With Charlie and the Chocolate Factory coming to The Varieties’ stage next year, we took a trip to the archives to uncover any possible connections between the history of Leeds and chocolate. Little did we know that a golden ticket and a series of mysteries awaited us, right in time for National Chocolate Day!
Written by Sophie Ashley
A world of imagination
Although written in 1964, the well-loved novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was infact inspired by a different time – the 1920s and 1930s. These decades were a golden age for British chocolate manufacturing, featuring now recognisable household names like Cadbury’s, Rowntree’s, and Fry’s. At this time, pioneering chocolate and confectionery inventions were becoming more widely available and starting to capture the imaginations of the British public.
However, a different name entirely cropped up when searching through the digital records of the West Yorkshire Archive Service for mentions of chocolate in Leeds: Henry Thorne & Co. Unknown to me, I thought why not take a punt and see whether this mysterious name would reveal any stories?
A golden ticket
Working through the boxes of Henry Thorne & Co’s archival material began dryly with a stack of Directors’ Minute Books from the turn of the 20th century. While the handwriting was beautiful, the contents were not so scintillating. These minutes were followed by Profit and Loss Accounts and a Share Allotment book from around the same time – time for a banana break to keep focus! But then, further into the box, things started to get more interesting.
The penny dropped with a shiny sales catalogue from 1923 naming The Cocoa Works of Leeds and depicting a collection of beautiful chocolate tins being sold by the company Thorne’s. This was not just a vague connection between chocolate and Leeds; this confirmed that there was a fully-fledged chocolate factory in the city 100 years ago, at most.
Thorne's 'chocolates for the connoisseur' advert from 1923. Credit: West Yorkshire Archive Service
Thorne's cocoa works in Leeds city centre. Credit: West Yorkshire Archive Service
A golden ticket, offering up an even more fascinating revelation, came in the form of black-and-white photographs of the impressive chocolate factory right in the heart of Leeds. Although not fit with glass elevators or underground tunnels, this was a 5,000-square-foot factory fit for Charlie Bucket!
With the help of Google, I also discovered that the depicted factory was just a minute away from our beloved Leeds Grand Theatre.
A trip down Lady Lane
The Thorne’s cocoa works stood in the plot of land between Lady Lane, Edward Street and Templar Lane (now the big car park behind the Old Red Bus Station) from approx. 1842 to 1972. Some sources suggest that the factory was not built until 1889, 11 years after Leeds Grand Theatre in 1878.
What is certain is that the chocolate factory not only co-existed with Leeds Grand Theatre but possibly also crossed paths with it in early life. Sadly, The Grand is out of frame in the wider-scale photo locating the old factory, but the facade of the Old Red Bus Station and Vicar Lane is visible in the bottom left.
Thorne's cocoa works visible in Leeds city centre from above. Credit: West Yorkshire Archive Service
It’s hard not to run away with possible crossovers between the factory and our theatres. Imagine theatregoers being able to smell cocoa wafting or see smoke billowing from the premises (just like the Buckets). Imagine workers passing The Grand on their way to a shift spent picking toffees off the floor. Who knows if Victorian Leeds was so busy and smelly that none of the above ever happened!
Internet research seems to suggest that the factory does still live on in the memories of some Leeds inhabitants though. So why, if the chocolate factory was right there until 1972, had I never heard of Thorne’s?
Henry Thorne & Co
Many details about the family and the factory appear to be lost to history and records of Thorne’s exact origins do not remain. A surviving ‘century assortment tin’ ad from 1937 suggests the enterprise began in 1837, starting out as a humble shop for mustard, chicory and ginger. A smaller works, then involving cocoa also, was later set up on Little Neville St, the predecessor to the bigger factory.
The Thornes were a Quaker family, and the beginnings of their firm echoed those of Quaker confectioners elsewhere, starting by selling ‘Health Cocoa’. Due to their pious sobriety, Quakers advertised drinking cocoa as a fashionable alternative to alcohol with medicinal qualities. And Thorne’s drinking cocoa was popular: “We have it from old inhabitants of the city that Thorne’s famous rock cocoa in the 1870s was known by all the leading grocers in the North.”
The innovations of the 1800s not only transformed the production of drinking cocoa but paved the way for the chocolate we know and love today. Solid chocolate bars were invented some 10 years after Thorne’s was founded, and the archive materials demonstrate a move to produce chocolates, toffees and other confections.
Historians in the 1920s reflected on the Thorne change of fortune:
“When we remember that [they] laboured in [their original shop] handling a product new to Leeds, we realise they indeed were pioneers of an industry which was to become famous.”
Leeds and the Chocolate Factory
We know that cocoa and chocolate manufacturing was a competitive and secretive business, as embodied by Wonka and his golden tickets. For example, Thorne’s introduced an anti-cutting scheme in 1901 to keep industry prices high. There is also evidence that Thorne’s communicated with local (and surviving) competitor Rowntree’s, potentially selling cream-beating machines to them that same year.
Despite competition, a confusing fact repeated all over the internet is that Thorne’s successfully produced up to 2 million products a day from Lady Lane well into the 1960s!
Thorne's promoting the 'Health Cocoa' anti-cutting scheme. Credit: West Yorkshire Archive Service
Damage to Thorne's works, presumably from WWII bombing. Credit: West Yorkshire Archive Service
The circumstances behind the company’s demise are therefore even more uncertain than its beginnings. At the archives, we found press photos of bomb damage to the premises, but all evidence points towards growth and prosperity at the company despite living through both World Wars.
For example, Thorne’s expanded the factory in 1925 and continued to advertise its famous toffees into the 1940s despite food shortages or bomb damage to Leeds city centre.
It remains a mystery why, just 10 years later, Leeds’s chocolate factory disappeared off the map and from the public consciousness. Could it have been an issue with finding an heir to the company? Or a series of unfortunate and fantastical accidents on the premises? Now don’t be silly, that’s a different story entirely.
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