There's exactly one UK town whose name is genuinely synonymous with a specific sweet, and it's not Blackpool or Brighton — it's Pontefract, a West Yorkshire market town better known for a castle than a confectionery industry, except that it's actually both.
A medicine before it was a sweet
Liquorice root was grown in the soil around Pontefract from at least the 16th century, first valued for medicinal rather than culinary reasons. The local ground turned out to suit the plant unusually well, and liquorice cultivation grew into a proper local trade long before anyone had the idea of sweetening it into something you'd actually want to eat for pleasure.
The apothecary who added sugar
By tradition, that shift is credited to George Dunhill, a local apothecary, who is said to have added sugar to liquorice root extract around 1760 — turning a bitter medicinal paste into something closer to a sweet. He reportedly called the result Pomfret Cakes, using the old Norman name for the town. It's worth being upfront that the exact date and details rest more on local tradition than on hard documentary proof, but the broad story — apothecary, sugar, liquorice, Pontefract — is consistently repeated across local history sources.
From cottage industry to factory
What started as a small-scale, cottage-level trade eventually scaled up: a rival firm, Wilkinson, opened the first proper liquorice factory in the town in 1888, moving production away from individual apothecaries and toward the kind of volume manufacturing the sweet is made at today. The shape stuck too — small, round, flat discs, traditionally stamped with an image of Pontefract Castle, the fortress where the deposed King Richard II is traditionally held to have died in 1400.
Where the name ended up
The Dunhill liquorice business eventually passed through various hands before being bought out by Haribo in 1994, which is why the Pontefract cake you'll find on sweet shop shelves today, more than two and a half centuries after Dunhill's original batch, carries a German confectionery giant's name on the bag rather than a Yorkshire apothecary's.
What we stock
We carry Haribo Pontefract Cakes 3kg for bulk buying, and Haribo Pontefract Cakes Share Bags 160g sold as a case of 12, within our wider Liquorice collection.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is a Pontefract cake?
A small, round, black liquorice sweet traditionally stamped with an image of Pontefract Castle — "cake" here means a small moulded disc, not a sponge cake.
Who turned Pontefract liquorice into a sweet?
By tradition, apothecary George Dunhill, who is credited with adding sugar to liquorice extract around 1760.
Why was liquorice grown in Pontefract?
The local soil suited the crop well, and it was cultivated there from at least the 1500s, initially for medicinal use.
Does Supreme Sweets stock Pontefract cakes?
Yes — Haribo Pontefract Cakes, in a 3kg bulk bag and 160g share bags by the case.
Sources: Wikipedia: Pontefract cake; Wakefield Museums and Castles.