Roy

Arments Pie & Mash | 44y

Roy’s paternal grandparents took over this shop just off the Walworth Road in south London in 1914, and it became Arments Pie & Mash.

Roy himself started out as a Saturday boy in 1972 and went full time in 1976. 44 years on, he still comes in most days of the week to either make pies, train up his nephew or help out in the office upstairs.

Despite the dramatic changes to the area recently, including the tearing down of the Aylesbury estate, the shop has remained somewhat frozen in time. It still has its regular customers, though fewer now as the old estate’s residents used to pop in for a takeaway a couple of times a week. It has weathered the storm by attracting visitors from all over the UK and even China, the US, and Australia, all keen to sample the traditional pie recipes unchanged in decades.

The only addition to the menu in recent years has been a vegetarian option for the more gentrified tastes the area has brought in and a reintroduction of fruit pies around 15 years ago.

Roy had a celebrity visit a few years ago when the actor Joely Richardson turned up at the shop. Apparently she’d asked her driver to recommend a traditional pie shop in the area and the driver took her to Arments as his family had been going for many years.