Sorry About Teafolk... (10 September 1976)
I am sorry to hear of the impending closure of the Tetley factory in Bletchley. Sorry not only for the more obvious reasons. But also on what might be called sentimental grounds.
Tetley’s came to Bletchley in 1940, after their London premises had been bombed out and first occupied the factory at the corner of Osborne Street and Clifford Avenue which had previously been used by a dairy company.
They were never concerned solely with tea, especially during the war. The American GI required his cup of “cawffee” more than the British Tommy liked his cup of NAAFI tea and from 1942 onwards there was a steady stream of US Army vehicles taking containers of coffee from the factory to their camps to make sure that he got it.
When I arrived in Bletchley in early 1946 I lived for a few weeks in Clifford Avenue, right next door to the factory and vividly remember the strong smell of coffee that often permeated the atmosphere thereabouts. Coffee isn’t a bad smell as smells go, but when you have it all day and all night you tend to reach for the teapot instead.
The move to the new factory in Denbigh Road was made in 1949 or 1950. This was before the planned post-war expansion of Bletchley had begun, though the future industrial zones had already been designated under ordinary town planning. I think that that new factory and Wipac’s – who had also been bombed out of London and had occupied temporary premises in Bletchley – were the first to be built in the Denbigh Road after the war.
Today Tetley’s are best known for their tea bags. This should not be surprising, for they were the first makers of tea bags in this country.
Originally, tea bags were a European idea, but the Americans took it up, so that it is now generally believed to have originated there.
Tetley’s began making tea bags in 1947, but almost all those early ones were exported. Tetley’s were alone in the English market, but for several years they had an uphill struggle to sell them here, and they did not not get them on to the retail market until about 1952 or 1953. Then, when success finally came, so did competitors, and at length Lyons took them over.
Apart from British Rail and the brick industry, Tetley’s have been among the largest employers of labour in Bletchley. Wipac went out of the town long ago. M A Cook’s and Root’s brushworks have both closed. Other firms have become part of or subsidiaries to larger organisations. Just about the only manufacturer left unaffected in one way or another who were here when I came to the town seem to be Beacon Brushes and Valentin, Ord and Nagle’s. What with comparative newcomers, European Printers, also closing and Berry’s Magical leaving, there have been almost as many changes in the industrial sphere as in the retail trading sphere – and many of them by no means to the good.
But the Tetley affair I find particularly depressing. Here were a firm who introduced a now-famous household article to this country; who ventured to build a new factory before town expansion and before the new city was ever thought of; who eventually employed hundreds of people; who held fetes for them and their families in the factory grounds – and now, after 36 years in the town, nothing. No wonder we oldies feel that while we are not leaving Bletchley, Bletchley is leaving us!
As to Beacon’s Brushes and Valentin, Ord and Nagle’s – I have written previously about the history of brushmaking in Bletchley. So now just a few lines about VON, the glucose manufacturers.
This firm was the offspring of Mr John Cummings Nagle. He was born in 1862, spent part of his early life in the USA and introduced the glucose industry into this country from there.
After a close association with other successful glucose enterprises, he established the firm of Nagle Ltd at Fenny in the early 1920s and the firm became Valentin, Ord and Nagle’s a few years later.
He lived at the Woodlands, Aspley Guise, but after his retirement from active participation in the business in 1938 he went to live in Surrey, where he died at Guildford in 1948, aged 86.
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