File:Former Co-operative store, Writtle Road, Chelmsford. Dec 2011.jpg

English: Former branch of Chelmsford Star Co-operative Society - closed c 1984. this store must date from the late 1950s , because the original address was 50 Writtle road, some doors away, rather than 58 here. No 50 is marked by the post box outside

A little further along, towards Waterhouse Street , at No 38 was the Arc cafe, run by Mrs B. F. Muir in the 1950s. It wa so named owing to the promixity, and the source of much of its trade, one imagines, to the huge late victorian Arc works of Colonel Crompton, later Crompton Parkinson, later still Marconi Radar. Crompton had produced many improvements to Arc Lamps although a major earlier pioneer had been William Edwards Staite [1809 - 1854] who died on holiday in Normandy, but is buried in Wallasey. [a forgotten pioneer] The post office in the mid 50s was formerly at no 32, now Kelson premises on the eastern corner of Waterhouse Street. postmaster was William E Bedwell. However, 50 Writtle Road, is also known as a post office. Perhaps it became one when the Star Co-operative Society moved into its new premises above.

From the Bristol Mercury - more about the forgotten Staite... 25 May 1830 May 18 [1830, marriage] at St Augustine's church, Mr William Edward Staite, son of Mr John Staite of Stoke's Croft Brewery, to Mary, daughter of Mr John Webb, iron-merchant of this city and also ... 21 April 1838 April 11, at Layton, Essex, Mrs W.E. Staite, of a daughter the daughter was Agnes Charlotte Staite other children were mary, helen and George (1840) His wife Mary Staite died in Wirral in 1894. (by then Living in Ashton, Cheshire) In 1846, we read Staite was working with a Sunderland watch and clock maker, Carland, on a mechanism for controlling the space between the burning carbons across which the arc was produced. Staite lost the bulk of his capital when the Patent Electric Light Company, a supplier of chemical batteries in which he had a large

investment, failed. with his death, the initiative passed to the French. A forgotten pioneer.