From Gipsy assortments to black and white Smarties, York’s confectioners were never short of a marketing idea.
It has a huge collection of choccy-related memorabilia, and a selection of the best will be on display at a new exhibition from Easter – Chocolate: York’s Sweet Past.
The museum owns rarely seen advertising and packaging for brands such as KitKat, After Eight, Yorkie and Terry’s Chocolate Orange, sweet-making moulds and tools and even a tin of cocoa which went on Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic.
Bigger sweet shop
The tour will start in the museum’s Georgian, Victorian and Jacobean rooms, all filled with sweet delicacies of the day.
Visitors then head up to the Toy Gallery to find a spectacular whizzing and fizzing sweet making machine before following their nose to find out what’s cooking in the working Chocolate Factory where you can explore what it was like to work in York’s famous factories.
And a new larger sweet shop will open on Kirkgate, showing chocolates and sweets from Terry’s, Rowntrees and Craven’s.
Katie Brown, assistant curator of history at the museum, said:
The collection, which includes adverts from as far back as the 1800s and original packaging from world-wide favourites such as Kit-Kat and Terrys Chocolate Orange as well as long forgotten former favourites. These will all help tell the fascinating story of York’s history as an iconic chocolate and sweet making city.
To whet your appetite, here’s a glimpse at the Castle Museum’s chocolate assortment…
Chocolate gallery
