Jeremy ClarksonWho Do You Think You Are?, Series 1 Episode 4
2 Nov. 2004
Series in which celebrities trace their ancestry, discovering secrets and surprises from their past. Jeremy Clarkson goes in search of a family fortune and on the way charts the rise and fall of British manufacturing from mid 19th to mid 20th century, through the Kilner Glass company. It was set up by a distant ancestor and did very well, but went bust in the 1930s. Jeremy wants to know what went wrong and where his inheritance went. 46 minutes
Video:
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Jeremy Clarkson
Too boring to bother withJeremy Clarkson is not a man given to considered opinion. So it is not surprising that, when he was asked to research his family's history, his response was abrupt: 'Too boring to bother with', he said. He could not understand why anyone would be interested in finding out about the lives of his ancestors.
Jeremy was aware that one of his forebears had invented the Kilner jar, a receptacle for preserved fruit that is still popular in homes today. But he was completely unaware that the story of the Kilners, his maternal ancestors, was one of 'rags to riches and back to rags'. This information piqued his curiosity, and he was persuaded to pursue his family history a little further.
Family legend had it that the Kilners fell into bankruptcy. Jeremy's mother had often told him that another firm had stolen the patent for the jar, while there were rumours that the Kilners failed to register the patent in the first place. Whatever the truth, Jeremy understood that he might have been born into extraordinary wealth except for this mysterious reversal of fortunes.
Trift and skillResearches into John Kilner, Jeremy's great-great-great grandfather, born in 1792, revealed that he was once an employee in a glass factory. He set up a glassworks with friends and through thrift and skill turned the business into a massive success. Industrialisation and growing prosperity increased the demand for the production of glasses, jars and bottles, and soon John possessed two factories in south Yorkshire.
He died in 1857, and the firm was taken over by his four sons, George (Jeremy's great-great grandfather), William, John and Caleb. Each learned their trade on the factory floor, and the firm, then known as Kilner Brothers, continued to thrive and flourish.
Caleb, the youngest, was given the job of opening a London warehouse for the firm. This warehouse was used to store Kilner products so they could be transported all over the world.
Rise and fallOne of the firm's factories won the only medal awarded to British glass-bottle makers at the Great International Exhibition held in London in 1862. Then in the 1870s and 1880s, the business won medals and awards in Paris, Philadelphia, Sydney and Melbourne. The Kilners were at the summit of their trade.
Small family firms in Britain came under increasing pressure in the early 20th century, due to competition from cheap imports, and some firms had to merge to survive. One such merger created United Glass Bottle, a conglomeration of six glassware firms. They bought the Kilner patents when the firm fell into decline.
Flash HarryWhen Caleb Kilner had died he'd left the equivalent of millions of pounds in his will, most of which went to his son, George, and son-in-law, Harry Smethurst, but records show that neither of these died with much money to their name. So the question is, where did the money go?
Harry Smethurst - or 'Flash Harry' as he was known in the local pit village of Denaby - married Jeremy's great grandmother Annie Kilner, but was not involved with the glassworks. He was an architect, and is known to have designed many of the buildings in Denaby, as well as buildings for the Kilner brothers.
Harry and Annie liked to show off their wealth, and may have frittered much of the fortune. Rumour had it that they'd spent some of the inherited money on a motor car, around 1901, which must have made Harry one of the first men in south Yorkshire to own a car. Some money remained, but when Annie died she disinherited her daughter (Jeremy's grandmother) Gwendoline.
Research revealed that when the factory closed there was a family rift over how the proceeds of the closure should be divided, and Gwendoline sided with her cousin, causing estrangement from her parents. The money instead all passed on to her brother, Tom.
So Jeremy found out why he might have been born rich, but wasn't, and discovered an interest in common with his great grandfather, Harry. Whether he takes things further, though, is anyone's guess.
www.bbc.co.uk/whodoyouthinkyouare/past-stories/jeremy-clarkson.shtml
Jeremy ClarksonBy Matt Elton, 29 June 2009
In search of his family's missing fortune, the motormouth TV host reveals connections with the growth of an industry... Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has one major question about his family tree: “What happened to the money?”
He’s not talking about riches from the Clarkson side of his family, who all turn out to have lived in and around the town of Tickhill in Yorkshire, but the Kilners, who once owned a thriving glass manufacturing business.
The Kilner Jar, a rubber-sealed screw-topped affair, was famously used by cooks for vacuum-sealing food, such as homemade jams and preserves. Jeremy knows that a Kilner owned one of the first cars, the equivalent of owning a private jet today, so there was certainly cash around. However, a family quarrel means Jeremy’s mother never saw her own grandmother, Annie Kilner, so she knows little about her family.
To learn more, Jeremy needs to head to Yorkshire. It was here that Jeremy’s remarkable great-great-great-great grandfather, John Kilner (1792-1857), worked in the glass trade. He formed a partnership with four friends, who raised a working capital of £70. However, Jeremy finds “just weeds” at the former site of their factory in Whitwood.
Fifteen years later, John decided to go it alone, setting up a factory in Thornhill Lees. Soon, there were two factories, with a second site at Conisbrough. By 1894, the family business was manufacturing more than 3,000 different varieties of bottles and jars. The company owned warehouses in London so it could sell its wares in the capital.
The latter part of the 19th century was hugely successful for the Kilners. During the Victorian era, there were no death duties, so the firm passed intact to John’s four sons, George (Jeremy’s great-great-great grandfather), William, John and Caleb, who each started on the shop floor. In 1862, Kilner Brothers won a medal at the Great Exhibition. George’s son, Caleb (1843-1920), oversaw the business at its peak.
Family misfortunes That’s not to say the family didn’t face problems.
In Huddersfield, Jeremy sees papers related to an 1871 court case brought by the estate of the Earl of Scarborough against the Kilners. It was argued that smoke from the Thornhill Lees factory was polluting land around the factory. The judge ruled against the Kilners arguing that, “no man has the right to interfere with the supply of pure air”.
The Kilners were given three months to buy six gas furnaces at the then huge cost of £1,500 each. Jeremy has stumbled on the “dawn of Greenpeace”. No fan of environmentalists, he’s not impressed, preferring to point out that Huddersfield’s grand civic buildings were “paid for by smoke”.
But the Kilners absorbed the cost and when new investment was needed with mechanisation in the early 20th century, the Kilners invested in the latest American technology. So what exactly did go wrong? Why did the Kilners’ business fail?
The answer lies in changes to the glass industry in the first part of the 20th century, when British manufacturers faced increased competition. For the Kilners, this led to a spectacular reversal of fortune, which comes home to Jeremy when he visits his great-great grandfather Caleb’s former home, Ivanhoe Lodge.
The current owner found a copy of Caleb’s will in the attic. Caleb left a substantial fortune to his son, George, yet George mortgaged the family home in 1931. To have survived and prospered, the Kilners would have needed to knock down their factories and build again with new machinery, probably in partnership with another manufacturer. Instead, the business closed in 1937.
Nevertheless, as he meets the current holder of the Kilner Jar trademark in Cheshire and learns the jars are still being manufactured, Jeremy isn’t too downhearted. Long fascinated by Victorian engineers, he’s proud to have ancestors who were integral to the “patchwork quilt of ingenuity” that made the industrial revolution.
www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/episode/jeremy-clarkson
and we WILL hunt him down next year for you - group effort is needed I think 
I held you, you felt me, I touched you, you kissed me.......
