TODAY, facing up Duke Street from Skinnergate in Darlington is an undistinguished line of shops that was built in the mid-1960s.

Those shops were on top of an Upton’s supermarket which had itself been built in the 1920s on top of some 19th Century shops – one of which had been run by Doreen Duguid’s great-grandmother, Elizabeth Davison.

Doreen kindly sent in a photograph of the shop following the selection of Skinnergate photographs which appeared in Memories 318.

“Elizabeth had 14 children, 12 of whom survived, ran the shop selling cakes and pies baked by her only daughter, Minnie,” says Doreen.

“Elizabeth did all the paperwork for the shop and also for her husband, Joe, who had a decorating business and shop in Bondgate. Most of their 11 sons went in to building, decorating and joinery businesses in and around Darlington.”

The photograph, from about 1906, shows the Davisons’ shopfront advertising Fry’s chocolate, Rowntree’s sweets, Carraco biscuits and, emblazoned across the window, “Turog bread”. Can anyone tell us about Turog bread?