Patties

Tates Fish and Chip Shop in Rawcliffe High Street, 2000

I am trying to keep up with blogs and comments. It is becoming somewhat intermittent, but I am still here! 

Last week, Yorkshire Pudding mentioned patties, which are deep-fried battered potato cakes made and sold by fish and chip shops in East Yorkshire, but rarely else where. We had them in Goole, too, which was just over the river in the West Riding. He describes them as: 

“a staple option in most fish and chip shops in the East Riding of Yorkshire. I have never seen them for sale in Sheffield or Leeds. ... A patty is round - about 3.5 inches across and about 1.5 inches thick. It is made from mashed potato seasoned with sage and onion. Then it is dipped in a batter mixture before being deep-fried.” 

For me, it raised a question. A bit more about Georgina Pocklington’s family history is needed to explain. You may remember I wrote in an earlier posts that she had eight children with three different fathers, among them my grandma’s half-sister, Aunty Bina. 

Aunty Bina had ten children herself, i.e. my grandma’s half-cousins. She used to recite their names: 

“... there was Aunty Bina who had Blanche, Tom, Gladys, Lena, Olga, Fred, Ena, Dolly, Albert and Jack. ... They had fish and chip shops all over.”

You could say they had a fish and chip dynasty. It was founded by Aunty Bina’s husband, Tom Tate. Later, their youngest son Jack (born 1919) took it over, and my mother and other relatives helped in the shop when called upon. It still bears its name in Rawcliffe High Street, pictured in 2000. It has quite recently been renovated with a new white UPCV door and shop window, and a new sign in similar style, and has lost all its character. I don’t know whether it remains in the family. Jack Tate was known far and wide for the size of his fish. He used a Swan Vestas match box as a template.

I visited Jack around 2000, when working out that part of our family history. It was a privilege to see him. There were many he turned down. He remembered my mother helping in the shop. 

Many of Tom Tate’s children set up and helped each other open fish and chip shops themselves. So as well as Jack in Rawcliffe, there was one in Goole, one in Snaith, another in Retford, and, surprisingly, the eldest four children had shops in Rotherham. They were born in the 1890s, so had retired before 1970. We audited fish and chip shops when  I worked in accountancy, and you could see what good businesses they could be. 

[ADDED LATER] Tom Tate’s (junior) fish and chip shop in Rotherham is mentioned in Mike Marsh’s ‘Growing up in Goole, Volume 3’, although not by name. Mike Marsh was a childhood friend of Tom’s wife’s aunt, who arranged for them to stay with the Tates in Rotherham to see Donald Bradman and the Australian cricket team play Yorkshire at Sheffield in 1948. The Tates met them at Rotherham railway station, gave them unlimited fish and chips for tea, and took them to the theatre. After returning from Sheffield to Rotherham the following day, Brian’s “ever-generous uncle” bought them a real cricket bat and ball.

The ones in the Goole area certainly sold patties, but if there were once four fish and chip shops in Rotherham, with recipes originating in Rawcliffe, could you also once buy patties there, and can you still?