The lost tobacco fields of Winchcombe and Tewkesbury
Gloucester’s sole remaining city centre tobacconist Westgate News shut up shop in May in 2006. Not the most important of anniversaries you might say, but it prompted a peek at the near to hand Kelly’s directory for 1968. A quick thumb through reveals that there were 13 tobacconists within a one minute walk of the Cross at that time, among them the splendidly named J & D G Clutterbuck’s in Westgate Street and H & M Detroyat’s in Barton Street. Until a decade before, Barton Street was also the address of tobacconist Alf Bundy. Alf was blinded in the Great War and would have lost his life too had he not been pulled to safety by his brother Bill, who served alongside him in the trenches of northern France. Alf was one of 14 brothers and sisters - Violet, Lilly, Louise, May, Eva, Amy, Gwen, Edna, Winnie, Grace, Bill, Alf, Percy and Harold - and the family lived in Tredworth Road.
After the war Alf trained at St Dunstan’s where he learned the skills required to manage a shop. By the early 1920s he had his own business and took an active role on the local Chamber of Commerce. When the Duke of Beaufort unveiled the city’s war memorial on Saturday 21 October 1933, Alf Bundy led the wreath laying ceremony.
If you lived in the city in the 1960s you may remember the Indian chief who stood outside the tobacconist’s in St Aldate Street. Carved from wood the model had a full feather head dress, a striking Roman nose, folded arms and advertised Will’s Whiffs cigars.
The shop was owned by Francis Copeland a gent who took over the premises in 1930 when it sold only umbrellas. Over the years brollies were ousted by sweets, which in turn gave way to cigarettes, cigars, tobacco and snuff.
Smart’s Directory of Gloucester for 1907 tells us that a tobacco pipe maker named C F Ravenhill ran his business from St Mary’s Street.