Eben van Tonder, 5 Oct 2026

Introduction

Isaac Davis Read was born at Donhead St Mary in 1852, and his death certificate of 1929 describes him as a retired foreman bacon curer (1). He is the first working curer from the Wiltshire Bacon Curing Company to be named in this history. His story reached the author in 2026 through his descendant, Samuel Martell (1).

Every family tradition in this chapter comes from Samuel Martell. He holds the written recollections of Isaac’s daughter, Mildred Emma Davis Read, and of Isaac’s grandson, who was his own grandfather, and he set them beside census and certificate evidence (1). The traditions are credited to him at each point where they are used, and they are marked as family testimony.

The Wiltshire Bacon Curing Company was introduced in Chapter 13.02.01. Sweet Cured Harris Bacon, introduces the firm at Bowood through its first chairman, Henry Herbert Smith (2). That chapter is historical reenactment, and its letters and dates are a narrative device. This chapter is written as plain history.

Documentary record, family testimony and the author’s inference are kept separate in this chapter. Numbers in brackets refer to the numbered list of references at the end.

In this chapter, I set Isaac’s working life against the history of curing in Wiltshire between 1850 and 1934, and it records what the correspondence adds to the existing chapters.

The Wiltshire Bacon Curing Company

By 1890 the Wiltshire bacon trade was dominated by one town. The two Harris firms of Calne had amalgamated in July 1888, and by the end of the century the combined business killed between 2,000 and 3,000 pigs a week with more than 200 workmen (3).

The Wiltshire Bacon Curing Co. Ltd. was incorporated in 1890 to give Wiltshire farmers an alternative market for their pigs, because the trade was regarded as close to a monopoly (3). Its first chairman and managing director was Henry Herbert Smith, agent for the Marquess of Lansdowne, the Earl of Crewe, Lord Methuen and other local landowners (3). The company bought a foundry and engineering works in Foundry Lane, Chippenham, and adapted it for curing (3). Royal Wilts bacon was made there from 1891, together with hams, lard, sausages, black puddings, polonies, brawn and cooked Bath chaps (3).

The county history does not name the former owner of the works (3). Its chapter on engineering records two candidates beside Chippenham station (4). Rowland Brotherhood’s railway works had closed by 1870, when the Great Western Railway rented premises lately belonging to him as carriage sheds (4). The foundry of T. Ayland and Cook was acquired by H. G. Phipps in 1883, gave Foundry Lane its name and traded until about the First World War (4). The Brotherhood works is therefore the more probable site, because the Phipps foundry was still at work in 1890. This is the author’s inference, and the primary reference is still required.

The factory stood in the engineering quarter of Chippenham, beside the Great Western main line (3, 4). Aerial photographs of the station area taken in August 1934 survive in the Britain from Above collection, where a contributor has marked the premises of the company (5). A county valuation file for the Wiltshire Bacon Co. in Old Road, covering 1929 to 1949, is held at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre (6).

The company grew by acquisition in its first decade. It acquired the shares of the Chippenham Cheese Factory Ltd. in 1895 and carried on that business until 1919 (3). In 1897 it took over the Bradenham Ham Co., and Bradenham hams, cured by a secret recipe, remained a Chippenham product after that company was wound up in 1921 (3). Pigs came at first from farms within fifty miles of the town, and the products were sold in England, Scotland and Wales (3).

The independence of the firm lasted thirty years. Harris acquired the shares in 1920, and from 1922 the company was a wholly owned subsidiary of the business it had been founded to challenge (3). Bacon capacity stayed fairly constant from 1891 until 1934, when a tank cure cellar raised it by half (3). The workforce numbered 43 in 1914, 102 in 1939, 137 in 1950 and 290 in 1957 (3).

Royal Wilts was the trading name, and the county history uses the registered name throughout (3). The origin of the word Royal in the brand has not been established. The county’s yeomanry regiment had carried the title Royal Wiltshire since 1831, so the phrase was already familiar in the county (7). No source connects the regiment and the brand.

Chippenham had other curers in these years. The Avon Vale Bacon Co. was listed in a directory of 1907 and had gone by 1923 (3). A factory built by the Wiltshire Farmers’ Cooperative Association had been closed for some years when Spear Bros. and Clark of Bristol bought it in 1916 (3).

The machinery of such factories came largely from Calne. Edward Ward Maundrell took over the foundry of George Gough in 1885 or 1886, at the time when Harris began to mechanise (4). His firm made lard rendering plants, gas and coal fired singers, sausage fillers worked by steam and compressed air, pig hoisting gear and digesters (4). It found markets in Ireland, Denmark, South Africa and New Zealand (4).

Henry Herbert Smith and Bowood

The first chairman of the company was a land agent with a published manual to his name. Henry Herbert Smith brought out The Principles of Landed Estate Management with Edward Arnold of London in 1898 (8). The historian David Spring drew on it as the manual of the Marquess of Lansdowne’s agent (9). The same year saw the privately printed account of the bacon company that the county history cites from the company records (3).

The position of his employer in 1890 bears on the founding. The 5th Marquess of Lansdowne was Governor General of Canada from 1883 to 1888 and Viceroy of India from December 1888 to October 1894 (10). The company was therefore incorporated and brought into production while Lansdowne was in India, and Smith managed the Wiltshire estates in his absence. Any exchange between them about the venture would have passed by letter, and such letters may survive among the Lansdowne papers. This is the author’s inference.

Bacon & the Art of Living suggests that Lansdowne may have financed the company or held shares in it. The second note to Chapter 13.02.01 marks this as the author’s conjecture, because the share structure was unknown (2). That remains the position.

Samuel Martell writes that contemporary advertisements show Royal Wilts curing bacon from pigs raised on the Lansdowne estate (1). If the advertisements bear this out, they establish a commercial relationship between the estate and the factory. This would mean that the estate stood to the company as a supplier of pigs as well as through its agent. A shareholding would still require the share register or the annual returns of the company.

The Lansdowne family stood close to the court in the years before 1911. The Marquess was Foreign Secretary from 1900 to 1905 (11), and Maud, Marchioness of Lansdowne, was Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Alexandra from 1905 to 1910 (10). No source connects this to an order for bacon, and the point is recorded only as background to the Durbar tradition discussed below.

Isaac Davis Read. Record and testimony

The evidence for Isaac falls into two groups. Certificates, census returns and a baptism register give fixed points, and the family traditions preserved by Samuel Martell supply the stories that connect them (1). The table sets each statement beside its kind and its source.

Date	Statement	Kind of evidence	Source
1852	Born at Donhead St Mary	Record, as reported by Samuel Martell	(1)
Before 1890	Early adult life in Calne. “Probably started at Harris’s”, then kept a shop and a wholesale potato business	Family tradition, written down by Isaac’s grandson and supplied by Samuel Martell	(1)
1876	Married Catherine Brown, dressmaker	Marriage certificate, as reported by Samuel Martell	(1)
4 December 1898	Baptism of Mildred Emma Davis Read. Parents Isaac and Catherine Read of Lowden, Chippenham. Father a labourer	Primitive Methodist baptism register, located by the author	(12)
1901	Working in a bacon factory in Chippenham	Census, as reported by Samuel Martell	(1)
1911	Bacon curer	Census, as reported by Samuel Martell	(1)
1921	Employer the Royal Wiltshire Bacon Co. Ltd.	Census, as reported by Samuel Martell	(1)
1929	Died. Retired foreman bacon curer	Death certificate, as reported by Samuel Martell	(1)
Undated	“The Head Bacon curer, the head of the cellars, where thousands of sides of Bacon was cured every week”	Family tradition in the words of Mildred Read, supplied by Samuel Martell	(1)
Undated	Invented a new curing process, the patent rights to which belonged to the company	Family tradition, recorded by Isaac’s grandson and supplied by Samuel Martell	(1)
1911	Cured an order of bacon for the royal voyage to India. One ham returned sound and was shared among the workforce	Family tradition from Mildred Read, supplied by Samuel Martell	(1)

The records establish a short and firm outline. Isaac lived in Chippenham by 1898 (12), worked in a bacon factory there by 1901, was a curer in 1911, was employed by Royal Wilts in 1921 and had been a foreman curer by the time he retired (1). He was still at work at the age of 68 or 69 (1).

Samuel Martell writes that the tradition of employment at Harris has not been substantiated (1). It therefore stands as family tradition, and it is credited to his grandfather’s account. If it is correct, Isaac learnt the trade before the amalgamation of 1888, in the High Street works of Thomas Harris or the Church Street works of Charles Harris and Co. (3). The Church Street firm employed 60 to 70 men in 1879 (3).

The baptism entry of 1898 supports one inference by the author (12). A man recorded as a labourer at 46, who appears as a curer thirteen years later and ends as a foreman, probably brought earlier experience of curing with him. This strengthens the Harris tradition reported by Samuel Martell without proving it (1). Two cautions apply. A baptism date is not a birth date, and the word labourer may be a general description by the minister.

The 1901 return does not by itself identify Royal Wilts, because other curers worked in the town (3). The employer is first named in 1921 (1).

The town itself changed around him. The population of Chippenham rose from 5,074 in 1901 to 8,006 in 1911, after the railway signal works moved there from London in 1903 (4).

The cellar at Chippenham and the reported new process

Isaac’s working life spanned a period of change in curing method, and the existing chapters trace that change in detail. Harris introduced sweet cure in the 1840s (2) and built its first ice house in 1856 (3). Pale dried bacon followed by the 1890s (13, 15). The mild cure of William Oake, with its reuse of old brine, reached the region through Oake Woods of Gillingham in Dorset (14). That firm patented auto curing in Britain in 1895 and 1896 and licensed it abroad (14).

Two ways of protecting a process existed in this trade. Equipment could be patented, as with the Harris ice house of 1864 (3) and the auto cure cylinder (14). A cellar method could only be kept secret, and Chapter 13.06.01 observes that such a process stays protected only until the staff leave (14). The British auto cure patents name the managing director, Evan Roberts Down, as inventor (14).

The date of tank curing needs care. The existing chapters place the arrival of the old brine principle in Wiltshire at the close of the 1800s or in the first years of the 1900s (13, 15). The county history records that tank curing began at Calne in 1932, that new dry cure and tank cure cellars were installed there in 1933 and 1934, and that the Chippenham cellar followed in 1934 (3). The two accounts agree only if the earlier date refers to knowledge and trial and the later date to purpose built cellars and regular production.

Samuel Martell writes that Mildred Read remembered her father as the head of the cellars (1). He also writes that his grandfather recorded a new curing process invented by Isaac, the patent rights to which belonged to the company (1). This therefore means that the invention concerned the cellar and not machinery. It also means that Isaac ran a dry cure cellar with pumping, because the tank cure cellar at Chippenham was built five years after his death (1, 3).

No patent in the name of the company or of Isaac has been found. The case of Worthington Pumping Engine Co. v Moore, decided in 1903, is the authority usually cited for an employer’s claim to the invention of a senior employee (16). Published patent databases show only printed specifications, so abandoned applications must be sought in the printed name indexes at the British Library. If nothing appears there, the process was a works method that the firm simply kept.

The process in the tradition reported by Samuel Martell cannot be identified from the present evidence (1). Three readings remain open, and all three are the author’s inference.

1. The most probable is an improvement within the dry cure system. A foreman curer controlled the pickle, the pumping, the salting sequence, the stacking and turning, the maturation and the smoking. A change to any of these needed no new cellar and could not easily be patented.
2. The second is a keeping cure for hams. The company made Bradenham hams from 1897 (3). The recipe is dated by tradition to 1781 (17), so Isaac did not invent it, but he may have adapted it to factory production.
3. The third is that the family tradition preserves a patented process worked under licence, as auto curing was (14).

Samuel Martell reports Mildred Read’s recollection that thousands of sides were cured each week (1). The figure is high for Chippenham. The factory had 43 employees in 1914, and its capacity did not change in Isaac’s time (3). The recollection may preserve the impression of a busy cellar, and a production ledger would be needed to test it.

Three printed sources describe cellar practice close to his working years. Douglas’s Encyclopaedia of 1901 illustrates the equipment of the period (18). George J. Nicholls published Bacon and Hams in 1917, with the Wiltshire cut at its centre (19). E. H. Callow’s study of 1936 on the dry salt and tank curing of Wiltshire sides records the system within a few years of his retirement (20, 21).

The Durbar order of 1911 and curing for hot climates

Supply to the royal household and to ships was established practice in the Wiltshire trade long before 1911. Wyman’s Commercial Encyclopaedia of 1888 records that Harris bacon went through agents to the households of the Queen and the Prince of Wales (22, 13). It adds that the bacon was sent to India, China, the Cape, Australia and New Zealand, and that bacon for hot climates was extra cured and smoked (22, 13). By the end of the century the Calne factories supplied the principal Transatlantic, Pacific and Far Eastern steamship lines (3).

The voyage itself is well documented. P and O company files record the announcement of 26 April 1911 that the new liner Medina would carry King George V and Queen Mary to India (23). She was commissioned as a royal yacht on 10 October and sailed from Portsmouth on 11 November 1911 (24). She reached Bombay on 2 December and left again on 10 January 1912 (23), and she returned on 4 February (25). Stores loaded at Portsmouth were therefore at sea or in the tropics for about twelve weeks.

Samuel Martell writes that Mildred Read remembered her father curing an order of bacon for this voyage (1). In her account one of the hams came back to the factory in perfect condition after the journey to India and back (1). Isaac is said to have told his colleagues that everyone had contributed, “from the killer to curer”, and to have shared the ham among the workforce (1).

This therefore means that the tradition preserved by Samuel Martell agrees with the calendar and with the practice of the trade. He reports that the 1911 census records Isaac as a bacon curer (1), and the order would have been cured between April and November of that year. No record of the supplier has been found, and the story remains family testimony.

Samuel Martell asks what a skilled curer would have done differently for such an order (1). The sources describe the means available in 1911, although they do not record what Isaac did.

• A long dry cure without pumping was the surest method. M. Ingram showed in 1952 that a ham cured without injection and internally sterile keeps almost indefinitely, whereas pumped brine carries bacteria into the deep tissue (26, 13).
• Drying and smoking added protection. Smoking roughly doubles the storage life of bacon (21, 13), and Harris bacon for hot climates was extra cured and smoked (22).
• Borax was dusted on sides against mould when shipment was long (21, 13). Boron preservatives were prohibited in food in Britain only by the Preservatives Regulations of 1925 (27).
• A long matured ham was already made at Chippenham (3). Bradenham ham was dry cured with salt, saltpetre and brown sugar, steeped in molasses and spices and hung for up to six months (17).

Modern meat science explains the result. Leistner and Rödel of the Federal Centre for Meat Research at Kulmbach, now part of the Max Rubner-Institut, classed meat products as stable without refrigeration when water activity falls below about 0.91 (28). The curers of 1911 reached that condition by salt and drying without the concept, and the mechanism was probably the same.

The author’s experience of the South African trade is that unsmoked bacon remained a British taste, whereas bacon for the colonial markets was smoked. The returned ham of the tradition reported by Samuel Martell is consistent with a product of the second kind (1).

Catherine Brown and Bowood

Bowood House, the seat of the Marquess of Lansdowne, lies halfway between Calne and Chippenham (29). The 5th Marquess succeeded in 1866 (30) and married Lady Maud Hamilton in November 1869 (11). His mother Emily, the widowed Marchioness, lived until 1895 (30).

Samuel Martell writes that Catherine Brown was a dressmaker, as her marriage certificate of 1876 confirms (1). He reports the recollection of her daughter, Mildred Read, that before the marriage Catherine was dressmaker to Lady Lansdowne (1). In the same account a Bowood landau with coachman and footman collected her on Monday mornings, and Isaac was invited to visit her in her private room while they were courting (1). He adds that the surviving staff records of Bowood have not identified her (1).

This therefore means that the Lady Lansdowne of the family tradition was either Maud or the dowager Emily, depending on the years of service (11, 30). Catherine’s work at Bowood ended at least fourteen years before the bacon company existed (1, 3). The record therefore shows two neighbouring worlds joined by Smith’s office, and it does not show a chain from Harris through Isaac and Bowood to Royal Wilts.

A dressmaker who was fetched each week was probably paid as an outside tradeswoman and not as a resident servant. The household and estate accounts are therefore a better place to look than the staff lists. The Bowood Papers at the British Library hold the papers of the earlier Marquesses, and the estate keeps its own archive (31).

What the correspondence adds to the account

Given the information supplied by Samuel Martell, the following can be added to Bacon & the Art of Living to broaden and enrich the picture (1).

1. A named curer. Isaac Davis Read is the first working curer of the Chippenham cellars to enter the account, which has so far named only proprietors, managers and patentees (1).
2. A link between estate and factory. The advertisements for bacon from Lansdowne estate pigs, which Samuel Martell reports, would document the estate as a supplier to the company once they are seen (1). The question of shareholding stays open.
3. The use of the brand as a name. The 1921 census, as reported by Samuel Martell, calls the employer the Royal Wiltshire Bacon Co. Ltd. (1). This shows the trading name in daily use beside the registered one (3).
4. A tradition of curing for a long voyage at Chippenham. The Durbar story, preserved in the family of Samuel Martell through Mildred Read, places Royal Wilts beside Harris in this branch of the trade (1). It stands as family testimony until a dispatch record is found.
5. The curer’s view of an invention. The tradition recorded by Samuel Martell’s grandfather widens the account of patents with the experience of a foreman whose process was kept by the firm (1). If the Harris years are proved, Isaac also shows how method travelled with staff to a rival.

The review of sources prompted by the correspondence also produced amendments to existing chapters. They are set out below with the place of each.

Chapter	Present statement	Amendment	Source
13.02.01, Sweet Cured Harris Bacon, note 2	Lansdowne’s financial part in the company is conjecture	Add that Lansdowne was Viceroy of India from 1888 to 1894, so the company was founded in his absence. Add Smith’s manual of 1898 and the company pamphlet of the same year. Add the Lansdowne advertisements reported by Samuel Martell when seen	(1), (3), (8), (10)
13.02.01, Sweet Cured Harris Bacon, stitch pumping	Harris used stitch pumping from 1843	State that this rests on information from Susan Boddington of the Calne Heritage Centre, and that a contemporary document has not yet been located	(2), (32)
13.06.00, Harris Bacon, From Pale Dried to Tank Curing, references	Ingram, 1951	Correct to M. Ingram, Journal of Hygiene, volume 50, number 2, June 1952, pages 165 to 181	(13), (26)
13.06.00, Harris Bacon, From Pale Dried to Tank Curing, note 5	The transfer of tank curing is placed at the close of the 1800s or the start of the 1900s	Add the dates of the county history. Tank curing began at Calne in 1932, and the Chippenham cellar was built in 1934. Distinguish knowledge and trial from regular production in purpose built cellars	(3), (13), (15)
Chapters on the mechanisation of Harris	No engineering supplier is named	Add Maundrell’s foundry of Calne, which made singers, lard plants, sausage fillers and hoisting gear and sold to Ireland, Denmark, South Africa and New Zealand	(4)
C & T Harris, The Complete Collection	List of Harris chapters	Add Chapter 13.02.03 to the list

The aerial photographs of August 1934 can illustrate the chapter, subject to the licence terms of the Britain from Above collection (5).

Chronology, 1852 to 1934

The table joins the life of Isaac to the history of the two firms and of Bowood. Every entry for Isaac and Catherine comes from Samuel Martell, except the baptism of 1898, which the author located (1, 12).

Year	Event	Source
1852	Isaac Davis Read born at Donhead St Mary, as reported by Samuel Martell	(1)
1856	First Harris ice house at Calne	(3)
1864	Thomas Harris patents the ice house	(3)
1869	The 5th Marquess of Lansdowne marries Lady Maud Hamilton	(11)
1876	Isaac marries Catherine Brown, dressmaker, as reported by Samuel Martell	(1)
1885 or 1886	Maundrell takes over the Gough foundry at Calne as Harris begins to mechanise	(4)
1888	The two Harris firms amalgamate in July. Lansdowne becomes Viceroy of India in December	(3), (10)
1890	Wiltshire Bacon Curing Co. Ltd. incorporated, with Henry Herbert Smith as chairman	(3)
1891	Royal Wilts bacon first made at Chippenham	(3)
1894	Lansdowne returns from India	(10)
1895	The company acquires the Chippenham Cheese Factory. First British auto cure patent	(3), (14)
1897	The company takes over the Bradenham Ham Co.	(3)
1898	Mildred Read baptised at Chippenham, her father a labourer of Lowden. Smith publishes his manual of estate management	(12), (8)
1901	Isaac works in a bacon factory in Chippenham, as reported by Samuel Martell	(1)
1903	The railway signal works move from London to Chippenham	(4)
1911	Isaac recorded as a bacon curer, as reported by Samuel Martell. Medina sails from Portsmouth on 11 November	(1), (24)
1912	Medina returns on 4 February	(25)
1914	The Chippenham factory employs 43 people	(3)
1920	Harris acquires the shares of the company	(3)
1921	Census names Isaac’s employer as the Royal Wiltshire Bacon Co. Ltd., as reported by Samuel Martell	(1)
1922	The company becomes a wholly owned Harris subsidiary	(3)
1929	Isaac dies, a retired foreman bacon curer, as reported by Samuel Martell	(1)
1932	Tank curing begins at Calne	(3)
1934	Tank cure cellar built at Chippenham	(3)

Open questions and records

The printed and online sources have been taken as far as they go. The questions that remain can only be answered from unpublished records, and the table names the record most likely to settle each one. Several of the questions were first put by Samuel Martell (1).

Question	Record to consult	Where held
Did Isaac work for Harris, and when, as the tradition reported by Samuel Martell holds (1)	Censuses of 1871, 1881 and 1891. Birth, baptism and marriage records of his children, which state the father’s occupation. Kelly’s directories for Calne. Harris wage records	General Register Office. Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, collection 2140 (33). Calne Heritage Centre
When did he join Royal Wilts and become foreman	Wage books, staff lists and minutes. The company pamphlet of 1898 (3). Obituary and funeral report of 1929	Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre (33). Wiltshire Times and Wiltshire Gazette
Which works did the company buy in 1890	Volume 20 of the county history, on Chippenham (34). Deeds. Valuation survey under the Finance Act of 1910	Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre (6). The National Archives
Did Lansdowne hold shares	Annual returns to the Registrar of Companies. Share register. Letters between Lansdowne and Smith from 1888 to 1894	The National Archives, series BT 31, if the file was preserved. British Library (31). Bowood
What was the new process of the family tradition (1)	Printed name indexes of patent applicants and the Official Journal of the Patent Office. Reports of the company’s annual meetings	British Library. Local newspapers
Did Royal Wilts supply the Medina, as Mildred Read’s account holds (1)	Provisioning records of the Royal Household. Ship’s log. P and O collection. Annual lists of royal warrant holders. Trade press of 1911 and 1912	Royal Archives, Windsor. The National Archives. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. London Gazette. The Grocer and the Meat Trades’ Journal
Why was the brand called Royal Wilts	Trade mark registration. The company pamphlet of 1898 (3)	Trade Marks Journal. Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre (33)
When and for whom did Catherine work at Bowood, as Mildred Read recalled (1)	Household and estate accounts before 1876	Bowood. British Library (31)

Volume 20 of the county history has been published, and its draft texts are online as page images (34). Its account of the bacon factory and its archive references should be compared with the statements above about the site.

Acknowledgement

This chapter exists because Samuel Martell wrote to the author about his ancestor and set out with care what rests on record and what rests on family memory (1). All family traditions quoted here are his to share. They come from the written recollections of Mildred Emma Davis Read, the daughter of Isaac, and of Isaac’s grandson, who was Samuel Martell’s grandfather (1). Susan Boddington of the Calne Heritage Centre supplied much of the Harris history on which the existing chapters depend (32).

References

The numbers match the numbers in brackets in the text.

1. Martell, S. 2026. Letter to Eben van Tonder concerning Isaac Davis Read (1852 to 1929) of Calne and Chippenham. Private correspondence. Source of every family tradition in this chapter, namely the written recollections of Mildred Emma Davis Read, daughter of Isaac, and of Isaac’s grandson, the grandfather of the writer. Also the source of the census, marriage certificate and death certificate evidence reported for Isaac and Catherine, and of the report of the Lansdowne advertisements.
2. Van Tonder, E. Bacon & the Art of Living. Chapter 13.02.01: Sweet Cured Harris Bacon, with note 2. EarthwormExpress.
3. Crittall, E., editor. 1959. A History of the County of Wiltshire, volume 4. Victoria County History, London. Other industries, Bacon and associated products, pages 220 to 223, with footnote 37 for the company pamphlet of 1898. British History Online.
4. Crittall, E., editor. 1959. A History of the County of Wiltshire, volume 4. Victoria County History, London. Engineering and railway works, pages 183, 189, 196 and 198 to 200. British History Online.
5. Britain from Above. Aerofilms photographs EPW045772 to EPW045777, Wiltshire Creameries Ltd. Milk Factory and Chippenham Station, August 1934.
6. Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre. F12/110/3. Wiltshire County Council, County Valuation Department, Chippenham Assessment Area, Industrial Premises. Wiltshire Bacon Co., Old Road, Chippenham, 1929 to 1949.
7. Wikipedia. Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry. Title Royal granted by William IV in 1831.
8. Smith, H. H. 1898. The Principles of Landed Estate Management. Edward Arnold, London.
9. Spring, D. 1963. The English Landed Estate in the Nineteenth Century. Its Administration. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore.
10. Wikipedia. Maud Petty-Fitzmaurice, Marchioness of Lansdowne. Dates of the Canadian and Indian appointments and of her service to Queen Alexandra.
11. Wikipedia. Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne. Marriage of 1869 and tenure as Foreign Secretary.
12. Primitive Methodist Circuit, Chippenham. Baptism register. Entry for Mildred Emma Davis Read, 4 December 1898. Located by the author. Repository and piece reference to be added.
13. Van Tonder, E. Bacon & the Art of Living. Chapter 13.06.00: Harris Bacon, From Pale Dried to Tank Curing, with notes 5 and 12. EarthwormExpress.
14. Van Tonder, E. Bacon & the Art of Living. Chapter 13.06.01: Oake Woods & Co., Ltd., Rapid and Auto Cured Bacon. EarthwormExpress. Includes British patents GB189518662A and GB189614285A in the name of E. R. Down.
15. Van Tonder, E. Bacon Curing, a Historical Review. EarthwormExpress.
16. Worthington Pumping Engine Co. v Moore (1903) 20 R.P.C. 41.
17. Country Life. Hooray for festive ham. Account of Bradenham ham and of the recipe dated to 1781.
18. William Douglas and Sons Limited. 1901. Douglas’s Encyclopaedia. London.
19. Nicholls, G. J. 1917. Bacon and Hams. Institute of Certificated Grocers, London.
20. Callow, E. H. 1936. Bacon curing, the dry salt and tank curing of Wiltshire sides. Cited from the reference list of (21).
21. Mrak, E. M. and Stewart, G. F., editors. 1953. Advances in Food Research, volume IV. Academic Press, New York. Review of Wiltshire bacon, as cited in (13).
22. Wyman and Sons. 1888. Wyman’s Commercial Encyclopaedia of Leading Manufacturers of Great Britain. London. As quoted in (13).
23. Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. Company files on RMS Medina, as transcribed at Roll of Honour.
24. Royal Museums Greenwich. Object PAE2097. W. L. Wyllie, The P and O liner Medina at Portsmouth in 1911, fitted as a royal yacht.
25. Wikipedia. RMS Medina (1911). Return on 4 February 1912, citing J. Fortescue, The Royal Visit to India 1911 to 1912.
26. Ingram, M. 1952. Internal bacterial taints (bone taint or souring) of cured pork legs. Journal of Hygiene, volume 50, number 2, pages 165 to 181.
27. Ministry of Health. 1925. Public Health (Preservatives, etc., in Food) Regulations. London.
28. Leistner, L. and Rödel, W. 1975. The significance of water activity for micro-organisms in meats. In Duckworth, R. B., editor, Water Relations of Foods, pages 309 to 323. Academic Press, London.
29. Wikipedia. Bowood House.
30. Wikipedia. Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 4th Marquess of Lansdowne. His death in 1866 and the dates of Emily, Marchioness of Lansdowne.
31. British Library. Add MS 88906, The Bowood Papers.
32. Boddington, S. Personal communications to the author. Curator, Calne Heritage Centre.
33. Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre. Collection 2140, C.T. Harris (Calne) Ltd., 1683 to 1972, 102 files.
34. Institute of Historical Research and Wiltshire Victoria County History Trust. A History of the County of Wiltshire, volume 20, Chippenham and its environs. Draft texts.