Dunhill's Liquorice Box
This case is full of liquorice boxes created in and around Pontefract throughout history.
On the left hand side of the case there is a small cardboard box with green stripes, and the text ‘Dunhill’s Original Pontefract Cakes / Est 1760’ on it.
Pontefract cakes are liquorice-flavoured sweets in the form of small black discs, often stamped with an image of a castle gate.
This packaging refers to the story that they were invented by George Dunhill in 1760. Although it is possible that George Dunhill did invent the Pontefract Cake, he was only 7 years old in 1760! It seems more likely that that Pontefract Cakes date from nearer 1800.
The Dunhill family had an apothecary business and also rented part of Pontefract Castle where they grew liquorice. The two businesses were actually connected, as the traditional use for liquorice was in medicine. Liquorice does in fact contain a chemical that can treat coughs, ulcers and constipation, though it can be dangerous in very large amounts!
Through the 18th Century Pontefract became a centre for growing medicinal liquorice. It became so important that there were laws against taking the buds out of the town. For medicinal use liquorice root extract was made into small pastilles that were dissolved in water.
From around 1800, liquorice was also being made into sweets in Pontefract. Liquorice is already very sweet, much sweeter than sugar. Adding extra sugar to the liquorice extract makes it chewable, and hence the first sweet was invented.
Pontefract Cakes proved incredibly popular. Liquorice growing in Pontefract boomed and lots of other companies began making the sweets. By 1900 there were at least a dozen liquorice factories employing 9,000 workers, mainly women. The demand for liquorice was so great that it had to be imported from Spain and Turkey.
Then, the Second World War stopped production completely. Sugar was rationed and imports from the Mediterranean were cut off. The liquorice that was available was needed just for medicines instead. Pontefract's liquorice factories switched over to war work, repairing tanks and aeroplane engines.
Today there are still 2 liquorice sweet factories in Pontefract, Haribo (who bought up the original Dunhill's company) and Valeo Confectionary.
Ballot Box
The ballot box is a tall rectangular dark wooden box with a narrow slot in the top. In front of it in the case there is a small narrow booklet, and on top of the box there is a brass stamp with a wooden handle.
The box was used in the very first secret ballot for a parliamentary election in Britain, which was here in Pontefract! It was used in a by-election for a Pontefract MP held on 15th August 1872. Secret voting had been introduced in July 1872 to try and stop widespread corruption and violence in elections in Britain.
Until this change was brought in men (and only men, until 1918) would cast their vote in public. They would go to a public polling station, tell the Returning Officer who they were, establish their right to vote, and declare who they were voting for.
All of the votes were recorded and published in poll-books. The booklet in the case is one such poll-book, recording all of the votes in the Pontefract constituency for the General Election in 1868.
The new system introduced in 1872 was pretty much the same as today. At the polling station voters were given a ballot paper with the candidates’ names printed on it and they marked their choice on the paper in a private voting booth.
Before voting began Pontefract's ballot boxes were sealed with wax and a liquorice stamp. This was used to make sure everyone could see it had not been tampered with. You can see the remains of the original liquorice seal on our ballot box. There is also an example of the liquorice stamps used inside the case.
Pontefract’s 1872 secret vote saw Liberal MP Hugh Childers re-elected. The changes brought in by the new system were initially only a trial, but the election ran very smoothly, as did later similar ones, so the changes were made permanent.
Pontefract had made national political history!
Tanshelf Pots
This case is full of ceramic pots we refer to as the Tanshelf Pots.
These pots were all found in a kiln that was excavated by archaeologists in 2008. The kiln was just east of Pontefract Monkhill train station on the site of an old maltings.
The pots themselves look very similar to a style known as Stamford Ware, which is dated to around 1100AD.
However, when the kiln was scientifically dated, it turned out to be from about 1000AD - 100 years earlier!
This was a complete surprise. Until these dates were confirmed it was thought that late Saxon Yorkshire did not produce any pottery, with the technology to create them only being reintroduced after the Norman Conquest in 1066AD.
Pots are also often used for dating in archaeology because the styles can be quite closely dated, so the pots in this case raise all sorts of questions about the dating of other sites in Yorkshire.
The pots are different shapes and types, including jugs with and without spouts, a wide-bodied bottle, and wide necked storage jars. They are all somewhat damaged. Some are incomplete and made from reassembled pieces, and some nearly complete but missing a small shard.
The pots are light cream or grey in colour, some with splashes of green or yellow glaze. Some are plain and some are decorated with incised lines and stamps. They are all very finely made.
Keirincx Painting of Pontefract Castle
This is a large oil painting of Pontefract Castle as it was in about 1640.
It shows what a grand site it was, and much larger than the standing remains today might suggest.
There are 10 towers and 3 lines of defensive walls extending down to the Knottingley Road.
The Castle was painted by the Flemish landscape painter Alexander Keirincx.
In 1638 King Charles II arranged for 2 painters, one of them Keirincx, to come to England the following year. Keirincx had a commission for 10 paintings. By the time of the paintings Charles was based in York preparing to invade Scotland, because the Scots had refused to accept his changes to their religious practice.
It seems likely that Charles brought Keirincx to his court to celebrate the glorious victory he intended to win over the Scots. Unfortunately for Charles things did not go very well! His underprepared and ill-trained army only got as far as Berwick, where it was outmatched by a superior Scottish army and Charles was forced to agree a temporary truce. When Charles assembled another army at Berwick to try again in 1640 the Scots responded by invading England, crossing the Tyne, seizing Newcastle and forcing Charles’ English army to retreat to Durham.
With no victory for Charles to celebrate, Keirincx instead painted 6 of Charles’ great houses or palaces in Scotland, and 4 in Yorkshire, Ripon, Helmsley and Pontefract Castles, and the city of York.
This case has a small broken pot out of which spill gold and silver coins. A few of the coins are displayed separately, as is a small gold ring. Inside the ring is the inscription ‘When this you see remember me’.
This is the Ackworth Hoard, found in a garden in Ackworth in 2011.
The dark brown glazed broken pot is about 15cm high and was almost certainly made at Wrenthorpe. It is a type often called Cistercian ware and dates from the 15th-17th centuries AD.
Buried in it were 591 coins, 52 gold and 539 silver, and the gold ring. The earliest coin in the hoard is a gold half sovereign of Edward VI dated to 1547AD, while the latest are half crowns of Charles I dated to 1545/6AD. The hoard was probably buried in late 1645 or early 1646.
The smallest denomination coin is a sixpence, even though there were smaller coins in circulation at the time. When people chose to hoard coins and store them in this way for safe keeping, they were storing their most expensive and valuable coins and items. During the coin minting process many valuable coins were ‘clipped’, with small shavings cut off because of the value of the gold or silver itself. This meant there was ‘good’ and ‘bad’ money in circulation, and for hoards people tried to collect as much ‘good’ money as possible.
The face value of all the coins is £85 12s. This was a lot of money in the 1640s! An infantry soldier in the Civil Wars might earn 8 to 10 pence a day, so the hoard was over 5 years' pay for a common soldier.
The great majority of the coins are English, but some are Scottish or Irish. There are even some ducatons from the Spanish Netherlands. These ducatons give a hint as to who might have buried the hoard. King Charles II's wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, was on the Continent in the early years of the English Civil Wars and is known to have sent ducatons to the Royalist commander in Yorkshire. When she returned to England she came to Yorkshire bringing more ducatons with her. She then stayed at Pontefract Castle on her way to join the King in Oxford.
It seems likely therefore that the Ackworth Hoard was buried by a Royalist supporter, possibly when Parliamentary troops were billeted in Ackworth during the siege of Pontefract Castle in 1646.
Inside this case is a cream-coloured fabric waistcoat with 6 buttons. The waistcoat looks somewhat stiff and has a faded chequerboard effect of raised squares. This is because it is, at least in theory, bulletproof!
It belonged to Edward Tew, a partner in the local bank Leatham, Tew and Company. Edward’s father Thomas Tew founded 2 banks at Pontefract and Doncaster with John Leatham in about 1800. In 1809 they bought another bank in Wakefield.
Edward Tew managed the Doncaster branch, and had to travel between the 3 branches, presumably carrying valuables. The roads were becoming safer by the early 19th century, and the last recorded robbery by a highwayman on horseback was in 1831. However, there was still a risk of highway robbery when the banks were founded.
Edward was clearly being cautious in case he was stopped by a highwayman with the infamous call to 'stand and deliver!'
This is a tall cylindrical mining lamp. It was used by miner John Dewitt at the Prince of Wales Colliery in Pontefract from 1920 to 1940.
The lamp has a heavy brass base, a central glass light and a tapering iron top ending in a large hook or carrying handle. The central glass light originally had a metal mesh or gauze screen inside it but this has since corroded and fallen out.
Coal mines were always very dangerous. One of the main threats was from explosive and flammable gases, usually methane.
The gauze in this type of safety lamp was invented in 1815 by Sir Humphry Davey. It allowed air in to burn but prevented the flame of the lamp getting out and igniting any gas in the atmosphere. It could also be used as a warning system. The lamp would also burn blue if methane was present, and go out when the concentration of oxygen in the air fell too low.
However, the gauze in the lamp was easily damaged and the light it gave off was very dim.
Under pressure to reach quotas miners would often use a candle as well, so unfortunately accidents and deaths continued.
Even after much safer electric lights were introduced from the 1890s explosions still happened, and sadly still do in coal mines around the world today.
This is a small, greenish glass bottle with a cork stopper and a handwritten paper label.
The inscription on the label reads:
Oil of turpentine, 10 drops in half a tea spoonful of sugar, twice in one week
Each dose towards bed time, a good drink of tea after a dose
1/6 [one shilling and six pence]
Turpentine is a liquid distilled from tree resin, usually pine trees. It was mainly used as a solvent, but for centuries turpentine was also used for medicine. When used on the skin it can kill lice or maybe help with cuts. However, as in this case, people also used to take it internally. It may have helped with parasites, but we now know it is actually very dangerous and toxic.
Before publicly-funded health care was introduced with the NHS in 1948 many people couldn’t afford to pay for private health care and were not eligible or able to access free charitable care. This is why there was a big market for homemade remedies like this - whether they worked or not, or were even dangerous!
This bottle was sold door-to-door in Tanshelf in the 1920s for the relatively modest price of one shilling and six pence.
This is a small pocket-sized notebook, divided into rows and columns with handwritten notes in black and red referring to pipes, carburettors and other engine parts.
This notebook belonged to Bertha Killingbeck who worked in a liquorice factory before the Second World War.
During the Second World War supplies of sugar and liquorice were rationed, and what liquorice there was available was used in medicines. Unable to carry on as normal, the many liquorice and confectionary factories in Pontefract switched to 'war work'. They mostly focussed on repairing and refurbishing war equipment and weaponry.
The liquorice factory where Bertha worked was taken over by Humber Ltd and specialised in refurbishing aircraft engines. Another of the large liquorice works in Pontefract switched to repairing tanks.
On the left hand side of the case there is a small cardboard box with green stripes, and the text ‘Dunhill’s Original Pontefract Cakes / Est 1760’ on it.
Pontefract cakes are liquorice-flavoured sweets in the form of small black discs, often stamped with an image of a castle gate.
This packaging refers to the story that they were invented by George Dunhill in 1760. Although it is possible that George Dunhill did invent the Pontefract Cake, he was only 7 years old in 1760! It seems more likely that that Pontefract Cakes date from nearer 1800.
The Dunhill family had an apothecary business and also rented part of Pontefract Castle where they grew liquorice. The two businesses were actually connected, as the traditional use for liquorice was in medicine. Liquorice does in fact contain a chemical that can treat coughs, ulcers and constipation, though it can be dangerous in very large amounts!
Through the 18th Century Pontefract became a centre for growing medicinal liquorice. It became so important that there were laws against taking the buds out of the town. For medicinal use liquorice root extract was made into small pastilles that were dissolved in water.
From around 1800, liquorice was also being made into sweets in Pontefract. Liquorice is already very sweet, much sweeter than sugar. Adding extra sugar to the liquorice extract makes it chewable, and hence the first sweet was invented.
Pontefract Cakes proved incredibly popular. Liquorice growing in Pontefract boomed and lots of other companies began making the sweets. By 1900 there were at least a dozen liquorice factories employing 9,000 workers, mainly women. The demand for liquorice was so great that it had to be imported from Spain and Turkey.
Then, the Second World War stopped production completely. Sugar was rationed and imports from the Mediterranean were cut off. The liquorice that was available was needed just for medicines instead. Pontefract's liquorice factories switched over to war work, repairing tanks and aeroplane engines.
Today there are still 2 liquorice sweet factories in Pontefract, Haribo (who bought up the original Dunhill's company) and Valeo Confectionary.
Ballot Box
The ballot box is a tall rectangular dark wooden box with a narrow slot in the top. In front of it in the case there is a small narrow booklet, and on top of the box there is a brass stamp with a wooden handle.
The box was used in the very first secret ballot for a parliamentary election in Britain, which was here in Pontefract! It was used in a by-election for a Pontefract MP held on 15th August 1872. Secret voting had been introduced in July 1872 to try and stop widespread corruption and violence in elections in Britain.
Until this change was brought in men (and only men, until 1918) would cast their vote in public. They would go to a public polling station, tell the Returning Officer who they were, establish their right to vote, and declare who they were voting for.
All of the votes were recorded and published in poll-books. The booklet in the case is one such poll-book, recording all of the votes in the Pontefract constituency for the General Election in 1868.
The new system introduced in 1872 was pretty much the same as today. At the polling station voters were given a ballot paper with the candidates’ names printed on it and they marked their choice on the paper in a private voting booth.
Before voting began Pontefract's ballot boxes were sealed with wax and a liquorice stamp. This was used to make sure everyone could see it had not been tampered with. You can see the remains of the original liquorice seal on our ballot box. There is also an example of the liquorice stamps used inside the case.
Pontefract’s 1872 secret vote saw Liberal MP Hugh Childers re-elected. The changes brought in by the new system were initially only a trial, but the election ran very smoothly, as did later similar ones, so the changes were made permanent.
Pontefract had made national political history!
Tanshelf Pots
This case is full of ceramic pots we refer to as the Tanshelf Pots.
These pots were all found in a kiln that was excavated by archaeologists in 2008. The kiln was just east of Pontefract Monkhill train station on the site of an old maltings.
The pots themselves look very similar to a style known as Stamford Ware, which is dated to around 1100AD.
However, when the kiln was scientifically dated, it turned out to be from about 1000AD - 100 years earlier!
This was a complete surprise. Until these dates were confirmed it was thought that late Saxon Yorkshire did not produce any pottery, with the technology to create them only being reintroduced after the Norman Conquest in 1066AD.
Pots are also often used for dating in archaeology because the styles can be quite closely dated, so the pots in this case raise all sorts of questions about the dating of other sites in Yorkshire.
The pots are different shapes and types, including jugs with and without spouts, a wide-bodied bottle, and wide necked storage jars. They are all somewhat damaged. Some are incomplete and made from reassembled pieces, and some nearly complete but missing a small shard.
The pots are light cream or grey in colour, some with splashes of green or yellow glaze. Some are plain and some are decorated with incised lines and stamps. They are all very finely made.
Keirincx Painting of Pontefract Castle
This is a large oil painting of Pontefract Castle as it was in about 1640.
It shows what a grand site it was, and much larger than the standing remains today might suggest.
There are 10 towers and 3 lines of defensive walls extending down to the Knottingley Road.
The Castle was painted by the Flemish landscape painter Alexander Keirincx.
In 1638 King Charles II arranged for 2 painters, one of them Keirincx, to come to England the following year. Keirincx had a commission for 10 paintings. By the time of the paintings Charles was based in York preparing to invade Scotland, because the Scots had refused to accept his changes to their religious practice.
It seems likely that Charles brought Keirincx to his court to celebrate the glorious victory he intended to win over the Scots. Unfortunately for Charles things did not go very well! His underprepared and ill-trained army only got as far as Berwick, where it was outmatched by a superior Scottish army and Charles was forced to agree a temporary truce. When Charles assembled another army at Berwick to try again in 1640 the Scots responded by invading England, crossing the Tyne, seizing Newcastle and forcing Charles’ English army to retreat to Durham.
With no victory for Charles to celebrate, Keirincx instead painted 6 of Charles’ great houses or palaces in Scotland, and 4 in Yorkshire, Ripon, Helmsley and Pontefract Castles, and the city of York.
The Ackworth Hoard
This case has a small broken pot out of which spill gold and silver coins. A few of the coins are displayed separately, as is a small gold ring. Inside the ring is the inscription ‘When this you see remember me’.
This is the Ackworth Hoard, found in a garden in Ackworth in 2011.
The dark brown glazed broken pot is about 15cm high and was almost certainly made at Wrenthorpe. It is a type often called Cistercian ware and dates from the 15th-17th centuries AD.
Buried in it were 591 coins, 52 gold and 539 silver, and the gold ring. The earliest coin in the hoard is a gold half sovereign of Edward VI dated to 1547AD, while the latest are half crowns of Charles I dated to 1545/6AD. The hoard was probably buried in late 1645 or early 1646.
The smallest denomination coin is a sixpence, even though there were smaller coins in circulation at the time. When people chose to hoard coins and store them in this way for safe keeping, they were storing their most expensive and valuable coins and items. During the coin minting process many valuable coins were ‘clipped’, with small shavings cut off because of the value of the gold or silver itself. This meant there was ‘good’ and ‘bad’ money in circulation, and for hoards people tried to collect as much ‘good’ money as possible.
The face value of all the coins is £85 12s. This was a lot of money in the 1640s! An infantry soldier in the Civil Wars might earn 8 to 10 pence a day, so the hoard was over 5 years' pay for a common soldier.
The great majority of the coins are English, but some are Scottish or Irish. There are even some ducatons from the Spanish Netherlands. These ducatons give a hint as to who might have buried the hoard. King Charles II's wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, was on the Continent in the early years of the English Civil Wars and is known to have sent ducatons to the Royalist commander in Yorkshire. When she returned to England she came to Yorkshire bringing more ducatons with her. She then stayed at Pontefract Castle on her way to join the King in Oxford.
It seems likely therefore that the Ackworth Hoard was buried by a Royalist supporter, possibly when Parliamentary troops were billeted in Ackworth during the siege of Pontefract Castle in 1646.
Bulletproof Vest
Inside this case is a cream-coloured fabric waistcoat with 6 buttons. The waistcoat looks somewhat stiff and has a faded chequerboard effect of raised squares. This is because it is, at least in theory, bulletproof!
It belonged to Edward Tew, a partner in the local bank Leatham, Tew and Company. Edward’s father Thomas Tew founded 2 banks at Pontefract and Doncaster with John Leatham in about 1800. In 1809 they bought another bank in Wakefield.
Edward Tew managed the Doncaster branch, and had to travel between the 3 branches, presumably carrying valuables. The roads were becoming safer by the early 19th century, and the last recorded robbery by a highwayman on horseback was in 1831. However, there was still a risk of highway robbery when the banks were founded.
Edward was clearly being cautious in case he was stopped by a highwayman with the infamous call to 'stand and deliver!'
Mining Lamp
This is a tall cylindrical mining lamp. It was used by miner John Dewitt at the Prince of Wales Colliery in Pontefract from 1920 to 1940.
The lamp has a heavy brass base, a central glass light and a tapering iron top ending in a large hook or carrying handle. The central glass light originally had a metal mesh or gauze screen inside it but this has since corroded and fallen out.
Coal mines were always very dangerous. One of the main threats was from explosive and flammable gases, usually methane.
The gauze in this type of safety lamp was invented in 1815 by Sir Humphry Davey. It allowed air in to burn but prevented the flame of the lamp getting out and igniting any gas in the atmosphere. It could also be used as a warning system. The lamp would also burn blue if methane was present, and go out when the concentration of oxygen in the air fell too low.
However, the gauze in the lamp was easily damaged and the light it gave off was very dim.
Under pressure to reach quotas miners would often use a candle as well, so unfortunately accidents and deaths continued.
Even after much safer electric lights were introduced from the 1890s explosions still happened, and sadly still do in coal mines around the world today.
Homemade Medicine Bottle
This is a small, greenish glass bottle with a cork stopper and a handwritten paper label.
The inscription on the label reads:
Oil of turpentine, 10 drops in half a tea spoonful of sugar, twice in one week
Each dose towards bed time, a good drink of tea after a dose
1/6 [one shilling and six pence]
Turpentine is a liquid distilled from tree resin, usually pine trees. It was mainly used as a solvent, but for centuries turpentine was also used for medicine. When used on the skin it can kill lice or maybe help with cuts. However, as in this case, people also used to take it internally. It may have helped with parasites, but we now know it is actually very dangerous and toxic.
Before publicly-funded health care was introduced with the NHS in 1948 many people couldn’t afford to pay for private health care and were not eligible or able to access free charitable care. This is why there was a big market for homemade remedies like this - whether they worked or not, or were even dangerous!
This bottle was sold door-to-door in Tanshelf in the 1920s for the relatively modest price of one shilling and six pence.
Humber Engine Notebook
This is a small pocket-sized notebook, divided into rows and columns with handwritten notes in black and red referring to pipes, carburettors and other engine parts.
This notebook belonged to Bertha Killingbeck who worked in a liquorice factory before the Second World War.
During the Second World War supplies of sugar and liquorice were rationed, and what liquorice there was available was used in medicines. Unable to carry on as normal, the many liquorice and confectionary factories in Pontefract switched to 'war work'. They mostly focussed on repairing and refurbishing war equipment and weaponry.
The liquorice factory where Bertha worked was taken over by Humber Ltd and specialised in refurbishing aircraft engines. Another of the large liquorice works in Pontefract switched to repairing tanks.
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