Introduction

Imagine a time when life was so certain that when you built a building for your business you were confident enough in the future that you put the name of the business into the very fabric of the building.

This is not a time of mergers and takeovers of globalisation and restructure, this is when life was more local and certain.

There are a number of such buildings around and so this blog is an attempt to record some of them and more importantly a bit of the history of the business which by and large are no longer with us.

If you know something about any of these business please add a comment. You can do this without having to sign up for anything and can be anonomous if you prefer.



Thursday, September 2, 2010

W Gregg and Company Ltd


This is Riego Street, Dunedin

As can be seen this building has seen better days and appears to be unused except perhaps for storage, it is however the corner building of a much larger site still occupied by Greggs and in production producing coffee.

A short history is to be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg's_(New_Zealand) which tells us that Greggs was established in 1861.
Another article on Greggs here http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Cyc04Cycl-t1-body1-d2-d43-d9.html from the Cyclopedia of New Zealand published in 1905 amused me somewhat with this reference "Messrs W. Gregg and Co. make it a standing rule that not one ounce of anything adulterated leaves any of their factories" It then goes on to observe later in the article that the company has a "chicory farm of fifty-six acres, and drying kiln are situated on Inchclutha" In case you not already aware chicory is a coffee substitue and while it may have been sold as such I suspect (without knowing I admit) that it was added to the coffee potentially to make it more affordable.

The cyclopedia article also makes reference to the business being in Rattray Street, and "at Pelichet Bay, convenient to rail and wharf" this last reference is the current site which has the main address of Forth Street these days and the name Pelichet Bay is no longer in usage as it refers to what is now Logan Park which was filled in and reclaimed.

There is also a link between one of our earlier entries The Malt Extract Company, where Greggs was a substaintial shareholder from 1965 until 1990 when it sold out of this business.

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