Ashfords’ range of products still make your mouth water
WE’RE well aware it’s a bit too early in the year to be thinking seriously about ice cream, but with the recent freezing spell behind us and things warming up at least a little, we can at least think about the prospect of warmer days.
Black Country folk of a certain vintage will surely remember Ashford Brothers of Stourbridge, purveyors of milk, cream, butter, and especially ice cream.
Regular contributor John Sparry, who attended King Edward VI School in Stourbridge
was a contemporary of one of the Ashford family, Peter, and has put our way this fine collection of photographs from the Ashford family collection.
Bean
As John explained to us in an article on his schooldays last July, the first lorry owned by Ashford Brothers of Stourbridge was a Dudley-built Bean. When, in 1922, Ronald Ashford began selling milk, his transport was a pony and float.
“Success seemed assured when he contracted with a farmer at Woodcote near
Bromsgrove,” said John, “whose cows gave a rich and creamy milk. His first week’s profit was thirty shillings.
“A Model T Ford was acquired and by 1924 Ashfords were also wholesaling milk from premises in Bowling Green Road, Stourbridge. In 1927 a power-driven butter churn enabled the firm to make and sell their well-known Worcestershire Roll and Curl Butter (this was still being purchased and enjoyed by our family in the 1960s).
“The butter operation alone eventually employed about ten girls with butter pats and packing the finished product in 24lb
boxes. The Demarco vertical ice-cream freezer purchased in 1928 meant that soon Ashford’s Luxury Ice-cream – 14% butter fat – was also in demand.
“The first of the Ashford Dairy shops opened as far back as 1929 at 76 High Street, Stourbridge, and was run by Mrs Isobel Ashford, Ronald’s mother, who loved the active shop life – even during the war when thousands of ration coupons had to be administered.
“The range of products on offer in ration-free times can still make mouths water. Milk, cheese, clotted cream, butter and a ‘very excellent lemon
cheese’. And for ninepence there was a giant ice-cream sundae –two servings of icecream with orange and other pure syrups, topped with fresh fruit, cream and nuts.
Blue coats
“Peter Ashford joined the company in 1953 after attending Stourbridge King Edward VI. Ashford’s had a treadleoperated machine for filling ice-cream tubs. Little chaps in blue coats and caps sold the ices at the Stourbridge cinemas such as the Central, the Scala and the King’s Hall. Thus the ‘Blue Boy Ice-cream’ name.
“From the age of 11 Peter helped to sell the family icecream at Cradley Heath Speedway meetings – maybe a customer there was famed rider and King Edward’s Old Boy, Phil Malpass, later a journalist on the County Express.
“Ashford’s eventually became Fiesta Foods and Peter, in 1970, served as President of the National Association of Wholesale Distributors of Frozen Foods.
“I don’t recall any special lessons at King Edward’s in making ice-lollies; Peter said there were brine tanks and you had to get the stick in quick before it froze!”
THE Bugle Annual 2021 has been a great success, quickly selling out in some areas. Lesley Adams enjoyed reading her copy, especially when she saw this photograph in it that is more than 70 years old.
It shows the ladies taking part in the Staffordshire County Police tennis tournament that was held on July 9, 1948. Among the ladies in their tennis whites is Lesley’s mother.
Front row
“My mother, Kathleen Adams, or Kathleen Frost as she was before she got married, is sitting on the left hand end of the front row,” said Lesley when she telephoned the Bugle.
Lesley was also able to identify two of her mother’s friends:
“Sitting second from right is Kath Philpotts, who was Kath Brown before she married, and standing second from right is Doris Garland, or Doris Northcliffe before she married.”
Lesley continued, “They were all based at Brierley Hill police station. My mother joined the police in the war and she went on to become a sergeant.
“The three of them were only around 5’ tall and I remember Mom telling me that one time they were at the station and a head popped over the yard wall and said, ‘Oh look, it’s the three little pigs.’
“My mom won several tournaments and even one doubles championship when she was expecting my sister – she didn’t tell anyone that she was pregnant until afterwards and she was told off.
“There may be a Sergeant Adams in the picture as well, but I’m not sure which one she is.”
For many years Brierley Hill came under the auspices of the Staffordshire County Police, which was founded in 1842, although several Staffordshire boroughs in the Black Country had their own constabularies.
In 1966 Brierley Hill was absorbed into Dudley Borough and consequently came under the newly created West Midlands Constabulary. This, in 1974, was expanded to the become the West Midlands Police.