Deakin Family History
and the
History of W.R. Deakin Limited
(Deakin's Jams)
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 very successful jam and marmalade business, W.R. Deakin, opening fruit and vegetable canning factories and jam manufacturing businesses further afield in Worcestershire in the market town of Pershore and on Lord Sudeley's Estate in Toddington, Gloucestershire.
William Deakin also established a number of large fruit plantations across the Vale of Evesham: around Pershore and Stoulton, and at Hampton just outside Evesham and Gatley in Cheshire.
Deakin's Jams, under the ownership of William Deakin and his sons, flourished until the mid 1930s.
All Deakin's jams and marmalade are boiled in beautiful silver pans.
Deakin's canned fruit, jams and marmlade, the best that skill and 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.
Buy Deakin's Jams and encourage British Labour in Fruit Growing and Jam Making.
British Boys & Girls like Deakin's Jams.
Victorian postcards advertising Deakin's in the Vale of Evesham: Where the fruit is grown for Deakin's Jams:
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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 early 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.
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Pershore is a market town on the banks of the River Avon in Worcestershire. Pershore is famed for its Georgian architecture, magnificent medieval abbey and its plums. Every August, Pershore dresses the town in purple for its Pershore Plum Festival.