Local history
A short history of
Blackpool rock
A stick of rock with the town's name running all the way through it is one of the most familiar seaside souvenirs in Britain. Here is how it came about, based on what the sources can actually confirm.
What seaside rock is
Rock is a hard stick of boiled sugar, usually with a coloured outer casing, a white centre and words that run right through it. Bite or snap it anywhere and the lettering is still there, reading backwards at one end.
The traditional recipe is mostly sugar and glucose syrup, boiled to a very high temperature, around the hard crack stage of 150°C. The Wikipedia entry on rock confectionery gives a good overview of the recipe and process.
How the letters get inside
The lettering is the clever part, and it is all done by hand. The boiled sugar is split into batches. Most is pulled, which works air into it and turns it white and opaque. Smaller batches are coloured.
- Build each letterStrips of coloured and white sugar are shaped into large letters, each one a long bar. An O, for example, is a white cylinder wrapped in colour.
- Assemble the boilingThe letters are laid side by side around a white centre, with white sugar filling the gaps, then the whole lot is wrapped in a coloured casing. The result is a large, warm bar called a boiling.
- Spin it outThe boiling is stretched and rolled into a long, thin rope. Because everything stretches together, the big letters shrink down to fit inside a stick you can hold.
- Cut and wrapOnce it has cooled and set hard, the rope is cut into sticks and wrapped.
Because the letters are built in at the start, a mistake cannot be fixed later. That is why making rock is a skilled trade.
Ben Bullock and the first Blackpool rock
The story most often told, and the one set out by Showtown, the Blackpool museum, starts not in Blackpool but in Yorkshire. Ben Bullock, a former miner from Burnley, ran a sweet stall on Dewsbury market and experimented with sweets that had lettering running right through them.
According to Showtown, his first lettered batch spelled out 'Whoa Emma', the title of a popular song of the day. The success led to his business, Bullocks Excelsior Toffee Works, founded in 1870.
In 1887 Bullock came to Blackpool on holiday and spotted an opportunity. Back home, he made the first batch of rock with Blackpool's name through it and sent it to the resort to sell to its fast-growing crowds of visitors.
Other accounts name different pioneers, and nobody has an airtight paper trail for the very first lettered sweet. The Bullock story is the version Blackpool's own museum tells.
Rock made in Blackpool itself
For its first years, Blackpool rock was made elsewhere and shipped in. Showtown says the first person to make it in the town was probably George Seniors, a former employee of Bullocks, in 1902. He founded the Star Confectionery Company, where the public could watch rock being made on Bank Hey Street.
Watching rock being made became part of the entertainment. According to Showtown, more confectioners set up in Blackpool through the 1920s, including the Coronation Rock Company in 1927, and some demonstrated rock-making to visitors on the Pleasure Beach.
Making rock in front of an audience made sense. It is hot, quick, skilful work, and watching a huge glowing bar stretched into a rope of finished sticks is a show in itself.
Other claims to the first stick
Like a lot of popular inventions, lettered rock has more than one origin story. Some accounts credit a Victorian sweet-maker known as 'Dynamite Dick', said to come from Morecambe or Blackpool. The food history site Foods of England notes that it has not been able to trace either Dynamite Dick or Ben Bullock definitively.
Earlier still, sticks of pulled and boiled sugar were sold at fairs. Putting the name of a resort through the middle seems to be what turned a fairground sweet into a seaside souvenir.
We cannot settle the argument here, and we would rather not pretend to. What is clear is that by the early 1900s Blackpool rock was being made and sold in the town itself.
Rock in song and story
Rock was famous enough by the 1930s to be a joke everyone understood. George Formby recorded the comic song 'With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock' in 1937, and it became one of his best-known numbers (Wikipedia on the song).
A year later, Graham Greene used the sweet as the title and central image of his 1938 novel Brighton Rock. The idea is that, like the lettering in a stick of rock, a person's nature runs all the way through them (Wikipedia on the novel).
Rock spread to resorts all around the British coast, each with its own name in the middle, and it is still sold along Blackpool's seafront today.
The comparison works because everyone knew how rock looked inside. Snap a stick at any point and the message is the same, which is exactly what a souvenir should do: carry the name of the place home with you.
A skill that is still around
Making lettered rock is still done largely by hand, because building letters out of hot sugar is hard to automate. Shops along the seafront sell sticks in every colour and flavour, and you will still find rock with personal messages, company names and dates running through it, made to order.
The basic method has barely changed: boil the sugar, pull and colour it, build the letters, wrap the casing, then stretch the whole thing out until a block you could not lift becomes dozens of sticks small enough for a pocket.
The Rock Factory today
Our building is called The Old Rock Factory, and we have kept the name. We are not going to claim a history for these particular walls that we cannot back up. What we can say honestly is that the rock-making has gone, and the name has stayed.
Today the building is home to makers and small businesses instead: people who build, fix, store, sell and design things in a town that has always been good at making something out of very little. A stick of rock was a simple idea, done with skill. We like to think the people working here now are in the same spirit.
Find out more about The Rock Factory, or see the businesses based in the building.
Questions
Who invented Blackpool rock?
Showtown, Blackpool's museum, credits Ben Bullock, who made the first Blackpool rock at his Yorkshire works in 1887 after a holiday in the town. Other accounts name different pioneers.
When was rock first made in Blackpool?
Showtown says it was probably 1902, by George Seniors at the Star Confectionery Company on Bank Hey Street.
How do the letters get into rock?
Each letter is built by hand from strips of sugar at a large size, assembled into a thick bar, then stretched until it is thin enough to cut into sticks.
Is rock still made at The Rock Factory?
No. The building carries the name, but the rock-making has gone. It is now home to makers and small businesses.
What was the first lettered rock said to spell?
According to Showtown, Ben Bullock's first batch of lettered sweets spelled out 'Whoa Emma', a popular song title of the time.
Sources and official guidance
- My little stick of Blackpool rock (Showtown Blackpool)
- Rock (confectionery) (Wikipedia)
- Seaside rock (Foods of England)
- With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock (Wikipedia)
- Brighton Rock (novel) (Wikipedia)
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