Kentish Town

In 1873 the Sainsbury family moved to live above their new shop at 159 Queens Crescent. To open a second shop just four years after starting their business was a remarkable achievement.

Queen's Crescent was far less impoverished than Drury Lane. Kentish Town was located on the edge of a new area of suburban development and John Benjamin Sainsbury recalled that it ‘served a big distance as far out as Hendon’.

Like Drury Lane, the second shop was a small dairy, selling eggs, milk, butter and cheese. A customer recalled that it was possible to buy milk when the shop was closed from a slot machine outside, known as a 'mechanical cow'.

The shop did well and John James opened another branch in 1875 at 151 Queen's Crescent. This new shop specialised in ham and bacon, imported from Ireland and Denmark. Trade continued to grow and in 1884, a third branch was added at number 98.

Each of the Queen’s Crescent shops was relatively small and so, as in Drury Lane, Sainsbury’s traded from both the open windows of the shops and from trestle tables outside. There was rivalry for trade, both with market traders and between the three Sainsbury’s shops, which were known locally as ‘upper Sains’, ‘middle Sains’ and ‘lower Sains’.

Mrs Sophie Jones, whose mother, Hetty Scott ran a fruit and vegetable stall on Queen's Crescent market remembers:

‘I would make my mother a jug of tea, take it over to Sainsbury's and ask them to put a farthing's-worth of milk in it. Being stall holders, my brothers would go to the baker's, get two rolls, take them to a grocer's shop, they would butter them free, take them over to Sainsbury's, they would fill them up with ham off the bone, and all for 6d.’