Rock ‘n’ roll was biggest import of the 1950s
IT was the decade when crooners the likes of Al Martino, Dickie Valentine and Frankie Laine made way for a new import from the USA called rock ’n’ roll.
Washing powder brands such as Omo, Oxydol and Rinso were likely to be on your shopping list and if you had a television you stood up from the armchair in your front room for the National Anthem at 10pm.
We’re talking about the 1950s, when in Gloucestershire farmworkers in the county campaigned for a wage of £7 for a 47-hour week.
Industry expanded in Gloucestershire with Dowty leading the way.
The firm planned new factories at Arle Court and Ashchurch and in 1954 reported a profit of more than £1million and George Dowty was knighted for services to aviation.
More employment opportunities opened with British Nylon Spinners, who took over part of the Gloster Aircraft Company site at Brockworth to begin production.
Haw Bridge was badly damaged when a tanker travelling down the swollen Severn at night collided with a supporting pier.
The coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953 was watched by thousands for the first time on television.
Two years later the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh arrived in Gloucester to mark the 800th anniversary of the city receiving its Royal charter.
The couple’s itinerary included visits to the Technical College and Wagon Works.
Eastgate Market celebrated its 100th anniversary. One of its long standing stallholders was Hurran’s, who went on to open some of the first garden centres seen in Britain.
Plenty of post war building, such as the Moorfield estate at Brockworth, was underway in and around Gloucester with housing developments planned for Tuffley on land occupied at the time by prefabs.
A crowd of 17,000 watched Gloucester City Football Club play Bristol City in the first round of the FA Cup.
In Woodchester, Stroud, the Bentley Piano Company celebrated its golden jubilee and at the end of the decade Stroud Brewery merged with the Cheltenham and Hereford Brewery.
The slum clearance programme that started in Tewkesbury before the Second World War resumed, though many residents of housing declared unfit for habitation in the town’s alleys were reluctant to leave.
Lacquered hairpins made by Cales of Harbour Road, Lydney were exported all over the world, while another local firm, Constance’s of Longhope, was the country’s leading producer of wooden handles for brooms, brushes, hammers and spades.
Cannop Colliery in Coleford was still using pit ponies underground.
In Cheltenham work began on the new Royal Well bus station and bus services were introduced on Sunday mornings.
Princess Elizabeth, as she still was in 1951, cut the first turf for Hesters Way. The Benhall estate was developed too.
Elm Street, Malvern Street, Worcester Street, Waterloo Street and others in the Lower Dockem (west) end of town were demolished as part of the postwar slum clearance programme.
GCHQ moved to Cheltenham. The Opera House (Everyman) was bought by the borough council and couples were forbidden from cuddling in Town Hall corridors on dance nights.
Novel though the notion seems today, in the 1950s you could buy groceries at umpteen food shops in the town centre, at the Gloucestershire Dairy in the Prom, or Morgan’s in Queens Circus for example.
Wet fish was wonderfully displayed in all its icy slipperiness on the slabs of Olives, Macfisheries, Iddles and W Dean & Sons in the High Street.