Carr’s Water Biscuits

Known and loved the world over (our daughter reported great consternation in Muswell Hill earlier this year when, because of flood damage, the factory was closed down and there were empty shelves!)

. . . and still made in Carlisle. Carrs is no longer a family firm (now owned by United Biscuits/McVities), but I have been reading a book* about the Carr family. A fascinating story of a family and their times 1831 to 1931. Jonathan Dodgson Carr it was who left Kendal in 1831 to walk to Carlisle, where he eventually set up a factory for baking bread. But he knew that ‘The future lay in biscuits . . . ‘ He then built the factory that would remain in the same place, although much altered over the years, until the present day.
 
However, it was his grandson Theodore who, in 1890, made the first Table Water biscuits. They were based on a biscuit they were already making – Captain’s Thins, which themselves were based on the original ship’s biscuits which were carried on sea voyages. But he managed to reduce them to one third of the normal thickness, made them much more delicate in texture and paler in colour. They sold for sevenpence a pound.
 
There is a lot more that can be said about this story and the links with Carlisle and also Silloth, but this will suffice for now.
 
* The book is Rich Desserts and Captain’s Thins by Margaret Forster. It is a fascinating book, especially for anyone familiar with Carlisle, but also anyone interested in how people lived during that time. The family were Quakers, so following how they reconciled this with being in business is interesting too. It is very readable and, having been published in 1998, it is possible to get cheap second hand copies, as I did.