HERE’S some food for thought for you, but it’s probably best to look away now if you adhere to a vegan lifestyle. It’s Eastman’s butchers back in the day. And the day we’re taking is sometime in the early 20th Century. The venue is 24 Frogmore Street.

The past is often a bloody and brutal business and it doesn’t get no bloodier than these boys. Take a butchers at these no-nonsense meat and cleaver men. Is that claret on their otherwise pristine white aprons?

These gentlemen of the chopping board spent their days knee high in offal and elbow deep in guts to bring the good people of Abergavenny their choice cuts and Sunday joints.

Before the age of health and safety regs, the apron was a man’d best friend when it came to wiping away the blood of a butchered animal.

Nowadays of course our stomachs would turn and sensibilities shudder at the thought of someone resembling Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre serving us up our sausages. Nor for that matter would we particularly want to see animal carcasses hanging outside a shop like an unsavoury advertisement for wholesale slaughter. But times change and so too do shopping habits.

Eastmans Limited was by no means unique to Abergavenny. By 1912 business was booming and the popular butchers had over 1,400 shops scattered across the UK.

Yet the First World War spelt disaster for the company with many of Eastmans’ employers never to return from the killing fields of France.

The premises would later be taken over by J.H. Dewhurst’s who would themselves become a household name before they too succumbed to the dawn of the supermarket.

The premises in Frogmore Street would later become amongst other things, a cafe, a hairdresser, a Chinese restaurant, a carpet shop, and in one of its most recent incarnations, a lingerie specialist and Ladies Emporium.

Just imagine what these lovely lads in the fading photograph would have made of such a silky transformation?

If you’ve got a blast from the past or something sage from a forgotten age then get in touch with Tim Butters at 01873 852187 or [email protected].