In 1986 Bill Andrews and his wife Audrey retired from active participation in the Manor Road butchers (now managed by their son "young Billy" and daughter Janet).

In August 1988, also for health reasons, Dan and Joyce Andrews (shown in photographs), whose premises were in Ringwood Road, (where the Indian Palace restaurant is now in 2005) retired and sold his premises. They decided to leave Verwood for somewhere nearer the coast. 

In 1941, during World War II, Joyce as a schoolgirl was evacuated from Biggin Hill, Kent, to Christchurch where she met Dan Andrews and his brother Bill. On leaving school she trained as a chemist, but then married Dan. When Dan's brother Bill bought the butchers shop in Ringwood Road, Verwood, from a Mr. Legg (a lay preacher who at weekends used to plaster his shop window with religious texts) Dan and Joyce moved here to manage it. Help being needed in the shop, Joyce abandoned her early dreams of being "just a housewife". She learned the butcher's trade and worked alongside Dan.

Two years later, Dan bought the Ringwood business from his brother Bill, who then left Christchurch to move into the newly-built house and butcher's shop in Manor Road, Verwood, where he set up his separate business which continues to this day (2005).

At the rear of the shop which fronts onto  Ringwood Road, there was a lovely old thatched cottage where they used to live, before it was demolished to make room for the bungalows in St Stephen's Road.

When Dan and Joyce came to Verwood in 1956 it was a small village, almost self-sufficient, with Barrow's Bakehouse and General Store (now the Video Shop!), the Bon Marche (On the parade), Library and Restynge House at the crossroads, a fish shop and Hopkins Newsagents (then kept by Miss Hopkins).

Verwood then also had its own policeman, living in the Police House on Ringwood Road, who could solve most of the tricky problems brought to him by Verwoodians. There was a train service to Poole and Salisbury, a bus service to Ringwood/Bournemouth every two hours up till midnight and a local doctor, district nurse and midwife. What Verwood lacked was made-up roads, but there was little traffic, even on the Ringwood Road where daughters, Jane and Hazel, could happily play outside the shop, and where, in Mr. Legg's day, his old black labrador could sleep in the middle of the road while the occasional car or bus would steer round it

There was no main gas and Dan and Joyce well remember the overhead electric cables which, at the first sign of a thunderstorm became "alight" .glowing in the night sky.

Brought up as children in strict but differing religious disciplines, Joyce and Dan have an honourable record in local voluntary service - Dan was a committee member, secretary and for 13 years chairman, of the Verwood Royal British Legion while Joyce was, for five years vice- chairman of the Carnival committee and cherishes the thought that she has never knowingly refused help to anyone who sought it.

In 1984, when the Safeway store came to Verwood, Dan extended his country deliveries to be a full mobile butcher’s service to Cranborne, Alderholt and surrounding places. His daughter Hazel who (like her mother) had been roped in to learn the trade and help in the shop, now continues this mobile service on behalf of young Billy’s Manor Road business.

T.C.Dale.