Biscuit Town
In 1865, Peek agreed with Carr that the business needed bigger premises. In exchange for a stake in the business, Carr gave the company 10 acre of market gardens he had recently bought on Clements Road and Drummond Road, Bermondsey. Commissioning a new integrated factory, its resultant scale and emanations of sweet smells resulted in Bermondsey gaining the nickname "Biscuit Town".[1][2] The opening of the factory coincided in 1866 with James Peek stepping down from the business, installing his son-in-law Thomas Stone in his place.
On 23 April 1873, the old Dockhead factory burnt down in a spectacular fire, which brought the Prince of Wales out on a London Fire Brigade horse-drawn water pump to view the resulting explosions.
James Peek died aged 79 at his home in Watcombe near Torquay, Devon. After George Frean's son James Frean retired in 1887, his family had nothing more to do with running the business. Peek's nephew Francis Hedley Peek (1858–1904) became the first chairman of the now publicly listed company in 1901. However, on his death in 1904, again the Peek family had nothing more to do with managing the business. John Carr's family remained actively associated with the business for several more generations.
In 1906, the Peek, Frean and Co. factory in Bermondsey was the subject of one of the earliest documentary films shot by Cricks and Sharp.[3] This was in part to celebrate an expansion of the company's cake business, which later made the wedding cakes for both Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten and Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer.
In 1924, the company established their first factory outside the UK, in Dum Dum, India. In 1931, six personnel from the Bermondsey factory went to Australia to train the staff in the new factory in Camperdown in Sydney. In 1949, they established their first bakery in Canada, located on Bermondsey Road in East York, Ontario, which still today produces Peek Freans branded products.
After 126 years, the London factory was closed by then owner BSN on Wednesday 26 May 1989. The closing down of the factory in Bermondsey was the subject of the 1988 documentary film Old Ways New Ways made by local, independent filmmakers Sands Films, directed by Olivier Stockman.[4]
Left derelict for a long period, the former premises were eventually redeveloped into what today is called the Tower Bridge Business Complex.[5] One of the streets near the site of the factory is still called Frean Street, after the company's co-founder. In 2020, plans to redevelop the former Biscuit Town site as build-to-rent (BTR) housing were announced, with a £500m, 1600-home BTR scheme given planning permission in March 2024.[6]
In late 2011, a tinned Christmas pudding was discovered at the back of a kitchen cupboard in Poole, Dorset. Donated to the museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, it was a "Peek, Frean & Co's Teetotal Plum Pudding—London, High Class Ingredients Only" from 1900. It was one of a thousand puddings sent to British sailors during the Boer War on behalf of Agnes Weston, superintendent of the Royal Naval Temperance Society – hence its recipe being alcohol-free.[7]
