Local resident, Chris Cook comments on Facebook (3 May 2025) that the above was taken on Lodge Rd, Feltwell. This location is known as ‘Garden Field’. William Springhall, gardener to Mr Upcher, is on the left.hand side while the man second in from right is Mr (Fisty) Willet .
George Frederick Whitmore was born in Cambridge in 1863. He was a keen athlete, cricketer, and cyclist. He was a founding member of the national skating association. He represented Great Britain in competitions abroad.
George was a Freemason and the son of Alderman George Whitmore. After his father’s death, he inherited the family’s wine merchant business in the city. By the early 1900s and tired of Cambridge society life, he and his wife, Edith, moved to Methwold. Here his plan was to concentrate on his sports. But, not long after moving, he turned over his 100 plus acre Glebe Wood Estate to the cultivation of tobacco. Joining other UK farmer/landowners who were also attempting to grow the crop.
With the sandy Brecks’ soil ideal for tobacco growing, George was granted the first commercial license to grow tobacco in the UK. In 1911 King George V learned of tobacco being grown near his Sandringham estate and was intrigued to discover more. Samples of the Methwold tobacco plants and leaves were sent to him at Balmoral.
By 1912 Whitmore’s landowning neighbours, Lords Iveah and Walsingham#, became involved in growing tobacco. The cigarettes manufactured from them were marketed as ‘Grown from Norfolk tobacco’. George Whitmore’s Glebe Wood Estate used the latest technology including Pullen-Burry Traversing Hothouses. These mobile hothouses could be moved over the land allowing intensive cultivation of young tobacco plants. He planned to have a dozen such hothouses on the estate. They would be used each Spring over seed boxes and then for starting the tobacco plants. However, these plans probably never materialised due to the start of World War I.
But Whitmore was heavily invested in this new technology. He was Joint-Managing Director of Pullen-Burry (Traverse Traveling) Hothouse. In 1913, the company launched a share flotation. They offered 100,000 shares at £1/share in the British Tobacco Plantations (Pullen-Burry System) Limited (see image below). By at least 1920 there was a British Tobacco Growers Society. In the same year, the Ministry of Agriculture devoted an allotment of 10 acres. They used their demonstration farm at Methwold for tobacco culture.
In 1914, aged 51, Major George Whitmore (above) was sent to fight in France. He then returned to Norfolk as a Group Captain to command a local Royal Flying Corps. The field opposite his house in Methwold was used as an experimental night flying landing ground. In 1917 his wife Edith died, aged just 40. The following year tragedy struck once more when George crashed his plane in woods just behind his house. He was severely injured and his wounds affected him for the rest of his life. He died in 1922 aged 59. His death and the withdrawal of government financial support to tobacco farmers brought his Methwold initiative to an end.
For a video showing tobacco growing in Norfolk in the 1920s visit: www.britishpathe.com/asset/106014/
# Lord Walsingham had tried to grow tobacco in the 1890s. However, at that time, there was not the skill and knowledge to process the product.
Sources of newspaper articles and images: www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk