St Ives Chicory Factory

St Ives Chicory Factory

On the edge of St Ives a factory once stood that turned an unassuming root into a popular national product. Chicory is a plant root that can be dried, roasted, and used as a coffee substitute or coffee blend, and its value rose sharply when imported coffee became scarce and costly. In St Ives, that need helped to establish the first chicory factory in England, a place that linked local farmers, fenland fields and industrial processing in one neatly efficient system.

St Ives Chicory Factory, c1941.

Why chicory?

All parts of the chicory plant are edible. When coffee was introduced into Europe in the 1700s, chicory was used as an additive. It is a hardy plant which, once harvested, sliced, kiln-dried and roasted, has a similar bitterness and dark body to coffee, but contains no caffeine. It is also significantly cheaper to produce and became a staple for stretching limited coffee supplies.

Pure coffee became an unaffordable luxury for many during the Great Depression in 1930. Chicory was a highly profitable, cheaper alternative that allowed coffee merchants to stretch their product. By blending chicory with real coffee, companies could sell a product like Camp Coffee, a highly popular liquid coffee-and-chicory essence, at a price that cash-strapped 1930s consumers could afford.

St Ives Chicory Factory

Before 1930, the vast majority of chicory used by British coffee blenders was imported from Belgium and France. Following the economic crash, the British government pushed heavily for domestic manufacturing and agriculture to keep money within the country. By building a chicory factory at St Ives in 1930, a Belgian entrepreneur named Charles Augustave de Cock realized he could completely bypass the import tariffs on foreign-processed chicory. Charles convinced hundreds of local farmers in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire to grow the crop, creating a brand-new British industry.

When World War II broke out a decade later, shipping lanes were cut off, and a true coffee shortage hit Britain. Because the St Ives factory was already established, fully operational, and backed by local Fen farmers, it became an invaluable wartime asset, rapidly ramping up production to full capacity to keep Britain supplied with its substitute brew when real coffee entirely vanished from shop shelves.

By 1951, the site was still active as the English Chicory Ltd factory under the ownership of Lyons.

Other chicory production locations

St Ives was part of a wider East Anglian chicory production. Guernsey also developed a chicory industry.  Lakenheath in Suffolk was the most serious competitior to St Ives. Both relied on chicory grown in the fenlands. That overlap created a natural rivalry.

They both also relied on skilled labour. In 1938 Home Grown Chicory Ltd of Lakenheath claimed the St Ives factory was trying to poach its staff. The pay was less at St Ives, but the working conditions were better. It took weeks to train a new employee, and the team were much less productive until the new man was up to speed.

Chicory production operation at St Ives

The St Ives operation was a streamlined industrial process. Massive quantities of soil-covered roots arrived by cart and rail. High-pressure jets removed the heavy fen clay. Mechanical guillotines sliced the roots into small chips which were then passed through high-temperature kilns. Then the product was roasted in large rotating drums to develop the caramel-like bitterness, before being ground into a fine powder.

St Ivians remember the smell of roasting chicory wafting across the town. Opinion was divided, with some liking the extra strong smell, akin to Camp Coffee, whilst others thought the scent was awful.

Dangers of chicory production

The primary risk was fire. The kilns, effectively huge drying floors, operated at intense temperatures, up to 200°F (93°C), and fine dust produced during the slicing and grinding phases was highly combustible. Teams of men worked in the punishing temperature of the kilns turning the chips of chicory. There were instances of dust explosions and localized fires that required the constant vigilance of the town's fire brigade.

Men working in the punishing heat of a kiln at St Ives Chicory Factory, c1941.

In 1932, fire damaged the St Ives factory. At 4am one of the chicory driers found the first floor on fire. Flames spread through the silo to the second and third drying floors, causing extensive damage. In 1933 and application was made to increase the supply of water to 50,000 gallons per day.

Chicory production was not glamorous work. Machinery used for slicing was dangerous. Hot equipment, rotating machinery, dust, and handling systems all made factory safety important, especially in an era before modern safeguards became routine.

Decline of chicory production

By the late 1940s and early 1950s, once imports of coffee recovered, the British public largely abandoned chicory blends in favour of pure instant and ground coffee. The high cost of maintaining specialized kilns made the St Ives factory economically unviable.

The end of the St Ives chicory factory

Chicory production ceased at St Ives in the late 1970s. The site was derelict for years, finally set alight as part of the storyline for the concluding two episodes of ITV's London's Burning fourth TV series. Today it is the site of an Aldi supermarket.

St Ives Chicory Factory 1951.

St Ives Chicory Factory delivery, c1958.
Fred Angood from Mepal made this delivery, a distance of 14 miles and not a single chicory root lost (so it seems). Fred Angood sits in the driver's seat, with Albert Newman, farmer of Hillrow, Haddenham, standing.

Lionel Saunders, second left, Company Secretary, St Ives Chicory Factory, c1941.
C H L Saunders was Company Secretary from 1933 to 1947, also rate collector and parish clerk.