In the 1870s, Frank Cooper's wife Sarah-Jane created her own recipe for marmalade. Frank, who had been a hatter, a hosier, a grocer and a sales man decided to bottle the marmalade and sell it from his Oxford high street shop. The marmalade proved so popular that Frank eventually commissioned the construction of a purpose-made factory.

The factory in Park End Street was designed by architect Herbert Quinton. The four-storey, 1,630 square feet (151 m2) factory had separate floors for cutting fruit and bottling the finished product. The third floor included a cloakroom and dining room for employees. The marmalade and jam were boiled in a separate building at the back of the yard behind the main factory. Quinton designed the premises in compliance with the Factory and Workshop Act 1901.

The factory was strategically located close to the stations and goods yards of both the London and North Western Railway at Rewley Road and the Great Western Railway in Botley Road. This made the delivery of fruit and sugar, and the distribution of marmalade and jam for company personnel, suppliers and trade customers as efficient as possible. 

Frank Cooper's marmalade was especially popular with dons and students at Oxford University. It was taken to Antarctica on Robert Falcon Scott's expedition to the South Pole. A jar was found buried in the ice many years after the ill-fated expedition.

The site of Cooper's Marmalade Factory at 27 Park End Street survives as an office space and a contemporary restaurant on the ground floor called 'The Jam Factory.'