Little luxuries for everyone
HMS Mull of Galloway, Clyde, April 1949: South Yorkshire has a new industry – making potato crisps! The Gaffney family of Thorne, who have a fish and chip business, have turned a large house into a cookshop with rooms for preparing, frying and packing, and in their first week they produced 3,600 packets. Now, with the help of family and friends, they are making 25,000 a week.
Their first move was to ask the Board of Trade for permission to begin the venture and to their delight they found there was no red tape to deter them.
"You can have a permit tomorrow if you want it, or a site for your factory, and we will see you get everything you need," said the men from the ministry.
So very soon the Gaffneys – James, his son Kenneth and son-in-law Mr Jenks – will be moving the business to Hopkinsons' old motor auction rooms in Sheffield Road, Conisbrough, processing two tons of spuds every week just for starters.
"We had been offered a choice of sites for the factory and we would have liked to have remained in Thorne," said James. "But the gas pressure is so low there we could not hope to carry on successfully."
Meanwhile it is still "frying tonight" back in Thorne.
Secrets of huts
PEOPLE wonder what is going on in some wooden huts in an inconspicuous position by the side of a bungalow in Bessacarr. Now all is revealed.
This is the centre of a thriving industry called the Yorkshire Egg Producers Ltd which handles 30,000 dozen eggs a week before they are delivered to shopkeepers.
Each week a fleet of vans collects 15,000 dozen eggs from 600 farmers in the Doncaster and North Lincolnshire areas for testing, grading and packing. More eggs arrive by lorry from the docks at Hull, Goole, Liverpool and Manchester, laid by poultry clucking away in far off Canada, Poland, Denmark, Holland, Australia and the Argentine.
Mr Smith, the manager with over 20 years in the business, says Polish eggs are good and Danish eggs exceptionally good.
The eggs are tested and graded by Rossington ladies called chandlers (or candlers?) who, using a shaded lamp, can spot cracks, air bubbles or meat spots. The good ones go on to the shops in three categories by weight; the others are classed as second quality, to be sold off the ration. Only about three eggs in any hundred are found unsuitable.
Mrs Smith says it requires a lifetime of experience to perfect the art of detecting a flawed egg.
New ration books
THE new ration books are ready to be collected, though I don't have one of course, being RN. There is a useful calendar on the front and the words TEA and SOAP are printed on the coupons set aside for those commodities. Sweet coupons are still there, but sweets are fairly plentiful, and the section for clothing coupons has been detached.
Dry times
DONCASTER is experiencing a drought. The reservoir at Thrybergh from which the town draws 350,000 gallons a day has only 50 days' supply.
Another 1,000 more trout have been put into the reservoir from a hatchery in North Yorkshire this month.
Home guard tale
MAJOR Muir has written a short history of the 40th West Riding Doncaster Battalion Home Guard.
READ MORE ON NEXT PAGE
What do you think? Add your comment below.
Buy The Star - Monday to Saturday - for local news, sport, features and ads. To subscribe CLICK HERE
READ MORE
Main news index
Your letters
Features
South Yorkshire's environmental news
Kids Zone
More business news
More Rotherham news
More Doncaster news
More Barnsley news
Latest sport
The story of its formation begins with a meeting in the Lonsdale Avenue bus sheds! The total number of men who joined this battalion between 1939 and 1944 and were kitted out was 5,300 and there were nearly 2,000 remaining at the stand-down. The major has worked out some unusual statistics, revealing for instance, that clothing and equipment (excluding weapons) distributed to each man cost an average of 9 16s.
Archivist dies
MR THEOBALD, the Borough Archivist, has died. He worked at the Mansion House and became an authority on all aspects of the town's history from Roman times. "He had no equal," says his obituarist.
His predecessor was my old history master, Captain Percy Bales, also known affectionately as Tut. He won the MC for heroism in the First World War. Only a very few people knew about this.
He wrote the history of the Duke of Wellington's West Riding regiment, of which he was adjutant and intelligence officer. His vivid descriptions of battles long ago, like Agincourt and Waterloo, thrilled us lads but he never mentioned his own battles in the trenches.
He also taught us swimming. On the command using a whistle we would jump into the baths naked. He did just the same, naturally.
Happy ending
YOU remember I wrote about Mr Jackson, who had an emergency throat operation in his house in Balby Road?
The doctor arrived just when it appeared his patient might die. He dashed outside, stopped a cyclist, borrowed the man's pen knife and made the necessary incision while Mrs Jackson held her husband steady. Mr J has been discharged from the infirmary. He must talk as little as possible, only in a whisper.
Slum demolition
DONCASTER is now ready to demolish all its slum properties close to the town centre and rebuild, with the work to conclude in about six years.
Very soon work will begin on the vast new Intake estate, where thousands more dwellings are to be built. This will take at least three years. Doncaster is about to change beyond all recognition, hopefully for the best. Some of the good will inevitably vanish with the bad.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Sheffield
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: East
