J. Graven, Ely

James Graven founded his agricultural engineering business in 1860, exporting products to India and other parts of the world. These first years may have been difficult and he was declared bankrupt by the Ely courts in July 1869. However Craven rebounced after that setback and started making steam tractors and other machines, mostly for agricultural purposes. Around this time the firm was located at 1 Annedale terrace (1875 edition of the Post Office Directory) but relocated a few years later to Broad Street (1883 edition of Kelly's Directory) where it remained, apparently, until the early 2000s. In 1912, following a meeting with Henry Ford, James Craven ventured into the motor vehicles industry. Little is known about the following years. Craven continued to sell steam machines as well as Ford tractors and Ford Anglia cars. The company's name is listed in several magazines for the farming industry but nothing of major importance seemed to have occurred until 1969. That year, the Agricultural Machinery Journal, included the following short article:

Ernest Doe & Sons Ltd, agricultural engineers and agents of Fulbourn, near Cambridge, have taken over the Ford tractor and agricultural engineering side of the business of James Graven & Sons Ltd, 17 High Street, Chatteris, Cambs, and Broad Street, Ely. The service will be continued at Ely and Fulbourn.

Since then James Graven has been specialising in retailing, in particular of locally-produced food, and runs several shops in partnership with Budgens, BP and Spar in the Ely - Cambridge area.


J. Graven
Engineer and
Agricultural Machinist
The house where this sign was painted may have been the family home of James Craven and his successors. The workshop and showrooms were located just across the street. Most of the site was demolished a few years ago but one of the showrooms survived and was converted into a dwelling.


The company's website doesn't include much information about the history of James Craven, but they have a few interesting photographs, including one on which the showroom, to the left of the church, is in its original state (third picture. On the same photograph, look for the house with two windows opposite the production site's exit: you may be able to make out the painted sign, just about...).

Location: Broad Street, Ely, Cambridgeshire / Pictures taken on: 03/07/2010

Marsh & Swan's vans, fly and stage waggons

Even though this sign in Ely has been restored, it must be the oldest one I've seen so far. It was painted on a range of eighteenth century cottages, two of which were used as staging post until around 1845.

Lynn, Cambridge and London
Vans, Fly and Stage Waggon
To the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate Street
Every Day
Isaac Marsh and William Swan
Proprietors
According to English Heritage this sign dates from the eighteenth century, but that may not necessarily be the case...
Several sources from the early nineteenth century mention the coach company of Marsh & Sons, based in London, Cambridge and Norwich. The company was certainly well established and well equipped by 1803. As The Annals of Cambridge for that year indicate, on March 7,

on the renewal of war with France, Messrs. Robert and I. L. Marsh and Sons of this place, the London, Cambridge and Norwich carriers, offered to furnish Government in case of invasion, with one hundred horses, twelve broad wheel waggons with twenty-four men to drive and guard the same, twenty-four flat-bottomed boats with men and horses usually employed therewith, four blacksmiths with travelling forge, two wheelwrights, and two collarmakers with their necessary appendages. The above to be employed whenever there might be occasion for their services at hour's notice.

A Guide Through the University of Cambridge published in 1808 also mentions that company. Back then Marsh and Sons' waggons

set out from Cambridge every day to the Bull, Bishopsgate-street, and return every day.
Their Swaffham and Fakenham Waggons pass through Cambridge every Thursday.
Their Downham, Ely, and Lynn Waggons leave Cambridge every Wednesday and Thursday.
Their Norwich and Yarmouth Waggons leave Cambridge every Monday and Friday.
Their BOATS to Lynn leave Cambridge every Saturday.

However, if the 1814 edition of the same guide gives the same list of departures, the name of the company has changed to Marsh & Swan. Therefore it seems the partnership between Isaac Marsh and William Swan dates from the first decade of the nineteenth century (later than 1811 in any case as documents from that year mention Marsh & Sons' general coach and waggon office at the Bull Inn). In the years that followed Marsh & Swan acquired some land in the proximity of the City to build stables, warehouses, granaries, a smithy and wheelwright shops. This suggests they transported goods in large quantities as well as passengers.

However the partnership must have come to an end after a few decades. Indeed in the 1845 edition of The Cambridge Guide the company appears as Swan & Sons. By then its passenger service out of Cambridge was:

Van, every morning (Sunday excepted), at 11 and 12 o'clock, and on Saturday evening at 8 o'clock, viâ railroad, to the Bull, Bishopsgate-street, London. -- Returns same days at 3 o'clock in the afternoon for Cambridge.
Waggon, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning at 9 o'clock to Brandon, Watton, Dereham, Swaffham, &c.
Van, every morning (Sunday excepted), at 11 o'clock, to Ely, Downham and Lynn.

Unless it operated new rural routes, the company may not have survived for very long after 1845. That year the railway from London reached Cambridge and one year later the line was extended to Ely and King's Lynn.

As for the Bull Inn in Bishopsgate, from where coaches towards East Anglia departed, it was immortalized by Charles Dickens in The Picwick Papers (chapter 22). It is in its yard indeed that the Pickwickians boarded the coach to Ipswich in company of Peter Magnus. After the latter checked all his bags were on board, they finally left London:

And away went the coach up Whitechapel, to the admiration of the whole population of that pretty densely populated quarter.
‘Not a wery nice neighbourhood, this, Sir,’ said Sam, with a touch of the hat, which always preceded his entering into conversation with his master.
‘It is not indeed, Sam,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, surveying the crowded and filthy street through which they were passing.

Sam Werrel then makes that wonderful comment:

"‘It’s a wery remarkable circumstance, Sir,’ said Sam, ‘that poverty and oysters always seem to go together.’

How times have changed!

Location: Market Street, Ely, Cambridgeshire / Picture taken on: 03/07/2010