Much of the 65,000 tonnes of cocoa beans required for chocolate manufacture arrive via Liverpool docks each year, due to its proximity to factories in Yorkshire and north Wales.
The cocoa story from Liverpool Docks, Ellesmere Port, through the Shropshire Union Canal, over the Llangollen Canal Aqueduct to Cadbury’s Chirk then Cadbury World.
The Shropshire Union Canal
The Shropshire Union Canal, nicknamed the “Shroppie”, was an important conduit for many industries and is an amazing sixty-mile, four-day cruise to add onto any cruise ending at Liverpool. The tub boat canal runs from the River Mersey at Ellesmere Port down through some of the most beautiful and underpopulated areas of England to the edge of urban Wolverhampton where the main Cadbury factory is.
Ellesmere Port near Liverpool dock was once the UK’s largest inland waterway dock complex, and a major transhipment point for goods traveling anywhere on the canal network, including cocoa beans.
CADBURY CHOCOLATE STORY – in a cocoa pod
In 1824 John Cadbury opened a grocery shop in Bull Street, Birmingham, where he sold tea, coffee, cocoa, and drinking chocolate – which he prepared himself using a mortar and pestle. We saw that technique explained in a period store in our tour of Boston in the USA. Cadbury’s chocolate became very popular. He bought a nearby warehouse in 1831, and with his sons George and Richard Cadbury he expanded, moving to a larger factory in Bridge Street in 1847.
The sons took over in 1861. George ran production and Richard built the sales side.
George brought in the cocoa press being used by Dutch manufacturer van Houten. The press squeezed out so much cocoa butter from the beans, that they didn’t need to add any starches. He then took the Swiss system of mixing milk.
in 1847 the brothers found the 14.5-acre meadow that would allow them to expand and they added Ville meaning village to the Bourn. The air quality was cleaner, they started with 16 workers houses and facilities for the staff grew to include a Quaker church and a cricket pitch. They established a community and introduced pension benefits long before other trades. In 1893 they bought another 120 acres, and by 1900 there were 314 cottages and the factory had over 2,500 employees. This is all extremely worthy, but not the story that my 4 and 6 year old grandchildren were ready to hear. The slightly off-tune approach may be one of the causes that closed the second Cadbury World in New Zealand. But lets look at the positives, careful approach to the tickets means you can find deals, like midweek and adult and toddler combinations, otherwise, it is expensive for what it is.
The story, the canal, and the railway are all fun for an adult, and four days in the summer would make a great canal tour. It is the prettiest canal in Great Britain and sports one of three Cadbury factories at Chirk on the Wales-England border. There they process the raw cocoa bean. It is then shipped to the appropriate Cadbury factory. Cocoa powder and drinking chocolate is also manufactured at Chirk. It is at Chirk and Llangollen that there are two amazing aqueducts.
From Liverpool
Just an hour from the Liverpool cruise terminal lies the Llangollen Canal. An hour is nothing on a cruise excursion, most panoramic coach trips beat that hands down, and ports like Trieste, Rotterdam, and Cadiz offer trips that would have you travel double that. So, going to see the most beautiful canal in Great Britain and the amazing high Pontcysyllte or Chirk aqueduct is not a stretch, whether for the engineering, the beautiful canal, or Cadbury’s chocolate legend.
The Llangollen Canal
The Llangollen Canal leaves the Shropshire Union Canal just north of Nantwich in rural Cheshire is 41 miles long and takes 3 days to cruise one way. Using locks, it climbs through Shropshire countryside to cross the border into Wales near Llangollen and the Pontcysyllte Viaduct which spans the River Dee. From the height of the viaduct, the white water running under it, the countryside of Llangollen can be seen.
The World’s Tallest Canal Aqueduct
Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is amazing. It is hard to believe how thin the steel sides appear, but the water is only four feet deep, which is the secret to canal building. The weight of water is only that which is above it, the deeper you go, the higher the pressure.
Would you canoe over it? We drove from London to do just that.
The stunning aqueduct is part of the first 11 miles of the Llangollen Canal. All eleven miles is an outstanding example of industrial and engineering heritage, but the tallest canal aqueduct in the world takes the prize for being awe-inspiring. The rest of the embankments, tunnels, viaducts, aqueducts and 31 other listed structures are also amazing. 334yds long, it spans the Dee Valley. 18 stone arches made with local stone and mortar which they added bulls blood to. It was water-proofed with tar and sheep’s wool.
Chirk
Even at the top of the 70 ft high Chirk aqueduct the water is only four feet deep. It was built between 1796 and 1801 by Thomas Telford and William Jessop, and the watertight joins of the iron plates were made with local tar and sheep’s wool. There are 10 circular masonry arches each spanning 40ft and side walls built of stone, quarried locally at Pont Faen. Here Cadbury process the beans before they move onto Bournville where Cadbury World is.
The Chirk Aqueduct spans 710-foot across the Ceiriog Valley near Chirk, on the England-Wales border, spanning the two countries
Cadbury World
Cadbury World is perhaps a little more worthy than it is entertaining, a touch more adult than child-focused. Counters and some displays are above toddler height and they have to be lifted. At the entrance, visitors are confronted with the sale of little blue bags, as if there is a need. However, there is nothing to put in them at any point of the tour. The whole tour is on the film.
The Cadbury Wharf, Knighton, Staffordshire factory operated between 1911 and 1961 to process locally collected milk and produce “chocolate crumb” which was transported to Cadbury’s in Bourneville (Birmingham) along the Shropshire Union Canal.
Some key dates.
- 1824 – John Cadbury snr opened his shop
- 1831 – he took a warehouse
- 1847 – With sons took a factory in Bridge Street
- 1861 – sons took over
- 1893 expanded Bournville with another 120 acres
- 1905 – Cadbury Dairy Milk launched
- 1910 – Cadbury’s sales overtake Fry’s chocolate sales
- 1919 – Cadbury merges with Fry
- 1920 – Flake launched
- 1921 – Fry’s smaller factories start to close and Cadbury open a factory in Australia
- 1921 – Cream Eggs launched
- 1928 – Fruit & Nut launched
- 1929 – Crunchie lauched
- 1933 – Whole Nut launched
- 1935 – Cadbury took control of Fry
- 1938 – Roses launched
- 1956 – Cadbury start manufacturing in Bombay
- 1969 – Merger with Schweppes
- 1970 – Curly Wurly
- 1976 – Double Decker launched
