The practice
Ellard & Roe has tested eyes at 21 Priestpopple since 1961, through four partnerships and one flood. Four people work here. Nobody is on commission, and there is no target on the frame room.
1961 to now
Norman Ellard opened at number 21 in 1961, when a sight test was seven shillings and sixpence and the NHS still paid for the frames. His granddaughter Ruth runs the clinical side now. The original refracting chair is in the back room; it is not for patients, it is for the grandchildren, and it still goes up and down.
The rest has changed completely. We bought the first autorefractor in 1994, the first digital retinal camera in 2006 and the OCT in 2019, and that last one changed what an eye examination is for. It stopped being a test of how well you see and started being a record of how your eyes are changing.
What has not changed is the arithmetic of a small practice: four people, about nine thousand appointments a year, and no way to hide from anyone we have got wrong, because we will see them in the Co-op on Saturday.
A sight test used to be a question — can you read this? Now it is a measurement, and a measurement is only worth something if somebody keeps the last one.
The register
"Optician" is a job title anyone can use. "Optometrist" and "dispensing optician" are protected titles held by registration with the General Optical Council, and that register is public and searchable. Here are ours.
Ruth Ellard
Optometrist & independent prescriber · partner
Qualified 2004 at Bradford, pre-reg at the RVI, here since 2007 and partner since 2011. Runs the glaucoma repeat-readings clinic and the dry eye list. Her independent prescribing qualification means she can prescribe for the eye directly, which saves a GP appointment for blepharitis, dry eye and anterior uveitis follow-up.
GOC 01-24518MCOptom · IP Check the register
Sam Roe
Optometrist · partner
Qualified 2011 at Manchester, joined 2013, partner since 2016. Runs myopia management and the complex contact lens list — keratoconus, post-graft and irregular corneas. Also the person who reads every OCT twice, which is why the Tuesday clinic runs late.
GOC 01-31904BSc (Hons) MCOptom Check the register
Priya Nandra
Dispensing optician
Twenty-two years dispensing, eleven of them here. Children's frames, difficult varifocals and low vision. If a lens cannot be made in the frame you have fallen for, she will tell you in the shop rather than four weeks later on the phone — which is the entire skill, really.
GOC D-14722FBDO Check the register
Ade Coulthard
Contact lens optician
Fits rigid gas permeables and ortho-K and teaches every new wearer himself. Repairs frames the manufacturer has written off, using a drawer of parts that goes back to the 1980s and an unreasonable amount of patience.
GOC D-19086FBDO (Hons) CL Check the register
Ellard & Roe is also registered with the GOC as an optical business, and we carry professional indemnity through the Association of Optometrists. Both are conditions of practising, not achievements — but you should be able to check them, so they are here.
The instruments
A slit lamp for the front of the eye and, with a condensing lens, the back of it. A non-contact tonometer for pressures. A Humphrey field analyser. A digital retinal camera. An optical biometer for axial length, which is what makes the myopia clinic possible.
And the OCT, which images the retina in cross-section at roughly five microns. It is the difference between seeing that a macula looks unusual and being able to measure whether it has changed since 2021.
None of this replaces the optometrist. An instrument produces a number; somebody still has to know which numbers matter for you, at your age, with your family history — and that is the part we charge for.
The Priestpopple Plan
We publish this because a plan you cannot evaluate is just a standing order. At £168 a year it is worth it if you would have had the enhanced examination anyway and you buy glasses more often than every four years. If not, don't join — we will still see you.
OCT, retinal photography and fields included — £75 on its own, and we recommend it yearly from 50 anyway.
On the published prices, not on an inflated list. A £240 varifocal pair becomes £192.
Including a full remake if your prescription changes materially inside twelve months.
Ring the shop and you will speak to somebody who works in it. No queue, no options menu, no callback.