Challenge Number 13: Learn Enough About Something In York To Be Able To Give A Guided Tour Of It - Sweet Things

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

Typical New Earswick houses

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)

The KitKat plant

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 20^th 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 18^th 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

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 20^th 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

Aviva buildings at Tanner's Moat

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.

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

Mary Craven and an old tin of her toffee

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 20^th 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.

Fairfax House

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.

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

Shortly before the Reading Cafe vomiting incident

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.

Challenge Number 36 – To Spend A Day As A Yummy Mummy (Yummy Family) in Crouch End

Crouch End. Another home. The leafy suburb in North London where Dave and I bought our first home together, a small one-bedroom flat where we lived for nearly four years. We would have happily stayed forever in the area, had we been able to lay our hands on the half a million pounds required to purchase a property with an extra bedroom. We loved Crouch End’s villagey atmosphere, its tree-lined avenues of Edwardian villas, its arty actor locals and the quirky restaurants and bars clustered around the Broadway.

I had been back to Crouch End once since we moved up to York, but Dave had not, and I chose this challenge simply as an excuse to revisit as something which we weren’t when we lived there, namely parents. Crouch End had always seemed to be bursting with families, and the cafés on weekends had been an obstacle course of buggies and children. Dave and I of course found this terribly annoying. We were probably jealous of all these people that had been able to settle properly in Crouch End and afford a family-sized home with enough money left over to eat out in restaurants. But it is fair to say that yummy mummies and kids en masse are annoying full-stop. So now it was our turn to be annoying and find out just how family friendly life in Crouch End really was.

We drove into Crouch End from the Bishop’s Stortford Travelodge, and decided to park outside our old flat. Thanks to it having houses only along one side and a park on the other, our street had always been the easiest one in North London to park on, so we were fairly sure we’d be guaranteed a space, plus we knew the way there. But to our initial horror, when we arrived it transpired that the road had become permit parking only in the interim five years, but thankfully on closer inspection the permit parking didn’t apply on weekends. As we pulled up, our old next-door neighbour Maureen was emerging from her flat, so that’s twice in a row I have made a trip into London and seen someone I know a few seconds after disembarking.

Our old flat was looking a little dismal, partly because everything looks dismal in winter grey and rain, and partly because the lounge windows which needed replacing five years ago have been left by subsequent owners to deteriorate to a really quite disastrous level. Furthermore, the house on the other side was knocked down shortly after we moved out and still seems to be a boarded-up building site. So nothing to make us feel too homesick there. We headed across the road into pretty Stationer’s Park and spent a good while in a part we had never had reason to visit before – the toddlers’ play area. The park was muddier than I have ever seen it, and it was also striking that the few other parents in the play area completely ignored us. In York we would have exchanged at the very least a smile, maybe a hello, or a bit of a conversation. We might even have got a helpful tip about something happening in the neighbourhood, discovered that we knew people in common or - heaven forbid - become friends. But you just don't talk to strangers in London.

The lounge windows of our flat are to the left of Dave's ear

Toddler play area in Stationers Park

Yummy Mummy

We then headed down to the Clock Tower and the Broadway to have a wander round and see what had changed. Woolworths had long been replaced by a Waitrose, the independent book shop had gone, two new artisan bakeries had opened up, there was now a Jojo Maman Bebe here too, and various bars and restaurants had changed hands as they inevitably do in the never-ending cycle of London life. But much was just the same. However, it was all kind of dull for a toddler in a pushchair and it became clear that passing time on a weekend in Crouch End beyond a nice lunch out would have been pretty hard work. Suddenly we realised that York was rather good after all, where we can just pop in free of charge to the National Railway, Castle or Yorkshire Museums on a whim, where there are plentiful soft play centres and open spaces to run around in (when the open spaces are not flooded at least), and where we can be at the seaside in just over an hour. Even Crouch End’s bars and cafes suddenly didn’t seem so child-orientated after all, full of beautiful young professionals doing brunch and glaring at us just as Rebecca and Dave might have done a few years ago. Obviously Central London has no shortage of amazing things to do but even these are probably more suited to older kids and it would involve a substantial amount of effort to get there. Waiting for buses, travelling on the Tube, riding escalators, carrying pushchairs up long flights of stairs and fighting my way through huge crowds with a two-year-old is never going to be an appealing prospect. Though I am sure there are lots of little baby and toddler groups and activities on in the various community centres and churches in Crouch End, just as there are in York, to help fill up the week.

Wintry clock tower

"Get off, Mum, you're embarrassing me"

Charlotte sups her first Crouch End babyccino

So for us there on a weekend, a nice lunch it was, in Monkey Nuts, where we had seen my gym “buddy” Dermot Murnaghan take his kids when we lived there. Extortionate London prices of course, but decent food and – thank goodness – space for a pushchair, and baby-changing facilities. We had never had to entertain the notion of dirty nappies in N8 before. We did well to sneak in at noon, as an hour later the whole restaurant was rammed. After lunch, Charlotte could barely keep her eyes open so we headed back to the car so she could sleep on the way back to Stortford.

One thing though - if we had stayed and had a baby in Crouch End, at least I would have been considered an average-aged or even possibly YOUNG mother at 37, instead of the ancient creature I was seen as in York. (Though I'd have still ended up decrepit in either place.) But could I ever have been a proper Crouch End yummy mummy? Rich enough to do all my shopping in the toy boutiques on the Broadway, perhaps almost famous, or at least social-climbing enough to address the celebrities in the gym as though they were my friends, and thin three seconds after giving birth? No. I'd have felt horribly inadequate at my NCT get-togethers down there, I'm sure.  And these 40 challenges would have been utterly derided. "You mean you're not taking Charlotte on a rickshaw along the Great Wall of China this summer?" "You mean your blog hasn't been made into a mini-series yet?" Thank goodness for all my lovely friends in York!

Absence had made our hearts grow ever fonder, but our return to Crouch End showed us that now that we do have a young child, moving away was probably the right decision. But I still like to think that one day, we'll be able to hang up our hats there again. 

Challenge Number 37: Take Charlotte To See Both Her Parents’ Home Towns – Part Two

As some of you may recall, we completed part one of this challenge in April, via the beautiful Settle-Carlisle railway. Part two was completed via a somewhat less beautiful car journey as part of a Christmas mini-break to visit Charlotte’s Uncle Stu. Although thanks to a total gridlock on the A14 on our journey down, we did eventually have to head across some rural back roads through Papworth, Royston and Buntingford, which were at least a little more scenic than the originally intended M11 motorway.

As my father was already staying with my brother, our home for three nights was the Bishop’s Stortford Travelodge, which could hardly be described as the lap of luxury, but at £24 a night for a family room at an otherwise very expensive time of year holidaywise, it did the job nicely. A few years ago, the Travelodge was a fairly decent hotel called Stansted Manor, and was where we held my mother’s wake after her funeral. The hotel has now been completely ripped out and refurnished with the bright but spartan Travelodge brand, but for me the room where we had our all you-can-eat breakfast buffet each morning was still recognisable as the place where I had last been seen downing multiple whiskies and trying to make polite conversation on one of the worst days of my life.

Bishop’s Stortford and the general East Hertfordshire area always seem to come high up in lists of desirable places to live on the likes of Phil and Kirstie’s property programmes. It’s a place which people leave London for when it’s time to start a family. They want to live in a bog-standard semi with a garden, where you won’t get murdered (or not, as it turns out) and where you have an excellent choice of schools. Bishop’s Stortford has always been a stopping off point, initially for Romans marching along Stane Street and latterly for stagecoach travellers between London and Cambridge. It has a plethora of former coaching inns - apparently Samuel Pepys used to stay at one. So I suppose it’s no surprise that it is now by and large a commuter town, full of people used to journeying. Stortford once had some importance in its own right as a market town for the county and a centre for the malting industry. It is mentioned in the Domesday Book as “Esterteferd”, has a mound where a Norman castle once stood, and its most famous former citizen is Cecil Rhodes, colonialist diamond-bagger and founder of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Bishop’s Stortford’s permanently right-wing town council were all in favour in erecting a memorial statue to Cecil in the market square, until they found out that he might have been gay. So they set about cancelling the town’s twinning arrangements in evil Europe instead.

Growing up in Bishop’s Stortford, it was thoroughly boring place, with sod all to do for anyone between the ages of ten and eighteen. It’s possibly a little better now. My parents moved there after my father got a job as a research scientist for a Harlow-based Latex manufacturer (making carpet backings, not condoms) and they decided that they didn’t want to live in Essex. You see, contrary to popular belief, Bishop’s Stortford isn’t in Essex, though it is right on the border. But anyway, their decision meant I got a good education, and being near to Cambridge and London and, in later years, a newly expanded Stansted Airport had its advantages (as long as you didn’t mind aircraft noise).

I have no family in the actual town now, as my brother’s house is in the nearby village of Stansted Mountfitchet. This trip was the first time I had been back since Charlotte was born. Bishop’s Stortford continues to struggle with its identity, and with the economic climate. It’s part genteel and snooty, and part chain-store chav. There’s a Café Rouge on one corner and a place where the locals fight on another. There’s posh vowels and Essex vowels, there’s Waitrose and there’s Poundland. We managed a quick walk along the high street in heavy drizzle and fading light, and there was a weird mix of fates on view. One side of the street was a row of sad, boarded-up buildings where large independent shops had operated for decades, like Pearsons department store and Clement Joscelyne’s home furnishings; both of which were fairly exclusive in their time but have now sunk from flourishing into bankruptcy. But on the other side of the street were newly opened branches of White Stuff and Jojo Maman Bébé, so the town’s smart side is still thriving at some level.

Pearsons

On North Street looking towards the Corn Exchange

Tissiman's

Boar's Head (Samuel Pepys and sixth formers have drunk here)

St Michael's Church

Police Station

Market Square, with bankrupt Clement Joscelyne's

Happy Charlotte

We showed Charlotte the Corn Exchange, the market square, the police station which once held such dubious late-night parties that it made national headlines, the spire of St Michael’s Church, the timbers of Tissiman’s gentleman’s outfitters, and the Boar’s Head pub where my entire sixth form used to drink underage (right next to said police station). But the highlight for Charlotte of course was a ride-on Thomas The Tank Engine in Jackson Square shopping centre, which funnily enough was situated in exactly the same spot as a huge and ugly winding concrete ramp that was the main entrance to the shopping centre in the seventies, and running down which was the highlight of any trip to town for me as a little girl.

My first employer

We had a quick drive past my old family house, but there wasn’t much to observe at half past nine on a wet Friday morning other than the fact that someone appears to be about to pave over the front garden. We made a yoghurt stop at the supermarket at the local parade of shops where I worked on Sunday afternoons during my A Levels. Someone called Lisa who started on exactly the same day as me still works there now.

The trip gave me a chance to introduce Charlotte to a few of my school friends and their families. The great thing about school friends is that you may not see each other for years, but as soon as you meet up again it feels like it was only yesterday that you were last together. We turned up regularly at my brother’s house for food, including the world’s largest vegetarian Christmas dinner. Charlotte met some new playmates and I think learned to extend the meaning of the word “holiday” to apply to more than just a motorway service station. Now it probably incorporates bouncing up and down on a Travelodge sofabed long after she should have been asleep and eating “chocolate toast” (Nutella) for breakfast.

It was nice to be back, and sad to be back. They say that there is no place like home. Home is a place that gives you happy childhood memories and that you spend your teenage years fighting against. Home is an emotional place as well as a physical one. In 2005 when my mum died, I lost my emotional home, that safe place, that rock, that shelter that would always take you in whatever your circumstances. I am of course lucky that I had that place in my life for 32 years. When my dad sold the house, the physical home went too. Losing Mum decimated my life, and it’s a void that can never be filled, an ache and a longing that never goes away. Yes, there’s no place like it, but the reality for me now is that there can be no going back home, and life has to move forwards. It is now my responsibility to provide that same emotional haven for my young daughter, to watch her grow into it, and to create that place of happy memories.

Challenge Number 32 – Swim 40 lengths of Energise pool (can be in more than one session)

The point of this challenge was to make me take up regular exercise again, in the hope that maybe, just maybe, by the end of the year I would in fact be able to swim 40 lengths of a pool in a single session.

But this is me we are talking about and I have always been good at finding excuses not to take up regular exercise. Knee dislocating, for example. Or the fact that I am ungainly and unfit. Or that exercise requires some sort of physical effort on my part. Exercise has to be very convenient for me – I prefer it to be on my doorstep if possible. I don’t mean that I will literally only exercise on my front doorstep, but I don’t like to have to travel far to do any kind of sporting activity. For me it sort of destroys the object of exercise if I have to use a car to get there.

I didn’t do too badly in my last few years in London, where I forked out for membership at the gym in Crouch End, and did actually use it from time to time (every day, for example, when our bathroom was being refitted and I needed somewhere to have a shower). The gym was located ten minutes’ walk from our flat and could be integrated into my journey to or from work. As I was working freelance, I could be very flexible about my hours and therefore go to the gym at quieter off-peak times. This was when all the local celebrities did their work-outs, which also gave me a good incentive for going. One morning for example, newsreader Dermot Murnaghan was on a bike next to me, actor Simon Pegg on a treadmill opposite, and Peter “Malcolm Tucker” Capaldi on a stepper to my right. It kind of made me feel like I was somebody important too, even though one look in a mirror at myself in shorts would do a lot to dispel that belief.

But as soon as we moved to York, things kind of slid downhill on the exercise front. There were no gyms or pools in walking distance from our house once the Barbican was demolished. I was working at the university, but the grotty university sports centre just smelled of teenage testosterone (and didn’t have a swimming pool). The fancier David Lloyd gym next to campus cost more than our London gym per month and was the wrong side of the university for my walk to work. I couldn’t go in my lunch hour as my team were expected to eat together every day, as we were all working in offices in different buildings and didn’t get to see each other otherwise. 

As I say, it doesn’t take much to create myself a suitable excuse to avoid exercise.

We did do quite a lot of walking out in the Yorkshire countryside at least. And as I mentioned above, I did walk to work and, briefly, own a bike. The sparkling new Energise finally opened when I was pregnant, replacing the hideously grotty Edmund Wilson as our nearest swimming pool, and it was nice enough to entice me straight away. I did manage to go most weeks until I got too bulky to fit behind the steering wheel of our car. (Unfortunately, “nearest” is still far enough away that I have to go by car.)

But then we had Charlotte and nothing we had ever done before would be the same again. I look forward to her being able to walk far enough to reinstate those regular hikes in the Wolds, Dales and Moors – for now, the paths aren’t pushchair friendly, and she weighs far too much to fit into any form of carrier.

In a bid to regain some sort of physical form, I did decide to take up Aquafit at Energise just after Charlotte turned one. I was going to go with a friend on Tuesday mornings. Once I’d overcome the psychological battle of making this decision, I took action - I managed to get Charlotte settled into the Energise crèche a couple of times, booked my first Aquafit session for the following week - and promptly wrecked my knee that very evening.

So that was that. My knee is still, a year on, puffy and painful, so Aquafit is still out of the question. But swimming isn’t, hence the challenge.

40 lengths of Energise pool took three sessions. The first two of these happened in June, the final one last night, in late December. Which says it all about how regular my "regular exercise" has been. I have taken Charlotte swimming numerous times in between, but swimming with Charlotte involves me standing in the pool while she sits on the side emptying a watering can over my head, and no actual swimming.

I don’t know what happened in those lost months that made this challenge take such a frustratingly long time to complete. It was partly the pool opening times – weekends are packed out with kids, and the evening sessions often don’t start until 8.50pm, which was OK in June when it was still light, but once it was dark by half eight, I usually collapsed onto our sofa, unable to be prised off it. And there is no way I could fit in a morning swim before Dave has to leave for his train. And there aren’t any public sessions in the daytime when it isn’t Charlotte’s lunchtime and when the crèche is open. (Once again, see how good my excuses are?)

However, the timetable at Energise has just changed to include a women-only session at 7pm on Tuesdays, which is what I went to last night. It worked out really well, so I am actually a little bit hopeful that I may manage to keep this one up in the New Year. Though there are only two categories of swimmer at women-only sessions and I don’t fit into either. There’s the very middle-aged, very overweight ones who swim breaststroke two abreast up and down the pool, engrossed in conversation and moving so slowly that they might as well be going backwards. And then there’s the super swimmers in the laned off area, who race up and down in an effortless front crawl that thoroughly puts me to shame. I am in between, willing to get out of breath and go as fast as I can, but that fast is a good swimmer’s slow. Plus I like to swim on my back, so need a clear run. But I managed to find a little niche for myself last night, so here’s hoping I can do so again after the Christmas holidays. No more excuses. .

Update - And More Bread

I have been asked by a friend to republish my list of 40 challenges, with the ones that I have completed crossed off. So here you go. As you can see, there are about eleven left to go. Some of these are booked, some are ongoing, some are tantalisingly close to being finished, and at least two are looking pretty hopeless at this stage. But I am spending every spare moment obsessing about them at least.

1. Climb Snowdon (by train is allowed)

2. Learn some BSL.

3. Translate at least one chapter of a book from German to English.

4. Perfect (= be able to bash out) a Beethoven piano sonata.

5. Grow something new.

6. Drink cocktails in a glamorous dress and non-clumpy shoes.

7. Eat lobster.

8. Eat at a 2-Michelin star restaurant.

9. Do pilates every day.

10. Do something for charity.

11. Eat something differently coloured for breakfast every day of the week (for a week).

12. Get our attic fixed.

13. Learn enough about something in York to be able to give a guided tour of it.

14. Snog on the back row of the cinema...

15. Learn something crafty, e.g. knitting/quilting/ oil painting.

16. Write a short story.

17. Keep a challenge blog.

18. Have a crazy hair cut/colour.

19. Visit Clifford’s Tower.

20. Solve a moderate level Sudoku.

21. Attend a live sporting event.

22. Read a novel by Dickens.

23. Get in the Deal Or No Deal audience (= to be a pilgrim).

24. Attend a cookery course.

25. Visit somewhere German-speaking.

26. Visit an island.

27. Visit both Clapham Junction stations.

28. Swim (BATHE) in a natural body of water. (Skinny dipping optional.)

29. Make jam or marmalade.

30. Take Charlotte to an aquarium.

31. Take Charlotte on the North York Moors railway. (= Changed for make and ice Charlotte a birthday cake)

32. Swim 40 lengths of Energise pool (can be in more than one session!).

33. Build a piece of IKEA furniture all by myself.

34. Bake 40 loaves of bread in a year (not all of them in a bread maker).

35. Go on the Settle-Carlisle railway.

36. Spend a day as a yummy mummy (=yummy family) in Crouch End.

37. Take Charlotte to see both her parents’ home towns.

38. Take Charlotte to see the Queen and/or the Olympic torch.

39. Learn to count to 100 in Welsh (and three swear words).

40. Make a Christmas box for a needy child.

And here are some more contributions towards Challenge Number 34:

Loaf 22

Loaf 23: Spelt and honey loaf (the recipe book says the loaf is meant to be sunken in the middle)

Loaf 24: What happens when you use a packet of yeast that has been open too long. An inedible brick.
In the background you can see jars of my green tomato chutney, made with my home-grown tomatoes.
It's still maturing.I haven't dared try it yet.

Loaf 25

Loaf 26

Loaf 27: Chocolate and Banana Bread again

Loaf 28