Our county has been immortalised in many jigsaws
WITH more time on our hands than usual of late many of us have discovered, or rediscovered the delights of jigsaws.
Not surprisingly for a county so rich in lovely landscape, from the picturesque Cotswolds to the green Severn Vale and the Forest of Dean’s distinctive charms beyond, Gloucestershire scenes feature in many such puzzles.
Perhaps you have a 1,000 piecer spread across the dining table that is keeping you occupied at this very moment.
The Cotswold panorama you see pictured here was originally a travel poster for British Railways.
It presents an idealised view of the area with hay ricks of golden corn, horse drawn wains and a village of honey-hued stone, although you have to say those mountains in the background look nothing like the rounded, rolling hills that in more usual times attract large numbers of tourists to the Cotswolds.
Historians of the jigsaw will tell you that they were the invention of John Spilsbury, a London engraver and cartographer who pieced the idea together in the latter 18 th century.
Far from being mere entertainments, the first jigsaws, or dissections as Mr Spilsbury dubbed them, were used to teach geography.
Maps were pasted on sheets of wood, then cut up, so that the student who put the image back together learned where Thurso was in relation to Land’s End and so on.
When King George III, his wife Queen Charlotte and family arrived to take the waters in Cheltenham on July 12, 1788, it’s likely they brought jigsaws with them in their luggage.
Spilsbury’s dissected maps were used as a teaching aid by Lady Charlotte Finch, governor of the royal children. This helped to popularise the jigsaw, which enjoyed a further boost when they began to be made from cardboard, rather than wood in late Victorian times reducing the price.
The Gloucester firm of Roberts Brothers, founded by Harry Owen Roberts in 1891, made toys, including jigsaws, at their Glevum Works factory in Upton Street.
A large employer in the city, its products were widely exported, taking the name of Gloucester all over the world.
During the Second World War the Glevum Works was requisitioned by the War Office and became a dispersal factory for Rotol.
The 700 employees were either called up or deployed for more pressing wartime matters than making toys, the result being that when peace arrived in 1945 Roberts Brothers found it difficult to reboot as a going concern.
Consequently the company was sold to Chad Valley Toys Ltd and the Upton Street premises closed in the mid 1950s.
A director of Chad Valley was Kenneth Horne, who was a regular visitor to Gloucester while Roberts Brothers Ltd was being bought up and the factory closed down.
Those who recall the golden age of radio will know that Horne was a star of such BBC Light Programme comedies as “Beyond Our Ken” and “Round The Horne”.
His career in radio took off in 1944 with the launch of “Much Binding In The Marsh”, in which Horne co-starred with Richard Murdoch.
The long-running series, it continued until 1954, was inspired by the performers’ experiences as flying instructors when both were based at RAF Moreton-in-marsh during the Second World War.
Another regular member of the Much Binding cast, incidentally, was Nicholas “Just A Minute” Parsons who was for many years a county resident living in Windrush.
The Cheltenham Flyer was one of five famous British trains chosen by
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the Royal Mail to appear on a series of postage stamps in 1985.
Toymaker Waddington’s turned the image of the stamp into a 500 piece jigsaw, which I happen to be struggling with at the moment. It’s the sky that’s the problem.