DID you know that many a wartime bride had to to make do with a tiered wedding cake constructed from cardboard?

This curious fact comes from reader Joe Whittle of Windle who tells me that he picked up this little gem while visiting a unique theme museum, Eden Camp, in Malton, North Yorkshire, covering every aspect of the 1939-45 conflict.

Says Joe: "I learned that in 1940 the use of sugar for icing was prohibited, and the cardboard cakes could be hired from bakers."

Now, he wonders if any of our more mature couples had a dummy wedding cake of this kind for their reception.

Other wartime gleanings from Joe include the fact that, just one year into the war, the sugar ration was 12 ounces a week per person, butter 4ozs, and the tea, margarine and cooking fat weekly allocation was 2ozs.

And cheese lovers had it tough in 1941 when it was rationed down to one ounce a week. Even bath-water was carefully monitored, with a 1942 instruction that this should not exceed five inches in depth.

And, on a more grim note, I'd never before realised that during the war as many as 80,000 men, women and children were killed by enemy action just on the home front.

THANKS, Joe, for those memory-jerking facts and figures.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.