Shops and Trades

Within living memory Radwinter boasted two windmills, two blacksmiths, a hardware shop, a saddler, a telegraph office, two butchers, as well as one who visited, two bakers, two general stores, two brewers, several carpenters, two wheelwrights, five carriers, four sweetshops, a tobacconist, a fishmonger, two cobblers and a village tailor, a milkman, an undertaker, a garage and numerous pubs, off-licences and alehouses. It had its own registrar of births marriages and deaths, a relieving officer to help the poor, a vaccination officer and a school attendance and inquiry officer. There was also a resident village policeman and postmaster. During the middle of the nineteenth century, the Somelite van would would act as a traveling hardware store.

Today most of this has passed away although the principal industry of farming remains.There is now just one pub, two others closing during the nineteen eighties and nineties and the post office in the twenty-first century. Two builders and a carpentry firm ply their trade from the village. Of the two public houses shown here, The Plough and The Red Lion, The Plough still plies its trade, offering good ales and wines and a high quality restaurant.