90 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF NORWICH AND DISTRICT 
a step ladder with a handrail. Maria Cogman, the school-mistress at 
Stoke, was transferred.’ A school was maintained by the firm, until it 
was taken over by the School Board in 1900, and must suffice as an 
example of the advanced ideas that were prevalent at Carrow Works at 
that date. The numerous activities initiated or favoured by the firm 
would fill a long catalogue, and it can only be mentioned in passing that 
they were usually in advance of their time—a visit of 500 employees to 
the Exhibition of 1862, an Old Age Pension Scheme in 1899. 
It was in the early ’eighties that the great step forward of substituting 
roller-milling for the various older crushing processes came to be applied, 
first to the mustard making, but sooner or later to the flour milling, which 
the firm has never forsaken. The making of starch and blue also under- 
went many developments as mill was added to mill and the property of 
the firm reached out and out along the bank of the Wensum. The 
sphere of its influence was broadening in another direction. Jeremiah 
James Colman moved into Carrow House, a substantial residence, in a 
property containing the ruins of the female priory of that place, which he 
re-edified. All around, a whole quarter of the town became filled with 
the dwellings of the clerical, administrative, and wage-earning staff. All 
this gradual building up was very important for Norwich, which had lost, 
from about 1830, in a very few years, the whole of its ancient textile trade, 
and might have suffered dire poverty had it not been for the Colman 
works, and perhaps Gurney’s Bank. All this time Jeremiah James 
Colman and his relative in London attended markets together and carried 
on an exacting amount of personal supervision. Even to-day the Board 
meets alternately in Norwich and in London, the head of the Norwich 
family being the Lord-Lieutenant of Norfolk, and that of the London 
family, Sir Jeremiah Colman, Bart. 
To-day, however, the name of Colman means a great deal more than 
the works at Norwich or the London offices, factories and branches 
having been established in many parts of the world. If we count the first 
considerable development as the move from Stoke to Norwich in 1856- 
1862, and the second as the promotion of the limited liability company 
in 1896, the third must be the extension of the company’s business by 
the amalgamation with Keen, Robinson & Co., and the most recent altera- 
tion of the Articles of Association of the company to permit of the issue 
of their shares to the public. 
This is the scope of a Norwich business which, a hundred years ago, 
was carried on in the chaise-house behind Stoke Mill. 
(6) BOOT AND SHOE MANUFACTURING 
Boot and shoe manufacturing is the staple industry of this city and 
occupies a proud position in relationship to other shoe-manufacturing 
centres of this country—more especially is this so when it is considered 
that from the geographical standpoint Norwich is not closely situated to 
any of the recognised shoe manufacturing districts. 
The industry itself is of considerable magnitude, consisting of twenty-six 
