Brian La Piazza here. I am Tony and Ellen’s youngest son. My older brother was Joe. I have some photos that you may find interesting. The first is a photo of the ice cream van sitting outside the original café, which was later the Co-op fruit shop. I think it might be Maria (Tony’s sister) inside it but she did not drive at that time so it looks scary to me. I remember how scary she was when she passed her test! The original is faded but you can clearly make out the name “The Little Duchess Café” on the original.  Nov 2012

tn_Van.jpg (4786 bytes) (From Ed. Can anyone verify the exact location?)


This one was taken inside the café and again it is Maria in the photo. I cannot tell whether this is the old café or the new one but the photo looks pre war so I think it may be the old one.

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This photo is self-explanatory. It is taken in 1938 before a Wembley trip. My father Tony and my uncle, Arthur Pelosi, are the two on the top right of the back row. No idea who the others are but somebody may recognise them.
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This is a photo of John McLeod and his wife and children taken outside the church in Cambuslang on the occasion of my mother and father’s wedding. You may recall that there was a plumbers & electricians beside the café in the shop which later became Hastie’s bakery. The proprietors were the McLeods and the Aitkenheads. I think John McLeod married Johnny Aitkenhead’s sister. Johnny was ex Motherwell left winger. John’s son Duncan went into the business and I think Fiona McLeod is still in Halfway. The original name above the door was Hugh McLeod & Son and I think that the kids in the photo could be Barbara and Duncan. Fiona was born around the same year as my brother so she was not around at that time. In case, does anyone think that it is Fiona in the photograph?

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This is a proof photo taken outside the church when I got married in 1975. The people in the photograph you may recognise. The lady on the left was Margaret Connor and she worked in the café for years through my childhood in the 1950s and 60s. The man is Alec Collins who lived in Overton road, and the lady on the right was Mrs Pate. She ran Gilbertfield Post Office. I recall another woman who worked in the café with Margaret called Kathleen but I can’t remember her surname. She was darker with black curly hair.
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These 3 photos must have been taken after the café closed but before the summer of 1986 when my father passed away. So I’d reckon around 1985. One is taken from the top of the stairs at the Mill Road flats and the other from the house itself. The one looking west towards Glasgow from outside the flats in Mill Road is looking across beyond the garages where the tennis courts attached to the bowling club were and the remnants of the Gateseide bing beyond.

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My recollection of the shops in the 1950s starting from Glen street were as follows:

Co-op drapery which had a shoe section.
Next Co-op fruit shop.
Gilbertfield Post Office,
Templetons General Store
The McLeod’s and Aitkenheads.
The Café
Mills newsagents and hairdressers Barbara Mills and I can’t remember her sister’s name).
East Kilbride dairies
Curley’s Butchers (Gerome & Willie Curley)
Galbraith’s General store on corner.

Across Craigallian was Coopers building with Russell’s Chemist shop on the corner.
Across Hamilton Road on the corner of Mill Road was another newsagent’s run by Jock & Willie McLean.
Further down the road there was a piggery.
In Craigallian between Coopers Building and the doctor’s surgery there was a farm “Burns Farm? Maybe which people cut through to the Ingleneuk and then on up to St Cadoc’s. Barr the Butchers had a cabin the other side of the doctor’s surgery.

The other side of Glen Street was the Co-op grocery run by Mr Duncan, whose son William I knew well at primary school. He had a younger sister Anne. I think the rest of the shops were Co-op owned as I can recall the hardware store but I think I am missing one or two. The guys I knew well at school were Donald McBean, Jim Kane, Arthur Grant, Tom McGuire, Mick Coulter and his sister Anne; Conn and Willie Duffy, Brian Wilson, Jim Bryceland, Eddie Torley, Eddie Burns, Brian Mcghee, Jim Grant, Charlie McCusker and John Gormley, the McMenemys and God knows how many more.

As I said to Pete McKenna, I worked in the café as a young lad on a Sunday morning and I recall the BB boys coming in first after their parade in Glen Street, and then it was quiet until 12 o’clock mass came out and everyone piled in. The long set between the ice cream counter was often filled with teenagers but often there were married women who seemed to commandeer it. I recall Mrs Gibbons and May Smith and a few others whose names I cannot recall. I was always better with faces than names.