{"id":30366,"date":"2024-01-08T10:23:54","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T09:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ed07c5f0-4296-4b7c-a2c0-4bf41a1496ff"},"modified":"2024-01-08T10:34:29","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T09:34:29","slug":"jeremy-clarkson-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/rss_feed\/jeremy-clarkson-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeremy Clarkson on Who Do You Think You Are?<\/em>: Everything you need to know"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>
By Rich Marshall\n <\/p>
Published: Monday, 08 January 2024 at 09:23 AM<\/p>
\n\n
Jeremy Clarkson was born on 11 April 1960 in Doncaster and is now 63 years old. He first began presenting Top Gear<\/em> in 1988 and continued to do so until 2015. He is also known for writing columns for The Sunday Times <\/em>and The Sun <\/em>and presenting Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? <\/em>and the Amazon Prime series Clarkson’s Farm<\/em>.<\/p>
At the start of his episode of Who Do You Think You Are?<\/a><\/em>, he says his main question about his family is: \u201cWhat happened to the money?\u201d<\/p>
He\u2019s 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.<\/p>
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\u2019s mother never saw her own grandmother, Annie Kilner, so she knows little about her family.<\/p>
To learn more, Jeremy needs to head to Yorkshire. It was here that Jeremy\u2019s remarkable 4x great grandfather, John Kilner (1792-1857), worked in the glass trade. He formed a partnership with four friends, who raised a working capital of \u00a370. However, Jeremy finds \u201cjust weeds\u201d at the former site of their factory in Whitwood.<\/p>
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.<\/p>
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\u2019s four sons, George (Jeremy\u2019s 3x 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\u2019s son, Caleb (1843-1920), oversaw the business at its peak.<\/p>
That\u2019s not to say the family didn\u2019t face problems.<\/p>
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, \u201cno man has the right to interfere with the supply of pure air\u201d.<\/p>
The Kilners were given three months to buy six gas furnaces at the then huge cost of \u00a31,500 each. Jeremy has stumbled on the \u201cdawn of Greenpeace\u201d. No fan of environmentalists, he\u2019s not impressed, preferring to point out that Huddersfield\u2019s grand civic buildings were \u201cpaid for by smoke\u201d.<\/p>
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\u2019 business fail?<\/p>
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 2x great grandfather Caleb\u2019s former home, Ivanhoe Lodge.<\/p>
The current owner found a copy of Caleb\u2019s will<\/a> 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.<\/p>
Nevertheless, as he meets the current holder of the Kilner Jar trademark in Cheshire and learns the jars are still being manufactured, Jeremy isn\u2019t too downhearted. Long fascinated by Victorian engineers, he\u2019s proud to have ancestors who were integral to the \u201cpatchwork quilt of ingenuity\u201d that made the industrial revolution.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n
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