» Elephants’ unforgettable visits to county Nostalgia
THIS week in 1965 if you’d been standing at the Cross in Gloucester at noon an unusual passing cavalcade would have caught your eye.
It comprised 15, full grown Asian elephants, tramping trunk to tail up Eastgate Street, past St Michael’s tower, then along Westgate Street to the Oxleaze on their way from the GWR railway station, their point of arrival in the city, to the big top where they were due to perform that evening.
Each was ridden by a woman in military style hat and blue uniform.
Such a thing, of course, could not happen today and a good job too. But if it did there would be so many animal liberation demonstrators, anti-exploitation of women campaigners, risk assessment officers, public liability insurance inspectors and political correctness enforcers that there would be no room for the elephants.
These jumbos were announcing the arrival of Billy Smart’s circus in Gloucester.
And the odd thing for us to appreciate today is that the sight of elephants and other exotic creatures was far from rare in times gone by.
In 1931, for instance, when Bertram Mills’ circus came to Gloucester, the publicity procession through the city centre included not only elephants, but also a group of women from Senegal, each with a giraffe-like neck stretched by brass rings.
Chapman’s circus arrival in Stroud at around the same time when elephants and camels were disgorged at the railway station to march up the High Street informing all of their arrival.
Van Amburgh’s circus visited Tewkesbury in Victorian days and set up its big top in Swilgate Meadow. Like all circuses of the time, Van Amburgh’s featured a performing elephant.
Being the star of the show, he was taken to reserved accommodation in outbuildings behind the Plough Inn, which then stood in the High Street. But he wasn’t securely tethered.
During the night a breeze got up, wafting whiffs from a nearby brewery into his sleeping compartment and our floppy eared hero, finding the aroma much to his liking, went walkabout.
The elephant was first discovered some time later in Smith’s Lane snacking on a tree he’d uprooted. Then proceeding in the direction of the brewery, he waded through a row of back gardens knocking down fences and attracting a group of followers who’d come from their beds to see what was causing the commotion.
At last our elephant arrived at the brewery, which had a narrow entrance and in this he stuck fast. The local constabulary was called and with great resourcefulness, plus buckets of soapy water, managed to extricate the elephant and escort him back to his quarters.
Elephants have wandered the streets of Cheltenham too. In March 1934 such a line of jumbos was padding along Albion Street when one of their number sniffed the heady aroma coming from Bloodworth’s, the agricultural merchants.
The rich mixture of hay, seed corn, molasses and who knows what else provided a temptation too great for the strolling creature to ignore. Breaking free from its fellows, the elephant strolled purposefully into the shop and ate a whole sack of seed potatoes.
This event, by the way, is recorded in a mural on the wall of the passage that runs off the Strand pedestrian precinct.
On another occasion in the 1930s when elephants were en route for the circus site at Oakley (close to where Sainsbury’s now stands), a similar incident happened, once again in Albion Street. This time it was the smell of cakes and bread from Leopold’s bakery that attracted the attention of a sweet toothed elephant.
Fortunately the animal sensed that its girth was too great for the doorway, so jumbo stood outside the shop and reaching in with its trunk enjoyed a good feed of drippers, doughnuts and Chelsea buns.
For years afterwards the logo on Leopold’s paper bags and stationery featured an elephant.
On Edwardian summer Sunday afternoons elephant rides were a feature of the entertainments to be had in
Pittvillepark.
Bertram Mill’s Circus staged an elephant themed publicity stunt on a visit to the town in May 1940. Half a dozen young jumbos were marched along to the Town Hall where a female attendant brought out jugs of spa water for them to guzzle.
The photograph you see here first appeared in the Cheltenham Chronicle and Graphic, but it’s difficult to tell from the expression on their faces if the salty waters were to the elephants’ taste.
Surprising though it may seem, Gloucestershire exports elephants. Or rather, exported an elephant about 20 years ago. It weighed six tons, was made of bronze, cast at the Pangolin Editions foundry near Stroud and today resides in Alabama, USA.