TO MANY younger people in York today, the old Terry’s factory on Bishopthorpe Road is probably little more than a building site, where new flats and apartments are being created out of a factory their parents are oddly nostalgic about.

To older Yorkies, however, the factory with its iconic clock-tower was a living, breathing part of the fabric of York.

It was a factory that employed generations of young workers, turning out confectionery with magic names such as All Gold and the Chocolate Orange to the Spartan chocolate assortment.

It is that Terry’s that we revisit today, thanks to a trip to our archives.

One photograph, taken in 1964, shows the factory from the air, with the empty expanse of Knavesmire to the left and Bishopthorpe Road in the foreground. It is a photograph that gives a real sense of the size of the factory, although there are so many green fields all around you’d hardly think it was on the edge of a major city.

York Press:

Terry's from the air in 1964

We have also dug out a couple of photographs of the old Clementhorpe factory, where Terry’s chocolates were made until Frank and Noel Terry bought the Bishopthorpe Road site in 1923. There was a tall chimney at Clementhorpe, with the name Terry picked out in white lettering down the side. The chimney, which had stood for more than 120 years, was demolished in 1974 because it was thought to be unsafe.

York Press:

September 1974: the chimney of the old Terry's factory in Clementhorpe beng demolished

Thirteen years later, in 1987, most of the rest of the Clementhorpe factory was also demolished, to pave way for a proposed £6 million block of 27 houses and 11 flats. Photographer John Giles was on hand to capture a giant mechanical crusher framing the half-demolished building against a brooding sky.

York Press:

Going, going, gone: not the Bishopthorpe Road factory, but the earlier Terry's factory in Clementhorpe, which was demolished in May 1987

Most of our photos today, however, come from inside the Bishopthorpe Road factory.

They range in date from a 1947 picture inside the cake wrapping department to an early 1990s colour shot showing women – still in their white caps and gowns – checking trays of chocolates.

They’re images that will, we’re sure, prompt a host of memories for any of our older readers who once worked at the factory.

York Press:

Checking chocolates at Terry's in the early 1990s

York oral historian Van Wilson reproduced interviews with many former Terry’s workers in her wonderful The Story of Terry’s, published in 2009.

Among those who words were recorded for posterity in Van’s book was Joan Pannett, who went to work in the packing room at Terry’s in 1934, aged 14. Her account gives a wonderful picture of what it was like to work there in the years before the war.

“I loved it,” she said. “There were some very nice girls. They had a belt training you to pack and I went on there and learnt. We had alleyways with seats. You had a big sack of straw shavings to put in the bottom of a box ... You had glossy brown paper and that’s what they put in the bottom of the chocolate boxes ...You did a layer of sweets, and some shavings and another layer. You was all brown with dust on your white overall.

York Press:

The Terry's cake-wrapping department in 1947

“We got a penny halfpenny for a dozen boxes. And if it was warm weather, there’d be no air conditioning, they only had green blinds they’d put down outside the building...”

OK, so not everything was better back then. But for many, many York families, this was an excellent company to work for. Terry’s in York may be gone – but it’s certainly not forgotten.