Huntley & Palmers

Huntley & Palmers was founded in 1822 by Joseph Huntley as J. Huntley & Son. Initially, the business was a small biscuit baker and confectioner shop at number 119 London Street, Reading, Berkshire. A blue plaque is displayed outside. The building is now home to Age UK Berkshire. At this time London Street was the main stage coach route from London to Bristol, Bath and the West Country.

One of the main calling points of the stage coaches was the Crown Inn, opposite Joseph Huntley's shop, and he started selling his biscuits to the travellers on the coaches. Because the biscuits were vulnerable to breakage on the coach journey, he started putting them in metal tins. Out of this innovation grew two businesses: Joseph's biscuit shop that was to become Huntley & Palmers, and Huntley, Boorne, and Stevens, a firm of biscuit tin manufacturers founded by his younger son, also called Joseph.[4]

Statue of George Palmer in Palmer Park

In 1838 Joseph Huntley was forced by ill-health to retire, handing control of the business to his older son Thomas. In 1841, Thomas took as a business partner George Palmer, a distant cousin and member of the Society of Friends. George Palmer soon became the chief force behind its success, establishing sales agents across the country. The company soon outgrew its original shop and moved to a factory on King’s Road in 1846, near the Great Western Railway. The factory had an internal railway system with its own steam locomotives and one of these has been preserved near Bradford.[5]

Thomas Huntley died in 1857, but George Palmer continued to direct the firm successfully aided by his brothers, William Isaac Palmer and Samuel Palmer, and subsequently by his sons, as heads of the company. They became biscuit makers to the British Royal Family and in 1865 expanded into the European continent, and received royal warrants from Napoleon III and Leopold II of Belgium. At their height, they employed over 5,000 people and in 1900 were the world's largest biscuit firm. The origins of the firm's success lay in a number of areas. They provided a wide variety of popular products, producing 400 different varieties by 1903, and mass production enabled them to price their products keenly. One source of flour was Hambleden Mill, a few miles down the Thames. Every week a barge, Maid of the Mill brought flour upriver from the mill.[6]

The Palmers were notable local figures in Reading who generously gave money and land to Reading, including Palmer Park and the town was often known as "biscuit town". Reading F.C. football team was also known as the "biscuit men".

A Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin in the form of a set of books

A Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin made to look like a stack of Derby porcelain plates

Another important part of their success was their ability to send biscuits all over the world, perfectly preserved in locally produced, elaborately decorated, and highly collectible biscuit tins. The tins proved to be a powerful marketing tool, and under their easily recognisable image Huntley & Palmers biscuits came to symbolise the commercial power and reach of the British Empire in the same way that Coca-Cola did for the United States.

The tins found their way as far abroad as the heart of Africa and the mountains of Tibet; the company even provided biscuits to Captain Scott during his 1910 expedition to the South Pole. During the First World War they produced biscuits for the war effort and devoted their tin-making resources to making cases for artillery shells.

In 1970, following the merger of the Scottish biscuit companies, Crawford's, McVities and McFarlane Lang and in order to respond to that market competition, the three main English biscuit manufacturers, Huntley & Palmers, Peek Frean and Jacobs amalgamated together as Associated Biscuits.

Manufacturing in Reading ceased in 1976. In 1982 Nabisco acquired Associated Biscuits. Production continued at Huyton until 1983. After the closure of the Peek Frean factory at Bermondsey in 1989, Nabisco sold the Associated Biscuit brands (Huntley and Palmers, Peek Frean, and Jacobs) to Danone.[7]

The firm manufactured over 400 different types of biscuits over the years and innovated many new types of biscuits including the Nice biscuit.

A history of the company, Quaker Enterprise in Biscuits: Huntley & Palmers of Reading, 1822–1972 by T. A. B. Corley, was published in 1972 on the firm's 150th anniversary. The historic company archive is now housed at the Reading Museum, where there is a gallery devoted to the company. Some archive films of the Huntley & Palmers factory are available for viewing in the special Huntley & Palmers gallery in the museum in the Town Hall[8]. The business archive is located at the Special Collections of the University of Reading.

In the 21st century it came to light that one freelance artist commissioned to design biscuit tins for Huntley & Palmers (including one based on an original artwork by Kate Greenaway[9]) had placed secret images in his designs, such as depictions of copulating dogs, copulating people, and a man with a cannabis joint.[10]