Henry John May - a 19th Century Entrepreneur from West Mersea

Henry John May (1802 - 1894) was an oyster merchant, a property owner, and farmer and was the son of Thomas May, Lord of the Manor of West Mersea Hall.

West Mersea Hall

As a young man, Henry assisted his father on the Manor, with their properties and oyster layings. In 1825, as a newly married man living in Brick House Farm on Mersea, Henry John started to develop his business buying oysters from fisheries round the coasts of Great Britain, as far north on the east side as the Firth of Forth, and on the west to the Isle of Skye; perhaps most business being done along the south of England and the Channel Islands. This was as well as producing his own oysters at Mersea.

In 1831 Henry John had a vessel built at Mersea, named "The Essex", which sailed in the summer and autumn to and from Spanish ports with fruit and salt, and at other times to both Norway and English ports, with coal as well as oysters. He started a business with Norway where he bought ponies and put them in the hold and brought them over to England where they were unloaded and sent to various markets.

He then hired a shop belonging to a friend in Darkhouse Lane near Billingsgate where ice was stored and sold. The business had three ice wells in London - one was one at Stratford and another at Bow.

An ice well - or ice house - was a large chamber or well dug underground and bricked, roofed with a thick thatch of straw to keep the heat out. The wells were made in the vicinity of flat low lying meadows, which were flooded in winter to about six inches deep. When a night frost made ice as thick as a pane of window glass, it was gathered with rakes and shovels, and put down the well, where it froze into a solid mass. In the summer it was taken out by pickaxes, and sold mainly to fishmongers and the dairy and meat trades.

In the winter, Henry John had a routine whereby a watchman would check the thermometer overnight and wake his master at 4am if the temperature fell below freezing. Henry John would then ride on horseback to London to supervise the harvesting of the ice on his meadows and see it transported to the ice wells. One of the largest ice-wells to be found. This example is near Regent's Park and dates to 1780.

For more details, see https://www.sci.news/archaeology/ice-well-london-06776.html
Image with thanks to MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology)

It was when he was in Norway for the purchase of ponies, at anchor in Kristiansund, Henry John noted the method used to collect and load timber. The trees, fir and pine, were cut on the mountains and slid down the slopes right to the water's edge, the slides being made of ice. Watching this operation Henry John came up with the idea of cutting blocks of natural ice up on the hills, sliding them down the slides to a ship, and bringing them over to London to the ice wells - a much simpler and cheaper process than off the meadows at Bow; the ice was also cleaner!

Having unloaded his cargo of ponies he went back to Norway, and arranged to load and (according to his obituary in the Chelmsford Chronicle of 8th June 1894) bring back to London the first consignment of Norwegian ice that came into this country. [The history books tell us in fact it was a William Leftwich who first brought ice to London in 1822 - probably giving Henry the idea a few years later].

From a business point of view there is no doubt Henry John should have kept to this lucrative trade, but it kept him in London.... away from Mersea.

He was to sell up his ice meadows and well at Bow and his shop and store premises in Darkhouse Lane leaving him with one well, and the ice business's goodwill.

Henry John lent his foreman, George Stevenson, the money to buy the remaining well, hired another shop for him and set him up in business. So successful was George Stevenson he became the largest ice merchant in the world, known as 'Stevenson the Ice King of London' and later amalgamated with Carlo Gatti, credited with being the first man to make ice cream available to the general public. 

Henry John had gained sufficient importance to become a "freeman" of the city of London, and a member of the Fishmongers Livery Company but in the end the lure of life in Mersea was to pull him back home.

The history books tell of George Stevenson and Carlo Gatti's significance in the ice trade but Mersea's own Henry John May got there first, Mersea's Ice King!

Elaine Barker
Peldon History Project

More Mersea history