lizzybuffy2008

Yesterday, Mr Cee and I went to London with our U3A 'London Explorers' group to visit the Peek Frean's museum.

The museum is in a room in the old factory site (the factory finally closed in 1989), which now houses lots of companies, including the 'Actor's Exchange' (Mr Cee suggested if you weren't happy with your actor, you could bring them in to exchange them *eyeroll*).  The museum is run by two volunteers and former employees of Peek Freans, and our guide was very knowledgeable.

Peek Frean's began production of sweet biscuits (which our US friends would call cookies) in 1857. Up until then, a biscuit would have been a twice-baked hard tack biscuit taken on long sea voyages to supplement the lack of bread for sailors. Jack Peek came up with the idea of incorporating sugar into a delicate, sweet biscuit, and the company grew from there, producing favourites such as the sweet custard cream, garibaldi, bourbon biscuits and savoury snacks such as twiglets.

Photos of fun memorabilia under the cut.
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It was a tiny but very interesting museum (and free to visit). They had original handwritten books detailing complaints, which made fascinating reading. So many customers reported finding hair in their chocolate biscuits! LOL!

I can also report that we got to eat some biscuits! I had a chocolate bourbon biscuit, which was delicious!