Whenever I'm out for the day I make
up sandwiches and a flask. My favourite sandwich filling is jam and cheese
(together) and the jam is usually Harltey’s. I can
remember Hartleys jams on the shelf in the shop my
mum ran forty years ago. The company is still flexing its muscles. Here I am at
a rural cemetery where the jam god Sir William Hartley is buried.
He’s buried just outside the small Lancashire
village of Colne where he was born in 1846, an only child.
Aged 14 he left school and worked for his mum and dad in the grocery business. Aged
20 he married Martha (the youngest of 13 children) and they’d go on to have six
children. He was 25 when the business started due to a chance event: a supplier
failed to deliver some jam so he made his own. It sold so well he started
making marmalade and jelly, too - all supplied in distinctive earthenware pots.
By the time he was 28 the business was doing well and, borrowing lots of money,
took a risk by transferring the manufacturing to Bootle in Merseyside.
The Hartley’s liked the coast and by the time
William was 34 the family had moved to Southport and became well known for
helping local causes and, being religious, were members of the local Methodist
Church. Aged 40 the business had made so much money they transferred
manufacturing to Aintree as it was near to the railway network (they had their
own siding.) Within five years another large warehouse was built and, eight
years later another. Often six trains arrived per day and two hundred wagons were
filled with jam and other conserves. William even chartered ships to get jam
across the world. Soon the factories were making 1000 tons of jam per year.
Being a devoted Christian William devoted Sundays
to the church. Like many religious businessmen he looked after his workers.
Aged 42 he had a model village at Aintree built for them (the cottages had
gardens, the streets were wide, there was a bowling green and playing fields
for sports.) He started a profit-sharing scheme, free medical treatment and
paid higher wages than those of his competitors. He made huge donations to
hospitals, universities and theological college (the one in Manchester is
called Hartley Victoria College.) At the jam factory he was known for being a
generous friendly man asking that anyone can approach him with problems inside
or outside the factory. He opened a benevolent fund to help those who were
suffering hardship (but this excluded anyone spending their wages on alcohol or
cigarettes.) When he learnt some workers lived too far away from home to nip
back for their dinner he built a huge cafe/dining room built that could seat
750 at a time (meals were at cost.)
In his seventies William was rich - so rich that
when World War One started the government was looking for financial
contributions to the effort. He made generous contributions but the war greatly
depleted staff that the jam factory was nearly lost. One profound personal loss
was that a grandson who was killed in action.
For years William had suffered from angina
pectoris but past resilience proved it wasn’t a grave worry. It was though and
the grave I’m stood beside beckoned with a crooked finger. One night his angina
was so bad his wife called into this bedroom three times but by the morning he
felt well enough to think about going to factory. Suddenly that Wednesday morning
he died of a heart attack aged 76. The jewel of the jam world was gone. The
funeral service was held near the Hartley home (since demolished) but the
funeral procession travelled 50 miles here to Trawden
outside Colne where I’m stood.
I’d looked for William’s grave years ago at the
main church in Colne. Slightly dejected I left and
only recently learnt of this overflow graveyard in the countryside. There’s no
church - just long-distance views across to Colne, fields
dotted with sheep and one house. There are bigger headstones in the small
graveyard but somehow I guessed which was William's. A few Hartley’s are buried
here judging by the fading carvings. Even in death William was helping people:
after his demise a Hartley Memorial Fund raised money to trained of medical
missionaries and impoverished students.
I found only one war grave - also one fencing in
a child hugely missed judging by the paraphernalia festooning it. I did salutes
and left.
Looking back to Colne...
The Hartley home where William
died...