The industrialisation of local agriculture - Jew’s Farm and Wilson’s Farm in East Ham

The origin of these farms is obscure. Jews Farm seemingly lay at the end of what had been called Harrow Lane (named after a local pub) and on John Rocque’s map of the London area in 1746 was Siblemeed Lane. (This is where East Avenue E12 today meets East Ham High Street North and Plashet Grove). This probably refers to a piece pf marshland called Sibley Mead bordering the river Roding, which was sold in 1839 as part of Lord Henniker’s East Ham estates after his death. Today’s Sibley Grove, immediately north of East Ham station, continues the name.

On the Rocque map no farm building is marked, but on the Chapman and Andre map of 1777 buildings have appeared at the end of Jews Farm Lane; this may have been the home of a Jewish farmer named in a document of the 1760s. The farm seems to have disappeared by the early 19^th century but Jews Farm Lane retained its name until it was renamed East Avenue in the 1890s.

On John Rocque’s map “London 10 miles round” 1746 Jews Farm Lane appears as Siblemeed Lane. No farm buildings are marked. Today’s High Street North & Plashet Grove meet at North End above.

By the mid-19^th century East Ham was well-established in vegetable production, growing peas, cucumbers and above all onions for the London market. One of the biggest producers by the 1840s was Thomas Circuit, an incomer to the area from Bedfordshire, who arrived in East Ham about 1840. Circuit rented a holding called Wilson’s Farm in Plashet Lane (today’s Plashet Grove, opposite Plashet Park) and farmland east of what is now High Street North, including the site of Jews Farm.

Circuit and his family lived in the Plashet Lane farmhouse but about 1845 he had already fitted out a building for drying and storing large quantities of onions. This was probably on the Jews Farm site where present day East Avenue meets Sibley Grove. Circuit may have moved to East Ham because he saw the potential for vegetable production to feed the metropolitan market and he contracted to supply Crosse and Blackwell’s Soho factories with onions for pickling. Constructing what became known as the onion sheds enabled him to begin mass production of skinned onions ready for pickling.

The sheds were built well away from the family farm, since they were clearly another example of the “noxious trades” in which both East and West Ham specialised. The site may also have been chosen because in the 1840s the construction of rail links through East Ham into Essex were being actively promoted through bills in parliament. The Jews Farm site was ideally placed next to the eventually constructed line, and at some stage between the 1850s and 1890 sidings were built to serve the onion sheds. This enabled onions to be brought in from Essex for skinning and then shipped on to Crosse and Blackwell’s central London pickling works.

Jews Farm onion sheds c.1890

At mid-century Circuit and his neighbours were still growing vegetables locally. The work was highly seasonal; the workforce on Circuit’s 147 acres of arable and marshland in 1851 was 30 men and boys and 9 women, but in the summer of 1850 Circuit had employed 600 workers, “pulling, carting and peeling onions for pickling”. Pulling and skinning the onions was said to be women’s work, with payment (several times a day) on a piece-work basis, Circuit’s wage bill being about £200 a week during the two-month season.

This seasonal work was insecure, and even during harvest periods was not guaranteed. In 1852 Circuit refused pea-picking work to a group of “mainly Irish” labourers, as he already had enough hands. This resulted in a violent confrontation, with crops damaged before the police arrived to disperse the crowd.

The location of Wilson’s Farm occupied by the Circuits as tenants in Plashet Lane/Grove (left side of map) and the onion sheds in Jews Farm Lane (top right) on the 25-inch OS map c.1895, showing the right of way across the railway tracks where Sarah Ann Merritt was killed.

Around 1860 Thomas Circuit, possibly foreseeing the need to move farming operations away from East Ham as housing development spread, acquired farmland at Rainham in Essex. When he died in 1865 his sons Thomas junior and John seem to have focussed their operations in Essex. Both brothers died young, leaving their property in a family trust, and by 1900 the trust owned or leased several farms in the Upminster and Rainham area.

 Even by the early 1870s John Cubis Circuit was employing 250 workers on the 775-acre Brick House Farm at Rainham. The family retained both Wilson’s Farm and the onion sheds in East Ham, probably under a manager, Thomas Meeks, who was mentioned in Thomas Circuit jnr.’s will as the foreman of “East End Farm” (probably the Circuits’ property in East Ham – Meeks’ home was next to East Ham station). The business was split at this point, with Thomas and John growing onions in Essex which were shipped to East Ham for skinning. The Circuits were able to farm on a much larger scale in rural Essex than in East Ham where land was already being bought up for housing development.  Their farms in Rainham and Upminster were also close to the London Tilbury & Southend Co’s. rail link back to East Ham, and towards the end of the century Essex-grown onions were being shipped by rail to the private siding at the Jews Farm onion works.

 Thomas Circuit jnr. died in 1868, leaving his property in a family trust managed by his brother John and an East Ham farming neighbour Jabez Abbott. As early as 1870 the farm was producing 12,000 bushels of onions a year (well over 300 tonnes) exclusively for Crosse and Blackwell, whose annual output was already two million jars.

  

The farm occupied by the Circuits in Plashet Grove near the corner with East Ham High Street. Here called Circuit’s farm, elsewhere it is referred to as Wilson’s Farm, referring to the landowner. Copy of a watercolour map by Alfred Stokes late C19th, courtesy LB Newham Archive.

John Circuit died in 1876 and the livestock and equipment of Wilson’s Farm (including the onion sheds) were eventually put up for sale in 1883. At that time one of the two onion sheds on the Jews farm site had six floors and the other had three. This was even by local standards a massive operation, and had converted agriculture in East Ham into an industry. Interestingly the 1883 sale also included ploughs, harrows, waggons and “seven powerful horses” suggesting that agricultural production had continued alongside the onion skinning operation, and indeed the fields north of Plashet Lane were part of the farm. They were bought in 1889 and were subsequently developed into Plashet Park.

 This industrial site reflected the conditions prevalent in many factories of the time. In August 1874 an inquest was held on Sarah Ann Merritt, a 16 year-old onion skinner, who had been killed crossing the railway next to the farm. She and many others of the 400 strong work-force were forced by the lack of adequate and clean toilet facilities to cross the line and use a secluded lane on the other side of the railway between East Ham and Barking stations. In summing up the coroner was scathing about “the disgraceful character of the sanitary arrangements” at the farm, and required the Inspector of Health to make an inspection.

Plashet Grove c.1910, showing the entrance to Wilson’s Farm, occupied by the Circuit family while farming in East Ham. Plashet Park is on the left.

 

In response Henry Swann, the works manager, wrote to the papers with a copy of the report by the Health Inspector, who had found not just three closets as the coroner had said, but as many as seven, all clean but unused by the workers then in the plant. Clearly some work had been done before the inspector’s arrival.

 By 1890 onions were no longer grown locally and the works was supplied from estates at Rainham managed by Swann and Thompson. This company was closely associated with the Circuit family, being part owned by Henry Swann, the manager of the Jews Farm sheds and Thomas Thomson, one of John Circuit’s trustees. Although the Crosse and Blackwell name was displayed on the sheds it was Swann and Thompson which ran the operation on contract.

 Conditions at the works were appalling. Girls and women worked up to 15 hours a day skinning onions. They breathed noxious chemicals and lung-burning fumes in unventilated sheds, and eye and skin infections, as well as respiratory and reproductive illnesses were common. Many became permanently disabled with no compensation from their employer.

Crosse & Blackwell advertisement late 19^th century

The work remained seasonal, as it had been in Circuit’s time, and in the summer months onion skinning was, like hop-picking, seen as a means for east London women to earn extra money. Some east enders had been coming every season for nearly 50 years. The women workers ranged in age from 16 to 70 and over, and the younger and quicker workers were able to earn about 12s. a week.  This is equivalent to c.£49 a week today, at a time when a skilled tradesman could expect to earn 12s. a day. Child care and rent took half the women’s wages, leaving just over 6s. for food and all other expenditure. In the summer of 1890 wages were cut; for peeling the equivalent of 9 kg of white onions the women were receiving 6d-8½d, so that many were earning only 1s. for a 15-hour day which began at 6am and lasted well into the evening.

Discontent among the women workers grew, and when on the afternoon of 30 July 1890 some of them were docked pay for alleged bad work the women walked out the following day. They demanded an 8-hour day, a minimum wage and improved working conditions. These were a reflection of the demands made by the unionised workers at the nearby Beckton gas works and in the London docks the previous year. Will Thorne, founder of the National Union of Gas Workers’ and General Labourers, wrote in his autobiography “Towards the end of 1889 the spirit of the ‘New Unionism’ was flaming across the country, here, there and everywhere. Workers were rising for improvements in their wages and conditions; often unorganised, downtrodden, they took action without planning ahead; sheer desperation drove them to striking revolt, and with their striking came organisation”.

 

By the late 1880s a siding had been built into the farm (visible just below the number 237), enabling the product to be dispatched quickly across London to the main plant in Soho, where the pickle was made.

This clearly had an impact on the women at Jews Farm. As Thorne said, “in the public-houses, factories, and works in Canning Town, Barking, East and West Ham every one was talking about the union”. Thorne described the successful conclusion of the gas workers’ action as a milestone in trade union history, but it was also notable for the engagement of Karl Marx’s youngest daughter Eleanor in the emergent “New Unionism”, and her key role in organising women workers. The East Ham onion skinners’ strike was to play a small part in Eleanor’s pioneering work with women trade unionists.

In the aftermath of the Beckton strike and during another local action against exploitative employment practices at Silver’s Gutta Percha works Eleanor set up the first women’s branch of the gas workers’ union, which was admitted as the Silvertown branch in October 1889. When the women walked out at Jews Farm the following summer Eleanor immediately became involved with the strikers and under her influence many of the 400-strong onion skinners joined the Barking branch of the Gas Workers’ union.

As the strike began Eleanor addressed a meeting of 200 in a field next to East Ham station, talking of the need to organise a picket, and perhaps mindful of the recent strike at Silver’s works, counselled against attacking any blackleg labour that was brought in. At the conclusion of the meeting the women marched to East Ham town hall behind a makeshift banner made out a shawl tied between two sticks and decorated with a bunch of onions.

350 women signed up to the gas-workers’ union, and a strike committee and a collection for funds were established. During the week-long strike the union was therefore able to offer small amounts of pay to members, though this usually amounted to a little over a shilling each.

 

Headline in Barking, East Ham & Ilford Advertiser, Upton Park and Dagenham Gazette 2 August 1890

Eleanor was also active in promoting support for the onion skinners both from the general public (through letters to the newspapers) and among other workers in the area. On the first weekend of the strike she was in Ponders End, Enfield addressing gas workers on the need to support the strike, and to end petty jealousies between workers. She emphasised the importance of union membership for both men and women, and declared that young women should demand to see their lovers’ paid-up union membership cards.

Prejudice against women workers and divisions amongst trade unionists between skilled and unskilled workers could, as Eleanor correctly saw undermine strike action. This had happened at Silver’s works in the autumn of 1889, when the Amalgamated Engineers’ Society decided unilaterally to return to work, leaving the other strikers with little choice but to follow suit.

In face of the onion skinners’ action Henry Swann, still the factory “superintendent”, initially refused to negotiate, claiming that rates had not been changed and denying that he had refused to meet the strikers. However he quickly offered a small pay rise, and finally free beer for all. These were refused, and as the railway siding filled with wagons laden with over 30 tons of onions in the summer heat pressure grew for a settlement. Having made an increased offer, again refused, Swann finally agreed the workers’ terms, and after nearly a week on strike the women returned.

Eleanor Marx-Aveling

 Despite this victory labour relations at the works continued to be problematic. In July 1895 another strike was called and 200 women walked out, again because Swann & Thompson had cut wages. There is no record of how this strike ended, nor of the date when the works finally closed, though Swann & Thompson were still growing onions for market at Rainham in 1898, so possibly they were still running the East Ham works at that time.

The Circuit farms at Rainham and Upminster were finally sold by the family trustees in 1909. In an echo of the move from East Ham in the 1860s the estate was advertised as suitable for building development and included several acres of “unrestricted factory land”. Urban development was moving further out into Essex in the first decades of the new century.

The urbanisation of rural Essex was preceded two decades earlier by housing development in East Ham. The financial return on agricultural production was no match for the gains to be made by mass house building., and in 1893 the farmland immediately north of East Ham station was divided into 99 plots and let for building on very cheap terms. 

  

Land was for sale in the roads leading to Jews Farm. West Ham and South Essex Mail, 8 July 1893

By 1899 the first “villas” had been built in Shakespeare Crescent, which today covers the area where Jews Farm had stood, while in 1901 the London Tilbury & Southend Railway Co. stopped the right of way across the railway at Jews Farm (where Sarah Anne Merritt had met her untimely death 30 years earlier) and built a footbridge, so this probably marks the time by which the onion sheds had disappeared and housing development begun on the site.

East Ham station c.1893 looking east. The onion sheds are just visible in the distance, the line of trees marking Jews Farm Lane. A sign in the left foreground announces building plots to let. (LBN Archive).

Wilson’s Farm survived longer, continuing first as a working farm and later in the 1900s as a depot for a carter contracted to East Ham Council, until it was finally demolished in the early 1920s to make way for the first girls’ school to be built on the Plashet Grove site.

 

A footbridge now crosses the District & C2C Line from Sibley Grove to Southend Road, replacing the foot crossing where Sarah Ann Merritt was killed in 1874

In April 1899 Jews Farm Lane, known locally as “Skinny Lane” because of the onion skinning sheds there, became the much more respectable East Avenue, named after Joseph East, a local councillor and first chairman of East Ham Urban District Council. The farm-factory also disappeared in the face of relentless urban development.

Crosse and Blackwell were to return to the area decades after the Jews Farm site closed down, though this time it was for a sweet rather than savoury product. In the 1920s the company acquired James Keiller & Son (of Dundee marmalade fame). Keiller's had opened a factory in 1878 at Tay Wharf Silvertown, and production continued there under Crosse and Blackwell ownership until the 1980s.

The 1974 strike at Crosse & Blackwell in Silvertown, reported by the Stratford Express

 It was here at Silvertown that in 1974 a curious repetition of the Jews Farm dispute occurred. 300 women at the works went on strike to demand that increased production line speeds were matched by increased bonuses. As in 1890 with union support the women won an hourly pay increase. It was not a long-lasting success however, as Crosse & Blackwell were already winding down the works and moving production to Scotland. The Silvertown works closed in 1985.