Tower and Town, April 2023

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The Pelham Blue Plaque

This is the story of Bob Pelham, creator of the famous Pelham puppets. Designed and manufactured in Marlborough from 1947 to 1980, Pelhams was for years the town’s largest employer, with over 200 staff at its height.

Bob was studying architecture when he joined up to fight in World War II. He had a hobby of making “wonky” toys and when discharged, he decided to turn his hobby into a business.

Early on, a legal challenge forced him to change tack to the design and manufacture of puppets. It was a brilliant decision. Over the years Pelham’s produced all sorts of puppets for children, for professional puppeteers and latterly, very successfully, for TV shows. They produced puppets for every children’s programme you can think of, from Muffin the Mule to the Wombles.

The workshop was first in Silverless Street, then in Victoria House on the corner of the High St and Kingsbury St (site of the blue plaque). Later the operation moved to much larger premises on London Road.

Sadly, it was not to last. By 1980 the business was declining and Bob died in May of that year. His widow and loyal workforce struggled on but on April 4th, 1986 production ceased at the London Road factory and forty years of Pelham Puppets ended abruptly. It is sad to realise that, in any case, those lovable puppets would not have survived in today’s world of computer generated images.

Sara Holden