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In the mid 1980s, I moved to the interlinked villages of Histon and Impington, just north of Cambridge. It soon became very apparent that, even then, the jam factory was a big part of the community. Each night when I arrived back from work, I would know exactly what jam / marmalade had been made that day as the air would be infused with a strong scent of raspberries or oranges!
Although the factory had been sold by the Chivers family more than 25 years previously, the family were still much in evidence in the villages - as fruit growers and sellers, and running the local dairy. In fact, it was the Chivers family who gave me my first taste of, and fostered my interest in, unusual apple varieties. In what I remember as an old packing shed in Impington (although I now realise this may well have been the site of the barn where Stephen Chivers first boiled his jam) interesting apples and baked goods made using the fruit were sold to the public. A couple of years after the factory and farms were sold, the Chivers family had bought back most of the farms.
Last week I went to an interesting talk on the factory given by David Oates, whose father had worked there. He also told us of his own experience of casual work at the factory. When the factory was sold to Schweppes in 1960 his father took a large and fascinating collection of ephemera including photographs for safekeeping. These items are now housed in the Cambridgeshire Archives at Shire Hall, though they are as yet uncatalogued.
The factory has been in the ownership of several large companies, and although jam is still made there it is now sold under the brand name of Hartley's, and as supermarket own brands. The Chivers brand was sold to an Irish company which does still make jam. With his orchard so close to the railway station Stephen sent his fruit north, where 2 of his 3 sons dealt with the orchard’s produce in wholesale markets. They suggested to their father that rather than transport the perishable fruit, it would be a better idea to process it into jam and transport the less perishable jam.
By the 1870s the jam was being made in a 3-storey factory built on the orchard site, employing a large number of people. David showed us many old photographs of fruit pickers, and factory workers from many different sections of the factory. It was a business which kept as much as possible in-house. The jam was boiled in copper vats, lined with silver, and then poured into silver-lined channels. The silver plating was carried out on site. The jam factory even had its own fire brigade with a network of telegraph wires to firefighters’ homes should there be a fire out of hours. Wide round bushel baskets for the pickers were all made by a family from the village.
In 1907, the newly built Orchard Factory was opened. It was extremely large and imposing. This factory was demolished in the mid 1980s, a small modern factory built, and most of the original factory site sold off. The Orchard Factory became the first specialist fruit canning factory in the country. The range of foodstuffs made at the factory over time also included bottled fruit, table jellies, lemonade, custards, blancmange, Christmas puddings, canned, early Birds Eye frozen, and dehydrated vegetables, and also soup powder for WW1 troops. Initially for the troops in WW2, Chivers were the first to produce dehydrated mashed potato known as “POM” (Potatoes One Minute).
The Chivers family were committed Baptists and were concerned for their workers’ well-being. They set up the Chivers Mens’ Institute, housing a library, meeting place, billiard table and 1d baths. Firs House, now the local Doctors’ Surgery, provided classes for the girls. The factory also had its own nurse. The Chivers family ethos was to provide as many as possible with healthy and congenial employment.
Fruit pickers and factory workers were drawn from Histon and Impington, and from villages further afield (they were bussed in). Indeed the fruit was grown in several different locations and was also bought in from local gardens. The jam factory played a big part in the lives of the people of Histon and Impington, and surrounding villages. Old photographs and ephemera document almost a century of fascinating social history.
The talk really whetted my appetite to carry out deeper research!
Monica Askay
May 2018