Joseph Huntley, a Quaker, started the business in 1822 as a small bakery at what is now 121 London Street, Reading, which at the time was on the main stage coach route from London to Bristol, Bath and the West Country. (A blue plaque is now displayed on the London St site on a building which houses AGE UK.) One of the main calling points of the stage coaches was the Crown Inn, opposite the London Street shop, and Huntley started selling his biscuits to the travellers on the coaches. The biscuits were fragile and vulnerable to breakage when transported, so they started using metal tins which were manufactured by Joseph Huntley Jnr.
Initially, a small biscuit baker and confectioner Joseph was then joined in this enterprise by his son Thomas. In 1841 George Palmer entered into partnership with Thomas (Joseph senior having retired) and the business went from strength to strength. They opened a large factory in 1846 on Reading’s Kings Road in what was a converted silk mill. By 1900, the firm was the largest biscuit manufacturer in the world, employing over 5,000 people. However, as the industry and market for biscuits changed production at Reading finally ended in 1976.
The company used large amounts of flour and one source of flour was Hambleden Mill, a few miles down the Thames just past Henley. Every week a barge, Maid of the Mill, brought flour upriver from the mill. Another and a little closer to Reading was Sonning Mill.
The Kings Road factory site expanded to cover about 24 acres and had an internal railway system with its own steam locomotives, one of these has been preserved near Bradford. The building we can see here is all that is left of the vast factory and once housed the social club and was the place where visitors were received.
