Deakin Family History
and the
History of Messrs W.R. Deakin Limited
(Deakin's Jam)
In the late 1880s, William Robert DEAKIN (1862-1943) set up his first jam and preserves manufacturing business, Deakin & Hodson, in Wigan, Lancashire, in partnership with his father Samuel Pownall DEAKIN and brother-in-law John Hartley HODSON.
The Deakin partnership with John Hodson was dissolved in 1890 but William went on to set up his own jam and marmalade business, W.R. Deakin Limited, opening canning factories and jam manufacturing businesses further afield in Worcestershire near the market town of Pershore and in Toddington, on Lord Sudeley's Estate in Gloucestershire.
William Deakin also established a number of large fruit plantations across the Vale of Evesham and at Gatley in Cheshire. Deakin's Jams, under the ownership of William Deakin and his sons, flourished until the mid 1930s.
Deakin's advertising slogans from the 1900s:
ALL DEAKIN'S JAMS AND MARMALADE ARE BOILED IN BEAUTIFUL SILVER PANS
DEAKIN'S CANNED FRUIT, JAMS AND MARMALADE
THE BEST THAT SKILL & SCIENCE CAN PRODUCE
DEAKIN'S DELICIOUS TABLE JELLIES BOILED IN SILVER PANS
LIKE DEAKIN'S JAMS AND MARMALADE
'They are unsurpassed for Purity and Excellence'
Hampton Park, Red Lane, Hampton,
Evesham, Worcestershire
William Deakin's first residence and fruit farm in the Vale of Evesham
----------------------
Author's notes:
This website provides information I have gathered on the people related to and descended from William R. DEAKIN during my research of Pershore's 'plum' history.
Despite the size and success of Deakin's Jam business in England in the late 1890s and the beginning of the 1900s, few records exist of the Deakin family's involvement in fruit farming in Pershore and the Vale of Evesham at that time.
Other fruit farms and canning factories existed in and around Pershore at the same time as Deakin's, notably those owned by The 9th Earl of Coventy (Croome Estate Jam Company Ltd est. 1890 in a former industrial building near Pershore station), TW Beach and Sons Ltd and the Pomona Jam Factory.
