Tim's One Photograph a Day

The Old Huntley and Palmers Building, Reading.

Huntley and Palmers.

Huntley and Palmers: All that remains of the extensive factory.

All that remains of the extensive factory.

Reading at one time was synonymous with biscuits – and Huntley and Palmers. Sadly, this building is virtually all that remains.

Amazingly, this building does not appear to be listed. However, it has been remarkably well preserved, at least on the exterior. The company started out in 1822 as J Huntley & Son.

This building shows the established date of Huntley and Palmers to be 1841. In 1838 the founder, a Quaker by the name of Joseph Huntley, retired due to ill health, and the company passed to his son Thomas.

Thomas took a distant cousin, one George Palmer, as a business partner three years later. And the rest, as they say, is history! Reading earned the nickname “biscuit town”, and the football team were known as “biscuit men”.

In 1970, the company responded to a merger of Scottish biscuit manufacturers by merging with Peak Freen and Jacobs to form Associated Biscuits.  Manufacturing at the Reading plant ceased six years later. In 1982, the company was acquired by Nabisco and, seven years later, the biscuit operations were sold to Danone.

After a break of 15 years, the Huntley and Palmers name was re-established, with a manufacturing plant now in Sudbury, Suffolk.

Photograph Details:

  • Taken: 13 Jul 2017
  • Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10 MkIIA
  • Lens: Olympus 14-42 1:3.5-5.6
  • Focal Length 22mm
  • F/6.3
  • 1/500 Sec
  • ISO 200

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