Peggy Carpenter
My husband was born at Lower Green and his grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather were all Blacksmiths - the forge was where Jolly Robins is now.
My brother-in-law (Alan Betsworth) was chauffeur to Mrs. Lyle at Hawkley (Hawkley Place [below] on the edge of the Green was the home of the Lyle family well known as part of the Tate and Lyle Sugar Group) and his aunt was Mrs. Shorter. Alan was chauffeur till he left to go in the Army, he died in 1997 at the age of 85, He was quite old when he went in the Army, he lived at Homefold Cottages and his parents lived there all their married lives, he married my husband's sister in 1940.
I moved to Battersea in 1935 having attended Regents Park Central School in Marylebone from the age of 11. I was transferred to BCS but I was only there till 1937 because my parents moved yet again back to Marylebone. I decided that I wanted to be a shop assistant in a London Store rather than being trained for Commerce so I started work at Parnells of Victoria where I served a 2 year apprenticeship. So I wasn't a BCS student for long but I made lots of friends there.
The company was formed in 1921 from a merger of two rival sugar refiners, Henry Tate & Sons and Abram Lyle & Sons. The cooper and ship-owner Abram Lyle acquired an interest in sugar refining in 1865 in Greenock, western Scotland then in Plaistow, London, England. Henry Tate (1819-1899) began his business in 1869 in Liverpool, England, later expanding to London, England. He used his industrial fortune to found the Tate Gallery in London in 1897. Both companies had large factories nearby each other. Henry Tate in Silvertown, London and Abram Lyle in Plaistow. This prompted the 1921 merger. In 1949 the firm introduced its "Mr Cube" brand, as part of a marketing campaign to help it fight a proposed nationalization by the Labour government.
The company is renowned for its refined sugar cane products, and especially for "Lyle's Golden Syrup", its brand of partially inverted refiners syrup. The Lyle's Golden Syrup trademark (also used on other products) depicts a lion and a swarm of bees, as well as a quotation from the Bible. In Book of Judges, Chapter 14, Samson was travelling to the land of the Philistines in search of a wife. During the journey he killed a lion, and on his return past the same spot he noticed that a swarm of bees had formed a comb of honey in the carcass. Samson later turned this into a riddle at a wedding:
"Out of the eater came forth meat and out of the strong came forth sweetness".
While no one is sure why this quotation was chosen, Abraham Lyle was a deeply religious man and it has been suggested that it refers either to the strength of the Lyle company which delivers the sweet syrup or possibly even to the trademark tins in which Golden Syrup is sold. According to a news report, the Guinness Book of Records has carried out extensive research and concluded that the design of the tins, packaging which has remained almost unchanged since 1885, forms Britain's oldest brand.
