Over the last 100 years Corsham has seen a number of well-established butcher shops come and go. Many of us remember the shops of Mr Ives, the Love family, Beszants, with their slaughter house, the Royal Wilts and the North West London Meat company. In recent years the shop, now occupied by Toby Haynes, was the premises for Artingstalls and the Thomas family from Malmesbury. Toby Haynes has been in Corsham for the last 8 months and he’s been kind enough to share with us how he came to choose Corsham for his new business.
Corsham’s new butcher, Toby Haynes
Toby was born and educated in Highworth and on leaving school trained as a chef at the local college whilst working in the kitchens of the golf club. He left being a chef when an opportunity came up at the local butchers to improve his skills and knowledge for his chef’s career, but he loved training as a butcher so much he never went back into being a chef! He then did his NVQ training in butchery at Andrew’s Quality Meats in Highworth and stayed there for 8years becoming shop manager in the end. After his time in the Andrew’s shop he followed on by managing Michael Hart and Son in Cricklade for 4 years until, with his wide, they decided to look for their own shop and found it to be in Corsham High Street, our gain, Cricklade’s loss.
During the last 8 months Toby, together with his team of staff, Marie and Robert, has built up a fantastic customer base ensuring specific customer requirements are catered for. Toby comments that he was lucky enough to be brought up on a farm and has strong beliefs when it comes to animal welfare and quality of life and he thinks that happy well looked after animals make for good eating!! We wish Toby, with his staff, every success for the future.