From monastic medicine to Charlie Chaplin’s boot, discover how local ingenuity turned two foreign roots – liquorice and forced rhubarb – into icons of West Yorkshire identity.

When people think of West Yorkshire’s past, coal mines, shoddy mills and engineering often come to mind first. But for generations, two much less obvious industries helped put the region on the map: liquorice and rhubarb.

One became the famous Pontefract Cake, known across Britain and beyond. The other was grown in dark sheds by candlelight and earned West Yorkshire a worldwide reputation for producing the finest forced rhubarb.

Together, they tell a fascinating story of local ingenuity, industrial change and agricultural tradition.

Why West Yorkshire?

The success of both crops was no accident.

Liquorice requires exceptional soil depth to accommodate its extensive taproots (or “runners”), which penetrate up to six feet beneath the surface in search of moisture and minerals. Pontefract provided deep, well-drained loamy soil directly overlying a rich bed of limestone, alongside fertile alluvial deposits. This “friable” subsoil permitted the long liquorice roots to push downward without encountering impassable clay strata or standing water.

Rhubarb thrived for a different reason. The area between Wakefield, Morley, and Rothwell became famously known as the “Rhubarb Triangle.” Bounded by river valleys and situated in a cold frost pocket in the shadow of the Pennine hills, the region provided the wet, chilly winters required to break the roots’ natural dormancy. After exposure to winter frost, the plants were brought indoors into darkened sheds, prompting them to grow rapidly during the winter months.

Property/Climate	Liquorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra)	Forced Rhubarb
Soil Type	Deep, friable, well-drained loamy soil directly overlying limestone; rich alluvial deposits	Heavy, workable topsoil heavily augmented with organic matter and ashes
Drainage Needs	Exceptional drainage; requires loose loam or sand-filled trenches up to six feet deep to prevent root rot	Highly moisture-retentive during open-field maturation, but free-draining to prevent waterlogging
Temperature Thresholds	Requires warm summers for rapid root development; native to warm Mediterranean microclimates	Severe winter frost exposure (“frost hours”) mandatory to break root dormancy prior to forced lifting
Light Exposure	Full daylight in open field plots throughout its multi-year growing cycle	Open sunlight during initial two-year field phase. Pitch-black darkness during indoor forcing.

Nature provided the foundations, but local industry helped things along too. Waste from Yorkshire’s woollen mills, coal mines and growing towns was recycled onto the land. Woollen waste, manure and ashes enriched the soil, while cheap coal heated the famous forcing sheds where rhubarb was grown out of season.

From Medieval Medicine to Pontefract Cakes

Liquorice did not begin life as a sweet. The plant originated in the Mediterranean and Middle East, where it had been valued for thousands of years as a medicinal remedy. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all recognised its healing properties. Roman soldiers are even said to have chewed liquorice root on long marches because it helped relieve thirst.

Historians believe liquorice reached Pontefract during the medieval period, possibly brought back from the eastern Mediterranean by returning Crusaders. Another theory credits the town’s religious houses, whose monks maintained extensive medicinal gardens and often exchanged plants and remedies with other monastic communities across Europe.

The Black Friars in the Friarwood Valley and the Cluniac monks of St John’s Priory, both in Pontefract, cultivated liquorice in their herb gardens, known as garths. In an age when professional medical treatment was beyond the reach of most people, monasteries played a vital role in caring for both travellers and local communities. Liquorice was valued as a treatment for coughs, chest complaints, digestive disorders and stomach ulcers. It was also used in remedies for sore throats and was sometimes prescribed for horses suffering from digestive ailments.

Even after Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in the 1530s, the knowledge of how to grow and use liquorice did not disappear. Local gardeners continued cultivating the plant on the rich soils around Pontefract, transforming what had once been a monastic medicine into one of the town’s most distinctive crops.

By the seventeenth century, liquorice gardens were a familiar feature of Pontefract. Maps produced during the English Civil War period show extensive plots surrounding the town, evidence that a crop introduced for healing had already become an important part of the local economy.

The Birth of a Yorkshire Icon

Everything changed in the eighteenth century. A local chemist named George Dunhill experimented by mixing sugar with liquorice extract. The result was a much more palatable product that became known as the Pontefract Cake, or “Pomfret Cake” as it was originally called.

The small black discs, stamped with an image of Pontefract Castle, quickly became popular throughout Britain.

Making them was labour intensive. Skilled workers known as “liquorice thumpers” stamped thousands of cakes each day by hand. Their speed and dexterity became legendary in the town.

Pontefract’s most famous sweet even found its way into one of the most important moments in British democracy. When the town hosted Britain’s first secret ballot election in 1872, officials sealed the ballot boxes with red wax impressed using a stamp from Dunhill’s liquorice factory…the same type of stamp that was normally used to mark Pontefract Cakes. More than 150 years later, the ballot box still survives in Pontefract Museum, bearing the distinctive seal that links the town’s liquorice trade with a landmark event in British political history.

A Town Built on Liquorice

By Victorian times Pontefract had become a major centre of confectionery manufacturing.

Factories sprang up across the town, employing hundreds of workers. Firms such as Hillaby’s, Wilkinson’s and Addingley’s turned liquorice production into a thriving industry.

At its peak, Pontefract boasted more than a dozen liquorice factories within walking distance of the town centre.

Pontefract Goes to Hollywood

One of the most remarkable stories from Pontefract’s liquorice industry reached all the way to Hollywood. In 1925, Charlie Chaplin released The Gold Rush, a film that included one of cinema’s most famous scenes. Trapped by a blizzard and driven to desperation by hunger, Chaplin’s character cooks and eats his boot for dinner. The sequence is played for comedy, with Chaplin delicately twirling the bootlaces like spaghetti and nibbling the nails as though they were chicken bones.

The boot itself was not leather at all. It was an edible prop made from liquorice by Hillaby’s Lion Liquorice Works in Pontefract, then one of the world’s leading liquorice manufacturers. Contemporary accounts link Hillaby’s with the production of the famous boot, creating an unlikely connection between a Yorkshire confectionery town and one of the defining moments of silent cinema.

Chaplin reportedly had to film the scene repeatedly to achieve the perfect take. Audiences roared with laughter as Chaplin boiled, carved and devoured his boot with mock refinement. For the star himself, however, the joke eventually wore thin. The edible liquorice prop had to survive repeated filming, which meant Chaplin had to keep eating it take after take. The scene became a cinematic classic, but by the end of filming he had probably consumed far more Pontefract liquorice than anyone could comfortably enjoy.

For Pontefract, though, it was a remarkable claim to fame. At a time when the town’s factories were exporting liquorice products around the world, one of their creations had appeared on cinema screens across Europe and America. Few industrial towns could boast that their local speciality had played a starring role in a Hollywood classic.

The End of the Liquorice Fields

Ironically, the very success of Pontefract’s liquorice industry hastened the decline of local growing. Liquorice grown in Pontefract required up to five years to reach maturity, while growers in the warmer climates of Spain, Italy and the eastern Mediterranean could produce roots more quickly and at lower cost. As imported liquorice became increasingly economical, local cultivation gradually faded away, even as Pontefract’s sweet factories continued to thrive.

Today, the town’s liquorice tradition survives through companies such as HARIBO, which maintains a major presence in the area, while a handful of local growers have revived small-scale liquorice cultivation.

The Art of Rhubarb Forcing

While Pontefract was becoming famous for liquorice, another Yorkshire speciality was developing nearby.

Rhubarb, a relative newcomer to British gardens despite its traditional reputation, is originally native to Central Asia and Siberia.

It was introduced to Britain in the seventeenth century primarily as a medicinal plant, with its roots prized far more than its stalks, for use in remedies and medicines, prescribed by doctors and herbalists for digestive complaints, particularly constipation and stomach disorders. In fact, rhubarb root was once so highly valued that it could command extraordinary prices in European apothecaries.

The plant’s transition to a culinary food occurred only in the late eighteenth century, when cheaper, more affordable sugar transformed its sour pink stalks into the puddings, pies, and crumbles that eventually became favourites of British cuisine.

Soon, rhubarb found an unexpected home in West Yorkshire, where the region’s damp climate and frosty winters proved perfect for its cultivation. The Rhubarb Triangle became one of the most unusual agricultural regions in Britain. At its height, West Yorkshire produced the vast majority of the world’s forced winter rhubarb.

Rhubarb Process

Maincrop rhubarb grows outdoors naturally in the spring and summer, with standard harvesting running from April or May through to July. These stalks are thicker, greener and more tart than forced rhubarb.

Forcing is an extra technique used to get an early luxury crop in the winter and early spring (January to March). The rhubarb roots spend two years growing outdoors to store energy before winter frosts trigger their move into completely dark forcing sheds.

With no sunlight to allow photosynthesis, the plants channel all their energy into stretching rapid, straight red stalks upwards in search of light, rather than developing broad green leaves. Complete darkness is essential: if exposed to bright light, the stalks produce chlorophyll, turning greener, tougher, and much more acidic. To prevent this, growers work in the sheds using only candles or dim lights, preserving the soft glow needed to harvest stems that are famously tender, crimson-pink, and noticeably sweeter than outdoor rhubarb.

Harvested by Candlelight

One of the most distinctive traditions in the Rhubarb Triangle is the candlelit harvest. To preserve the crop’s delicate colour and flavour, rhubarb is still harvested in near darkness inside the forcing sheds. Traditionally, growers worked by candlelight, and some continue the practice today.

The dark sheds also have a curious atmosphere. Many growers have spoken about hearing the rhubarb growing…in the forcing sheds it can grow 2.5 centimetres (an inch) a day. As the stalks expand rapidly, they can make faint popping and cracking sounds caused by the tight outer bud sheaths snapping open as the main stems burst out. Squeaks and creaks are caused by the fibrous stalks rubbing against each other as they stretch upward toward the ceiling in search of light…and the leaves rustle as they move against each other.

Some have compared the noises to a distant crowd murmuring in conversation.

The Rhubarb Special

Getting fresh rhubarb to market required speed. For decades, the Great Northern Railway operated a dedicated overnight freight service known as the “Rhubarb Special”. During the growing season, trainloads of rhubarb left West Yorkshire in the early hours of the morning bound for London’s wholesale markets.

Hundreds of growers relied on the service. Freshly harvested stalks could be picked by candlelight and arrive in London before many people had eaten breakfast. It was an impressive logistical operation and a reminder of how important rhubarb once was to the local economy.

Decline and Revival

Like many traditional industries, both liquorice and rhubarb suffered during the twentieth century.

Changing tastes, imported foods, urban development and the decline of rail transport all contributed. The Rhubarb Special disappeared and many growers left the industry. The number of rhubarb farms fell dramatically, while locally grown liquorice became increasingly rare. But neither tradition vanished entirely.

In 2010, Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb received Protected Designation of Origin status, placing it alongside products such as Champagne and Stilton in terms of legal protection. The designation recognised that authentic Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb could only be produced using traditional methods within the designated area.

At the same time, local history and food heritage have become increasingly valued, helping both rhubarb and liquorice find new audiences.

Celebrating a Unique Heritage

Today these traditions are celebrated through annual festivals.

Wakefield’s Rhubarb Festival brings thousands of visitors into the city each February, while Pontefract’s Liquorice Festival celebrates the town’s most famous export every summer.

Both events remind us that West Yorkshire’s history is about much more than mills and mines. It is also a story of market gardeners, confectioners, railway workers and farming families whose skills transformed two unlikely plants into symbols of local identity.

Few places can claim to have changed the world with both a sweet and a vegetable. West Yorkshire did exactly that.

So, next time you bite into a Pontefract Cake or enjoy a rhubarb crumble, you’re tasting a small piece of Yorkshire history.