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The Breakthrough
With the arrival of the Great Western Railway in the late nineteenth century, came a rapid growth in a new industry in Cornwall: tourism. The Rodda's seized the opportunity of the increasing numbers of visitors to the county, by providing part of a traditional Cornish delicacy, the clotted cream that makes a 'proper' Cornish Cream Tea.
Whilst serving a cream tea to her guests from London, Fanny Rodda heard them bemoaning the fact that they could not take any of her 'Cornish Gold' home with them as it would go off. This set her thinking. In 1924, Fanny's experiments into the sterilisation of clotted cream were complete. She realised that by sterilising the cream and packing it into preserving jars, the cream could be kept for a longer period of time. The technique was patented and Fanny's invention made the family name; a business had been born.
Before and After the War
With the prolonged shelf life of the cream after sterilisation, it became possible to transport the product to London. Within a short period of time, stores such as Fortnum and Mason and Harrods were selling Rodda's Cornish Clotted Cream. Demand for cream, particularly in London, continued to grow until the dark shadow of the Second World War brought the business to a grinding halt with the prohibition of cream sales in 1940.
It was not until the early 1950s, when government restrictions were finally lifted, that two of Alfred Ernest and Fanny's sons, Willie and Eric, and their respective wives, Nancy and Betty, were able to renew the cream trade. Since the 1960s, the business has grown at a tremendous rate, and Ernest and Fanny's grandchildren and some of their great-grandchildren have taken the business into the twenty-first century. The buildings, the process and the people involved in the production of Rodda's Cornish Clotted Cream may have altered, but the principle of clotted cream has not changed at all.
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