Anyone who has heard of Brentford will know of its docks, breweries and bridges. Fewer will be aware of the world famous jam made from locally grown strawberries.

It was in 1851 that a young man called Thomas Beach won prizes for his British Queen Strawberries at the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, at Covent Garden and from Chiswick Horticultural Society.

Born in Isleworth, the 22-year-old was part of a large family of fruit growers living around Brentford, Isleworth, Heston and Hounslow – fruit growing being more profitable than general farming.

He had started growing fruit from his 10-acre garden to the west of the River Brent five years earlier, growing not only strawberries but apples, pears, blackcurrants and Russian Violets too. 

The jewel of these orchards were, however, its strawberries, and by 1867 Beach's business was doing so well that he decided to take on a lease of 26 acres called Ealing Road Gardens.

There he began to make jam, working from the factory between Walnut Tree and Cressage Roads, while living with his second wife and the children of his first and second marriages at Walnut Tree House – later replaced by a large double fronted house with strawberry leaves and fruit carved on the doorsteps that was appropriately renamed Strawberry Villa.

What made Beach's jam world famous were improvements he introduced to the manufacturing process and recipe – he used steam pans instead of coke fires, and kept the fruit whole instead of pulped.

His ultimate revolution of the industry was when he introduced whole fruit without glucose into 21b glass and earthenware jars.

Beach was a philanthropic man. He supplied soup and bread to those in need when bad winters hit, and built a billiard hall and theatre for his workforce, in hope of helping them stay out of the many public houses in Brentford. Admission was one old penny or – in an early form of recycling – two empty jam jars.

Five years before his death, to mark Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee he put on a festival for the poor, festooning fairy lights to the factory.

While the smell of jam and strawberries no longer wafts over Brentford, it seems a fitting time to reflect on Thomas Beach as we come to celebrate our Queen's Platinum Jubilee with bowls of strawberries and cream.