The story of North & Co is a multi-generational tale of industrial ambition, family legacy and an unexpected corporate twist.

It began three generations prior in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, where the North family established themselves as prominent soda and mineral water manufacturers. 

By 1871, Edwin North was running a successful operation alongside his three sons: Bill,Fred and Ted.

Bill North initially co-founded the regional giant North & Randall in Aylesbury. But looking to forge his own legacy, he departed in 1898 to set up a new venture on his own. 

He chose Grandpont, Oxford, building a factory on the corner of Cobden Crescent and Buckingham Street, overlooking the River Thames. He named it North & Co, paying homage to his father's original firm. To finance this modern facility and buy expensive aerated water machinery, Bill took a common Victorian route. he registered the business as a Limited Liability Company. But by bringing in outside investors to raise capital, he inadvertently traded away total ownership, diluting his voting power.

For the next decade, Bill’s business thrived, churning out high-class ginger beers, fruit cordials and aerated waters to thirsty Oxford residents. But by 1910, a rift formed between North and his board of directors. In a stunning corporate betrayal, the investors used their majority voting power to legally force the founder out of his own enterprise. They stripped him of his managing director title, cut off his salary, and locked him out of the Grandpont works. Because the corporate entity legally owned the trademarks and the recipes, the directors kept the "North & Co." name alive for another four decades, capitalizing on the sterling reputation Bill had built.

Left with no modern executive safety net, Bill North was financially ruined. Local accounts recall a heartbreaking sight. The once-proud factory owner spent his twilight years walking the same Oxford cobblestones where his delivery wagons rolled, working as a door-to-door peddler selling matches and bootlaces to survive until his death in 1920.

The end of an era arrived in 1953. After decades of independent success under the new directors, the premises were taken over and transformed into Oxford’s official Coca-Cola bottling plant, operating on-site until 1970. Today, the original building is gone, replaced by residential housing. But the memory of Bill North’s enterprise survives captured in these antique bottles