Joseph Terry and the chocolate orange

Joseph Terry was born in Pocklington, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, in 1793. He did not set out to make sweets. He trained as an apothecary, the old name for a chemist, and set up his own chemist's shop in Walmgate, York.

Marrying into sweets

In York there was a confectionery business, founded in 1767 near Bootham Bar, that sold cough lozenges, candied lemon and orange and other sweets. By the 1820s it was run by the Berry family from St Helen's Square. In 1823 Joseph married Harriet Atkinson, who was related to Robert Berry, and he closed his chemist's shop to join the business.

After Robert Berry died in 1825, Joseph went into partnership with George Berry as Terry and Berry. George left in 1828 and the firm became Joseph Terry and Company. By 1830 Joseph was the sole owner.

A chemist's sweets

Joseph used his chemist's training to develop new lines. His range included candied eringo, coltsfoot rock, gum balls and conversation lozenges, sweets printed with messages that were an early form of Love Hearts. The firm also made marmalade, marzipan, ketchups and jellies. He was quick to use the new railways, and by 1840 Terry's sweets were sold in more than 75 towns and cities across the north of England and in London.

The sons take over

Joseph Terry died in 1850. His son, also Joseph, moved production to a new factory at Clementhorpe beside the River Ouse, where steamships brought in sugar, cocoa and coal. The younger Joseph was knighted in 1887 and was Lord Mayor of York four times. Under his sons the firm launched Neapolitans in 1899.

The Chocolate Works and the Orange

In the 1920s Frank Terry, the founder's grandson, and his nephew Noel built a grand new factory on Bishopthorpe Road, Terry's Chocolate Works, with a clock tower 135 feet tall. The launches came quickly: the Dessert Chocolate Apple in 1926, All Gold in 1931 and the Chocolate Orange in 1932, an orange shaped ball of chocolate flavoured with orange oil and split into 20 segments.

The apple did not last. With cocoa scarce after the Second World War, it was phased out in 1954 so the factory could make more oranges. A Chocolate Lemon was tried in 1979 and dropped three years later. The orange became a Christmas institution: at one time it was estimated that one in ten British Christmas stockings had a Chocolate Orange in it.

Tap it and unwrap it

The segments are stuck together in the middle, which is why generations of people have given the foil wrapped ball a sharp tap on the table before opening it. The advertising leaned into it, from tap it and unwrap it to whack and unwrap, and Dawn French spent ten years telling the nation it was not Terry's, it was hers.

What happened to Terry's

The family sold the business in 1963, and after a string of owners the York factory was closed by Kraft in 2005. The Chocolate Orange is now made in Strasbourg, France. The whole story is in how Terry's left York.

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