AN OBSERVATION in last week's Looking Back article on the closure of Hounslow Synagogue is ambiguous and either interpretation leads to a wrong conclusion.
Eddie Menday writes that the furniture store of Harold Rose was 'opposite the Bell public house in Bell Road'.
This means either that the store was in Bell Road (incorrect) or that the public house itself is in that road (technically incorrect as it is in Staines Road) but, more to the point, the furniture store referred to was actually in Staines Road some waydown from the Bell pub and more-or-less opposite the old Alcazar/Granada cinema (later the site of Annabelle House, now of the Etap Hotel).
Across Bell Road and opposite the Bell pub were the High Street offices of P Chase Gardener estate agents, with their auction rooms behind.
Some of your readers will remember the disastrous fire which destroyed the furniture store; this turned out to have been started by Harold Rose's successor, his former sales manager, for a fraudulent insurance claim and to cover up a series of hire purchase frauds he had initiated.
For these crimes, he was sent to prison for a number of years. It was an inglorious end to a fine shop which had traded on the site for many years.
DEREK WHEATLEY Whitton Dene, Isleworth.
