Then and Now

WARREN SHOPS, MALVERN

Photographer, date and source unknown. Photo courtesy of Bonnie Haughey


Photographed by Joyce A. Post, April 2006



The General Warren Inn on Old Lancaster Road near Malvern was a major stagecoach stop in the Tredyffrin area in the early 1800s. Stagecoach stops almost always had associated shops nearby where blacksmiths and wheelwrights tended to horses, coaches and carriages. The Warren Shops were located just to the east of the inn on the southwest corner of the intersection of Old Lancaster Road and Warren Avenue. The view in these images look south on Warren Avenue.

Local historian Thomas J. McGuire, in his book Battle of Paoli [Stackpole Books, 2000], relates [on pages 97 and 99] how, on the night of September 20, 1777, just before the "Paoli Massacre", the British forced a blacksmith at the Warren Shops to guide them to the location of Gen. Anthony Wayne’s troops - camped just south of what was then known as the Admiral Warren Inn. The unknown blacksmith, however, led the British in a different direction, thereby saving Wayne’s troops from an even worse disaster.

A few local newspapers carried business announcements about the craftsmen at the Warren Shops. On March 26, 1870 the Jeffersonian reported that Joseph Aikens had purchased the Warren Shops from Jesse Coburn who moved to Willistown. In the December 20, 1879, in the Green Tree & Malvern Item, John G. Moore, manufacturer of carriages, announced the establishment of a general wheelwrighting business in the Warren Shops. The February 24, 1891 Daily Local News reports that Samuel Mood of the Spring Mills Shops in Glen Loch would be moving to the Warren Shops on April 1st of that year.

 

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