Quality Discounts Furniture

In 1841 this building was occupied by Edward Charles Baker, grocer and draper who died in 1850, aged 45. The business was taken over in the late 1850s by Tyrrell Garner Smith until a fire devastated the building in 1871. Three years afterwards the shop was put up for sale.

It was bought by Charles Henry Hannant, a Londoner by birth but with Norfolk connections. By the 1890s the shop was well established as a “supply store” grocers, tea blenders, patent medicines providers and wine and provision merchants, with two of his sons.

Charles lived at Point House, New Sporle Road and died in 1905. The business continued to the 3rd generation when Charles’ grandson Eustace died in 1961.

Image taken from 1890s.

The business was then bought by Benjamin Rust of Cromer and became part of Rust’s Ltd. The old Rust’s shop was demolished and reduced to a two storey building in 1965.

For three months during its construction they received a special licence to sell alcohol in the Shire Hall next to the courtroom – except on Mondays when the court sat!

The new building was very modern in appearance – even to being part self-service.

Image 1965

Information is scarce on the life of the building after that time. Murdoch-Norton appears to have taken over as grocers around 1976-1980 but it was then taken over by Freeman, Hardy and Willis as a shoeshop in the mid 1980s. It closed before the company folded by 1996. Did Stead and Simpson replace it? Until when?

It became Thing-Me-Bobs, part of the QD group, in the 2010s and in 2021 re-opened as a QD furniture store, closing in January 2024.