After the war I came out of the army and went to work at Anstie's, recalls Arthur Cleverly. I was storekeeper in Long Stores. My father worked there as well. 
Anstie's factory offices in the Market Place in the 1950's.
Cigarette manufacture was done on the ground floor, that's where the cigarette and packet machines were, and a conveyor belt carried the packets up to the first floor to be packed. Cigarettes had been packed in there since at least before the First World War and between the floor boards you could find dried up old packets of cigarettes.
The spaces between the boards were also packed full of chaff because the building had been used at one time as a fodder store.
The buildings at the Market Place end were just offices. The upper floors of Long Stores end were used for storage, packing materials mainly, and it was the only place where there was a power lift. It was only for goods though, you loaded it up and then chased up the stairs to unload it.
There was a very large cellar with an old well. The top of the well was bricked around in a cone shape with the hole in the middle. It was used for years for dumping rubbish in, old broken glass and so on, it didn't matter how much you put in, it always sank down eventually.
After the war all the drill materials from the home guard, including old grenades, were dumped down there also. Anstie's threw away a lot of their old dyes for cigarette printing down there too; they made cigarettes for other companies and didn't want these to get into the hands of anyone else.
One day I was down the cellar on my own and throwing down some old, broken glass plates used as window advertisements for tobacco, (Brown Beauty and Black Beauty) and it was taking a long time for them to go down. To speed it up I climbed on to the top of the well and jumped up and down on the glass, which made it suddenly drop about five feet. Luckily, I was able to catch the top of the brick edge just in time to prevent myself slipping down with it.
Tobacco arrived as dry leaf in hogsheads. These were big cylindrical containers about four to five feet long and made of wood. Nearly all the tobacco came from India although it was called 'Virginia'. Some came from Africa. They arrived from the station on lorries and were pushed off the end and rolled in through big double doors in New Street ('Snuff Street').
The leaves were unpacked and taken to the wetting down room where they were moistened, then spread out on big tables for stripping. Removing the stalk was known as stripping and this was done by hand, mainly by the girls. There were always jokes about the girls in the stripping room. 
A scene in the stripping room of Anstie's c. 1920.
After this the tobacco went to the cutting room where it was cut up in high speed machines for the tobacco and for cigarettes. The big sellers for a while were Anstie's Gold Flake and Anstie's Cambridge. We also made cigarettes for I. Rutter & Co. who had been in Mitcham and for them we made Tobacco Bloom which was a more expensive cigarette. The owner of Rutters lived at Potterne.
We had a weekly allowance of twenty free cigarettes and we could buy more at a reduced price. Practically everyone smoked in those days and most people who had been in the army during the war came out as smokers.
 | From:
Devizes Voices compiled by David Buxton
Tempus Publishing
ISBN 0 7524 0661 2
£9.99
For a complete list of local history books published by Tempus Publishing visit: www.tempus-publishing.com |
| 
