Hague & Howford. 12 Barber Road
“Radio & Gramophones. Accumulators charged.” Accumulators were rechargable battery packs which people increasingly used to power their radios. Children would be sent on errands to get these recharged for 2d or so (and warned to be careful as they contained battery acid). Many shops dealing in gramophones and records offered this service. This is the only example of their sleeve I have found to date. Someone has cut off the corners, possibly because they has become creased, and repaired the edges with tape over the years. Premises still there, currently carpet shop.
Hall. M.H. 97 Leppings Lane
Newsagent, wholesale and retail tobacconist, according the the small rubber shop stamp on this 10″ plain brown record sleeve. The shop probably just carried a small selection of current popular songs. Amazingly the shop is still there, now dealing in football programmes and memorabilia (it is very close to the Sheffield Wednesday football ground).
Handsworth. 337a Handsworth Road.
A radio and general dealers shop named after the road and suburb, also selling gramophone and wireless sets and stockists of records. Their sleeve also mentions “High Class Toys at Lowest Prices”. Premises is now a hairdresser but much modernised. It would have been quite a modest sized shop.
Harrison, Bernard & Co. 273 Ecclesall Rd.
Specialists in Clumberphone gramophone cabinets and players, as well as records the shop also stocked second hand and rare string instruments. Shop facade had been modernised and is now a student letting agent.
Hattersley. J.. 96 Fawcett Sreet.
Specialist in Gramophone Repairs. Cycle accessories. Records.
The area of small brick built terraced houses and small shops was redeveloped in the late 1950s and is now low rise flats.
Heeley Gramophone Saloon, 507 London Road
Prop H.G.Mosby. Established 1918, this sounds a very grand shop. In fact it was one of two small shops next to each other built out over the river by the bridge here. Heeley Gramophone saloon was the right of the two, and demolished in 1936 along with the pub next door (the pub was rebuilt). (The second shop lasted into the 1980s).
The shop was previously known as Mosby’s (The Radio Man) (see separate entry). H. C. Mosby is listed under the Heeley Gramophone Saloon, 507 London Road in the Sheffield & District Trades Directory 1927-28. Stocking “All the latest records. Radio expert, accumulators re-charged. Pianos, gramophones and musical small goods. Sheet music.”
The shop kept changing the design of their sleeves, and several different examples exist. The one here is perhaps the grandest and implies a magnificence very much at odds with the actual shop. Sheffield journalist Stephen McClarence wrote about the shop in 2012. “In her early 20s, my mother was an assistant in that shop, in a working-class area of Sheffield. To the end of her life she remembered selling records by Albert Sandler and his Palm Court Orchestra and she remembered what colour the labels were. Accumulators were a sort of battery, and one morning a young man from round the corner with Brylcreemed black hair came in to do the recharging. He hit it off with my mother….”
Hitsville, 125A Rockingham Street, city centre
Run by Michael Kersey who had set up Windmill Records in the Wicker. Hitsville was going until rents rises and redevelopment shut it down in the 1980s. It may have then become Jeff’s Records two blocks away for a time I think. Michael went mail order only and was still going in 2019 (https://www.windmill-records.co.uk/)
Hobson & Allen, 119 Infirmary Road, 316 Langsett Road, 341 Penistone Road
Records, cycles, motorcycles, gramophones, wireless parts, etc.
Open all day Sunday too. The later bag below just has the Penistone Road address, suggesting they may have closed the two other shops which were within a mile of the first. 119 still stands but much altered. 316 remains but has been converted to cheap accommodation. 341 has been demolished. The sleeve above has been heavily repaired in years gone by with strong brown tape.
Hoyland & Son. John. 70 The Moor
Radio, Music, Records, Gramophones, Pianos. Radio servicing.
The sleeve claimed Hoylands were the ‘oldest established music house in Sheffield’ but we cannot confirm this. Their record sleeve also boasted of ‘The best equipped radio showroom in the north of England’. They also had a branch at Worksop.
The Moor was extensively damaged during the war, and the shop moved out of the town centre (perhaps as a result of this) to 111 Penistone Street, where it sold “All the latest record ‘hits'”
Hudson. G. 92 Staniforth Road (later 32), 42 Attercliffe Road (later 48), 101 Spital Hill (later 105)
Hudsons appears to be another early record stockist judging from the design of their various record sleeves. Originally advertising as The Cycle Man, records were soon in stock, as well as wireless sets and toys. I do not know if they were related to the Hudson’s who had a long running record shop business in Chesterfield.