Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

34 A move of the store to Applemarket Street followed in 1983, but around this time a double tragedy struck, as both of Fred’s sons died young in the early 1980s – Philip in January 1982 at the age of 49, and Ken in April 1983 aged 59, little over a month after retiring from the pet shop. Both had married, but I have not traced any male descendants and I believe that the Hyland family name has now died out in this line. Sadly, the family’s pet shop has long since vanished; I suspect it closed around the time of Ken Hyland’s retirement. There is a pet shop today in Northwich’s main shopping street, but although the name of Hyland Pet Stores still rang a bell with the proprietor when I visited in May 2010, it has no connection with the Hyland establishment. Fred Hyland had died before the family tragedies of the early 1980s. He saw out his last years apparently as the owner, or at least the occupier, of three properties. As well as the house in Beach Road, he also retained ownership of 10 Moss Terrace, and there are references both in telephone directories and in the memory of Mike Talbot-Butler to a further property in the village of Goostrey, a few miles east of Northwich. In some years in the 1960s there are separate phone-book entries for Fred’s widow both at 149 Beach Road, Hartford, and at Woodstock, New Platt Lane, Goostrey; Mike’s memory is of Fred living in Goostrey at nearby Booth Bed Lane. Maybe his peripatetic tendencies didn’t leave him in his later years, after all: they were just focused on a smaller area. Hyland celebrated his 70th birthday just before the end of 1963, but it would seem that he was by now ailing. In mid-February 1964 he made his will, leaving both his properties, 149 Beach Road and 10 Moss Terrace, to Ada, and almost all the rest of his estate ultimately to his three children. He died less than a fortnight later on 27 February at his home Of the Late Frederick J.Hyland, again Fred Hyland lived here in Beach Road, Hartford, Cheshire at the end of his life. Photograph taken in 2010.