When everyone wanted to buy a new bucket
THE great bucket shortage could be the name of a Goon Show episode written by Spike Milligan. But as you can see from the front page of the Echo, published on December 30 1950, it wasn’t a joke.
The story reads: “Reporting ‘an unprecedented demand for anything in the hardware line,’ a representative of a local firm said today that the rush on buckets had been so great that some stocks would last only two or three days. Other shops are already sold out”.
The cause of this panic buying of buckets was the announcement from the Government that as from February of the year following, the use of zinc, brass and copper in the manufacture of household goods was to be banned.
“We have quite a number of buckets on order, but at the rate they are going we shall soon be sold out and we don’t know when fresh supplies will be available” said the same local ironmonger.
It wasn’t just buckets. Dustbins were in short supply too. There was a run on barbed wire.
And the same front page of the Echo that carried the bad news about buckets announced that carpets were just about to soar in price, as blankets had shortly before.
Such was Britain in the early 1950s. Everything was in short supply, wartime rationing was still firmly in place despite the fact that hostilities had ceased in 1945 and now if you wanted to clean your windows you had nothing to put the sponge in.
Many towns and cities were down at heel, but Cheltenham looked particularly dowdy.
The town had been taken over by thousands of Uncle Sam’s GIS when the American Forces of Supply made Cheltenham its HQ in preparation for the invasion of Normandy.
And when our transatlantic cousins moved out of the once fine Regency and Victorian buildings they’d occupied, it was plain that they hadn’t been the most caring of tenants.
Pittville Pump Room was in such a poor condition that the cash strapped town council debated whether it should be demolished as no funds were available for its restoration. A bright spot on the horizon was that employment prospects improved in Cheltenham when CGHQ arrived, along with engineering firms such as Walker Crossweller and the post war recovery of Dowty, plus Smiths Industries in Bishop’s Cleeve.
Another local employer was Cheltenham Caravans. The company exhibited at the 1952 Earl’s Court motor show, when four of its models were on display - the Eland, Antelope, Gazelle and Bison.
The latter was newly launched and received an enthusiastic review from the press.
No doubt many would-be caravan owners had one on their bucket list.