A story of Entrepeneurship Against the Odds- The Pontefract Cake

The story of liquorice and its close relationship to the town of Pontefract in mid Yorkshire is quite remarkable.

The liquorice plant that is used in production of the sweet originates from the Mediterranean and Middle East(Glycyrrhiza glabra) although there are other species from other parts of the world which are similar in their chemical composition and physical appearance. It even grows wild in the alluvial soils of countries such as Iraq in the riverbeds of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. So suitable is this habitat for its growth that it can be cultivated and harvested without any encouragement through agricultural practices such as fertilising, watering or replanting.

As you can imagine the climate of mid Yorkshire is completely different! Nevertheless, the soil is a deep, sandy loam which stays moist but is free draining thus mimicking the natural habitat of liquorice in the Euphrates river perfectly. However, the cultivation of liquorice in Pontefract is extremely labour intensive with annual applications of manure and replanting of the root every 3-5 years after it is harvested. Also, the harvesting of the root requires a specialist horticulturalist so that the highest yield of the root is obtained when it is dug up.

Initially the root was used raw as a sweet but also was a quite effective medicine in herbalism, particularly for easing(!) constipation. This all changed when George Dunhill added sugar to the extract to create the Pontefract cake in 1760. Within about 40 years 10 different companies were churning out about 25,000 Pontefract cakes a day. As the plant was so labour intensive to cultivate the raw root or extract was increasingly sourced from warmer climates such as Spain where it is cheaper to produce until around the 1960s when commercial cultivation of the plant ceased completely in Pontefract.

And yet the legacy of liquorice for Pontefract still exists in 2022 as there is still an inexplicable worldwide demand for it. This is reflected in the fact that a German company called Haribo bought Dunhills in 1990s and production continues at the original factory to this day. Infact, such has been its success that they opened another factory at Castleford nearby.

The other famous liquorice producer, Bassetts, of Sheffield who made the famous liquorice allsorts with good old Bertie Bassett in, occurred as a very fortunate mistake by a salesmen that accidentally mixed up the different types of sweets for a potential client. It is now owned by Cadbury-Schweppes.

To my mind it is an incredible story of British entrepeneurship that Pontefract has this legacy of growing a plant that is completely out of its climate zone and turning it into a sweet for which a global demand still exists. We need more great stories, in likeness of this, of modern entrepeneurship today in Britain. Unfortunately, it became apparent to me on visiting Pontefract that it was still living on Victorian credit now in 2022 which is the kind of depressing thought that should inspire Michael Gove’s levelling up fund!