Speaker meeting 11th August 2011 Stuart James - Tiptree Jams
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he government also became interested in helping farmers in a time of agricultural
depression which set in from the 1870‟s and Gladstone himself recommended that farms took up jam production. This inspired the Wilkin family to turn to jam production in 1885 – as it did the farmers in another Essex Village, Elsenham, where another Jam Factory was founded in 1890 by Sir Walter Gilbey when, like the Wilkins, he planted local orchards.
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ilkins‟ first batch of jam produced in 1885 was all exported to Australia.
Initially the firm made losses, but over the next ten years or so it grew and profits improved to such an extent that it was able to fight for the building of the „Crab & Winkle‟ Railway Line which was completed in 1904 from the main line at Kelvedon, calling at Tiptree and taking a short cut to the sea at Tollesbury and its pier: the line be- tween Tiptree and Kelvedon finally closed as part of the Beeching cuts of 1962.
n about 1900 Charles John Wilkin went on a tour of the USA and brought back sam-
ples of fruits from the US including Little Scarlet strawberries and loganberries, all for jam making.
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B T
ilkins became a limited company in 1888, and was initially called the
Britannia Fruit Preserving Company, but in 1903 it changed its name to Wilkin & Sons Ltd which it has retained ever since. By 1905 the firm had 10,000 customers, including the Empress of Russia, and the Queens of both Spain and Greece. In 1911 the firm received the Royal Warrant for Jams from King George V.
y 1913 the firm employed 959, produced 114 types of fruit and 230 types of
product.
he 1914-18 War meant that 73 left to join up, and unfortunately 20 of these were
killed. During the war, the Company developed a relationship with the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) at Stow Maries (later to
become part of the RAF) and pilots of these early planes dropped orders for jam from the air. In 1916, Wilkin & Sons Ltd donated 8,000 boxes of jam to the front which was made available to all ranks. Again in 1916 a Zeppelin that had been bombing Bromley by Bow was severely damaged and its escape route brought it out close to Tiptree;
the
Zeppelin crew threw overboard all their be- longings, including official log books and machine gun. The Zeppelin eventually came down in Great Wigborough and as a conse- quence, a newly born baby was christened Zepplelina (she only died a few years ago!).
B
y 1923 the firm had a good reputation and items were sold directly to over
200,000 customers and this figure continued into the 1930‟s. In January 1923 the company donated special miniature glass jars of jam to stock the Royal Dolls House presented to Queen Mary by Sir Edward Lutyens, currently to be found in Windsor Castle.
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T
ith the outbreak of the Second World War, the firm switched to primarily
supplying shops, a practice which has carried to the present day. Despite Tiptree‟s somewhat remote site from the theatres of war, the factory still was bombed.
n the immediate post-war period sugar ra- tioning continued, but was de-rationed in
1948 leading to a 50% rise in the firm‟s sugar usage. In 1954 the Royal Warrant was extended to include marmalade by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
he Wilkin family had for many years held strong religious beliefs, and they
exercised a concern for the welfare of their current and retired employees. An example of this was during the pre-war years, the company built about 29 cottages for their employees (by 1914 the cost of building a house was £116 per house). After 1919 the firm gave each former employee returning from the war a plot of land on which to build a bungalow.
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