Web Page  No 2366

29th April 2017

Top Picture: Original Corona Label

 Second Picture: Original Corona bottle

 Third Picture: The Corona Fizzical

Forth Picture: The Porth Factory

Corona

When we kids the most popular soft drink was Corona  produced by Thomas & Evans Ltd. This was a firm was created by two grocers William Thomas and William Evans when they saw a market for soft drinks caused by the growing influence of the temperance movement in South Wales.

William Thomas was born in 1851 in Mathry in Pembrokeshire in the west of Wales. He came from a family of farmers, and at the age of fourteen he left home to take up an apprenticeship as a butcher in Newport.  In 1874 he married Rowena Rowlands and they moved to the village of Aberbeeg where he set up a butcher's shop, living in the premises above. The business was a success and soon a warehouse was added and the shop enlarged.

In 1882 William Evans (born 1864), who himself came from Pembrokeshire, came to work at the shop and lived with the family for three years. The two men became business partners setting up a chain of grocery stores and a few years later they branched into the soft drinks market. 

Initially, William Evans had not considered producing non-alcoholic beverages, but a chance meeting with an American business man and the growing temperance movement in the south Wales valleys led him to the production of carbonated drinks. Although partners, William .Thomas provided the money to set up the business and the money he loaned to Evans was set an interest rate of 50%

Their first major plant was in Porth in the Rhondda Valleys, the heartland of the industrial coalfield in south Wales. Named the Welsh Hills Mineral Water Factory, the building opened during the 1890s and boasted state-of-the-art bottling machinery and a process to safely clean the glass bottles, allowing for the bottles to be reused after being returned by the customer for a small deposit. The bottles originally used Hiram Codd's globe-stopper with a wire hinged top to keep in the pressure of the carbonated drinks. Initially the firm produced mineral water and ginger beer, under the brand Thomas & Evans' Welsh Hills soft drinks, in the hope they could gain a foothold in public houses as a non-alcoholic alternative. This was an unsuccessful venture, and Evans was forced to find an alternative market for his drinks. He struck upon the idea of selling door-to-door using horse and wagon, and soon this became a success, with the company branching into other more child-friendly flavours, such as orangeade, dandelion and burdock, raspberryade and lemonade.  By the turn of the century the company had over 200 salesman delivering Corona drinks by horse-drawn delivery wagon across Wales, and two massive steam-driven vehicles.

In the early 1920s Evans decided to re-brand his drinks and chose the name Corona. A logo was devised consisting of seven wire topped bottles fanned to represent a crown over the new name (corona is Latin for crown). The brand was extremely successful and expanded across south Wales, and at its peak the company had 82 distribution depots and five factories, Tredegar, Pengam, Maesteg, Bridgend and Porth. Although a common and popular sight throughout Wales, the horse-drawn wagons were phased out during the early 1930s and replaced by a fleet of motor vehicles. These vehicles, recognizable by their red and gold livery and Corona logo, were serviced and repaired by the company's own engineering shop attached to the Porth factory.^[5] By 1934 the Porth depot had 74 vehicles and three years later that number had risen to 200.

In 1934 William Evans died and the role of chairman and managing director was taken over by his brother Frank and under his management the company continued to grow and by the end of the decade the factories of Wales were producing 170 million bottles a year. With the outbreak of war in 1939, many of Thomas and Evans motor vehicles were commandeered by the government for war service. This, along with petrol rationing, saw a brief reintroduction of the horse and wagon delivery service. With the end of the war in 1945, the company went back into full production and reintroduced a motorized fleet. In 1950 the firm launched Tango, an enduring brand that is still in production. 

 In 1958 the company was bought by The Beecham Group, who kept the Corona brand. Although production continued to be centralised in South Wales, depots began to appear all over the United Kingdom. Under new management Corona reached a new audience and during the 1960s was promoted by a series of television advertisements starring British singer and comedian Dave King. With the rise of supermarkets in the late 1960s and 1970s the public's shopping habits changed and the door-to-door sales dropped. During the 1970s one of Corona's most memorable advertising campaigns used the slogan Every bubble's passed its FIZZical!  In 1987 the company again changed hands coming under the ownership of Britvic Soft Drinks. Britvic closed the Welsh Hills plant in Porth in 1987 with production being transferred to Bolton.

In 2000 the old Corona factory in Porth was converted into a music recording studio named The Pop Factory obviously, a play on words.

I can clearly remember the Corona man doing his rounds around our area and begging mum to buy some Limeade or Dandelion and Burdock.

Keep in touch

Peter

gsseditor@gmail.com

On this day 29th April 1960-1965

On 29/04/1960 the number one single was My Old Man's a Dustman - Lonnie Donegan and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Wagon Train (ITV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

29/04/1961 the number one single was Wooden Heart - Elvis Presley and the number one album was GI Blues - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Bootsie & Snudge (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

The On 29/04/1962 the number one single was Wonderful Land - The Shadows and the number one album was Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 29/04/1963 the number one single was How Do You Do It? - Gerry & the Pacemakers and the number one album was Summer Holiday - Cliff Richard & the Shadows. The top rated TV show was Labour Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 29/04/1964 the number one single was A World Without Love - Peter & Gordon and the number one album was With the Beatles - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

29/04/1965 the number one single was Ticket to Ride - The Beatles and the number one album was Rolling Stones Number 2 - The Rolling Stones. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

Web Page  No 2364

22nd April 2017

Top Picture: The Witches Hat

 Second Picture: The Seesaw

Third Picture:  A typical drinking fountain.

In the Rec.

Do you remember those giant toys that were placed in the municipal parks or playgrounds? The enormously long see- saws which could sometimes accommodate twelve children or more on each side, there was always someone who fell off and the fear of some that they would get caught underneath.  

One of the other popular rides was the horse rocker that moved backwards and forwards as the riders sat astride it. These rides sometimes had a horse’s head on one end and a tail on the other plus two legs both sides. Again, this was a ride for multiple numbers of riders.

If you were on your own or with a friend you would have probably made your way to the swings and played higher and higher in an attempt to get the seat above the horizontal plane. This was often done whilst standing on the seat making the whole thing more exciting. There were always swings of varying sizes from those designed for older children right down to the safety seated ones for the toddlers.

There were often hoops and loops concreted into the ground so that children could swing on them and perform elementary forms of gymnastics. Sometimes there would be a climbing frame set into the grass but all these pieces of equipment always looked as though they had been made of scaffold poles and their connecting pieces.

Sand pits, football pitches with goal posts (no nets just posts) and acres of grassland always seemed to be the hallmark of these fields and if you were lucky there was always an area of rough grass that had not been cut to play in. There was a thing called either the Maypole or The Octopus which consisted of ropes dangling down from the top of a pole and onto which the children clung on and swung. Oh must not forget the slides! Often there was a sand pit for the little ones to play in but seeing some of the things that were deposited in these pits by the local dogs etc, it was not the best environment for many children to play in!

There always seemed to be a drinking fountain in these parks most of which were self-operated by turning a knob shaped vaguely like a lemon squeezer and then bending down to drink the water that gushed from the spout below. Occasionally there would be a metal mug chained to the pump, all in all one of the most unhygienic things I have seen for years and because during the summer months (it was usually either turned off or frozen solid in the winter) it was in constant use and the drain below could not cope so the drinking fountain always seemed to be in the middle of a muddy puddle!

I have left the two scariest rides until last. Firstly, there was the hand propelled roundabout. This was great fun until some children decided to see how fast it would go and try to spin it around at a fearful speed. They may have found it most gratifying but I know that there were hundreds of children who were terrified if this happened when they were on it. But that’s children for you!

The last piece of equipment I intend to talk about caused many injuries, cuts, sprains and even broken bones, so much so that in the mid-1960s most of them were dismantled and taken away. This piece of equipment was called ‘the Witches Hat’ a conical devise which rotated round and round as well as backwards and forwards across its axis. It was always obvious where this piece of equipment was in a playing field from the noise that the riders would make, shouts, screams, yells and sometimes cries of agony as some poor child got caught inside the hat itself. As I said many councils condemned them and most had been removed by the end of the 1960’s.

Soon health and safety took over and initially soft landing areas installed around the equipment and then investigations into some of the play equipment declared them a health hazard and many of them were removed. Usually the first to go was the ‘Witches Hat’.

Well we all survived these terrible pieces of equipment and are still here to tell the tale.

Keep in touch

Peter

gsseditor@gmail.com

On this day 22nd  April 1960-1965

On 22/04/1960 the number one single was My Old Man's a Dustman - Lonnie Donegan and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Armchair Theatre (ABC) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 22/04/1961 the number one single was Wooden Heart - Elvis Presley and the number one album was GI Blues - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Bootsie & Snudge (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 22/04/1962 the number one single was Wonderful Land - The Shadows and the number one album was Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 22/04/1963 the number one single was How Do You Do It? - Gerry & the Pacemakers and the number one album was Summer Holiday - Cliff Richard & the Shadows. The top rated TV show was Labour Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 22/04/1965 the number one single was Ticket to Ride - The Beatles and the number one album was Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

Web Page  No 2362

15th April 2017

Top Picture: Modern Approvals

 Second Picture: A sheet of Penny Blacks

Third Picture:  A 1960 Stanley Gibbons catalogue

Stamp Approvals

What were stamp approvals? Well the clue lies in the name. They were, simply put, stamps of which you approve. And you "approve" of them by looking at them and making up your own mind whether to buy or not.

Anyone who collected stamps as a youngster will remember going to a local shop and buying packets of foreign stamps off a card behind the counter or even buying a bump big bag of assorted stamps.

Collecting was simple all you needed was an album. A packet of stamp hinges to attach the stamps to the book and off you went. If you were really serious about collecting stamps you saved up and bought a Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue.

But what has this to do with Approvals? This method of buying stamps was introduced to me by my father, I do not know why because apart from a couple of albums he had had since he was a boy he was no great philatelist.

I suppose he must have ordered the packets of stamps and paid for those I wanted but I remember nothing of this side of the business, all I knew was that I eagerly awaited the arrival of the next packet of stamps through the post. If my memory serves me correctly I was never allowed to have any expensive stamps just ‘different’ ones.  I also do not remember paying my father for these purchases so I assume he must have paid for the purchased items and returned the unwanted stamps in the return envelope provided.

It is a complete mystery to me where my stamp albums went I do not remember selling them of giving them away so all I can assume is that they were dumped after I left home and my parents moved.  However one thing that I do remember about my stamp collecting days was my mother regularly saying that it was a good way for me to learn geography and about the World. 

Buying stamps "on approval" is one of the oldest and most traditional ways of building a collection. The Select @home Approvals service is now the longest established service in the UK and still under its original ownership. Other services have been around longer in name, but they are trading under a change of ownership. There is perhaps an association in some people's minds that stamp approvals mean nothing other than the cheaper, colourful and stamps that you might expect to find in a commercially manufactured packet of stamps or a juvenile collection. Approvals were once an ideal way of presenting such stamps for sale, it is true. Firms such as Broadway, Ace, DJ Hanson and many, many others in the 1950s and 1960s specialised in doing so. That none do so today is witness both to the fall in demand, since the 1960s, for stamps and today's much higher handling costs.

In fact, an approval selection today is more likely to offer a range of penny blacks than a range of penny pictorials or an array of single stamps and sets in the 20p to £50 price bracket. As in the days of my youth what you see is what you get; you buy the very item in front of you.

Stanley Gibbons, the world's oldest stamp firm, had a thriving approval business until relatively recently as did many other firms, household names up to the 1970s but most of them no longer trading.

I must admit that I have been out of the stamp collecting world for many decades now and when I did this research I was amazed to find that they were still going.

Keep in touch

Peter

gsseditor@gmail.com

On this day 14^th  April 1960-1965

On 14/04/1960 the number one single was My Old Man's a Dustman - Lonnie Donegan and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Wagon Train (ITV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 14/04/1961 the number one single was Wooden Heart - Elvis Presley and the number one album was GI Blues - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was The Budget (All Channels) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 14/04/1962 the number one single was Wonderful Land - The Shadows and the number one album was Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Georges Pompidou becomes French Prime Minister.

On 14/04/1963 the number one single was How Do You Do It? - Gerry & the Pacemakers and the number one album was Summer Holiday - Cliff Richard & the Shadows. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 14/04/1964 the number one single was Can't Buy Me Love - The Beatles and the number one album was With the Beatles - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was The Budget (All Channels) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.The big news story of the day was Telstar broadcasts live TV pictures to UK from Japan

On 14/04/1965 the number one single was The Minute You're Gone - Cliff Richard and the number one album was Rolling Stones Number 2 - The Rolling Stones. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

Web Page  No 2360

8thApril 2017

Top Picture: Raymond Francis

Second Picture: TV Screen

Third Picture:  Lockhart at work

No Hiding Place

Now who remembers the British television series that was produced at Wembley Studios by Associated Rediffusion for the the ITV network between 16^th September 1959 and 22nd June 1967.

Actually this was not the original series as it was the sequel to the series Murder Bag (1957–1958) and Crime Sheet (1959), all of which starred Raymond Francis as Detective Superintendent, later Detective Chief Superintendent Tom Lockhart.

It was intended that No Hiding Place carried on from where Murder Bag and Crime Sheet left off. Murder Bag featured 55 episodes. 30 in Season One (16th September 1957 to 31^st  March 1958), all untitled and 25 in Season Two (30^th  June 1958 to 1^st  April 1959), all titled, and all featuring the word "Lockhart" as the first word of their title. All of the episodes were 30 minutes long and featured Raymond Francis. Backup sergeants and others cast members changed regularly. The murder bag in the title carried 42 items which were needed in the investigation of a crime. The show was produced live in the studio.

In Crime Sheet, Lockhart had been promoted to Detective Chief Superintendent. The writers of the series revealed to the TV Times in 1962 that Lockhart could not be promoted above this rank, as he would no longer be expected to visit the crime scene, thus hindering the potential of the storylines. 17 episodes of 30 minutes were produced from 8^th  April 1959 to 9^th  September 1959. Due to Raymond Francis contracting mumps, the final episode of Crime Sheet did not feature Detective Chief Superintendent Lockhart but Chief Superintendent Carr, played by Gerald Case.

No Hiding Place continued to follow the cases of Detective Chief Superintendent Tom Lockhart at Scotland Yard, with a new longer one-hour format allowing for more complex story lines and character development. He was initially assisted by Detective Sergeant later Inspector Harry Baxter  played by Eric Lander, followed by Det. Sgt. Russell (Johnny Briggs) and Det. Sgt. Perryman (Michael McStay), and finally by Det. Sgt. Gregg (Sean Caffrey).

The programme was still largely studio-based, but the series now included more pre-recorded film segments. The series was cancelled in 1965 but there were so many protests from the public and the police that it started again for another two years. An amazing 236 episodes were made in total.

Detective Sergeant Harry Baxter was there from episode one until episode 141. Midway through the series he was transferred to E Division's Q Car Squad and promoted from Sergeant to Inspector, a rank he retained when he returned to the Yard in 1963 in a  short TV series, Echo Four-Two. Unfortunately, the show suffered from poor scripts and of 13 planned episodes, only 10 were made (30 minutes each, 24^th  August 1961 to 25^th  October 1961), interrupted by an actor's strike, and so no more were made.

Both Murder Bag and Crime Sheet are considered lost television series; according to the web site www.lostshows.com, no complete episodes of Murder Bag exist and only one survives of Crime Sheet. The longer-running No Hiding Place fared marginally better than its predecessors, although only 25 of the 236 episodes produced are known to exist in either a full or partial form. This figure includes episodes known to be held by the National Film and Television Archive and those held in private collections. Some early episodes were broadcast live and as a result were never recorded.

But what of the star of the show Raymond Francis? He was born in London in 1911 and his first listed television role was as Dr. Watson alongside Alan Wheatley's Holmes in a 1951 BBC TV series entitled Sherlock Holmes, the earliest TV adaptation of the tales. He later reprised the role in a 1984 film The Case of Marcel Duchamp. His distinguished appearance often led to roles as senior policemen, military men and English aristocracy; he played such parts in series including Dickens of London, Edward & Mrs. Simpson, The Cedar Tree, Tales of the Unexpected, After Julius, Drummonds, the first Joan Hickson Miss Marple episode "The Body in the Library" as Sir Henry Clithering, and his final appearance was in a 1987 Ruth Rendell Mysteries adaptation.

He was also a noted stage actor and made several appearances in films such as Carrington V.C. and Reach for the Sky.^[He was married to actress Margaret Towner and had three children; his son Clive Francis is also an actor. Raymond Francis died in October 1987.

No Hiding Place was a firm favourite of mine when I was younger.


Maureen Writes:-

‘Bob a Job’ was not just the domain of the boys, whilst you did Bob a job, we Guides were doing ‘Willing Shilling’. On the same lines as Scouts, we were in full uniform and with our pen and Willing Shilling pad we knocked doors for jobs and they ranged from cleaning hearths, polishing brass and shoes, cleaning windows etc,etc.

I do recall some households had copious amounts or brass and silver to be cleaned and they made sure they brought out every bit (I think they raided the neighbours sometimes) and all for a Shilling!  I am not sure if it was a one off or an annual affair but I have found reference to it in 1953 in Alberta, Canada and in New South Wales, Australia but I know it didn’t last long as there were concerns about young girls visiting strangers houses and also the abuse for the tasks the girls were being asked to do. Slavery had been abolished by then!

Keep in touch

Peter

gsseditor@gmail.com

On this Day 8th April 1960-1965

On 08/04/1960 the number one single was My Old Man's a Dustman - Lonnie Donegan and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was The Budget (All Channels) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 08/04/1961 the number one single was Wooden Heart - Elvis Presley and the number one album was GI Blues - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Labour Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmatians. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 08/04/1962 the number one single was Wonderful Land - The Shadows and the number one album was Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was The Budget (All Channels) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Film director Michael Curtiz and ex Beatle Stu Sutcliffe die.

On 08/04/1963 the number one single was Summer Holiday - Cliff Richard & the Shadows and the number one album was Summer Holiday - Cliff Richard & the Shadows. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Atomic US submarine sinks killing 129.

On 08/04/1964 the number one single was Can't Buy Me Love - The Beatles and the number one album was With the Beatles - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Labour Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Beatles have 13 records in US chart.

On 08/04/1965 the number one single was Concrete & Clay - Unit 4 Plus 2 and the number one album was Rolling Stones Number 2 - The Rolling Stones. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.