Liquorice stamp, Dunhill's Ltd, early 1900s

Liquorice stamp, Dunhill's Ltd, early 1900s

Collected in 1985

Currently on display at Pontefract Museum

A wooden handled liquorice stamp with a design of the castle and Dunhill's on the stamp

This stamp was used to make Pontefract Cakes, the famous liquorice sweets. The stamp would flatten blobs of liquorice into discs with the Pontefract Castle symbol on them.

The workers who did this were called ‘thumpers’. They were mostly women.

This stamp comes from Dunhill’s. They were the first to make Pontefract cakes.

Since 1720 and maybe even earlier, they were renting land in Pontefract to grow liquorice. By 1779 George Dunhill owned a house, warehouse and garden in Broad Lane near the castle. The story is that George Dunhill invented liquorice sweets. The first Pontefract Cakes were probably made at Broad Lane.

The Dunhill business was successful and grew much bigger in the 1800s. In the early 1900s it moved to a purpose-built factory on Front Street.

At the end of the 1900s, German sweet company Haribo bought Dunhill's.

Haribo still make Pontefract Cakes in the old Dunhill factory. Today, they use machines, not ‘thumpers’.

Related images

$A green tin with Dunhill's original Pontefract Cakes old-fashioned style logo on it$

A tin of Dunhill's 'original' Pontefract Cakes

$Three women around a machine creating circular Pontefract cakes in the mid 1900s$

Dunhill's workers in the mid-1900s

$A woman stamping Pontefract Cakes by hand as rows of women do the same behind her$

A liquorice 'thumper' at work, mid-1900s

$A black plastic Haribo Pontefract Cakes sweet packet, with a note that says 'Dunhills have been making traditional Pontefract Cakes using the finest ingredients since 1760'$