History of Mr. Chips

Long gone are the days when fish and chips were cooked in coal fired-fryers and wrapped in newspaper!

The present proprietor of Mr Chips is John Hagan, who took the business over from his father Patrick in 1990.

But the earliest record of a fish and chip shop on this site in Aswell Street, Louth, is in 1906, and the Hagan family's connections with fish and chips go back nearly as far!

Daniel Hagan, a fisherman on the south coast, came to fish out of Grimsby in 1850 and his son, also Daniel Hagan, purchased this restaurant in 1920.

Daniel junior's son, Patrick, bought the business from his father in 1947 for a staggering £500. At that time fish, chips and peas, tea, bread and butter in the restaurant would have cost 1/7d - approximately 8 new pence! Waitresses' wages were 1/7d per hour.

So John took over the business that his grandfather had started seventy years early and so successive generations of the Hagan family have served successive generations of customers. This is the secret of Mr Chips …a high-volume business in a small Wolds Market town…it is the family involvement that is such a vital ingredient of their success.