My Adventures 3: Wilkin & Sons Ltd

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On Monday the 14th May 2018 I left home and after a 45 minute drive I parked up in the Wilkin & Sons Car park at CO5 0RF. I left the car park and turned left up Factory Hill.

At the junction by the War Memorial I turned right up Chapel Road.

The place-name 'Tiptree' is first attested in a charter in the British Museum (now in the British Library) of circa 1225, where it appears as Typpetre. The name means 'Tippa's tree'.

The 'village' status was the subject of a local referendum in 1999 but residents and secondary school pupils rejected town status. Tiptree is amongst the contenders for the title of 'largest village in England'.

Now I have a long ish bit of road walking but it was pleasant enough.

I turn left onto Grove Road and on a bend I leave the streets behind.

I walk along a lane before taking a footpath on my right.

I am now out in the country passing Ransomes Grove.

Wild Flowers including Red Campion and Sneezewort.

I crossed the stream below before realising my path continued ahead and I hopped back across again.

At the lake my path turns right and ahead for a bit before turning left again along an overgrown path.

Doesn't seem like this path gets used much

I reach an area called The Rampart of Haynes Green. This monument is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. The rampart in part consists of a double bank with a waterfilled ditch between the banks.

I walk out onto Hayes Green Road and up for a way before entering Layer Wood.

Now leaving the wood I walk up a stretch of road for a way before turning right onto a path through Thorringtons Farm.

The horses had churned up the field a bit and was a little muddy.

I leave the fields out onto another road passing Woodview cottages before taking a path across to Layer Marney Tower.

I wandered about Layer Marney Tower now.

Layer Marney Tower is a Tudor palace, composed of buildings, gardens and parkland, dating from 1520 situated in Layer Marney, Colchester, . The building was designated Grade I listed in 1952.

Constructed in the first half of the reign of Henry VIII, Layer Marney Tower is in many ways the apotheosis of the Tudor gatehouse, and is the tallest example in Britain. It is contemporaneous with East Barsham Manor and Sutton Place, Surrey, with which latter building it shares the rare combination of brick and terracotta construction. The building is principally the creation of Henry 1st Lord Marney, who died in 1523, and his son John, who continued the building work but died just two years later, leaving no male heirs to continue the family line or the construction. What was completed was the main range measuring some three hundred feet long, the principal gatehouse that is about eighty feet tall, an array of outbuildings, and a new church.

The buildings suffered considerable damage from the Great English earthquake of 1884, and a subsequent report in The Builder magazine described the state of the house as such that ‘the outlay needed to restore the towers to anything like a sound and habitable condition would be so large that the chance of the work ever being done appears remote indeed’. Fortunately the repairs were begun, by brother and sister Alfred and Kezia Peache, who re-floored and re-roofed the gatehouse, as well as creating the garden to the south of the Tower.

The next owner was Walter de Zoete who carried on and expanded the work, with a team of 13 domestic and 16 outside staff. He enlarged the gardens, built a folly known as the Tea House (converted to a self-catering holiday cottage in 1999), and converted the stables into a Long Gallery where he housed his collection of furniture, paintings and objets d’arts. As a consequence of all this work it would be fair to say that the interior owes more to the Edwardian aesthetic of Walter de Zoete than to the Marneys.

Walter de Zoete lost money in the Japanese stock market crash, and sold the house to a Dr and Mrs Campbell. The house came to the present owners, the Charringtons, in 1959. Gerald and Susan Charrington had been married in Layer Marney church in 1957; two years later Mrs Campbell’s executors put the house up for sale and the Charringtons purchased it. It has been occupied by the Charrington family ever since.

The church of St Mary the Virgin stands immediately beside the Tudor mansion house of Layer Marney Tower. The church as we see it today was built at the same time as the house, around 1523, and using the same red-brick - possibly made locally. Though the majority of the church is early 16th century, it incorporates fragments of an earlier 14th century collegiate church; William de Marney founded a chantry chapel here in 1330, with provision for two priests under a warden. The current building consists of a nave and chancel, west tower, south porch, and a north aisle with a chantry chapel and priest's lodging.

The church door is locked. This is a wonderful Tudor building, the Marney family tombs are beautifully preserved, as is the St Christopher wall painting.

The gardens are listed as Grade II on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England, while the building itself was designated Grade I in 1952.

The tower and gardens are open to the public from 1 April to 30 September for a small admission fee. The tower is also available for wedding ceremonies and receptions, as well as conferences. It has proved popular as a media location. Films and television programs which feature shots of Layer Marney Tower include Preaching to the Perverted, Pasolini's Canterbury Tales, and Lovejoy. In December 2011 the tower was the venue for BBC1's Antiques Roadshow.

However apparently the place isn't open to public today and the owners approached me. I apologised and left. Its open Wednesdays and Sundays I believe with a £9 entry fee. Still I'd seen enough and it had cost me nothing!

I make my way past Rockingham Farm Here there is a campsite and camping pods to stay in, along with four fishing lakes.

I enter Long wood and walk through another lovely woodland.

Tiptree back in view with new building going up.

Rear of Brook Hall.

I walk back out onto Factory Hill and walk up.

Brook Hall is a late 18th century Grade II listed building.

I am now back at the car where I dump my bag and boots, with my shoes back on , I head into the Museum, shop and Tearoom at Wilkin & Sons Ltd after a 7 mile walk.

The ‘Tiptree’ story begins around the early 1700s with Trewlands, the farm that was later to become the main site for jam-making in the Essex village of Tiptree. Today, there are some 11,000 inhabitants in what may well be the largest village in the country. And to save you valuable time on-line, the definition of a village is generally accepted as “a group of houses and associated buildings, larger than a hamlet and smaller than a town, situated in a rural area.”

By the time the Wilkin family had begun to move from arable to fruit farming in 1865, the village’s population was 850. People continued to choose Tiptree as a place to live and the 1961 Census recorded 3,018 inhabitants.

Fruit farming in Tiptree involved growing the fruit, then taking it by horse and cart to Kelvedon railway station and from there on to London for sale at the markets. When Gladstone, Prime Minister of the day commended fruit preserving to the population at large, Arthur Charles Wilkin leapt on this idea as a way to finally make a success of farming in Tiptree. In 1885, The Britannia Fruit Preserving Company was formed and the very first ‘Tiptree’ preserves were made, all to be sold to a merchant who would ship them to Australia. Within ten years, more than 200 tons of fruit was being produced, half of that used for making jam.

The success of Tiptree’s jam-making project was good news for the village and records show that in 1891, four hundred pickers were employed, earning between 12p and 40p per day. Factory workers in the meantime were busy making the jam and earned up to £1 per week.

The opening of a rail link between Kelvedon and Tollesbury via Tiptree did much to help the business and also encouraged population growth as travel became accessible to more and more people. Over the years, Wilkin and Sons (as the Company had by now become known) bought and farmed much of the land surrounding the village and even strayed as far as Dagenham and Suffolk. Today, the ‘Tiptree’ estate includes farms in Tiptree, Tollesbury and Goldhanger.

Things weren’t always easy and in one memorable note, Mr. Wilkin records having to sell a horse to pay the men’s wages. Despite that, village records also show that by 1900 an Old Age Relief Fund was helping the poorer people of the district and Arthur Charles Wilkin was active in setting up and helping to run that Fund. About that time he gave the Congregational Church one acre of land, helped fund the building of the Salvation Army Hall and gave employment to the Salvation Army Cadets.

By 1906, the Company owned 800 acres of land yielding some 300 tons of fruit each season. In 1914 The Essex Telegraph reported: “During Monday, over ten tons of strawberries including a large proportion of the famous ‘Little Scarlet’ were made into jam.”

1914 brought the First World War and Wilkin records from November 1914 state “Business at a standstill. Large works closed. Much unemployment.” Again in 1918: “Acute shortage of wheat, sugar and other important foods. Went to see Government Jam Controller in London. Turned out to be a barrister. Very difficult to convince that 1lb of sugar and 1lb of fruit would not make 2lb of jam.”

The war over, things improved once more and by 1922, the Company owned over 100 houses, eight farms, the windmill, the blacksmith’s forge, the Factory Club, The Salvation Army Hall, the factory and 1,000 acres of land. The village had grown to over 1,400 inhabitants, encouraged by the growth of jam-making and the Anchor Press which had become a major employer in the area.

During World War Two, Wilkin and Sons came under the control of the Ministry of Food but somehow Mr. Wilkin managed to get special dispensation to keep to the original recipes with their high fruit content.

During the 1950s, the village changed significantly as the population continued to grow and other businesses moved to Tiptree. An official guide to Tiptree from 1957 lists a shopping centre, two banks, two churches, a wide variety of sports and social clubs, six public houses, a playing field (Windmill Green had been a disused gravel pit) and two primary schools.

The Tiptree preserves business has seen good times and difficult times throughout its history but from the 1950s, there was a long period of steady growth. More recently, as the traditional market has declined and British manufacturing has become almost a thing of the past, the Tiptree business has gone from strength to strength. A renewed focus on home-grown fruits has helped the farm to flourish and today, it grows more fruit than ever, in stark contrast to much of the country’s fruit farming enterprises.

2010, the 125th year of jam making at Tiptree, signalled all-time record sales, despite global recession. A year of celebration, 2010 was marked by a visit from Her Majesty The Queen. The Company staged a play in the mulberry orchard, specially commissioned to relate the life of John Joseph Mechi, silversmith, inventor and experimental farmer at Tiptree Hall, now part of the ‘Tiptree’ estate. A Tiptree garden was created by Writtle College for the Chelsea flower show, it too reflected on the life of Mechi. The business recorded its best ever sales.

Today, Wilkin and Sons not only makes ‘Tiptree’ preserves, it has a flourishing fresh fruit business and multiple tea rooms in Essex. Thursday Cottage, a hand-filled preserves maker is now owned by Wilkin and Sons and based at Tiptree; Passionately Cakes was bought and later merged with Raven Catering to form Tiptree Patisserie, a successful high quality food producer based nearby in Witham. Tiptree Patisserie bought Daizylake cakes and moved that business to Witham. Cole’s Puddings (premium Christmas pudding producers) have also become part of the Wilkin & Sons food family.

Many of the staff live in Company-owned accommodation on the estate surrounding the factory. Around 850 acres of Essex farmland produce Grade I fruits, including medlars, mulberries and quinces. Wilkin and Sons is best known for its Little Scarlet strawberries, grown only on the ‘Tiptree’ estate. Adoption of the most up-to-date farming techniques ensure the farm is more successful than ever at growing exactly the right varieties of high quality fruit for ‘the jam factory’. The aim is to retain the flavour of the fresh fruit in the finished product.