"They had a shop on site where you could buy broken biscuits. "You'd walk past the factory on the way to school and you'd see the lorries coming in and out," recalls Magold, "you'd see the smoke rising from the factory. Magold grew up in Bermondsey and became entranced by the Wonkaesque alchemy happening on his doorstep. "Everyone knew someone that worked in Peeks." Peek Freans produced thousands of types of biscuits in its 132 years.
The museum's star attractions, though, are Gary Magold, a life-long fan of biscuits, and Frank "Taffy" Turner, who worked at Peek Freans for almost three decades. A towering Haversham-esque thing, it even features iced battleships - a nod to her husband's naval links. Holding court in the centre of the room is a replica of a wedding cake gifted by Peek Freans to the then-Princess Elizabeth, when she married in 1947. There are old advertisements, images of employees in flour-caked aprons, special Twiglet-cutting blades - even antique biscuits still in their packaging, decades past their best-before. Colourfully decorated tins glitter in cabinets. Secreted away in a surviving block of the complex (which now homes offices, artists' studios and a gym) is the Peek Freans Museum, a treasure trove of biscuit heritage. By the early 20th century, Peek Freans was making 400 million Pat-A-Cake biscuits a year. It's just as well they did the biscuit factory remained here until 1989, after which much of it was demolished. Peek Freans' answer to getting rid of the stench? Buying both companies out. Here, it found itself sandwiched between a manure company and a tripe boiling works. The factory was destroyed, and Peek Freans relocated to nearby Drummond Road. The Prince of Wales is said to have ridden out on a horse-drawn water pump to witness the conflagration. "There were reports of flaming biscuits dropping out of the sky in Peckham and Camberwell," says Gary Magold, curator at the Peek Freans Museum. Image: Paige Kahn The Potteresque leather tome of biscuit recipes from the 1960s. Gary Magold (left) and Frank Turner - the museum's curators/guides/living exhibits. Bermondsey earned the nickname 'Biscuit Town'. Soon the public were hooked on these novel sugary treats. The Pearl was followed by the Marie, named for an Austrian princess, and the shortbread-based Pat-A-Cake. But When Peek Freans dreamed up the Pearl in 1865 - a light, sweet confection - it sparked a renaissance biscuits could be delicious after all. Until this time, biscuits were a grisly necessity weevil-infested hunks of sawdust loaded onto ships for onerous ocean voyages. Started by tea importer James Peek in 1857, in a former sugar refinery on Bermondsey's Mill Street, the company soon acquired Peek's nephew-by-marriage George Hender Frean, then brought aboard John Carr (the same Carr of those well-known water biscuits). Image: Paige Kahn Gary Magold shows us an aerial image of the factory. The museum is secreted away in a room of the old biscuit factory. More than that, Peek Freans upgraded billions of wet British afternoons sat in front of Countdown with a cuppa.
0 kommentar(er)
