The original of the sweeties

JENNIFER Evans, 62, has worked in M Evans sweet shop on Wolfe Tone Square in Bantry since she was a girl.

Three generations of the Evans family have stood behind the wooden counter of the shop, which was established some time before the Second World War.

“The original name over the door used to be in a fancy script but it’s plain block letters now because the script doesn’t exist anymore,” says Jennifer, whose grandmother established the shop, and whose mother worked in the shop until she was quite elderly.

Her father died when she was young, but she remembers that he used to have an ice-cream counter in the shop.

Inside, the shop is painted Pepto-Bismol pink, with a vintage weighing scales and bags of penny sweets on the red Formica counter.

“There’s too many children coming in here now and I have to have the sweets ready for them,” says Jennifer, who sorts penny sweets into plastic bags costing 50c or €1. It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon, and children have been piling into the shop all day, mostly buying the bags of ‘penny’ sweets.

Bottles of lemonade sit high up on the shelves behind the counter, alongside Dettol and Domestos, household gloves and greetings cards. Jars of sweets are arranged in neat rows — Rosy Apples, Cough Sweets, Pineapple Cubes, Bulls Eyes, Sherbet Lemons and Fizzy Dummies.

“The children don’t eat toffees anymore, they’re more conscious of their teeth. Adults would come in and get a quarter of sweets. But it’s not a quarter anymore, it’s 113 grams,” she laughs.

It costs 84c for a quarter of sweets. Last summer, there was a rush on cough tablets, and lots of tourists visited the shop for sticks of pink rock, checking to see if ‘Bantry’ was written in wavy pink letters.

“The Cork people love the rocks during the summer. Long ago they used to put the names through the pink and white sticks of rock, but it’s too time consuming so it’s blank now,” says Jennifer.

It was a bad year for ice-cream sales due to the weather, yet despite this the youngsters from the caravan park in Ballylickey flocked to the shop for sweets all summer long.

As we chat, a woman pops into the shop to see if Jennifer has a conversion chart for pounds to kilos. The woman needs to weigh fruit in order to make plum pudding from a 100-year-old recipe. Her sister used to make the pudding every year, but passed away last year, and now it’s up to her to continue the tradition.

A group of 10-year-olds crowd the shop, shouting ‘Hello Jennifer’ and try to bargain with her. “You can do without something,” she smiles.

But times are changing, and Evans is unsure about the future of the shop. The local supermarket down the street is closing soon. The opening of a new community college at the top of the town may change everything, because the bus will then stop much further up the town, instead of right outside Evans’.

Evans no longer stocks newspapers or bread, except for the odd loaf for the regulars.

“A lot of what I used to sell 10 years ago, I don’t do now. I wouldn’t be getting up at 6am to sort out the newspapers now. A fellow asked me for them recently and it was embarrassing not to have them.”

Fifty years ago, she sold single cigarettes — Woodbines, Players and Sweet Aftons. With Sweet Aftons recently discontinued, Jennifer has one customer left who smokes them.

“I enjoy what I’m doing, but there’s not much to be made on sweets. You can only eat so many of them,” says the lady who, so far, runs the only sweet shop in town.

Picture: Jennifer Evans in her shop in Wolfe Tone Square, Bantry. Picture: Denis Scannell