Clarence Hardware's bright red and yellow sign has been an unmissable feature of Grangetown's Corporation Road in Cardiff for over 60 years. Standing out against the terraced houses on the street, the shop has been providing customers with all kinds of goods - from lamps to L-plates - for decades.
Martyn Thomas, 52, is the current proprietor of the shop, working there with his wife, Suzanne, also 52. The shop has been part of the street since 1959, and still attracts plenty of customers decades later. On a Tuesday morning, it is bustling with people, the bell on the door ringing every time it opens - which is often.
Customers of all ages come in asking Martyn and Suzanne for a huge variety of items. One asks for hand soap, before making enquiries about decking and leaving with some candles. Another quite aptly describes it as an “Aladdin’s cave" as she walks through the door, looking for Martyn's help to help her navigate the shop.
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It is filled from floor to ceiling with whatever items you could possibly need. Candles, gold star stickers - you name it, they’ve probably got it. Footballs hang from a net just above the door, while kitchenware lines the shelves behind where I sit to chat to Martyn. Customers come through the door, heading to the back of the shop for nuts and bolts or for Martyn to cut a set of keys for them.
Clarence Hardware was originally started in 1959 by Trevor Parker, a family friend of Martyn’s. Trevor worked with Martyn’s father, Ron, in Cardiff firm Perkins and Seward back in the 1960s, before asking him to come and work at the shop.
“Trevor left to start his own business and, within about a year, approached my father to say, ‘Can you give me a hand?’”, Martyn said. Ron came to work in the shop in around 1960-61, and Martyn says a member of the Thomas family has worked in there ever since. Despite retiring from the shop at 65, Ron, now 80, still comes back in to lend a hand on a voluntary basis. “He can still put in a full half-day shift,” Martyn said.
“He just comes in to see everybody and have a decent conversation with all the customers that we’ve had for 50-60 years,” Suzanne added. Martyn became a partner of the business with Ron in 2000, before buying his father’s half of the business when he retired.
The shop has become a true family business, with various members of the Thomas family having worked there over the years. Martyn and Suzanne's sons, Ben, 21, and James, 27, both worked Saturday jobs at the shop over the years, while Martyn’s uncle Lesley and aunt Mavis, who have now retired, also did shifts in the shop.
Martyn and Suzanne, who are set to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary this year, say that it’s “brilliant” working as a family. “It’s nice, the fact that you don’t have to worry. You’ve got the trust factor because it’s family,” Suzanne said. While she did the shop's accounts from home, she now works in the shop alongside her husband.
“She’s gone from not seeing me at all to seeing me every day now,” Martyn said. “I used to leave early in the morning and come back late at night, but she sees me most times through the day now and at night.”
He continued: “We actually closed down for the first time over the Christmas period just gone, and we had our first four days off together for two-and-a-half years.”
For Martyn and Suzanne, it’s the people who come into the shop every day that are the best part of working in the heart of Grangetown. Martyn said: “Your customers make your business. It’s the people who come in to see you every day, day in, day out. Year after year, it’s usually the same faces.”
Suzanne added: “You have customers that have been here for 50 years and their families, and children, and grandchildren all come in. People will come and if they have moved away, they’ll travel quite a way to come back to us. Even if they’re not buying anything, they’ll pop in to say hello. It’s lovely.”
Martyn has fond memories of working in the shop over the years, saying: " It’s a laugh-a-minute to be honest with you. When we had a full set of staff, and my father and uncle used to work here, they were a pair of devils together. We had some really funny times, really good-natured humour between staff and customers. We’ve had some really funny moments over the years."
The appreciation of the shop’s customers is clear. Back in 2007, the shop even won a South Wales Echo ‘They’re the Business’ award after a customer nominated them. The shop has accounts with the local schools, who they supply to regularly, as well as housing associations in the area.
In their time as part of the Grangetown community, the family has been able to see the area change over the years. “We get a lot of new youth coming to the area," Martyn said. "It’s changing on the face a little bit because Cardiff is now becoming quite a hub for television, film, [and] media. It’s bringing in a lot of professionals and they’re sticking to the area. Once you’ve secured them as a customer, they keep coming back.”
The wide range of items that the shop sells has led to some unusual requests from customers. “[We get] ‘four candles’ all the time from the Two Ronnies thing,” Suzanne said.
“We still still get the odd apprentice that gets sent up for a ‘long weight,’ 'a glass hammer for some rubber nails,’ 'a skirting board ladder.’ The best one of those that I had was probably a chap [who] had bought a wheelbarrow and then about 20 minutes later, he sent his apprentice back up and his boss told him to come back and ask if he could get one with a ‘faster squeak.'”
The shop has even been involved with some of the most popular TV shows made in Wales, supplying the taps for the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special, as well as supplies for Doctor Who and S4C programmes such as Pobl Y Cwm. On top of that, they have supplied to some of the largest projects in South Wales, including The Wales Millennium Centre and Cardiff Bay Barrage.
The site of the shop is also steeped in history, and has a plaque outside to commemorate the bombing of the Hollymans bakery in 1941. On the fateful night of January 2 that year, more than 50 people were killed in Grangetown alone.
Open for business since the 1870s, owners of family bakers Alfred and Bill Hollyman had offered shelter to more than 30 members of the local community in their large cellar, alongside their family of five. However, the property was levelled by a direct strike from an enemy land mine, tragically killing all inside. The following day, 14-year-old delivery boy for the bakery, John Williams, arrived for this round to find his employer’s shop in ruins.
The site of the bakery, which is now the hardware shop, was turned into two apartments owned by the John Williams foundry and the South Wales Coal board respectively. They became visiting apartments for high-ranking members of the institutions before one was bought and converted into the shop.
On a normal working day, Martyn says that he clocks up around 20,000 steps walking around the shop to find items for customers or cutting keys in the back. In lockdown, however, this shot up to 30,000 to 40,000 steps, as the shop began serving people from the street.
“It was a lot of leg work through lockdown. I gave myself shin splints. It was up and down [the steps] all the time,” Martyn, who also taught karate prior to the pandemic, said.
The shop has managed to survive the difficulties of the pandemic, but Martyn and Suzanne say that it was “hard work.” “We served from the street when we were able to open because at the beginning of the pandemic nobody knew how bad it was going to be,” Suzanne said.
“It was just a few hours, every other day, nine hours a week for the first few months to see how everything went. It was very hard - and not knowing what we were facing as well. Most people were just at home and we were out there facing the unknown.”
Since re-opening fully, the shop has experienced some issues with supply networks, imports, and price rises when ordering. “It’s a challenge,” Martyn said. But, on the morning I visit the shop, they are still busy as ever, serving a variety of customers, all with different needs and questions.
Suzanne says a good knowledge of all the different areas of the shop is key to the business. “You’ve got so much knowledge that you need to know for everything. You’ve got to literally train someone up for a good few years before you let them loose in the place. There’s electricals, there's plumbing, there’s housewares, there’s decorating - the list just goes on. There’s so many different areas involved.”
With years of experience under his belt, knowledge is something that Ron has built up and is still able to put to good use when he pops into the shop. “Though he’s 80, he’s still got a lot of knowledge there and helps out when he can,” Suzanne said. “He has to be in the shop - it’s a life-long thing. He loves coming in and mixing [with the customers],” Suzanne said.
“No day is the same,” Suzanne continued. “You’ve got your different customers coming in, different things that they want. It’s always a variety.”
