The hugely popular Frome-Based artist Kate Talbot has moved her studio - and shop - to a former butchers high up Catherine Hill.

She has moved from inside the Poot Emporium on Catherine Hill, to a shop on the right hand side opposite Phoenix Terrace.

The building was, as you can see from the original tiling, a former butchers shop. It was called Eastman's before that butchers group was taken over by the now closed Dewhurst group - and more recently the space, 28 Catherine Hill operated as the Paprika Indian takeaway.

You can read more about Kate and see some of her stitched work by clicking HERE : the artist's site

Dewhurst Butchers was once the largest butcher's chain in the UK. Part of the Vestey Group founded in 1897, at its peak the chain of butchers shops had over 1,400 outlets. However, as the supermarkets began to dominate the High Street and the Vestey Group diversified away from its core business, the business fell out of favour and into decline.

A little up the road is Cayfords butchers which was started in 1904.

Eastman's had a fascinating history. Importing meat from North America to Britain started in the 1860s and accelerated in the 1870s as refrigeration improved. One of the leading shippers was Timothy C. Eastman (1821-93) who owned a huge abattoir in New York.

Within Britain, the brothers Henry and James Bell set up a chain of butcher's shops in 1879. Ten years later they controlled 330 shops which traded as The American Fresh Meat Co. or Hill & Dale Ltd. Unlike traditional butchers' shops, these multiples did not have their own slaughter houses; there was no need, since everything was brought in from wholesalers.

The Bells' target clientele was the working class, which benefited from the availability of cheap foreign meat. In June 1889 they set up Eastmans and by 1903 Eastmans Ltd. had 205 retail shops and cold stores capable of holding 310,000 carcasses of mutton; by 1912 the number of shops had risen to 1,400. The five years preceding the Great War, however, were lean years for the imported meat trade, due to rising prices and slack demand. For Eastmans Ltd., the war proved disastrous. Between 1914 and 1917, 495 shops closed.

Later the remaining shops were taken over by Dewhursts, but fast forward to 2005 and the company was bought by West Country butcher Lloyd Maunder. A year later Dewhurst closed 60 shops and called in the administrators to help sell the remaining 35. Like so many other meat multiples, it vanished from the British shopping scene, bowing to the superior might of the supermarkets.