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| Essential research |
The story of chocolate and sweets in York is a tale of lots of Quakers
called Joseph, who revolutionised the welfare of workers in the city and
founded numerous lasting institutions. It is a tale of a few grocer
entrepreneurs that through hard work, exacting standards and overcoming a
suspicion of advertising eventually achieved global success, only to then find
themselves the victims of global conglomerates and the drive for lower costs. It
is a tale of essential provisions in two world wars. It is a tale of life
coming full circle, as new artisan chocolatiers in York take the story back to its roots, small shops selling quality goods manufactured
on their own premises.
We will take our virtual guided tour of the history of
chocolate from north to south, beginning with the Quaker settlement of New
Earswick, before heading down Haxby Road past the modern Nestlé factory to
visit several sites of importance in the city centre. We will then move on in a
southerly direction towards the now semi-derelict former Terry’s factory, and
ending up at the National Trust property of Goddards on Tadcaster Road.
The information contained in this virtual tour has been mostly
gleaned from Paul Chrystal and Joe Dickinson’s book The History Of Chocolate In York, a local history book about
Rowntree Park called A Walk In The Park,
The York Choccy and Sweetie walking tour (which runs once a month from outside
the Museum Gardens), exhibitions at the York Chocolate Story museum, and
various other leaflets about chocolate and the Rowntree and Terry families that
I have accumulated over the past few months.
1. New Earswick
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| Typical New Earswick houses |
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| The Folk Hall |
Let us begin in the car park behind the Folk Hall in New
Earswick, a pretty garden suburb to the north of York. After Rowntree’s
relocated all of its business from the city centre to Haxby Road in 1898, Joseph
Rowntree commissioned a new housing settlement for his workers, the majority of
whom were living in city slums. New Earswick is York’s equivalent of
Bourneville, Saltaire or Port Sunlight. Architect Raymond Unwin’s brief was to
provide houses that were “artistic in appearance”, sanitary and well built. The
workers were to have adequate living room but the houses had to cover as small
an area as possible, which meant that they were equipped with various novel
space-saving features such as indoor bicycle storage and the bath being kept in
the kitchen under a folding table. Approximately 530 houses were built between
1902 and 1948, the majority of which had three bedrooms. Sanitation was improved
as technology developed. The aesthetic appeal of the houses remained paramount,
so when television arrived on the scene, aerials had to be installed in
people’s lofts rather than on the roofs.
Welfare was a key priority. Various shops were built, and
Seebohm Rowntree set up a dairy in 1904 to ensure that residents had access to
clean and hygienic milk, in a bid to reduce the infant mortality rate. There
were twelve bungalows built for old people, all of which were fitted with
emergency alarms connected to a nurses’ residence. The Folk Hall was the centre
of New Earswick’s social and cultural life, as well as a place of worship and a
children’s nursery. Numerous sporting clubs and the New Earswick Musical
Society (which is still going strong today) also gathered there. Women who
might otherwise be stuck at home were encouraged to join the various groups.
There were weekly dance nights and regular adult education classes.
Schools were also established, initially in the Folk Hall
for infants,and then in their own buildings for older children. The Open Air
School, built in 1912, was light and airy, with plenty of space between pupils’
desks. The New Earswick trustees paid for extra teachers on top of the local
authority’s allowance so that class sizes could be kept to 30 pupils. Elsewhere
in the city, 50 or 60 pupils per class would have been the norm. Boys and girls
were taught the same subjects, including science, though it was stipulated that
“sewing and cooking will not be neglected for the girls. We want the girls when
they grow up to be able to enter marriage with intelligent understanding so
that they may be true and helpful companions to their husbands and able to
wisely guide the minds of children.” There were scholarships to a local
grammar school. Joseph Rowntree secondary school opened in 1942 and provided
classes in more practical subjects like printing and fruit cultivation as well
as traditional academic subjects. Its building was considered
revolutionary in terms of the sense of light, fresh air and space it offered.
There were also adult education classes. All of these facets are visible in the
school’s latest guise, a beautiful new building which opened in 2010, a little
out of the centre of New Earswick towards the A1237 Ring Road.
2. The Haxby Road
plant (now Nestlé)
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| The KitKat plant |
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| Joseph Rowntree Theatre |
Drive south towards the city centre and park at Yearsley
swimming pool, itself donated by Rowntree’s to the city in 1909. Nearby is the
Joseph Rowntree theatre, where the New Earswick Musical Society still performs today. Now inhale. You won’t get the chlorinated water stink you normally get
next to a swimming pool. Instead you will get pure, unadulterated chocolate.
Because in front of you is a gigantic chocolate factory. We will shortly see
Rowntree’s original sites in the city centre, but this is where they have been
based since the end of the 19
th century, when the company moved out
of town to provide a nicer working environment for employees and better
production and transportation of its products. By the 1930s, there were three
miles of train track around the factory, two train platforms, three
locomotives, 36 wagons and 100 delivery vans.
At the start of the 20th century, 2,000 workers
were employed on this site and there were strict rules and regulations. The
factory gates opened at 6am, and workers had to be inside them by eight minutes
past or they wouldn’t be allowed in for another two hours and would lose a
quarter of a day’s pay. After a time, the working week was reduced to 48 hours
so employees did not have to be on shift until 7.30am. The loss of output was
compensated for by a reduction in fuel costs from the later start.
At the time of the move out to Haxby Road, Rowntree’s didn’t
in fact make much chocolate. It’s something they didn’t really have much
success at until the 1930s, partly because it took them a long time to get over
a phobia of advertising and mostly because they were unable to compete with the
popularity of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. They also didn’t quite get the hang of
chocolate, attempting to copy Swiss style milk chocolate in 1899 using powdered
rather than condensed milk, and releasing products like the rather
rancid-sounding “Bulgarian soured milk chocolates”, which contained microbes
believed to prolong life. Joseph Rowntree was of the belief that milk chocolate
would turn out to be just a fad. So Rowntree’s business was mostly cocoa, and
fruit gums and fruit pastilles, which they had started manufacturing after a
sales visit to their factory in 1872 by Frenchman Claude Gaget. At the time,
“crystalised gum pastilles” had been the ailing company’s salvation, though
until the late 1920s, these were marketed as medicinal rather than fruit
products.
In the 1920s, they did have another good go at chocolate
production, releasing products like the Plain York bar (featuring the mascot
Plain Mr York of York) and a fruit and nut bar called Motoring, designed to be
eaten on long journeys. But it was the launch of Aero, Black Magic, Smarties,
and KitKat during the 1930s that finally led them to hit the chocolate jackpot.
Aero came out in 1935. (Did you, like me, think it would
have been more recent?) It was originally going to be called Airways, in
response to the increasing availability of jet travel, but in the end the
company went for Aero, a name that they had to buy off Cadbury, who had already
registered it. Its unusual aerated texture meant it overtook even Dairy Milk in
popularity. There were failed attempts at a fruit and nut version, and the
peppermint and orange flavours were launched in 1959 and 1960 respectively.
Smarties, launched in 1938, were originally called Chocolate
Beans and sold loose, before being put into tubes. The famous letter on the
caps was introduced in 1959. A former Smartie sorter at Rowntree’s told the
York Chocolate Story that she used to store up Smarties of one particular
colour under her work bench and, when she had enough, she would then fill a
tube of just that one colour. Just for the hell of it. She was never caught.
Other visitors to the museum, remembering getting a tube of all orange or green
Smarties when they were children and being disappointed to discover that they
hadn’t won a competition, have confirmed her story.
The chocolate selection Dairy Assortment (later Dairy Box)
was launched in 1936 to compete with Cadbury’s Milk Tray. Dairy Box was
packaged, whereas at the time Milk Tray was sold loose. However, Black Magic,
launched in 1937 was really the first chocolate assortment Rowntree’s aimed at mass
appeal. It contained twelve chocolates that were selected based on market
research interviews with 2,500 shopkeepers and 7,000 consumers.
KitKat (1935) was originally known as Wafer Crisp, then
Chocolate Crisp, then KitKat Chocolate Crisp, before finally ending up as just KitKat.
“KitKat” was Christopher Catling, the proprietor of an 18th century
literary club and pie shop owner who had featured on a box of Rowntree
chocolates in the 1920s. KitKat is now Rowntree’s most famous and most
successful brand. It was designed as a chocolate bar that people could take to
work and use as a quick pick-me-up. The slogan “Give yourself a break at
tea-time” was coined in 1939, eventually ending up as “Have a break, have a
KitKat” in 1957. In 1986, a £16 million KitKat plant opened in York. Between
three and five million KitKat bars are now made every single day at the Haxby Road factory. And that is just to
meet the demands of the UK market. There are also several manufacturing sites
abroad. Japan seems to have embraced KitKat more than any other country and
offers about 45 different flavours, including green tea, custard pudding, aloe
vera, cucumber, water melon, wasabi, soy sauce, cheese, sweet potato and jacket
potato with butter. Nestlé sponsored York City FC between 2004 and 2006, which
resulted in the city’s football stadium in Bootham being temporarily renamed
KitKat Crescent.
Another successful launch of the 1930s was Polo Mints, in
1939. They were based on the American “Lifesaver” sweets, and were originally
called Polo Digestive Mints. However, they were eventually marketed just as
“the mint with the hole”, since they didn’t actually have any proven digestion-aiding
(or life-saving) properties. Polo Fruits were launched in 1954 as a rival to
Mars’ Spangles.
After Second World War chocolate rationing ended in 1953,
more products were launched, including Nux in 1957 and Caramac in 1959. This
was also the advent of television, and while they were quick to ban the aerials
from the rooftops of New Earswick, Rowntree’s were also quick to also see the
benefits of television, increasing their TV advertising budget from £50,000 to
£650,000 in a single year. This was also the time that Rowntree’s started
making multi-packs of products for supermarkets.
Moving on to the 1960s, Jelly Tots were launched in 1965, After
Eights in 1963 and Matchmakers in 1968. In 1969, Rowntree merged with
Halifax-based toffee manufacturer Mackintosh, which brought Rolo, Toffee Crisp,
Weekend, Quality Street and Fox’s Glacier Mints under their remit. Operating
for years as Rowntree Mackintosh, the company name was eventually changed to
Rowntree PLC in 1987.
1976 saw the birth of the Yorkie bar, Rowntree’s most sexist
product, since it was aimed squarely at men (though of course one might argue
that most chocolate is unashamedly marketed at women), with adverts featuring lorry
drivers.(Sadly, the actor who played the original lorry driver faced jail a
couple of years ago after admitting smothering his terminally ill wife in a
mercy killing.) The slogan “It’s not for girls” came about in 2001. For years
there was a giant Yorkie bar on an advertising board by the railway line just
outside York station which proclaimed (the I and E of the wrapper having been
peeled back) “Welcome to York, where the men are hunky and the chocolate
chunky.” Ironically, Yorkie bars were mostly manufactured at the former Caley
factory in Norwich, which had been bought up by Mackintosh.
By 1988, Rowntree was the fourth biggest chocolate
manufacturer in the world. But that meant people wanted it. The company by this
point was vulnerable to takeover as the former Rowntree Trusts only had a stake
of 7%. Suchard launched a takeover bid in 1988, but Nestlé eventually won out
in 1989. Nestlé have made huge investments in chocolate and sweet production in
York – a £15.5 million Polo plant opened in 1992, an £18 million chocolate
plant in 1993 – and there have been various product launches since their
takeover, such as Vice Versas in 1992, Maverick in 1997 and KitKat Chunky in
1999.
The old factory buildings are gradually being demolished or
put up for sale and redevelopment, but the building of the new plants keep the
hope alive that - unlike with Terry’s - the future of some mass-scale chocolate
manufacturing on the Haxby Road site is secured.
3. St Helen’s
Square
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| York Cocoa House |
Continue on your way into the city centre and find somewhere
to park. Good luck with that. Assuming you’ve managed to find a space in either
Clarence Street or Marygate car parks, find your way towards St Leonards Place
and cross Lendal with the Minster to your left. Opposite the Assembly Rooms on
Blake Street, you will see York Cocoa House, one of the new artisan businesses
I mentioned earlier. It has a shop and a café. It serves an array of chocolate
dishes, both sweet and savoury, runs chocolate making workshops, has a library
of chocolate books, and even has its own cocoa plant called Henry. It isn’t
pushchair friendly, however. Continue down Blake Street into St Helen’s Square.
St Helen’s Square always has a queue for Betty’s tea rooms
snaking round into it, but once upon a time, it was Terry’s who dominated the
catering business in this part of town. If you look at the building that is now
the Swarovski shop, you will see the name Terry engraved into both the stonework
and cast in iron lettering on the marble. Joseph Terry was a farmer’s son from
Pocklington. He was born in 1793 and served an apprenticeship at an apothecary
in Stonegate before setting up his own shop on Walmgate, selling spices,
vinegar, medicines and perfumes and offering bloodletting by leeches. Joseph
married Harriet Atkinson, the sister-in-law of Robert Berry, who had a sweet
shop and factory in St Helen’s Square. After marriage, Joseph gave up his
chemist’s shop to join Robert Berry’s business. The shop sold cakes, candied
peel, marmalade, and medicated lozenges, the latter meaning Joseph could still
use his apothecary training. Robert Berry was succeeded by his son George and
the company Terry and Berry was formed in 1825. George Berry left in 1828, and
Joseph began to expand the confectionery business. Joseph Terry died in 1850, a
rotund man who had seemingly greatly enjoyed his produce. By this point his
products were selling in 75 towns across the country. The products were mostly
his lozenges, such as “conversation lozenges”. These were a little like
modern-day Love Hearts, festooned with such charming epithets as “Can you
polka?” and “I want a wife”. Joseph Terry’s son Joseph took over the business
in 1854, joined by his brothers Robert and John, but John did not stay long-term.
From 1858, a factory was leased in Clementhorpe across the
river, and all manufacturing had moved there from the St Helen’s Square site by
1864. The St Helen’s Square premises were then converted into an exclusive
shop, ballroom (with a sprung floor that is still in place today) and
restaurant, run by Terry’s. The jazz emanating from the ballroom caused
consternation at the neighbouring Harker’s Hotel, the manager claiming that the
noise was disturbing his guests and making him ill. Harker’s tried to prevent Terry’s
music licence being renewed in 1924, but lost the case. However, Terry’s had to
restrict music after midnight, by keeping windows shut and only allowing piano
and strings to play.
Terry’s in St Helen’s Square also ran a thriving mail order
business and did outside catering at the Mansion House, Assembly Rooms and
Merchant Taylor’s Hall. They were commissioned to bake the christening cake for
Edward Prince of Wales in 1894 and much later catered for the Duke of Kent’s
wedding reception at Hovingham Hall in 1961, as well as for several hunt balls
with such guests as John Profumo, Mandy Rice Davies and Christine Keeler. As
the 20th century progressed, they attempted to modernise the
restaurant and appeal to more mainstream tastes, opening a self-service carvery
and in the 1970s trying more “exotic” foods like spaghetti Bolognese, curry and
chicken Kiev. But by then they could not compete with Betty’s opposite and the
business closed in 1981 after 150 years.
4. Tanner’s Moat
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| Aviva buildings at Tanner's Moat |
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| Mansion House |
Continue now towards the Mansion House (from where the Lord
Mayor sent a bar of Rowntree’s chocolate to every York soldier fighting on the
front in the First World War) then turn left into Coney Street. Turn right at
the church and walk past City Screen to the walkway overlooking the river. Opposite
is Tanner’s Moat. The buildings now occupied by insurance company Aviva are on
the site of Rowntree’s first proper factory. Henry Isaac Rowntree relocated the
firm there in 1864 after purchasing Tuke’s cocoa business (more on this
shortly). He bought the site for £1,000. Their main product was rock cocoa, a
blend of sugar and cocoa ground into oily cakes. Henry Rowntree was the son of
Joseph Rowntree, a grocer whose shop we shall see later. Henry had a brother
who was also called Joseph, and he joined the company when it moved to Tanner’s
Moat, having done apprenticeships in his father’s shop and at a grocer’s in
Fenchurch Street. He had good business and accounting experience, and had done
a lot of research into poverty in England. His son Seebohm continued this research
into poverty, and his reports helped in the creation of the welfare state in
Britain in the late 1940s.
As for Tanner’s Moat, it was a bit of a hot-potch of
improvised buildings, with a resident parrot and donkey. Seebohm Rowntree
described it as “hell”. Night shift workers lived off pork pies and cocoa.
People had to communicate with Joseph Rowntree via a trapdoor in the floor of
his office. (Henry Rowntree died suddenly of appendicitis in 1883, leaving
Joseph in charge.) Wages were literally paid out of a hat. The cocoa
manufacturing process was gradually mechanised, but not in an especially
efficient way, as different machines had been developed for each part of the
process, and materials had somehow to be transported between each machine.
Joseph Rowntree tried to turn the business around, but he hated advertising and
preferred to let the quality of his products speak for itself. A grocer by
trade, his intention was always to cater for the better-off rather than appeal
to a mass market. So the company continued to struggle. As mentioned in the
section on the Haxby Road factory, the manufacture of fruit gums did a lot to
increase the company’s profits but it didn’t really become a real success until
much later.
Joseph Rowntree always had a very enlightened attitude
towards his employees, and despite the far from ideal working conditions at
Tanner’s Moat, he still established a staff library in 1885. There was also a
works outing to Whitby, which didn’t go so well when a group of walkers got
blind drunk in a pub on the North York Moors. In 1891, as the company was
increasing in size and he could no longer be personally available to all staff,
he took on a girls’ welfare officer (or “onlooker”) to monitor the health and
behaviour of all female employees. He was conscious that the majority of female
employees were young teenage girls who left work as soon as they got married,
and so the “onlooker”, a mature married woman, was intended to provide them
with a suitable role model. The Cocoa Works Magazine was set up as another
means of keeping in close personal communication with employees. It was
published from 1902 to 1986, when it became RM (Rowntree Mackintosh) News, and later
Nestlé Group News in 1992.
After the move to Haxby Road, a pensions scheme was set up
in 1905, sickness benefit and paid holiday were introduced, and the company
also provided for war widows after the First World War. A company doctor was made
available to provide free medical care from 1904 onwards (44 years before the foundation
of the NHS). Later on, there was also a company dentist (this was, after all, a
sweetie manufacturer), an optician and a female doctor. A profit-sharing scheme
was set up in 1923. Works councils were formed (one for women, one for men) to
give employees a say in the running of their company, and there was also an
annual company meeting. The company also had a strict moral code, refusing to employ mothers with illegitimate children and refusing honeymoon leave to any man who had had to get married because he'd got his girlfriend pregnant. Drinking was banned, as was gambling in 1904. Employees were not allowed time off to attend York Races until
1914, when staff protested en masse. Seebohm Rowntree had to relent but only
the men were allowed half a day off, and just for the May and August meetings.
Joseph Rowntree Junior died in 1925, and is buried in a
graveyard at the Retreat Hospital. Seebohm succeeded as company chair in 1923.
6. The York
Chocolate Story
Head back to Coney Street and take a left turn up one of the
side streets and then turn right towards Parliament Street. At Prêt A Manger
pass through the market to Kings Square. Just round to your left is the York
Chocolate Story museum, which opened a year ago. Entrance is quite expensive
(slightly cheaper if you book online) and you have to do a guided tour, but I thoroughly
enjoyed my visit. This is largely due the wealth of free samples on offer. For
starters, your ticket is made of chocolate. Then you go up in a lift (sadly not
a Great Glass Elevator) to a chocolate tasting room, where you are taught how
to assess chocolate like a connoisseur, as opposed to someone who just wolfs
down a Cadbury’s Boost to get a quick energy kick. Then you watch a short film
about the Aztecs and are offered a cup of the museum’s take on xocolatl, the original
chocolate drink made from cocoa and chilli oil. The next room contains an
interactive video story featuring all of the main founders of York’s chocolate
industry, and then there is a room full of archive photographs of the Rowntree,
Terry and Craven factories. They also have Mary Craven’s original chair (more
on Mary in a little while). Then there is a virtual chocolate factory, which
uses some clever computer imagery to tell you how chocolate is made from cocoa
beans. In this room there is also real chocolate making going on and you are pretty
much given free rein to stuff your face. As the lady giving the demonstration
said, “If one handful of chocolate buttons isn’t enough, have another.”
This room also had a lot of archive video footage to watch, showing factory
life, and Quaker schools and sports days. My favourite film clip was one of
women singing as they worked to try and break the monotony of the packing line.
I hope you leave the museum feeling rather less shaky than I
did, thanks to having eaten something close to my body weight in chocolate. But
I had learned a lot about KitKats. Including the fact that Rowntree’s had to
make a special KitKat for the Queen that didn’t contain any wafer biscuit
because she didn’t like that part. Which kind of destroys the point, in my
opinion. The museum has a chocolate café and large shop, should you wish to
indulge.
7. The Origins of
Rowntree’s
From the museum exit, turn right then walk down through the
Shambles onto Pavement. (Feel free to stock up on more chocolate goodies at the
Monk Bar Chocolatiers on the Shambles, a street which has been voted the
prettiest in England, and which comedian Dara O’Briain claims is made entirely
of fudge.) Turn right and outside the side entrance to Marks & Spencer's look
across to the building that is now a Pizza Hut. This was where Rowntree’s set
up in business. Joseph Rowntree (Senior) bought the shop in 1822 at auction.
The auctioneer had been so drunk that Joseph had had to dunk his head in a pail
of water to get him to go ahead with the sale. Joseph Rowntree was originally
from Scarborough, and his father had been a grocer. Joseph refurbished the shop
to very grand standards and worked ridiculously long hours, 7am-8pm six days a
week, 7am-10pm on market days, with only two days’ holiday a year. (Though these
hours were normal at the time.). As well his own son Joseph, who later ran the
company, Joseph Senior’s apprentices at the grocer’s shop included Lewis Fry
and George Cadbury.
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| Lady Peckitt's Yard |
In 1857, York’s first adult school was established by
Quakers in Lady Peckitt’s Yard behind the Rowntree’s shop, aiming to improve
adult literacy. Apparently attendance improved when they started to serve cake.
Joseph’s eldest son Henry bought a cocoa and chocolate
business from William Tuke in 1862, which became Rowntree’s as we know it.
Tuke’s had been set up as a grocery business by Mary Tuke, a 30-year-old single
woman who had numerous legal wrangles with the Merchant Adventurers trading
association as she hadn’t been awarded the status of freeman of the city. To
gain this status you needed to pay the Merchant Adventurers either a £25
apprenticeship fee or be related to an existing freeman. Mary Tuke’s father had
been a freeman, but the Merchant Adventurers still wouldn’t grant her a licence
to trade. They prosecuted her, and she continued to defy the court for over two
years before being allowed to trade properly in 1732, after a one-off payment
to the Merchant Adventurers of ten pounds.
Mary’s nephew William took over the business in 1746. He
specialised in coffee. William’s son Henry joined the business in 1785 and started
to manufacture cocoa and chocolate too, and later to sell tea. William Tuke
established The Retreat Hospital for the mentally ill, set up in response to
the barbaric conditions patients were kept in at the York Asylum in Bootham.
The Retreat tried early forms of occupational therapy, and went on to become the
model for psychiatric hospitals around the world. William Tuke also set up The
Mount School for Girls. Henry Tuke’s son Samuel joined the family business in
1805, but there the legacy ended as Samuel’s sons, related to the Barclay
family, decided to go into banking instead. Thereafter, the business was run by
a Henry Hipsley and John Casson, and was renamed Tuke and Casson. After Henry
Rowntree bought Tuke’s, John Casson bought and took the tea part of the
business to London. Henry Rowntree was actually a distant cousin of Mary Tuke,
so really it was all kept in the family.
8. Mary Craven at
Coppergate
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| Mary Craven and an old tin of her toffee |
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| The memorial window in All Saints Church |
Continue along Pavement into Parliament Street. The left-most
stained glass window next to the traffic lights on All Saints Church is a memorial window to Mary Craven, paid for by her children. When they
weren’t called Joseph, it seems that York’s early chocolate and sweetie
pioneers were tenacious women called Mary. Mary Craven was born Mary Ann Hick
in 1829, and she was the daughter of a confectionery manufacturer, who was of
course called Joseph: Joseph Hick. She married Thomas Craven in 1851, who also
had a confectionery, tea and coffee business close to Joseph Rowntree’s shop.
Sadly, Joseph Hick and Thomas Craven died within a couple of years of each
other in 1860 and 1862, which suddenly left Mary with three children (aged
eight, six and four) and two businesses to run. She tried to sell the
businesses but the solicitors made a mess of things so, faced with starvation,
she decided to merge the two shops and run them herself. Thus the company
M.A. Craven was born, which Mary ran until her death in 1900, though it became
M.A. Craven & Son in 1881 when her son Joseph (of course!) became a
partner. Mary Craven was always a sweet manufacturer, rather than a chocolate
maker. Production was in a factory on Coppergate, on the opposite side of the
road to the church. At one point Craven had four shops in York, including one
on the Shambles which had a confectionery museum on the first floor. Mary
Craven is best known for her toffee, mint humbugs and French (sugared) Almonds.
The recipe for the latter was top secret, blended in a secure room and brought
back by Joseph Craven from a trip to Paris. In 1920, the Coppergate factory was
renamed the French Almond Works. Mary Craven was also a devout Quaker, and made
numerous visits to the poor of York.
Craven’s suffered mixed fortunes over the course of the 20th
century, mostly declining between 1920 and 1966, when they moved out to a
purpose-built factory on Low Poppleton Lane. This brought about increased
production and a bit of a revival. By 1980, they were turning out 800 million
sweets a year, exporting to Bloomingdales in New York and making own-brand confectionery
for Harrods and Fortnum & Mason’s. They had patented the “flap wrap” in
1954, allowing boiled sweets to be unwrapped easily. But from 1987 onwards,
M.A. Craven & Son was involved in numerous takeovers – bought by Trebor
Bassett in 1996, becoming Monkhill Confectionery in 1999, and then bought by
Tangerine in 2008, who also make Butterkist popcorn. However, production is
still ongoing at the site on Low Poppleton Lane.
When the Craven Coppergate factory was demolished in 1978,
Viking remains were discovered, which is why the Jorvik Viking Centre stands on
the same site today.
7. The Castle Area
Continue along Coppergate and turn left into Castlegate. (The
first building on the left, incidentally, is where the Tukes’ original shop
was.) Down a passageway to the right is the Friends Meeting House, where
Quakers worship today. As to why Quakers got so into manufacturing cocoa and
chocolate, this is largely believed (at least by Paul Chrystal) to be
coincidence. Cocoa was a good, available product that happened to come down to
an affordable price for consumers at the right time. Though as Quakers were
teetotal, they did have a mission to try and focus the public’s attention on
something better for them than drinking alcohol, and cocoa was believed to be
medicinal at the time. (Of course many thought the same about alcohol.) Joseph
Rowntree Junior was very involved in the York Temperance movement (though
apparently not averse to ordering the odd case of champagne to his home).
Quakers were almost forced into being businessmen as they
were excluded from all other walks of life – they weren’t allowed to attend
Oxford and Cambridge (the only universities at the time) or to serve in
Parliament or the courts (as they would not take oaths), and they were also banned
from the army (as they were pacifists). They set up strong networks and
business partnerships by sticking together and supporting one another – and
also by intermarrying amongst Quaker families. But they were very ahead of
their time when it came to industrial welfare; the first to truly believe that
factories should be pleasant places to work in.
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| Fairfax House |
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| The Terry's shop in the Castle Museum |
At the end of Castlegate is Fairfax House, which houses the
Noel Terry furniture collection. Noel Terry was Joseph Terry’s great grandson,
and ran Terry’s jointly with his uncle Frank from 1923. Whether the furniture
collection is still intact now that Goddards (Noel Terry’s family home) has had
some rooms restored and been re-opened to the public by the National Trust, I
am not sure.
Across the other side of the car park from Fairfax House,
and beyond Cliffords Tower, is the Castle Museum, which has contained a replica
Terry’s sweet shop since the 1950s. A chocolate potion was placed under the
counter to create an authentic smell inside. This was one of my favourite
places in the whole world when I was seven years old. You can still buy sugar
mice there today.
8. Terry’s at
Clementhorpe
Walk past Cliffords Tower and cross the river Ouse over
Skeldergate Bridge. The River Ouse used to bring in the majority of the raw
materials required for cocoa and chocolate manufacture, and export the finished
products back out again.
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| Clementhorpe today (from Clifford's Tower) |
This end of the river in Clementhorpe is where Terry’s
second factory was based. It was leased in 1858 to make boiled sweets and
lozenges (including violet, clove, cinnamon, lavender and “curiously strong”
peppermint), candied peel and preserved fruits and marmalade. The site provided
warehouse space and access to the Humber Estuary. Chocolate production began
there in 1867 but Terry’s remained more of a confectionery company until the
twentieth century. It also firmly marketed itself at the better off in
Victorian society and its products won awards as far away as New Zealand. The
chocolate assortment Neapolitans were launched in 1899. In 1906 their range of
“very superior” boiled sweets included greengage, butterscotch, pine and lime
flavours. However, some of their other medicinal lozenges carried a health
warning: “Poison, these lozenges contain bella donna” or “opium”.
Joseph Terry (Junior), a Quaker of course, was Lord Mayor of
the city four times and served on various prominent York committees, including
the Races and the asylum at Bootham. He was knighted in 1887. He died in 1898
and was succeeded by his sons Thomas Walker Leaper Terry and Frank Terry. The
business was known as Joseph Terry and Sons Ltd from 1895 onwards. Thomas was
killed in a bicycle accident in 1910, after which his son Noel Terry joined the
company in 1911.
A new chocolate block was built in 1920. In the 1920s,
suspension punishments for workers included the following: reading a newspaper
– 3.5 days, bad piping of chocolate – 5 days, incorrectly labelling boxes – one
week, but hitting a girl with a funnel – only half a day.
In 1922, Frank and Noel travelled together to Venezuela and
purchased a Criollo cocoa bean plantation near Caracas, which supplied them
until 1940, when they had to sell it. The Terry’s palm trees logo is modelled
on trees in Venezuela.
The Clementhorpe site, despite Terry’s moving out in the
1920s, was not demolished until 1987. A Roman mosaic was found, which is now in
the Yorkshire Museum. Noel’s son Peter Terry paid for its restoration.
9. Rowntree Park
and Chocolate In Wartime
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| Shortly before the Reading Cafe vomiting incident |
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| The lychgate war memorial under five metres of flood |
If the river is not flooded, walk down to Terry Avenue (via
the steps if you are on the right-hand side of the bridge) and take the
pleasant stroll along the river to Rowntree Park, York’s first municipal park. Joseph
Rowntree gave the park to the city of York in 1921 as not only a memorial to his
200 factory workers lost in the First World War but as a place where those who
did return could relax and recuperate in the hard times that followed. "Better
than another stone obelisk”, as he put it. The gift of the land had a strict
covenant that no booze or gambling ever be permitted on the park premises. The
architects were Frederick Rowntree and J. Swain and their plans also had to
include a flood management system. The list of the fallen soldiers was erected
on the lychgate by the ponds, and a second plaque added after World War Two. The
large wrought iron gates on the banks of the Ouse were also added in 1955 as a
memorial to those who had died in the Second World War. The park underwent
substantial restoration work in the early 2000s. It used to have a swimming
pool, a bandstand and aviaries, but now has a skateboard park, two mosaics,
several large play sculptures and a ton of goose poo. There was always a café,
which was refurbished in 2011 by the City of York Library Service as a Reading
Café, which is a further continuation of the great Rowntree legacy. Though that
didn’t stop Charlotte vomiting purple ice cream all over it last Halloween.
As for how life was in the chocolate factories during the
two world wars, the answer is much changed. They were commandeered by outside
organisations for both food and war materials production or billets for
soldiers and refugees.
I’ve already mentioned York’s Lord Mayor sending Rowntree
chocolates out to the trenches in the First World War. These (and cocoa) were packaged
in a tin, one of which inadvertently saved a soldier’s life in 1915 by stopping
a bullet that had pierced his pocket. The chocolate and cocoa orders gave the
factory much-welcome business, but the factory also had to manage with severe
manpower (with men at the front) and sugar shortages. Lots of their sugar
supplies had come from Germany and Austria-Hungary. Belgian refugees ended up in
New Earswick and were employed by the factory to relieve some staff shortages,
and sugar substitutes like saccharin and vanillin were developed. Conscientious
objectors were not employed after 1916, owing to bad feeling among other
factory workers.
Noel Terry was sent away to war but was wounded in 1916 and
thereafter seconded to work at the Ministry of Pensions with his uncle Frank.
The Terry’s factory was run by flour mill owner Henry Leetham (who was Noel’s
father-in-law) until his suicide in 1923, when Noel and Frank took over.
In World War Two, chocolate was rationed from 1942, reducing
the need for output. Half of Rowntree’s male employees went to war, meaning
that women had to operate the heavy machinery for the first time. Imports of
the necessary raw materials were once again difficult, which affected the
production of certain key products. Some were made to new recipes, such as
KitKats, which had a blue rather than a red wrapper to indicate the reduction
in quality. But many ceased production altogether for a few years, like Black
Magic. But chocolate was once again sent out to the troops, being vital for
energy and also useful for the soldiers as gifts and peace offerings. Chocolate
was also included in emergency rations on ship lifeboats. Types of chocolate
were developed to meet the needs of servicemen, such as jungle chocolate, which
didn’t melt in the high temperatures overseas. Vitaminised plain chocolate was
sent out to starving children in Europe and prisoners of war.
The Rowntree factory was requisitioned to make marmalade (in
the Fruit Gums block) for Frank Cooper Ltd, chocolate for Cadbury, optical
instruments for Cooke, Troughton & Simms, government-issue powdered milk
and egg, and Ryvita. A site next to the sports ground stored explosives and
anti-tank mine fuses made in the Smarties block. The dining block provided accommodation
for victims of the Blitz. A nursery was built to allow women to work and have
their children cared for.
At Terry’s, the Bishopthorpe Road site was taken over by
Hill & Sons to make propeller blades, and they also made parts for Rolls
Royce engines. They also made jams for Chives & Sons and did freezing for
Birds Eye. Terry’s chocolates were also sent out as rations, and they took over
chocolate production for London-based firm Charbonnel & Walker. During the
time of rationing, Terry employees received a monthly “fancy order” of two
chocolate oranges and six bars of chocolate, with an egg at Easter.
Both Rowntree’s and Terry’s built air-raid shelters. The
Terry’s clock tower was used as a look-out post for the prisoner-of-war camp on
the Knavesmire. Rowntree’s had an air-raid siren on top of its Elect Cocoa
Block, though most of its cocoa manufacturing was done out in the Pennines
during the war.
While York was targeted by the Germans in air raids in
response to the bombing of Lübeck, Rowntree’s itself escaped relatively
unscathed, only losing one storage warehouse in the attacks. In the 1942 raid,
the Terry’s restaurant in St Helen’s Square also escaped, and was able to
supply tea and coffee to the rescue workers. However, the family were not
exempt from suffering, and Noel Terry’s son Kenneth was killed in 1943 at the
age of 23.
10. Terry’s
Chocolate Works Factory
After walking through Rowntree Park, exit on the far side
near the Millennium Bridge, turn right into Butcher Terrace and then left onto
Bishopthorpe Road. If you are unable to visit the park because of flooding, you
will have continued up Bishopthorpe Road directly from Skeldergate Bridge.
After a short while, turn right into Campelshon Road, where opposite Knavesmire
Primary School you will arrive at the back entrance to the former Terry’s
factory, now looking rather sorry for itself.
Terry’s moved out here in 1927. The architect was J.E. Wade,
and the contractors who built it also worked on the Newcastle and Sydney
Harbour Bridges. The front door was modelled on the one on the Woolworth
Building in New York. The factory was extremely handsome, with air-conditioned
buildings and many of the latest scientific innovations.
A farm was set up along the road at Bustardthorpe to supply
milk, eggs and vegetables to the St Helen’s Square restaurant.
Noel Terry purchased a fleet of vans to carry Terry’s products
around the country. Various chocolate assortments were launched from the 1920s
onwards, of which All Gold (launched in 1932) was to become the most famous.
One assortment, called Theatre Chocolates, was alleged to have rustle-proof
wrappers. The Terry’s Dessert Chocolate Apple was launched in 1924, and was
made until 1954. The iconic Chocolate Orange arrived in 1932. A luxury
chocolate assortment was brought out for the coronation of King George VI in
Mary 1937 which featured centres of blackcurrant trifle, cherry & pistachio
Genoese, and champagne pineapple. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth came to
visit the factory in 1937. Queen Elizabeth II visited in 1952, the same year
that Waifa was launched to compete with KitKat. Queen Elizabeth II was
presented with a gold and silver casket filled with sweets from Terry’s,
Rowntree’s and Craven as a joint gift from all three manufacturers.
Similarly to Rowntree’s, Terry’s had a pension scheme, a
holiday club, an amateur dramatics society and various sports clubs, though the annual one-mile swim in the River Ouse was eventually
banned by early pioneers of health and safety. There was a sick room and a
member of staff in charge of female hygiene, who ensured that no lipstick was
worn, nails were clipped short and hair was kept tightly under caps. Frank
Terry was knighted in 1936, and held a competition to pick 12 workers to go
with him to London. They were put up in the Savoy and treated to a show on
Drury Lane.
After the Second World War, the welfare department gave
assistance to the sick and bereaved. Exports increased. One of Noel Terry’s
other sons, Peter, joined the business in 1945. Sir Francis Terry died in 1960,
having had many leading roles, including the Sheriff of Yorkshire. He had also
been president of the hospital and a benefactor of St Peter’s School.
The Forte Group bought Terry’s in 1963, and Terry’s
celebrated its bicentenary in 1967, prompting Blue Peter to make a special
programme. The 81 employees invited to the party had clocked up a total of
3,078 years’ service between them, which is an average of 38 years each. So to
get such longevity from its staff, it must have been a pretty nice place to
work. In the 1970s, Terry’s sponsored races at the Knavesmire and their All
Gold hot-air balloon came second in a cross-Channel balloon race.
Colgate Palmolive bought Terry’s in 1978, and they tried to
bring out a Chocolate Lemon which turned out to be, well, a bit of a lemon.
They had just been trying to use up a lot of leftover lemons from their soap
production, apparently. Colgate had no confectionery experience and eventually sold Terry’s
to United Biscuits in 1982. Initially, things went well and profits went back
up again. They moved the manufacture of Curiously Strong Mints to Bridgend, but
a new chocolate plant was built to make Chocolate Oranges on Bishopthorpe Road.
Peter Terry retired in 1985, going to work on the
restoration of Fairfax House and Noel Terry’s furniture collection. Sales
remained strong throughout the 1990s, particularly of All Gold. But chocolate
assortments gradually went out of vogue, people preferring to give wine or
flowers instead. Kraft took over the business in 1993. Initially chocolate
production stayed in York, but the confectionery plant in Bridgend was sold to
Wrigley and closed down. Then gradually chocolate production was moved to
cheaper sites across Europe – Waifa to Belgium, All Gold to Sweden, Twilights
to Austria, and then Chocolate Orange to Slovakia and Poland. In 2004, Kraft
made 6,000 people redundant and announced the closure of the Terry’s factory on
Bishopthorpe Road, with the loss of 316 jobs. The factory finally closed for
good in 2005.
The site was sold off and was supposed to be redeveloped
into houses, flats, hotels and shops, but so far there has been only further
reselling, ransacking and demolition, as well as some protracted legal wrangles
over planning permission. It is a sad state of affairs indeed.
11. Goddards
Let us – provided we are not in winter, when it is closed to
the public - end our tour somewhere beautiful. If it is not flooded, continue
along Campelshon Road and then cross the Knavesmire to Tadcaster Road. Your
destination is Goddards, near the junction with St Helen’s Road and the St Edward
the Confessor Church. Goddards is the former home of Noel Terry and his family,
built in 1927 in the Arts and Crafts style, overlooking the racecourse. Until
July 2012, only the gardens were open to the public, as the house was used as
office space by the National Trust. However, last summer, they decided to open
up some of the rooms to the public and – even better – establish a tea room,
serving cakes based on original Terry recipes. The interior has wonderful wood
panelling and several interesting exhibitions, and there’s usually a box of
Terry’s All Gold out with an instruction to help yourself. The gardens are a
tranquil haven, with lawns, terraces, fish ponds, hedges and a large greenhouse
where Charlotte has a worrying habit of slamming the doors. One of my absolute
favourite places in York.
Well, if you’ve actually done this tour, you must be bloody
knackered. Return to the city centre by bus down Tadcaster Road. Hopefully one
will take you somewhere near your car.
UPDATE February 2019: Inevitably, things change in any city. If you happen to stumble across this post (and I know people still do while researching the history of chocolate in York), here are some things to bear in mind if you attempt the tour:
1. York Cocoa House has now closed, but its owners have set up a small chocolate factory with a cafe on Castlegate, appropriately positioned behind the Quaker Meeting House.
2. The Swarovski shop in the former Terry's shop and restaurant on St Helen's Square is now a Carluccio's, and many of the building's original features (notably the beautiful wooden panelling) have been restored.
3. York Chocolate Story now give out paper rather than chocolate tickets, and the order of the tour has changed slightly - the last time I did it, you did the chocolate tasting at the end rather than the beginning, and they are a little less generous with the free samples. Lolly making is often on offer.
4. The Noel Terry furniture collection has remained at Fairfax House.
5. The Friends of Rowntree Park volunteers have made tremendous efforts to (humanely) reduce the numbers of geese in the park, and therewith the amount of poo on the grass.
6. Substantial development work has now taken place on the site of the former Terry's factory. The original buildings have been turned into luxury apartments and a luxury residential care home for the elderly. There is also an office block and a small wooden play area. The clock tower is still undergoing renovation. Numerous new houses and flats have been built where the ugly warehouses were, and more are appearing all the time. The pile-driving involved in their construction has at times driven the neighbourhood demented. The properties are compact and without much outside space, and are priced at a premium which few local residents can afford. Therefore most are second homes or rental properties. There is a fountain shaped like a Chocolate Orange, though, and the house designs are all names after Terry's chocolate assortments, such as Harlequin or Neapolitan.
7. The National Trust property Goddards is still one of my favourite places to visit, and has undergone further restoration and expansion. There may no longer be a box of All Gold out in the lounge, but there is a decanter of sherry. There is a games and music room for children, and you can borrow tennis racquets and croquet sets (and hobby horses on race days) to play on the lawns in the garden. Upstairs, there is a detailed model of the Terry's factory, and a myriad of information about its history.
8. The river has not flooded as much in recent times, but the consequences of Storm Eva, and the devastating floods of Christmas 2015, can still be seen across the city of York.
