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NORWICH AND DISTRICT INDUSTRIES 89 
X. 
NORWICH AND DISTRICT 
INDUSTRIES 
BY 
HERBERT P. GOWEN, F.S.A.A., J.P., 
CHAIRMAN OF THE NORWICH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 
(2) MESSRS. J. & J. COLMAN, LTD. 
TurRoucHoutT the world, the name of Colman is synonymous with mustard. 
The chief creators of the present firm were Jeremiah James Colman 
(1830-98), of Carrow House, Norwich, and Jeremiah Colman, his 
relative, of Gatton Park. But the family partnership was much older, and 
goes back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The ancestors 
of the two directors mentioned above had been milling flour and making 
mustard at Stoke since 1814 at least. Starch milling was undertaken in 
the early thirties. The mustard seed came from the Wisbech district, 
in bags which were, so one of the old clerks said, ‘ of material called duck 
or drill, which was bleached and made beautiful summer suits.’ In 
1834 James Colman (1804-54) did all the mixing of the various siftings 
of the crushed mustard seed for the four qualities of mustard, ‘ which 
were stored in a chamber over the chaise house on the east side of the 
Mill House garden.’ 
‘Lazarus Horne,’ it is related, ‘ did all the packing into casks in that 
chamber. He had only one arm. . . . In busy times . . . (Mrs. James 
Colman) . . . used to help nail the labels on the casks.’ Until 1845 there 
was no railway in Norfolk, and the transport was effected by three- or 
four-horse waggons. But like all patriarchal business men of the period, 
the Colmans and their dependants earned, demanded and hugely enjoyed 
their relaxations—and there can have been little difference in feeling and 
outlook among the partners and staff of that golden time. ‘ We used to 
get a Christmas dinner in the flour mill,’ one of the former remembered. 
©The men used to go indoors after dinner, and the women used to go 
into the other room with Mrs. Colman.’ It would take a good many 
‘ other rooms ’ to hold the employees of Carrow Works to-day. 
It was in 1856 that J. J. Colman and his partners began building the 
first mustard mill on the banks of the Wensum at Carrow, by Norwich, 
and on October 6, 1862, he wrote: ‘ I was at Stoke on Tuesday and shall 
go down again this week to take a last look.’ By that time Carrow Works 
were already of such dimensions that it had been thought well to institute 
a school for the children of the workpeople. ‘ It was housed in an upper 
room in King Street, up an opening by the “‘ Red Lion” Inn, reached by 
