PHILIP Brewer Henwood was born in 1847 and grew up in St Clements Street, Truro, the son of a Miller, Thomas Henwood. At the age of 14 he was one of the ten Boarders at Thomas Hart’s school in Tregony. The first record of Philip in Liskeard is when he joined the St Martin’s Masonic Lodge on the Parade on November 5, 1876. The following entry in the Lodge’s record book is ‘1877 January 30, Robartes, Thomas Charles Agar, Gentleman’ of Lanhydrock.

Since 1848 the grocer and chemist shop at 6 Market Street, now the Fat Frog café, and the Well Lane Warehouse, now apartments, had been owned and occupied by two devout Quaker and Teetotal families, the Eliotts and the Robinsons. Several headstones in the Halbathick Quaker Cemetery on the St Cleer Road bear their names. Their Quaker beliefs were not continued by Philip Brewer Henwood when he took over both premises around 1876.

Henwood & Co Ltd, as well as being wholesale and retail grocers, chemists and mineral water manufacturers, were agents for W & A Gilbey Ltd, Wine and Spirit Merchants. And in 1891 Philip, at the age of 42, married his 25-year-old live-in housekeeper, Ellen Biddick from St Merryn. They went on to have three daughters: Edith, Agnes and Phyliss.

When Alderman Thomas Lang proposed Philip to become Mayor of Liskeard for the 1900/01 term he said, “the gentleman has for 25 years been a successful merchant in the town, and for the past 13 years has occupied a seat on the Town Council, where he has rendered great service”. He was duly elected, and was again for a second term the following year.

Information supplied by Brian Oldham, Liskeard Museum volunteer and Bard of the Gorsedh Kernow