Hi

I have a bottle found at Chilworth near Southampton, the bottle has Radiant Kingswood Bristol on the front and 1935 on the base, its the internal screw top type. Can you shed any light on the company?

thanks Richard

Hi

The bottle is almost certainly connected to the Corona Lemonade Soft Drinks Company in Kingswood now closed down. not sure about the name Radiant. The bottle could have been manufactured anywhere in the UK.


Corona lemonade Ad: 1976 Let's get fizzical!

Fizzical trainer: C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, move, move, move.
These aren't just any old bubbles getting into this bottle of Corona
No sir! are they fizzy! Every one has passed the Corona fizzical
Mmm — nice!
Boy it's really tough back there!

Voice-over: Corona — every bubble's passed its fizzical.

Fizzical trainer: Ah, that's it boys — let's see you fizz, fizz, fizz!

Corona Deposit bottles have all but disappeared from the UK (but still are available in Germany), even by the early 1980s virtually everything you drank was in plastic. The exception was Corona lemonade, orangeade, limeade (fluorescent green) and some weird concoction called 'dandelion and burdock,' which sounded like something developed at Porton Down in the 1950s to stop invading Soviet troops and tasted much like it too. The joy with Corona lay in taking the bottles back to the shops AND GETTING SOME MONEY BACK. Ten pence per bottle was, in 1982, serious money for a nine-year kid, and I used to earn about a pound a week from collecting bottles from neighbours and taking them down the shops. Then I'd blow it on comics and sweets. The other great things about Corona were the Corona cartoon bubbles, who would have to pass a 'fizzical' to get into a bottle. A little cartoon of bubbles working out in a gym was simply charming . . .

Corona Drinks Door Deliveries in the 1930's
I remember well the day that Corona drinks came upon the scene. One day a salesman came knocking on the door and told us that there would be a delivery of Corona Drinks on a regular weekly delivery. He would leave four bottles in a wooden crate on the doorstep by swapping over the empty bottles. The charge was 3d per bottle.

However the big layout of money was that we had to pay 3d deposit on the bottles and 1/- for the crate. Thus after the first week a straight swap was 4 bottles of drink (Ginger Beer, Orange Lemon, Dandilion and Burdock) all for 1/-. However they didn't last long as when the war came all Lemonade etc had to be pooled like they did with petrol. So it all went under one brand name.

They caused quite a row in the trade after the wall as the shops boycotted them for selling direct to the houses. It's all changed now of course.

Paul Townsend www.bristolhistory.com

Kelly's Directory 1935.

Radiant Table Waters Ltd. mineral water manufacturers, 332 Two Mile Hill Road, Kingswood. On the corner with Waters Road.

Kevin.