Fillerys Toffees

History of H J Packer & Carsons

Edward Packer founded the business in 1881 in Armoury Square, Bristol, with his sister and brother. In 1884 H. J. Burrows joined, forming H. J. Packer & Co, but the partnership dissolved within a year and Burrows became sole owner. Burrows sold the business for £950 to Caleb Bruce Cole the following year. Sales grew substantially from 1894, prompting a move to a new factory in Greenbank in 1901.

Between 1903 and 1912 sales rose 250%, helped by Two ounces per penny quality chocolates for children and lines like Packers Chocolate Mixers. In 1908 the company bought Glasgow-based Carsons and created the Bonds of Bristol brand for luxury chocolates. Carsons' Glasgow factory closed and production moved to Shortwood, near Mangotsfield. By the early 1920s the company was Britain's fourth-largest chocolate manufacturer with over 2,000 employees, introducing Milk Crispets.

Carsons Chocolate accompanied Sir Ernest Shackleton on his expeditions. The company's fortunes declined before World War II. In 1955 the Packers brand was relaunched with Summit chocolate bars and penny sweets such as White Mice and Sweet cigarettes. Carsons production moved to Greenbank in 1961.

Carsons was the largest British manufacturer of chocolate liqueurs under the Famous Brands name. In 1962 H J Packer was renamed Carsons Ltd, but the company remained unprofitable, losing £39,000 by 1963. James Goldsmith's Cavenham Foods acquired the company in 1964.

History of Hollands of Southport

John Holland found a way to make creamy toffee in the 1890s, working out of a shop at 23a Cross Street in Southport that his uncle James Ford had given him. Holland had learned the trade as an apprentice to Ford, a confectioner in Ormskirk. His most popular item was Everton Toffee. During World War I, the company opened a new factory on Virginia Street.

In 1927, John Arthur Holland became the factory manager, and by 1932 the business was known as John Holland & Son. He took full control in 1936 and introduced the slogan Best on Earth. A fire damaged the premises in 1940. After the war, the company grew, and in 1953 it began exporting to the United States for the first time.

A year earlier, in 1952, John Arthur's sons, John Arthur Junior and Peter, took over, and the firm was renamed J A & P Holland. The company went public on the Liverpool Stock Exchange in 1953, and the Virginia Street factory got an extension in 1954. As demand for toffee started to slip, the brothers decided to buy up competitors. Their first purchase was Coq D'or Chocolates in 1959.

The next year, they bought Fillerys Toffees, a premium brand that supplied Marks & Spencer, along with Casket Confectionery and Walters Palm Toffee for £385,000. Later in 1960, the company listed on the London Stock Exchange, having acquired over 20 firms. In 1961, it added S. Parkinson & Son, Harper Paper for £1.25 million, Mackay Brothers of Edinburgh, and George & Son of Southend-on-Sea, among others. The Daily Mail called Holland the world's biggest toffee maker.

By 1965, it ran 33 wholesale warehouses. In 1963, John Arthur Holland Junior created a soft toffee that launched as Chewzits. But the company paid no dividends in 1963 or 1964, and many of its subsidiaries struggled. Independent shareholders clashed with the Holland family, and in 1965 James Goldsmith's Cavenham Foods launched a takeover bid. The Hollands fought it but lost.

Cavenham Confectionery Ltd

Cavenham Confectionery was created when Carsons merged with Yeatmans, J A & P Holland, and Paramount Laboratories under Cavenham Foods. Its product range included Famous Names, Chewits, Hollands Toffee, Fillery's Toffee, Walters Palm Toffee, Ewbanks Liquorice, Dr Who & The Daleks Sweet Cigarettes, Royal Doncaster Butterscotch, and Parkinsons Boiled Sweets. Most subsidiary factories shut down, leaving production at Carsons' Greenbank site, Holland's Southport plant, and Parkinsons' Doncaster factory.

By 1967, Cavenham Foods faced financial trouble, so James Goldsmith formed a half-and-half partnership with Perrier's confectionery arm, which owned Menier and Lindt. In 1968, the joint venture exported $750,000 worth of goods to America and bought the Elizabeth Shaw brand and recipes. The Perrier partnership ended in 1969, and Cavenham Confectionery was sold to Conwood SA for £1.2 million—a firm equally owned by Cavenham Foods and Conwood Corporation—but was quickly bought back by Cavenham Foods.

In 1981, during James Goldsmith's dismantling of Cavenham Foods, the management bought the business for £8 million and renamed it Famous Names Ltd.

Greenbank factory site

When the factory shut down in 2006, locals pushed back against the first developer’s plan to turn it into flats and houses, arguing the building was part of Bristol’s industrial heritage. George Ferguson backed that opposition, having previously transformed a disused Bedminster tobacco factory into the Tobacco Factory, a well-known arts venue. By 2012, the building was still empty because no one involved could agree on a second workable plan. An archived community group website for the chocolate factory held more details.

In late 2013, the building went back to Clydesdale Bank, and the Generator Group started planning. In August 2014, Generator South West put forward a proposal for open spaces around a new development of flats and housing. By 2016, the project had run into serious trouble: Generator South West requested an exemption from the rule requiring 30 to 40 percent of any development to be social housing, claiming the cost of restoring the old historic buildings made the plan financially unworkable.

The community group ACORN campaigned against this move, pointing to Bristol’s housing crisis and the shortage of affordable homes. The Generator Group then worked with Bristol City Council to include 36 shared ownership homes alongside the private ones. The first homes ready for people to move into in 2021 were shared ownership. Anyone looking for details on the 1950s factory block that still hasn’t been developed can search the city council’s planning archive.