Pumphrey’s Jam and Icing Sugar Factory on Mandale Road, Thornaby. The tiled façade was based on the art deco style and the large windows were typical of new factories built between the wars. The factory specialised in lemon curd. Can anyone recall the sweet smell of lemons? Photograph taken 4th February 1986.
Pumphrey’s Lemon Curd is mentioned in the crime novel Essex Poison, by Ian Sansom – page 50. Also Parkinson’s biscuits and Eno’s Fruit Salts. Plus Lavvo, whatever that was! Something like Harpic?
My mother worked here June Langstaff
Pumphrey’s were a sugar-processing company formed around 1870 in Thornaby. It does seem strange, that it is rumoured below that they didn’t employ staff of the Roman Catholic faith, as they were one of the the first UK companies to introduce a 5-day week, rest breaks with refreshments, paid holidays and had an excellent management/production line relationship, long before such conditions became the norm, via Government legislation. This art-deco influenced facade to Mandale Road, even seems to reflect the company embracing ‘new thinking and a new age’, as the original Victorian office-building in the side street (just past this new edifice), still had the age-old sign of a sugar merchant, i.e. three individually gilded ‘sugar-loaves’ hanging from a bracket over the front doors, right up until the time the company closed it’s operation.
Bob, I was a wee lad sitting in my Dad’s truck watching intently what went on as it was all new and exciting to me, memory of people around me sticks although some things would pass me by.
Your chap called Billy would not have got one of those drums of waste on a pram buggy they were big and heavy, that is where the truck came in, we would load up then drop some drums off for other breeders picking up the empty drums to take back. We would roll the drums off the truck on a plank and because it contained sugar it kept a while. People did get the cake waste from Sparks, although in wartime most waste went to Darlington where it was all cooked and compacted into blocks which then went back to the pig breeders along with fishmeal. Some fed the pigs on that but had to take them off for a week or two before killing for bacon, you could still taste the fish and my Father would not use any of that or the block waste.
Farmers would sell you a field after potato picking and we would pick over it getting sacks of missed potato’s lasting through the winter, we also grew our own. Norton at the time was one big Market Garden so we could get greens and roots they could not sell on the market, it was quite a busy trade or trade off, sometimes we paid in bacon.
One memory does come to mind, I was on leave and asked to take a loaded truck to Whitehaven quite a run back then and it turned out to be one of Pumphries Dodge trucks that had been bought from them that week, it was December so quite a dodgy (excuse the pun) drive across and back, it took around twelve hours there and back, now it would take five.
My cousin was transport manager at Pumphrey’s . His name was Clifford Ashman. Does anyone remember him?
My mum Margaret Wilson, remembers Clifford Ashman, she worked there for the first time in 1944. She left and went back but is unsure what year that was?
Pre war Pumphries made mainly lemon curd for about half the year, the lemon and orange season, I know this as we got drums of the waste for our pigs. I lived in Mill Lane, Norton my Father being a Haulage Contractor with his own truck who did transport jobs for Mr Skelton an Engineer at Pumphries who lived at the Old Mill down Mill Lane from us.
We would collect steel drums of lemon waste and it was fed to the pigs we kept along with potato’s vegetables and also the waste from the Sparks Cake Factory plus some meal. Our pigs ate better than some of the people in Norton at that time of shortage of work and very little dole.
In war time Pumphries made Jam which could be half turnip or beat with concentrated fruit that came from abroad, there would also be a lot of apple pear and plum added again in season, we lived to the seasons when food stuff had to be imported in convoys.
After the war Jam making comtinued but they went into Sugar or icing sugar making and back to lemon curd, we could get the odd jar during the war and I loved it, still do. Wartime jam was rationed although we seemed to get plenty, some did come from Goosepool the Canadian Bomber base where mother worked as an electrician, things were not all bad in wartime.
Frank – On your travels did you ever come across another food waste competitor called Billy, from Thornaby? He used a rickety old pram wheel barrow to collect food waste, his brother had a butchers shop, -“Gibbons”- in Westbury Street, they kept their 40 pigs on Foggins Allotments, Thornaby Road, Thornaby.
My father Bob Boiston was manager of the Farm Stores in Stockton, he was a friend of Percy Gibbon who had the shop in Westbury Street, Thornaby. I can remember helping to dress chickens and turkeys at Mr Gibbons house on Letch Lane near to my home on Roseworth. I was a schoolboy then and me and my father walked to Letch Lane with my fathers Borzoi dog.
The front tiled wall can still be seen today in places, the supporting sections inbetween the windows and a section towards Thornaby town hall. The overall profile looks exactly the same just hidden behind steel cladding. Shame it wasn’t protected like Sparks Bakery.
I lived just 100 yards from Pumphrey’s and passed it often, I can remember it in it’s heyday with female workers walking in and out including my sister Anne Wilson, what’s memorable is they all had to wear white hats, not proper hats mind you, more like a white beret. I can remember the flower beds shown being built and speaking to the brickies, and the bench seats being installed there, strange to say I never ever saw anyone using these seats. I was unaware Pumphrey’s made lemon curd as we used to know these works as ‘the icing sugar place’. Does anyone know this firms history and have more details about Mr Pumphrey?
Mr Reynolds Shop: Just out of sight to the right in this photo was the most famous hardware shop in Thornaby, complete with it’s very own “Grandpa Munster” (the Munsters, USA sitcom) – Mr Reynolds – who appeared to be a wealthy mid-Victorian eccentric complete with a gothic look and voice to match, Mr Reynolds, was a well loved legend in Thornaby, and his shop a legacy from times past.