When the 1950’s came back to Beech Road

Daft title I know but the sign outside Etchells’ on Beech Road with its promise of assorted different lollies will resonate with anyone who grew up in the 1950s and 60’s.

Beech Road, 2025

And it is less for those assorted different lollies and instead the pale yellow background, coloured strips and its distinctive blue lettering.

Eldorado, 1959

We were a Wall’s house but I know that other brands were available including Lyons Maid and El Dorado.

But for us it was that family brick with its vanilla, strawberry and chocolate sections called Neapolitan.

That said I had no brand loyalty as a kid and on occasion in Woolworth’s would buy one of those round ice creams in its round cornet which I think belonged to Lyons Maid.

And if really pushed might indulge in a Topper from Eldorado, but the flavour of its inside was bland.

I suppose we also fell on Wall’s because at 1922 it was the oldest and therefore was a brand both mother and father would have recognised unlike its whipper snapper rivals of Lyons which dated from 1925 and the baby Eldorado which only appeared in1952.

Wall’s also appeared in the Eagle comic that go to boy’s paper of the 1950s, which was.my weekly read. It had its own picture strip in which Tommy Wall’s would battle the bad, the very bad and even more bad villains.

Tommy Walls, 1950

At which point I could go into the history of the company’s and focus on all those Italian ice cream makers who worked our towns and cities in the late 19th and twentieth centuries, but I won’t.  Nor will I feature the work of Mrs Thatcher as one of scientists engaged in making whipped lighter ice cream thereby adding more air than white stuff to the finished product.

Although I am tempted to linger on the practice of selling the stuff in small metal containers at a penny ago, but the dreadful knowledge that the said bowls were not washed out between licks is a topic best left to those stern and heavy books on how diseases spread.

And that is it.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; On Beech Road, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and advert for Topper Ice Cream Lollie, 1959, from the Eagle Comic, May 30, 1959, Vol. 10 No.22, and Tommy Walls from the Eagle, April 18th, 1950