Edible Souvenirs

Blackpool Rock

Although "pulled sugar" with letters running through it seems to have been available at fairs throughout the country in the early 19th century, it took the efforts of one-time miner Ben Bullock to make it a seaside staple. Bullock was the first confectioner to put the name of the resort through the rock, in the late 1880s. Bullock, though, was based in Dewsbury, nearly 70 miles away from Blackpool. Blackpool Rock was not made in the town itself until around 1902. Today there are still twenty or so manufacturers there, producing both rock to meet the ever-buoyant-seeming local demand, as well as a curious array of other sugar novelties - sugar pasty and chips springs to mind as one bizarre example. The "authentic" Blackpool rock has a pink outer layer, mint in flavour, and the words "Blackpool Rock" running through the centre; though there are now many other flavours (with their associated nerve-jangling E numbers), the pink mint version is the marque. The manufacturing process is familiar to any child of the 1970s raised on BBC TV's Play School, where a film sequence showing it seemed to be a fixture for many years. Some companies have deep roots in Blackpool. Coronation Rock began production in 1927. RD Blackwood bought his Blackpool factory in 1944 and remains in operation as a family firm, with a shop in the town centre. Others, such as Baxter Brothers, are more recent, appearing in the late 1980s, but demonstrate that demand can support them. Sugar boiling is a skill which takes time to learn, like brewing or baking, so the best are much sought after - a textbook is no substitute for ten years' "hands on" experience.

The rock companies have weathered post-war sugar rationing and later shortages, as well as the caprices of taxation, healthy eating regimes and food legislation, but still have a product that has changed little in over a century and remains popular as an icon of the seaside holiday.

Another distinctive rock belongs to the Isle of Man - they prefer theirs with a square section, and the three-legged Manx symbol running through it.

Coronation Rock <www.coronationrock.co.uk>
W. S. Slater's <www.slaters-rock.co.uk>
Stanton' & Novelty Confectioners <stantonnovelty.com>