| Administrative History | William Burkitt (c1799-1873) was born in Walton, the eldest child of William and Mary Burkitt. He appears to have come into the malting industry through his father’s background as a publican – his father being the licensee of the Old Feathers on Lordsmill Street, Chesterfield from at least the 1820s to at least the 1840s.
From 1829, Burkitt was listed in trade directories as a maltster and variously as a corn dealer. According to his obituary, he had established a branch at King’s Lynn in 1833 – the firm importing barley, malt and possibly corn by boat to Chesterfield from East Anglia, to where they probably returned with coal from the Derbyshire and Sheffield coalfields. Building his business in Chesterfield throughout the mid-19th century, by about 1880 Burkitt’s was the only remaining maltsters in the town – there had been ten listed in Pigot’s Directory of 1835.
Burkitt had two sons, William and Samuel – the former managing the King’s Lynn business from 1846, and trading in the Mediterranean, Baltic and Black Seas, as well as with Hamburg, Marseilles and from 1855 in the North American market. By the time Burkitt died in 1873, the King’s Lynn business was one of the largest importers in the country of grain. Samuel was employed in the business in Chesterfield and continued it after his father’s death. The two branches traded together under the name W. and S. Burkitt. In 1873, a Bank Holiday excursion was arranged, with a ‘special train chartered from King’s Lynn to take the clerks and porters employed by the firm, and also the meters, pilots, clerks and others employed by them at Lynn docks, to Matlock Bath, where they were joined by employees from Stockwith, Mansfield and Chesterfield, which brought the total strength of the party to 400’ (Riden, 2018: 148).
In addition to the above-mentioned places, the firm had property and operations in Upper Langwith, where the brothers built housing for their employees. Having become the sole malting business in Chesterfield by about 1880, before the close of the 19th century, the Burkitts too ceased to make malt in the town, operating from their other establishments.
Samuel Burkitt of St Helens House, Chesterfield, bought the Stubbing Court estate at Wingerworth in 1890, and died in 1898, to be succeeded by his only child, William. William was also the principal heir of his uncle William in King’s Lynn, who died in 1906. The third William Burkitt died unmarried and childless in 1920, and the majority of his property (except Stubbing Court) was sold at auction. The business was continued into the 1940s by former employees who had been executors to William. |
| Custodial History | This record was presented to Chesterfield Borough Library in Sep 1941 by Messrs W & S Burkitt Ltd and transferred to Derbyshire Record Office in Feb 2018. |