Solving wife’s egg issue helped town pour on success
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TEWKESBURY is best known for mustard, but once was the home of custard. (There’s no extra charge for the rhyming couplet by the way.)
Alfred Bird, who was born in Nympsfield, near Stroud, in 1811, invented custard powder.
His wife Elizabeth was allergic to eggs and consequently the pleasures of conventional custard were denied her.
Alfred, right, came from a distinguished family of scientists and his father was professor of astronomy at Eton College.
But no man likes to see his wife made miserable due to an absence from her life of the natural accompaniment to rhubarb.
So rather than reach for the stars, Alfred directed his attentions to the development of egg-free custard.
His eureka moment came in 1837 and commercial production was soon underway.
Alfred’s two sons joined him in the business and astute advertising helped to make Bird’s Custard a national institution.
Incidentally, one of those sons – also named Alfred – set the record time for pedalling from Land’s End to John O’groats by tricycle that is unbroken to this day.
By about 1900 demand was so great the Birmingham factory could not keep up.
A second factory was needed and available for immediate occupation was a brick built former forage store adjacent to Ashchurch-for-tewkesbury station in Northway Lane.
This had been used to house hay, tackle and equine paraphernalia for horses that had pulled the railway’s parcel delivery fleet until superceded by motor vans.
Ashchurch station, photos of which you see here taken by Clifford Day, was conveniently just a stop or two down the main line from Birmingham.
Before long custard made from powder produced by the Tewkesbury workforce was being poured over puddings in Britain and those quarters of the world map shaded in red that comprised the British Empire.
The First World War boosted the nation’s appetite and large quantities of custard powder were supplied to troops in the trenches.
But Second World War rationing resulted in a sharp decline in demand and the Ashchurch factory closed.
After the war Dowty Electronics took over the building, much of which was destroyed in a fire that broke out 50 years ago this week in 1969.
When Alfred Bird died his obituary in the Journal of the Chemical Society described at length the quite minor scientific contributions he made to the fields of chemistry, physics and meteorology.
But not one word was there about custard powder.