Bob the Brit

A Bakewell Tart is a British pastry confection not unlike a jam tart.

These are usually around three inches in diameter with a pastry case containing a light spreading of jam, then almond paste (known as frangipane) topped with icing (frosting). There’s usually half a cherry decoratively placed in the centre. These are widely available and mass produced and are indeed very popular.

However, the residents of Bakewell, a small town in the Peak District about 150 miles north of London, lay claim to the original ‘Bakewell Pudding’.

The story goes that Mrs. Greaves, the landlady at the White Horse Inn in Bakewell (now the Rutland Arms), left instructions for a kitchen assistant to cook a jam tart. The cook misread the recipe instead of making a sweet pastry, simply spread the egg and almond mixture on top of the jam. When cooked, the jam rose through the frangipane mixture.

Bakewell puddings are usually around nine inches in diameter and, while several Inns in the area lay claim to the original ‘mistake’ there is, in Bakewell town centre ‘The Original Bakewell Pudding Shop’ that does a healthy trade in the ‘traditional’ puddings.

Hobson’s Choice is effectively no choice – you get what you’re given.

Thomas Hobson was a coachhouse (livery stable) keeper in Cambridge – about fifty miles north-east of London – in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

To ensure that the horses in his stable were used equally and to prevent the over-use of the more popular or stronger horses, Hobson’s choice was always the horse in the stall nearest the door. 

It clearly paid off, Thomas Hobson was a very successful businessman, in 1614, he helped fund a much needed new water supply into Cambridge by building a causeway from ‘Nine Wells’ near Shelford into Cambridge city centre. The ‘Hobson’s Ditch’ channels still run along Trumpington Street.

Hobson was wealthy enough to be able to acquire and extend ‘Anglesey Abbey’ – a country house about five miles outside Cambridge and now owned by the National Trust.

Hobson’s Choice was quoted in ‘England’s Reformation’ – a poem by Thomas Ward published (posthumously) in 1688 :

Where to elect there is but one,
‘Tis Hobson’s choice—take that, or none.

Hobson’s Choice inspired a play of the same name, by Harold Brighouse and first performed in 1916, it was subsequently filmed in 1954 by the prominent film director David Lean, starring Charles Laughton.  

Blackpool is a seaside holiday resort in the northwest of England, about 30 miles north of Liverpool and about 45 miles north west of Manchester.

As such it is one of Britain’s best known sea-side resorts, having become immensely popular in Victorian times when the cotton mills of Lancashire would close for a week each summer and the mill workers would take the new railways to the coast.  Rather than swamp the resorts, each mill would close for a different week allowing a steady flow of holidaymakers through the summer.

The heart of Blackpool is a stretch of promenade known as the ‘Golden Mile’. This stretches from a large funfair known as ‘the Pleasure Beach’ in the south, past three leisure piers (Blackpool is the only British resort with three) before ending at the northern end at ‘Blackpool Tower’.

 The promenade is served by electric trams which are brightly and spectacularly illuminated each autumn.

Blackpool Tower

Blackpool Tower was constructed in 1894 after the then Mayor of Blackpool returned, inspired by the Eiffel Tower, from the  Paris Exhibition in 1889 .

Blackpool’s tower rises to a height of nearly 520 feet, around two thirds the height of the Eiffel Tower. Nevertheless it can be seen for a radius of about thirty miles.

At the base of the tower is an extensive leisure complex – the ‘Winter Gardens’ that include an opera house and ballroom – which in turn is home to a massive Wurlitzer organ.

Blackpool Lights

Blackpool is famous for its electric illuminations which were introduced in 1879 and actually predate Edison’s patent of the light-bulb.  

The lights comprise over a million bulbs and extend for some six miles, accompanied by the illuminated trams. They are illuminated each evening for sixty six days from early September until November, thus extending the resort’s ‘season’ beyond that of most seaside resorts.

Like the Christmas lights in London’s West End the ‘turning on of the lights’ has been performed each year since 1934 with considerable fanfare by a topical celebrity.

Blackpool is increasingly turning to renewable energy to power the illuminations and there are plans for the display to be carbon neutral by 2010.

HP Sauce is a staple to be found in most British kitchens, it’s a dark brown, sweet/spicy ketchup that is usually served with a full English Breakfast.  

HP Sauce was devised by Frederick Gibson Garton, a grocer from Nottingham ( a city in the East Midlands, about 110 miles north of London and probably best associated with the legend of Robin Hood).

Garton heard that the popularity of the sauce had spread as far south as the Houses of Parliament in London, so in 1896 he registered the brand name H.P. Sauce – H.P. standing for Houses of Parliament – although he might properly have called in PW sauce for the Houses of Parliament are actually the Palace of Westminster. 

The label on a bottle of HP Sauce still bears the image of the Houses of Parliament.

Unfortunately Frederick Gibson’s financial acumen was less than his culinary skills and he fell in to arrears with a mister Edwin Samson Moor who owned the Midlands Vinegar Company, one of his suppliers.  Garton sold the recipe for “Garton’s HP Sauce” to Edwin Moor for the princely sum of £150 and a few years later, after tweaking Garton’s original recipe, Moor launched HP Sauce nationally in 1903.

The main ingredients of HP Sauce are :

• Malt Vinegar (from barley)
• Tomatoes
• Molasses
• Spirit Vinegar
• Glucose-Fructose Syrup
• Dates
• Sugar
• Salt
• Modified Maize Starch
• Rye Flour
• Tamarind Extract
• Spices
• Onion Extract.

As such it is suitable for vegetarians and has been classed as Halal.

There IS a version of HP Sauce manufactured for consumption in the United States (made by Lea & Perrins in New Jersey) but by all accounts it’s sweeter and less spicy that its British namesake.

Over the years the HP brand has been owned by Danone and more recently by Heinz, who announced that they were moving production to a plant in Holland. Despite protests and questions in Parliament they went ahead with their plans in 2006 and in 2007 the HP Sauce factory in Birmingham was demolished.  

Over 27 million bottles of HP Sauce are sold in the UK each year.

One of the brightest aspects of the regeneration of London’s South Bank is the renaissance of Borough Market.

Borough Market claims to have roots back in the Roman occupation of Britain and the foundation of Londinium, but the first credible record of a market on the site dates back to 1276. The market grew and prospered outside the influence of the City of London to the point where the City managed to get control of the market by royal charter from Edward VI in 1550, confirmed by Charles II in 1671. Unfortunately this generated so much traffic over London Bridge that the charter was repealed by an act of Parliament 1754.

The present market buildings were constructed in 1851, with additions through the 20th century.

The market continues to operate as a wholesale Fruit and Vegetable market each weekday morning, but the business is concluded by 8am.

When I worked near London Bridge in the 1980′s the site was deserted the rest of the time. This made it ideal for film locations, and both Bridget Jones Diary and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels were filmed in the area.

 In recent years the market has become known as a centre for top quality foods and artisan food shops, every weekend (Thursday through Saturday) the area becomes a bustling retail market and tourist destination.

Sadly, the location of the market also means that it is on the route of the proposed Thameslink 2000 railway upgrade programme and while the upgrades will greatly improve the rail network, a number of well loved and historic buildings will be sacrificed within the development.