Not quite London, as it happens
The packet says Bonds of London, but the older brand story points west. The parent business behind the Bonds name was founded in 1881 by Edward Packer in Armoury Square, Bristol. In 1901, the Packer business moved to a purpose-built factory in Greenbank, Bristol, which later became tied to the Bonds brand. Then, in 1908, the company created the Bonds of Bristol brand while also acquiring Glasgow chocolate maker Carsons. So the name now on the bag has a neat metropolitan polish, but the roots are Bristol, with a bit of Glasgow in the wider family tree. Grocery history does like to rearrange the furniture.
Bristol and the serious business of sweets
Bristol was not a random place for confectionery to grow up. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was one of England’s important chocolate-making cities, helped by port links, cocoa trade, and a local manufacturing scene that included major names such as Fry’s. Packer’s Greenbank factory sat in that world, making chocolate and building a reputation at a time when British confectionery was becoming bigger, busier, and more branded. Bonds began as a chocolate name, not specifically as the origin story for this blackcurrant and liquorice sweet, so it is better to be honest: the sourced heritage here belongs to the brand family, while the product itself sits in the long British habit of bagged sweets and boiled favourites.
From Bonds of Bristol to the modern Bonds bag
The older records refer to Bonds of Bristol, not Bonds of London, which is a useful reminder that the name on a modern packet is often only the latest chapter. By the early 1920s, the Packer company and its Bonds line had grown into one of Britain’s larger chocolate manufacturers, employing more than 2,000 people. Later, the business passed through a tangle of mergers and owners, including Carsons Ltd and Cavenham Foods, before becoming connected with the Elizabeth Shaw confectionery lineage. The Greenbank site continued making confectionery under various names until 2006. None of that tells us the exact first day this sweet appeared, but it does explain why a modern Bonds bag carries more history than it first lets on.
Why blackcurrant and liquorice still makes sense
Blackcurrant and liquorice is the sort of flavour combination that divides a room in a very British way. Some people reach for it immediately. Others look suspicious, as if the sweet might ask them difficult questions. For those who grew up with jars behind a counter, paper bags weighed out by the quarter, or grandparents keeping boiled sweets in a tin that had once contained something entirely different, it feels familiar. It is not a bright jelly sweet or a fizzy modern chew. It is slower, darker, and more patient, the kind of sweet you keep in a bag, a car, or a coat pocket and then pretend you forgot was there.
A small taste of the old sweetshop
For British shoppers in Canada, Bonds of London Blackcurrant & Liquorice has that specific pull of something remembered rather than explained. It brings to mind corner shops, railway kiosks, family parcels, and the particular joy of finding a sweet you had not thought about for years. The history behind the Bonds name starts in Bristol rather than London, and this particular product’s exact origin is not neatly pinned down, but the feeling of it is clear enough. It is a proper British boiled sweet with a liquorice middle, and The Great British Shop is glad to give it shelf room for people who know exactly why that matters.
