Although the flats on the Boundary Street Estate had basic cooking facilities, many of the early residents will have chosen to continue the working-class/lower-middle-class tradition of using a “cookshop”. Customers could either take in their own bought produce to be cooked by the shopkeeper, or buy hot food to take away.

Mr F Berringer of 9 Marlow Buildings on the Estate rented a shop in Calvert Avenue as a cookshop. This was his February 1897 tariff for hot food to go:
roast beef, 10d a lb
boiled beef, 8d-10d a lb, according to cut
roast pork, 1s a lb
boiled pork, 10d a lb
roast mutton, 1s a lb
pease pudding, ha’penny per portion
carrots and greens, ha’penny per portion
half a baked sheep’s head, tuppence ha’penny–threepence ha’penny, according to size
sweet puddings, ha’penny–1d according to fruit content

This particular ‘cookshop’ was in Drury Lane and was specially set up by a charity for discharged prisoners, offering cheap food and lodgings for those who had just come out of prison. The photograph dates from the mid-1870s.