Jesse Smith &W.J. Castle

There has been a Jesse Smith's on Black Jack Street since 1808 — the shop is Grade II listed — and since the late 1970s it has belonged to the Hawes family, butchers here in their third generation, who took on Watermoor Meat Supplies in the 1960s and grew from there. Six shops now trade across the Cotswolds: the Cirencester originals and the Love Lane farm shop opened in 2016, then Tetbury, Elkstone, Burford, and Northleach, where the counter runs under the W.J. Castle name. Roughly forty-seven staff cut and serve. The name over the door belongs to a different family than the one behind it — which, after two centuries of continuous trade, hardly matters.