A Maynards Story, Not Quite An Allsorts Origin Story
The modern packet says Maynards Bassetts, but the sourced history we have here is strongest on the Maynards side of the family. Charles Riley Maynard and his brother Tom began manufacturing sweets in their kitchen in 1880, in Stamford Hill, Hackney. Charles’s wife, Sarah Ann, ran an adjacent sweet shop, selling their products to the local Stamford Hill community. The brothers formally incorporated the Maynards sweet company in 1896. That is a nicely human beginning: kitchen, shop, neighbours, and presumably a fair amount of sugar in places sugar had no business being.
From North London Kitchens To Proper Sweetmaking
Maynards grew out of north-east London, then expanded beyond the domestic beginnings that make confectionery history sound so charmingly impractical. In 1906, the company opened a purpose-built factory on Vale Road in Harringay. Some accounts note the site’s practical advantages, including access to water and transport links, but the broader point is simpler: Maynards moved from local sweet-shop production into the larger world of British factory confectionery. It sat firmly in that late Victorian and Edwardian tradition where family businesses, city neighbourhoods and industrial sugar all got tangled together.
The Wine Gum Family Connection
Maynards is especially remembered for Wine Gums, introduced in 1909 and associated with Charles Gordon Maynard, Charles Riley Maynard’s son. The family story includes Charles Riley, a strict teetotal Methodist, needing reassurance that the “wine” in Wine Gums was a name rather than a moral emergency. That little detail matters because it says something about British sweets in general: they often carry names, shapes and flavours that require explanation, and sometimes the explanation is only just enough. Liquorice Allsorts belong very much in that same national habit of making sweets that look slightly eccentric and then acting as if this is perfectly normal.
Why The Packet Says Maynards Bassetts
The modern Maynards Bassetts name reflects a later joining of historic British sweet brands rather than one tidy origin tale. Maynards was acquired by Cadbury in 1988, and in 1990 it was brought together operationally with Bassett’s and Trebor. Manufacturing for the three brands was consolidated in Sheffield in 1991. Cadbury later became part of Mondelez International, and in 2016 the Maynards and Bassett’s names were combined as Maynards Bassetts. Corporate histories like to make that sound neat. In the cupboard, it mostly means the familiar sweet names now live under one longer label.
Allsorts And The British Sweet Cupboard
Liquorice Allsorts occupy a particular place in British sweet memory. They are not the same as a fizzy chew or a jelly baby. They feel more like something from a grandparent’s sideboard, a corner shop jar, or the sort of bag that appeared at Christmas and then hung about long enough for everyone to develop favourites. Some people love the strong liquorice edge. Some are really there for the layered fondant bits. Some pretend to be above the blue and pink bobbly ones, which is rarely convincing.
A Small, Striped Piece Of Home
For British expats in Canada, Maynards Bassetts Liquorice Allsorts are one of those products that can make a kitchen feel briefly closer to home. Not in a grand, misty-eyed way, more in the very practical sense of opening a bag and remembering newsagents, car journeys, grandparents’ cupboards and the odd family argument about who took all the best ones. The Great British Shop keeps that sort of memory within reach, quietly, because sometimes home is a 165g bag of liquorice shapes and nobody needs to over-explain it.
