"craiglea" The building itself was constructed in 1893 and was originally
scheduled to be a pub (the reason for the pub tiles on the exterior ), this soon came under fire from the upper class gentry that was north Annandale. so a shop and residence was the eventual outcome, thus “kierwan the grocer “ opened as a general store in late 1893 by a young newly arrived welsh emigrant david kierwan.

Up until 2005 when we bought the building at auction, although in a terrible state of disrepair, the shop never closed and has always been a meeting place for the locals.

I noticed what looked to be poorly rendered up doorways in the upstairs windows and with some arduous detective work i was able to establish that indeed craiglea did used to have a full wrap around balcony (as do a lot of pubs). I even found the grandson of one of the original owners of italian decent who told me he remembered the story of how the balcony was lost.

One day while trading in the shop in the early 1940s 2 men came in and approached mr cainairo who tended his groceries. The 2 men told of how dangerous the rotting timbers were to such heavy iron lacework and that they had no work at present and that for a very reasonable sum they would remove the entire balcony clean and paint all the iron and rebuild the structure “better than new”.

A deal was struck, the balcony was then speedily removed, and even more speedily taken away............never to be seen again..along with the 2 reasonably priced tradesman. I guess 29 lineal metres of iron work was worth a substantial amount even back then ;)