The photo this week shows Jim Hoppe in the piano workshop which at one time was situated in the Cross Keys Chequers. Jim started working in 1947 aged 15 and was employed by Jethro Crabb – a man we have featured before in ‘Bygone Salisbury’.

Along with Tom Price, Jethro owned the music store ‘Foley, Aylward and Spinney and their shop was where the entrance to Cross Keys Chequers stands today.

“I was there to learn the trade,” Jim recently told me. “Piano tuning, French polishing and that sort of thing. Our workshop was opposite the old staircase where years ago the old ‘Plume of Feathers’ stood. The workshop is where the shop ‘Cool!’ is today. A chap called Bill Heaton showed me how to tune pianos and Joe Cavender taught me French polishing – Tom Price, the joint owner was a very clever man because he could mend wind-up gramophones and old radios. Tom also had a recording studio up the stairs where there was a large room with a grand piano and there was Jack Symonds who gave piano accordion lessons.”

Jethro Crabb took on the work and managed the office and he also lived there in a flat that overlooked the Market Square. Eventually Jethro and Tom sold the business to Mr. Phil Nichols of Bournemouth in 1950. It is not known what happened to Tom but Jethro went into the car business.

Jim recounted how he travelled to work on an old Rudge motorcycle and referred to the Cross Keys as the 'Alley’. “Joe Yeates the hairdresser was there and above our workshop was Hetherington the dentist – sometimes you could hear the screams from the patients! These days my hearing is not what it was, which is not good for a piano tuner. But I still get people calling me and I still have all my tools so, even though I’m 87, who knows!”