Scrap Book Project – Robertson’s Jam and Golly Badges

My Nan worked at the Robertson’s jam factory which was on Barmerston Road in Catford, South London.  They used to make Golden Shred marmalade and a range of jams and had, what many might say now, an inappropriate golly as the company symbol.  We used to have golly badges and they are collector’s items now but I haven’t got them anymore because I rashly swapped them for something else (I can’t remember what exactly) when I was about ten years old and that’s real shame.

We used to have quite a lot of marmalade and jam (blackcurrant was my favourite) and to get a badge you had to collect paper gollies which were behind the label on the jar and when you had ten you could send away for a badge.  Later you could get little pottery figures instead.

Robertson’s introduced the Golly in the early 20th century when John Robertson on a visit to the southern states of America noticed young children playing with little black rag dolls with white eyes, made from their mothers’ discarded black skirts and white blouses.  He was so intrigued by the popularity of the Golly that he thought it would make an ideal mascot and trade mark for the Robertson’s range of products and the idea of Golly trade mark was accepted by the Company in 1910.

The most valuable and collectable enamel badges now sell now for up to a thousand pounds each but with over twenty million Golly badges sent out over the years most are only worth a few pounds or so but it’s not about the value or the money I just wish that I still had them!  You can’t get them anymore because they were discontinued on 23rd August 2001 and you can’t get Robertson’s jam either, because in 2006 the brand was sold to Premier Foods and in 2008 they announced that it would discontinue the Robertson brand the following year.

  

Scrap Book Project – School Crossing Patrols

In April 2003 the School Crossing Patrol service in the UK celebrated its 50th anniversary.  Britain’s first Patrol, a Mrs Hunt was appointed by Bath City Council in 1937 to work outside Kingsmead school.  Despite the bombing raids, Mrs Hunt continued to work throughout the Second World War, moving to a new site with the children when the building was destroyed in a bombing raid in 1942.

Experimental Patrols appeared in London in the 1940’s and Traffic Wardens were used to assemble children in Dagenham in 1949.  The idea proved very popular and other boroughs in London began to follow suit, leading to the Metropolitan Police deciding that this was something it should adopt and take over.

Patrols were formally recognised in Britain by the School Crossing Patrols Act in 1953 and allowed to operate across the country and the School Crossing Patrol Service in London officially came into being with The London Traffic (Children Crossing Traffic Notices) Law of 1953.

My Grandad Ernie was a school crossing patrol man in the 1970s.  He was Londoner and worked as a bus conductor on the old London double-decker Routemaster buses operating from the Catford depot in South London.  I can still remember him in his dark blue London Transport uniform with his red conductors badge and his leather satchel slung over his shoulder walking home from work in a jaunty sort of way all along Barmerston Road back to the flat my grandparents lived at, at number 50.  Grandad Ernie liked to have a drink (or two) and would always give my dad (who was a hopeless drinker) a headache after a night out and he used to smoke forty Embassy cigarettes a day until the doctor told him to quit or die.  He spent a lot of time sitting in his favourite chair watching the horse racing on the TV.

He was a really nice man but he never quite seemed to have the time for or the understanding of children that my other grandad (Ted) used to have.  He was generous and kind but just didn’t seem to have the time to spend with us on all of the trivial things that the other one did.  So it was a bit of a surprise when, after he had retired and moved to live in Rugby, that he became a lollypop man!

His first assignment was on High Street in Hillmorton but after they moved to Lower Street he had a transfer to Abbotts Farm shops where he used to see children across a stretch of dual carriageway near the Jolly Abbott pub.  The children seemed to like him and he would often come home with impromptu gifts.  Dad and I used to drive past him every day when we went home from work for lunch and he was always embarrassed to be caught holding a child’s hand because this exposed him as a softie when he had worked quite hard on his image of not really caring for the company of kids that much.

I like the picture of him on duty, it was taken by the local newspaper, the Rugby Advertiser, but I don’t know why.  I like the way he has got his raincoat on over his white coat which sort of missed the point about it being white for health and safety reasons! I posted it on a ‘I rememmber Rugby’ page on Facebook and lots of people responded to it saying how they remembered him and I was surprised by that!

He was a good man. He died in 1977 aged 75.

The Routemaster Bus and Robertson’s Jam

Both my nan and granddad used to go work which was quite unusual in the 1960s.  He was a bus conductor on the old London double-decker Routemaster buses operating from the Catford depot on Bromley Road in South London.  I can remember him in his dark blue London Transport uniform with his red conductors badge and his leather satchel slung over one shoulder and his shiny metal Gibson ticket machine over the other walking home from work in a jaunty sort of way all along Barmerston Road.  In the summer months he had a lightweight grey jacket and a white cap which I always thought made him look more like an ice cream man than a bus conductor!

For those interested in the technical details, the Gibson ticket machine was introduced in 1953 and named after George Gibson a former superintendent of the London Tranport ticket machine works. Different denomination tickets could be printed onto a plain paper roll by adjusting the wheels on the side of the machine and then winding the handle on the left-hand side to issue it.  A meter recorded the number and type of tickets issued.

Photograph courtesy of John King

The Catford Garage was opened in 1914 and was one of the largest South London garages.  It was always associated with the Routemaster and in fact was the last garage in South East London to operate them.  The Routemaster was a double-decker bus that was built by Associated Equipment Company from 1954 and introduced by London Transport in 1956 and saw continuous service until 2005 when it was officially withdrawn on 9^th December.

Nan worked at the Robertson’s jam factory which was on Barmerston Road itself.  They used to make Golden Shred marmalade and a range of jams and had what came to be regarded as an inappropriate golly as the company symbol.  We used to have golly badges and they are collector’s items now but I haven’t got them anymore and that’s real shame.  In 2006 Robinson’s sold out to Premier Foods and in 2008 the new company announced that it would discontinue the Robertson brand in 2009 in order to focus on its more successful Hartley’s.  By a strange, even spooky, coincidence the brand was discontinued on 9^thDecember!

Robinson’s factory has gone now but the bus garage is still there.

Photograph  © Copyright David Wright and licensed for reuse under thisCreative Commons Licence

Robertson’s Jam and Golly Badges

My Nan worked at the Robertson’s jam factory which was on Barmerston Road in Catford, South London.  They used to make Golden Shred marmalade and a range of jams and had, what many might say now, an inappropriate golly as the company symbol.  We used to have golly badges and they are collector’s items now but I haven’t got them anymore because I rashly swapped them for something else (I can’t remember what exactly) when I was about ten years old and that’s a real shame.

We used to have quite a lot of marmalade and jam (blackcurrant was my favourite) and to get a badge you had to collect paper gollies which were behind the label on the jar and when you had ten you could send away for a badge.  Later you could get little pottery figures instead.

Robertson’s introduced the Golly in the early twentieth century when John Robertson on a visit to the southern states of America noticed young children playing with little black rag dolls with white eyes, made from their mothers’ discarded black skirts and white blouses.  He was so intrigued by the popularity of the Golly that he thought it would make an ideal mascot and trade mark for the Robertson’s range of products and the idea of Golly trade mark was accepted by the Company in 1910.

The most valuable and collectable enamel badges now sell now for up to a thousand pounds each but with over twenty million Golly badges sent out over the years most are only worth a few pounds or so but it’s not about the value or the money I just wish that I still had them!  You can’t get them anymore because they were discontinued on 23^rd August 2001 and you can’t get Robertson’s jam either, because in 2006 the brand was sold to Premier Foods and in 2008 they announced that it would discontinue the Robertson brand the following year.

  

Ernest Steel, School Crossing Patrolman

In April 2003 the School Crossing Patrol service in the UK celebrated its 50th anniversary.  Britain’s first Patrol, a Mrs Hunt was appointed by Bath City Council in 1937 to work outside Kingsmead school.  Despite the bombing raids, Mrs Hunt continued to work throughout the Second World War, moving to a new site with the children when the building was destroyed in a bombing raid in 1942.

Experimental Patrols appeared in London in the 1940’s and Traffic Wardens were used to assemble children in Dagenham in 1949.  The idea proved very popular and other boroughs in London began to follow suit, leading to the Metropolitan Police deciding that this was something it should adopt and take over.

Patrols were formally recognised in Britain by the School Crossing Patrols Act in 1953 and allowed to operate across the country and the School Crossing Patrol Service in London officially came into being with The London Traffic (Children Crossing Traffic Notices) Law of 1953.

My Grandad Ernie was a school crossing patrol man in the 1970s.  He was Londoner and worked as a bus conductor on the old London double-decker Routemaster buses operating from the Catford depot in South London.  I can still remember him in his dark blue London Transport uniform with his red conductors badge and his leather satchel slung over his shoulder walking home from work in a jaunty sort of way all along Barmerston Road back to the flat my grandparents lived at, at number 50.  Grandad Ernie liked to have a drink (or two) and would always give my dad (who was a hopeless drinker) a headache after a night out and he used to smoke forty Embassy cigarettes a day until the doctor told him to quit or die.  He spent a lot of time sitting in his favourite chair watching the horse racing on the TV.

He was a really nice man but he never quite seemed to have the time for or the understanding of children that my other grandad (Ted) used to have.  He was generous and kind but just didn’t seem to have the time to spend with us on all of the trivial things that the other one did.  So it was a bit of a surprise when, after he had retired and moved to live in Rugby, that he became a lollypop man!

His first assignment was on High Street in Hillmorton but after they moved to Lower Street he had a transfer to Abbotts Farm shops where he used to see children across a stretch of dual carriageway near the Jolly Abbott pub.  The children seemed to like him and he would often come home with impromptu gifts.  Dad and I used to drive past him every day when we went home from work for lunch and he was always embarrassed to be caught holding a child’s hand because this exposed him as a softie when he had worked quite hard on his image of not really caring for the company of kids that much.

I like the picture of him on duty, it was taken by the local newspaper, the Rugby Advertiser, but I don’t know why.  I like the way he has got his raincoat on over his white coat which sort of missed the point about it being white for health and safety reasons! I posted it on a ‘I rememmber Rugby’ page on Facebook and lots of people responded to it saying how they remembered him and I was surprised by that!

He was a good man. He died in 1977 aged 75.

Every Picture Tells A Story – 50, Barmeston Road, Catford

“(Catford) the only place in all of London and the south-east set to remain impervious to gentrification” – Lucy Mangan, Journalist (The Guardian)

One day in 1995 I was at work and driving through London and on impulse took a detour to Catford and to Barmeston Road where my grandparents used to live to see the house that I used to visit with my parents when I was a boy.

It was having a bit of renovation work carried out to it at the time but although it seemed smaller (everything looks smaller as you grow older, especially chocolate biscuits) it looked almost as I remembered it and the memories came flooding back.

We used to visit Catford two or three times a year.  At first we went on the train because dad didn’t learn to drive until about 1963 and then we would drive down there in his Austin A55, registration SWD 774.  He hated parking his car on the road because of the blind bend and the steep camber, so steep it meant that the car door would hit the pavement if not opened with caution.  He had a parking light which was clipped to the drivers window and then attached to a torch battery. I think it was the law to have a parking light in those days.

Nan and Granddad didn’t live in all of the house because they only rented the top floor and this meant that there was a curious arrangement of walking through someone else’s home to get to theirs because there was only a single shared front door.  As I grew older I always found this rather odd and can remember feeling shy and self-conscious about walking through an entrance hall that obviously belonged to someone else.

At the top of the stairs there was a door into the living room and the stairs dog-legged through a mezzanine and doubled back towards the front of the house.  The living room was quite small but this was the main room of the house where they lived, entertained and had all of their meals.  It was always smoky because there was an open fire and granddad used to smoke a couple of packets of embassy cigarettes every day.

There was a dining table and chairs and a blue three piece suite with granddad’s chair in front of the fire and with the best view in the room of the television set.  In one corner there was a black bakelite telephone and four colour coded volumes of the London telephone directory.  Not many people had telephones in the late 1950s and when they answered the phone they always said the number, which was Hither Green 6515.  By the fire place there was large empty whisky bottle which granddad used to fill with silver sixpences and this was their savings plan for their holidays to Benidorm in Spain.

There was a side window which looked out over the front gardens of the neighbours (I recall the curiously named Kitty Roper)  most of these have been tarmacked over now to provide car parking space but there weren’t so many cars then so most people still had proper front gardens with front lawns and lovely flower beds.

There was a door which went to the very back of the house and the small kitchen with old fashioned cupboards and a sink with a cylindrical gas water heater over it.  There was no bathroom in the flat so this is where they had to wash and there was always someone ‘on guard’ when Nan was in there doing her daily ablutions!

Back on the stairs there was a WC with a high level cistern on the mezzanine, painted a vibrant canary yellow and then a few more steps and a corridor with my grandparents bedroom first and then at the front of the flat a small spare bedroom where I used to sleep and then the best front room, which was only opened up once a year at Christmas.

We weren’t really allowed to go in the best room for fear of breaking something precious or rearranging the brightly coloured velour cushions on the two-tone grey three-piece suite but when no one was around my sister Lindsay and I used to sneak in there and throw the cushions around and jump on them in some sort of juvenile outburst of defiance.

At the front of the house there was a concrete wall with sturdy pillars supporting a wooden gate with a small front garden (that’s my mum in the pictures above probably somewhere between 1946 and 1948), the garden was neat and tidy with Victorian ceramic rope edging separating the lawn from the borders but by 1999 that had all gone and the inevitable wheelie bin stood where the lawn used to be.

People didn’t have wheelie bins in the 1950s and most of the rubbish was either burnt on the fire or was taken away by the rag and bone man who used to come along the road once a week on his horse and cart shouting at the top of his voice something I could never make any sense of to alert residents to his approach and I can remember the shout and the clip-clop of the horses hooves on the road surface as though it were only yesterday.

At the back of the house was a garden which belonged to the owners but Granddad had a little plot at the bottom.  The soil was dark, almost satanic black and he grew a few vegetables on his patch.

There was a rough built wall at the bottom of the garden and directly behind that the River Ravensbourne, a tributary of the Thames, it was only a couple of yards wide and quite shallow but it bubbled and gurgled across pebbles and got faster and more dramatic after it had rained.  I used to pick up stones from the garden, lean over the wall, and throw them into the water.  In September 1968 there were heavy rains and the little river became so swollen that it burst its banks and there was a lot of flooding in Catford and nearby Lewisham but I don’t suppose this affected nan and granddad in their first floor flat.

There was a smell about London in those days which I can almost still taste but can’t describe it, it has gone now so it was probably pollution!  The name Catford, by the way, is derived from a ford across the river around about here where cattle used to cross when being taken up to Smithfield Market.

This is more up-to-date picture of the house that I found on an Estate Agency website:

I thought it looked rather sad; the old cord pull sash windows have been replaced with UPVC but interestingly the house next door has kept the original feature, the half tiled porch has gone and the plastic front door has been brought forward to the building line, the garden wall has gone and the little space behind is now a car parking area.

Sir Henry Cooper, British heavyweight boxer came from the area and Spike Milligan went to school at Catford Brownhill Boys School and often visited the suburb where his aunt and uncle lived. He always claimed to have lived in Catford and wrote about the area in his books and sketches.  Ben Elton the comedian and writer was born in Catford in 1959 and Cat Stevens lived in a flat above a Catford furniture shop in the early sixties

Both nan and granddad used to go work which was quite unusual really.  He was a bus conductor on the old London double-decker Routemaster buses operating from the Catford depot on Bromley Road in South London.  I can still remember him in his dark blue London Transport uniform with his red conductors badge and his leather satchel slung over his shoulder walking home from work in a jaunty sort of way all along Barmerston Road.

The Catford Garage was originally opened in 1914 and was one of the largest south London depots.  It was always associated with the Routemaster and in fact was the last garage in South East London to operate them.  The Routemaster was a double-decker bus that was built by Associated Equipment Company from 1954 and introduced by London Transport in 1956 and saw continuous service until 2005.

Nan worked at the Robertson’s jam factory which was on Barmerston Road itself.  They used to make Golden Shred marmalade and a range of jams and had an inappropriate golly as the company symbol.  We used to have golly badges and they are collectors items now  but I haven’t got them any more and that’s a real shame.  In 2006 Robertson’s sold out to Premier Foods and in 2008 the new company announced that it would discontinue the Robertson brand in 2009 in order to focus on its more successful Hartley’s.  Robinson’s factory has gone now but the bus garage is still there.

We used to go to Catford throughout the 1960s, once in 1965 I went on holiday there with my friend Tony Gibbard for a week by ourselves.  As I got older I didn’t really like going there that much and I was excused the visits.  Then in about 1969 or 1970 nan and granddad left Catford and London and came to live in a flat in Hillmorton near to us and I never visited Barmeston Road again until that unplanned detour thirty years later.

This is me with the badges in about 1959.  The dressing gown was bright red.

I am glad that I passed by Barmeston Road that day in 1995, I don’t suppose for a moment that I will ever do it again!

Important update.  March 2024, the current owner emailed me with a picture of how it looks now…

A Life in a Year – 9th December, The Routemaster Bus and Robertson’s Jam

 

Both my nan and granddad used to go work which was quite unusual in the 1960s.  He was a bus conductor on the old London double-decker Routemaster buses operating from the Catford depot on Bromley Road in South London.  I can remember him in his dark blue London Transport uniform with his red conductors badge and his leather satchel slung over one shoulder and his shiny metal Gibson ticket machine over the other walking home from work in a jaunty sort of way all along Barmerston Road.  In the summer months he had a lightweight grey jacket and a white cap which I always thought made him look more like an ice cream man than a bus conductor!

For those interested in the technical details, the Gibson ticket machine was introduced in 1953 and named after George Gibson a former superintendent of the London Tranport ticket machine works. Different denomination tickets could be printed onto a plain paper roll by adjusting the wheels on the side of the machine and then winding the handle on the left-hand side to issue it.  A meter recorded the number and type of tickets issued.

Photograph courtesy of John King

The Catford Garage was opened in 1914 and was one of the largest South London garages.  It was always associated with the Routemaster and in fact was the last garage in South East London to operate them.  The Routemaster was a double-decker bus that was built by Associated Equipment Company from 1954 and introduced by London Transport in 1956 and saw continuous service until 2005 when it was officially withdrawn on 9^th December.

Nan worked at the Robertson’s jam factory which was on Barmerston Road itself.  They used to make Golden Shred marmalade and a range of jams and had what came to be regarded as an inappropriate golly as the company symbol.  We used to have golly badges and they are collector’s items now but I haven’t got them anymore and that’s real shame.  In 2006 Robinson’s sold out to Premier Foods and in 2008 the new company announced that it would discontinue the Robertson brand in 2009 in order to focus on its more successful Hartley’s.  By a strange, even spooky, coincidence the brand was discontinued on 9^th December!

Robinson’s factory has gone now but the bus garage is still there.

Photograph  © Copyright David Wright and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

A Life in a Year – 23rd August, Robertson’s Jam and Golly Badges

My Nan worked at the Robertson’s jam factory which was on Barmerston Road in Catford, South London.  They used to make Golden Shred marmalade and a range of jams and had, what many might say now, an inappropriate golly as the company symbol.  We used to have golly badges and they are collector’s items now but I haven’t got them anymore because I rashly swapped them for something else (I can’t remember what exactly) when I was about ten years old and that’s real shame. 

Robertson’s introduced the Golly in the early 20th century when John Robertson on a visit to the southern states of America noticed young children playing with little black rag dolls with white eyes, made from their mothers’ discarded black skirts and white blouses.  He was so intrigued by the popularity of the Golly that he thought it would make an ideal mascot and trade mark for the Robertson’s range of products and the idea of Golly trade mark was accepted by the Company in 1910.

The most valuable and collectable enamel badges now sell now for up to a thousand pounds each but with over twenty million Golly badges sent out over the years most are only worth a few pounds or so but it’s not about the value or the money I just wish that I still had them!  You can’t get them anymore because they were discontinued on 23^rd August 2001 and you can’t get Robertson’s jam either, because in 2006 the brand was sold to Premier Foods and in 2008 they announced that it would discontinue the Robertson brand the following year.

A Life in a Year – 12th June, Home Grocery Delivery Service

John James Sainsbury was born on 12^th June 1844 and this was a man who transformed the grocery shopping experience.  I can remember an old fashioned Sainsbury’s in Catford in London where I would be taken by my grandmother when I was quite young when she carried out the weekly shop. 

It wasn’t a Sainsbury’s that anyone would recognise now, it was white tiled from floor to ceiling in a Victorian sanatorium sort of way and had counters around the outside with shop assistants who served the customers properly.  You made a selection and then this was cut on a slicer and then meticulously weighed before being carefully wrapped and passed with care to the purchaser.  There were meat slabs, cheese and dairy sections and a delicatessen, but what I remember most is the competing smells of the goods, you could almost taste the produce and I can still recall the distinctive atmosphere of the shop. 

The other distinctive smell that I can remember is Mr Tucson’s mobile shop that used to call down our street daily and which had a smell of old vegetables, especially potatoes I seem to recall. 

 

Shopping was completely different fifty years ago and wasn’t nearly as easy as it is today when one single car trip to Tesco is all that is needed.  For a start we didn’t have a car so it really wasn’t possible to transport all of the weekly shopping home in one go.  On market day mum would catch the Midland Red R76 into town to buy fresh vegetables and then later in the week she would go into town again to go to the butchers and the International Stores which until Fine Fare arrived was the only big food store in town. 

She had to go shopping twice a week for the simple reason that we didn’t have a fridge so keeping stuff fresh was a bit of a problem, especially in the summer.  If she forgot something or needed it urgently there was a village shop and a couple of times a week Mr Tucson’s mobile shop.  The milk was delivered early in the morning by Anderson’s dairy and then the baker came by in the Sunblest van a couple of times a week with bread and cakes.

You don’t get service like that anymore, sometime in the 1960s Mr Tuscon stopped coming along with the baker and the Grimsby fishmonger and quite soon after everyone got cars to go into town to shop.

A Life in a Year – 2nd April, Ernest Steel, School Crossing Patrolman

In April 2003 the School Crossing Patrol service in the UK celebrated its 50th anniversary.  Britain’s first Patrol, a Mrs Hunt was appointed by Bath City Council in 1937 to work outside Kingsmead school.  Despite the bombing raids, Mrs Hunt continued to work throughout the Second World War, moving to a new site with the children when the building was destroyed in a bombing raid in 1942.

Experimental Patrols appeared in London in the 1940’s and Traffic Wardens were used to assemble children in Dagenham in 1949.  The idea proved very popular and other boroughs in London began to follow suit, leading to the Metropolitan Police deciding that this was something it should adopt and take over.

Patrols were formally recognised in Britain by the School Crossing Patrols Act in 1953 and allowed to operate across the country and the School Crossing Patrol Service in London officially came into being with The London Traffic (Children Crossing Traffic Notices) Law of 1953.

My Granddad Ernie was a school crossing patrol man in the 1970s.  He was Londoner and worked as a bus conductor on the old London double-decker Routemaster buses operating from the Catford depot in South London.  I can still remember him in his dark blue London Transport uniform with his red conductors badge and his leather satchel slung over his shoulder walking home from work in a jaunty sort of way all along Barmerston Road back to the flat my grandparents lived at, at number 50.  Granddad Ernie liked to have a drink (or two) and would always give my dad (who was a hopeless drinker) a headache after a night out and he used to smoke forty Embassy cigarettes a day until the doctor told him to quit or die.  He spent a lot of time sitting in his favourite chair watching the horse racing on the TV.

He was a really nice man but he never quite seemed to have the time for or the understanding of children that grandad Ted used to have.  He was generous and kind but just didn’t seem to have the time to spend with us on all of the trivial things that the other one did.  So it was a bit of a surprise when, after he had retired and moved to live in Rugby, that he became a lollypop man!

His first assignment was on High Street in Hillmorton but after they moved to Lower Street he had a transfer to Abbotts Farm shops where he used to see children across a stretch of dual carriageway near the Jolly Abbott pub.  The children seemed to like him and he would often come home with impromptu gifts.  Dad and I used to drive past him every day when we went home from work for lunch and he was always embarrassed to be caught holding a child’s hand because this exposed him as a softie when he had worked quite hard on his image of not really caring for the company of kids that much.

I like this picture of him, it was taken by the local newspaper, the Rugby Advertiser, but I don’t know why.  I like the way he has got his raincoat on over his white coat which sort of missed the point about it being white for health and safety reasons!

 He was a good man. He died in 1977 aged 75.