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Your Story: Huntley and Palmers Biscuits, Reading |
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Huntley & Palmers was founded in 1822 when Joseph Huntley opened a small biscuit shop in London Street in Reading. London Street was on the London to Bath stage coach route and the coaches stopped at the Crown Hotel for refreshments. The inn food was poor and expensive so when Huntleys offered the coach passengers freshly baked biscuits as an alternative they were happy to buy them. Joseph Huntley’s son (another Joseph) had been apprenticed to a Reading ironmonger and opened an ironmonger’s shop opposite the biscuit shop. He made tins which enabled Huntleys biscuits to be sold in containers which ensured freshness throughout the coach journey.
As the business expanded George Palmer, who by then was in control of the business, identified the need for larger premises and opened the Kings Road factory in 1846. The site’s good transport links ensured the company could get raw materials on to the site and get fresh biscuits quickly to its customers. Initially Huntley & Palmers had transported biscuits by the River Thames to London and Kent, by the Oxford Canal to Leamington Spa and by the Kennet & Avon Canal to Bath and Bristol. The Kings Road factory was close to the Great Western Railway. A rail network was built for the factory and subsequently biscuits were easily and cheaply transported all over the country.
Very little remains of Huntley & Palmers. The original shop in London Street was demolished many years ago and replaced by a modern building with a pastiche of the original shop. Similarly, the Huntley Boorne & Stevens site in London Street was cleared in the late 1960s and no trace of the factory remains. The Huntley & Palmers factory in Kings Road was pulled down over a number of years with the main office site, built in 1936, being demolished in 1989. It has now been replaced with the Prudential Insurance Company’s headquarters. There is one remaining part of the factory left on the Kings Road site. This is the old social club opposite the small canal-side garden which was provided for the Huntley & Palmers employees. Both the remaining building and the garden were passed to Reading Borough Council when Huntley & Palmers finally left the Kings Road site in the 1980s.
Words: Ann Middleton - Berkshire Industrial Archaeology Group
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