This archive photo shows the garage of H Duffield and Son in Main Street, Fulford, and dates from May 1980.
We shared it in our nostalgia group on Facebook, We We Love York – Memories, and many readers have fond memories of the place.
It follows our story last week about the former Bristow’s garage further up Fulford Road in Fishergate, which closed in 2003 and led to one reader writing in to say the long derelict site should be compulsory purchased by the council and turned into houses.
Steve Lock posted in Why We Love York – Memories that he recalled Duffield’s. “I remember buying petrol at £1 per gallon!”
Ronald Hodgson went one better: “Remember buying petrol at £1 for four gallons, in the 60s, four gallons for a quid! And a squirt of Redex if nobody was looking!”
Linda Bullock posted: “I remember it well as it was owned by my uncle and aunt who lived next door to the garage.”
Gillian Sowray said her father bought his first brand new car there: a navy blue Ford Anglia.
The local history group, Fishergate, Fulford and Heslington Local History Society (FFHYork), has a fascinating and thorough account of the family and the garage business which you can read in full at: ffhyork.weebly.com
READ MORE: The real story behind the historic arches in Fulford Road
The Duffield garage story begins at the turn of the last century when James Henry “Harry” Duffield began repairing punctures to bicycles from the side of his family home at 24 Main Street, Fulford.
An archive photo from FFHYork shows the row of properties with a sign advertising his services at number 24 Main Street. The property is still there today.
He later moved the business to number 69 Main Street and began building as well as repairing bikes.
After the First World War he expanded to include the sale of motor cycles such as the New Hudson and Rudge-Whitworth.
The site also had a petrol pump installed in 1922 – only the second in York and the last before Selby some 13 miles south. Before this, petrol was sold in two-gallon cans.
By 1950 the business was on the move again. New laws required any business trading in petrol needed an entrance and exit and so the garage moved to what was to be its final location on the orchard land between 22 and 24 Main Street.
Harry died in 1959, and the business was continued by his son Thomas Henry who had joined the firm in 1924 following an apprenticeship with Lambert Brothers of Swinegate.
Throughout his career, the family business expanded with the sale of motor cars.
Paul Malcolm Duffield, Harry’s grandson, joined the family firm and eventually became managing director. The garage were the agents for Ford Motor Cars for 25 years, later taking on a franchise for Mitsubishi.
In 1972, 73 and 75 the garage won “Shell Shine” competitions and was voted one of the top three Shell stations in the country.
The garage prospered until the late 1990s when the site was sold to build Eliot Court in 1995 and Pavilion Row in 2006. Paul died in January 2006 aged 73 years.
What are your memories of Duffield’s? Join the conversation and share memories and photos in our Facebook group, Why We Love York – Memories.
