Plant
Department
The
Plant Department was one of the earliest
divisions which the company formed and
predates the Cadby Hall food factories. It
was formed in about 1888 to service the
then main activity of the company, that of
an exhibition caterer. This activity
continued in parallel with food production
and the Plant Department also became the
repository for supplies to equip teashops
and restaurants as they opened, or closed,
as well as providing the equipment for the
outdoor catering events (tents, chairs,
tables, linen, cutlery, china, pot plants,
flags etc.).
Originally
occupying space in the Olympia building,
and then Cadby Hall itself in 1894, by the
1950s it was spread over four depots,
Hermes Hill, Pentonville (the main depot),
Kings Cross, Clerkenwell and a small depot
in Cadby Hall. The Cadby Hall store was a
repository for containers for cooking and
carrying. There were soup jars,
earthenware dishes and tart tins, so that
they were on hand to meet rush orders from
the factories. Clerkenwell was used mainly
for furniture and furnishings. It was an
old building with a Victorian gaslight at
the entrance and with a distinct
Dickensian atmosphere. Hermes Hill was the
main depot for china and earthenware.
There were between three and four thousand
articles of plant at Hermes Hill, all
coded for easy reference. The store also
held heavier articles such as potato
mashing machines, scales, cork-drawing
machines, copper pans and metal trolleys.
At the other end of the size scale were
egg-timers, tea-strainers, ashtrays,
thermometers and milk measures. There were
mops, brush heads, clocks all hanging from
hooks like gigantic clusters of coconuts.
Tucked away in one corner of this
'Aladdin's Cave' was the front of the
original window from the company's first
teashop in Piccadilly. Nobody knows what
happened to this.
The
Plant Department were responsible for
equipping new teashops and restaurants and
in the case of teashops it was all
standard equipment and it depended on the
teashop size how much equipment was
needed. Orders were place for the
appropriate amount of cutlery, china,
glass, mops, pails, brushes, chairs,
tables, everything that was moveable from
a tin opener to a trolley. Even items such
as staff notices and price tickets were
provided by the Plant Department.
Equipment was kept on hand to provide
existing establishments (Corner Houses,
canteens, teashops) with replacement or
extra plant. To do this effectively there
had to be the closest co-operation between
the buyers attached to the various
departments and Plant Department staff.
Thousands of cups and saucers, for
example, were ordered each week for the
immediate delivery to catering outlets and
to maintain stock levels.
The
Lyons Annual Sports Day was one of the
highlights of the year and many thousand
pieces of china and glass, cutlery, trays,
and papier mâché cups, plus
hundreds of chairs and feet of tabling had
to be assembled at Sudbury by the Plant
Department staff during the week prior to
Sports Day. It would then all have to be
returned. Items broken would be noted and
replacements or repairs made. For a one
day event, with several thousand
attendees, it was a colossal
undertaking.
The
Plant Department at Hermes Hill was also
used as a lost property depot for items
left in the company's teashops and
restaurants. Every week more that 350
items were left in teashops alone and over
a year this amounted to 18,000 items. Peak
periods for lost property were Christmas
and Spring. Christmas because of the
shoppers who had much on their minds. It
was said that during Spring young men and
women had other things on their minds and
mentally were 'miles away'. Pouring into
the lost property offices each week were
hats, gloves, umbrellas, walking sticks,
compacts, ear-rings, pipes, spectacles,
overcoats, mackintoshes, handbags, books,
cameras, cigarette cases, rings, season
tickets, money orders, tobacco pouches,
false teeth!, and purses with money
ranging from a few pence to many pounds.
At the top of the curious list is the lady
who left one shoe and running a close
second was the customers who left a canary
in a cage. Another lady customer left her
child's pushchair.
The
job of this lost property department, if
items were not claimed, was to try and
trace the owners. On one occasion the
handbag which had been left contained a
photograph with a car in the background.
The police were able to trace the car by
its registration number and the bag was
reunited with the customer a few days
latter. In other cases bill or tradesmen
bills made the task much easier. However,
much was not traced and in one case this
was in connection with two bricks of
'cattle lick' were left and never claimed.
Can you imagine some of the fast food
restaurants in high streets today offering
this sort of service.
©
Peter Bird 2005
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