There’s a pleasing serendipity about the bicentenary of Huntley & Palmers and the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee both falling in the same year. The famous biscuit manufacturer, once the largest in the world, was chosen to make the wedding cake for the then Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten in November 1947. The magnificent four-tier cake was based on a ‘special old recipe’ – the same one, no doubt, that had also been used for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth’s parents, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and the Duke of Kent, in April 1923, and of Philip’s cousin, Princess Marina, and the Duke of Kent in November 1934.

The fact that Huntley & Palmers was the baker of choice for these important state occasions shows the formidable reputation the company had established during its first century in existence.

By the time of the young Princess Elizabeth’s marriage, Huntley & Palmers biscuits were being exported all over the world. The company had also notched up an impressive string of prestigious awards across Europe, including top prizes at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Paris Exhibition of 1878.

In a short space of time, Huntley & Palmers had transformed Reading, becoming its largest employer and leading to Reading being dubbed ‘Biscuit Town’.

Origins
Medieval Reading was known chiefly for its manufacture of cloth and leather, with malting, brickmaking and boatbuilding industries appearing during the 18th and 19th centuries. By the early decades of the 19th century, though, a new industry was waiting in the wings that would revolutionise this ancient riverside town.

In 1822, Quaker Joseph Huntley opened a small shop in London Street for the manufacture and sale of biscuits and confectionery. The shop was ideally situated on the stagecoach route from London to the West Country, and customers from the stagecoaches and the nearby Crown Inn were soon flocking to buy Huntley’s wares. When he was joined by his son, Thomas, the shop was officially named J. Huntley & Son.

It was Joseph’s younger son, also Joseph, who came up with the idea of selling the biscuits in decorated tins, which he manufactured through his own company, Huntley, Boorne & Stevens, and this attractive packaging became as popular as the tasty morsels within.

After Joseph Huntley senior’s retirement in 1838, Thomas invited a cousin, George Palmer, to join him in a partnership, thus establishing the famous Huntley & Palmers name.

It was largely thanks to Palmer’s energy, vision and business acumen that the company grew so rapidly during its early years. Before long it had outgrown its original premises, and in 1846 production moved to a converted silk factory in King’s Road, between the River Kennet and the Kennet and Avon Canal.

Palmer and local iron founder William Exall were responsible for developing the machinery that enabled mass production and for making increasing use of the newly arrived railway in Reading to distribute goods to other parts of the UK and overseas.

The company quickly outgrew its new factory, and in 1868 Palmer bought more land so that he could expand the production facilities north of the river. A new suburb developed along the riverside to house the factory workers. Much of this was demolished and rebuilt during the 1970s.

After Thomas Huntley’s death in 1857, two of Palmer’s brothers, William and Samuel, joined the firm. Palmer’s son, Alfred, also became a key figure in the company, notching up more than 50 years of service, which was chiefly spent building and maintaining the manufacturing machinery.

20th century decline
By the turn of the century, Huntley & Palmers was the largest biscuit manufacturer in the world, with a customer base spreading across more than 170 countries. The ever popular tins became collectors’ items, and special editions were often produced to commemorate important events. The Reading factory had expanded to 24 acres and had more than 5000 employees producing around 400 different varieties of biscuit, including the famous Nice and Bath Oliver biscuits.

The outbreak of the First World War saw the company beginning to falter for the first time in its history. Part of the factory was given over to the manufacture of munitions, and women were employed in larger numbers than ever before to counteract labour shortages. The company began to attract criticism for failing to move with the times, with its machinery now condemned as outdated and inefficient.

Despite this, the company coped well during the Second World War, including taking over part of the Peek Freans biscuit production after that firm’s factory was bombed, but during the post-war period production suffered due to food rationing and shortage of labour. Things seemed to be improving when a new factory was established in Liverpool, but labour shortages continued, both in Reading and Liverpool, and profits plummeted. The Reading factory finally closed in 1976, and both this and the offices were demolished during the 1980s-90s, bringing the ‘Biscuit Town’ era to a sad end.

Huntley & Palmers was taken over by Associated Biscuits and later Nabisco, but this wasn’t enough to save the Liverpool factory, which closed in 1983.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, in 2006, Huntley & Palmers resumed operations in Sudbury, Suffolk, producing a range of traditional and new biscuits and keeping the legendary name alive.

Working for Huntley & Palmers
Huntley & Palmers factory workers worked long hours – the company archives show that in 1893 the working week was 54 hours, with employees working from 6.30am-6pm Monday to Friday and 6.30am-12 noon on Saturday. By the mid-20th century this had been reduced to 45 hours, with workers under the age of 16 working 40 hours a week. Women and girls were employed to do work considered to be ‘suitable for female labour’, an attitude that persisted well into the 20th century.

Records also show, though, that Huntley & Palmers directors cared about the welfare of their employees, and there was generally a good relationship between them – so much so that in 1911, when rumours were circulating around the town about poor working conditions at the factory, the workers reacted with indignation and organised mass meetings to protest against those ‘shameless and lying statements’. The directors responded with a letter to the workforce thanking them for their loyalty.

In the early days of the company, annual day trips were organised for the workers and their families, usually involving river trips to nearby Mapledurham or Streatley. As staff numbers increased these trips became impracticable, so employees were given a day’s paid holiday every June and an Excursion Fund was established to pay for outings to seaside resorts and other popular destinations.

Social activities were strongly encouraged, and the company’s Recreation Club proved very popular. By the beginning of the 20th century the club had 3000 members, who were able to indulge in cricket, football, hockey, lawn tennis, bowls, quoits and athletics.

There was also a Reading Biscuit Factory Sick Club, which provided a vital lifeline for employees in the days before the establishment of the Welfare State.

On the Biscuit Town trail
Nearly 50 years on from the closure of Huntley & Palmers, there are still plenty of reminders of the former Biscuit Town days.

Alfred Palmer’s former home, East Thorpe – a magnificent late Victorian house – is now home to the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) and the University of Reading’s Special Collections, which includes the Huntley & Palmers archive.

The museum’s bicentenary exhibition, Biscuit Town: 200 Years of Huntley & Palmers in Reading, runs until 25th September and looks at the company’s impact both locally and globally through photographs, posters, packaging, objects of interest and more. It is worth exploring the main museum galleries, too, as there are more Huntley & Palmers gems on display.

The Huntley & Palmers archive contains more than 4000 items tracing the company’s history from 1837 to 1995. Few individual employee records have survived, but there are personnel records with details of wages, staff absences and accidents, conditions of work and much more, although there are gaps in the collection. The archive also includes business correspondence, newspaper and journal cuttings, photographs and personal papers of the Palmer family.

Find out more about the exhibition and archives at merl.reading.ac.uk .

Reading Museum has a permanent Huntley & Palmers Gallery featuring more than 300 of the famous decorative tins alongside photographs, archive films and oral histories telling the story of the company and its workers.

At both museums you can pick up a Biscuit Crumb Trail leaflet (also downloadable from the Reading Museum website), which highlights surviving buildings associated with Huntley & Palmers. The most noticeable of these is a former factory office building in King’s Road, which from 1938 housed the Recreation Club. Now the only surviving factory building, it has been converted into flats but still bears the Huntley & Palmers logo.

Other places of interest include George Palmer’s former home The Acacias, on the corner of Redlands Road and London Road, now marked with a red plaque; the original bakery shop in London Street, marked with a blue plaque; and the Quaker Meeting House and burial ground, also in London Street, where several members of the Huntley and Palmer families are buried.

The Riverside Museum at Blake’s Lock tells the story of the Kennet and Thames rivers in Reading and includes a small display of Huntley & Palmers artefacts. Coming up in September is an exhibition by local artists, Biscuits & Bricks: 200 Years of the Huntley & Palmers Legacy.

Close by is the former biscuit factory site, now in the process of being redeveloped as a residential area named Huntley Wharf.

Huntley & Palmers may have left Reading, but it is clear that local pride in the famous manufacturer, which played such a significant role in the town’s history, will never fade. {

Further reading
Dolphin, Tracy, Biscuit Tins, Shire Publications, 2011
Franklin, M.J., British Biscuit Tins, V&A Museum, 1984 Huntley & Palmers, The History of Huntley & Palmers Ltd: Biscuit Manufacturers, Reading and London, England, Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1927