The modern tin comes from a very busy Sheffield maker
By 2019, Simpkins was reported to be exporting to more than 40 countries, with exports making up around a quarter of its income, and producing about 80 lines of sweets in Sheffield. In 2009, the company was said to be turning out 2,000,000 sweets, or 35,000 tins, per day, which is the sort of number that makes one look at a small tin with fresh respect. That same year, Simpkins won a best new British product award at the Cologne confectionery trade show for its Dr. Stuart range of herbal sweets. Those facts do not tell us that Lemon, Honey & Camomile began on any particular day, and we should not pretend they do. What they do show is the world this tin belongs to: a Sheffield confectioner long associated with travel sweets, herbal flavours, and tins built for pockets, bags, and glove compartments.
Albert Leslie Simpkin and the glucose sweet idea
The company behind the tin, A. L. Simpkin & Co. Ltd, was founded in 1921 by Albert Leslie Simpkin in Sheffield. His own story is rather less tidy than a brand label can manage. After serving in the First World War, where he was mentioned in despatches and awarded the Military Cross, Simpkin was demobilised in 1920 because of severe wounds. During his recovery he had been given liquid glucose, and, finding that it was not readily available in solid sweet form, he set about making glucose travel sweets. That is a pleasingly practical origin: not a marketing brainstorm, but a man spotting that something useful would be better if it could survive a pocket.
From Pitsmoor to Hillsborough
Simpkin first worked as a retailer and wholesaler of sweets before buying a confectionery manufacturing business on Sedan Street in Pitsmoor, Sheffield. Later, he moved the operation to Hillsborough, where he turned a burnt-out refrigeration factory into a purpose-built confectionery factory. Sheffield matters here not because every sweet must be explained by steel and grit, though people do like to try, but because the company grew in a city with serious manufacturing habits. Simpkins sweets were aimed especially at dispensing chemists rather than simply fighting for space beside the louder mainstream sweet brands. The early success of Simpkins’ Orange Barley Sticks in pharmacies helped establish that useful, travel-sweet identity.
Why the tin became part of the point
Simpkins sweets were first sold in large jars, but the company soon shifted towards individual airtight tins. The reason was practical: sweets with a high fruit juice content were liable to turn sticky when exposed to moisture, which is not ideal unless one enjoys excavating a handbag with a teaspoon. In the 1950s, Simpkins introduced a seamless airtight tin that became a defining part of the brand. That little tin is not merely packaging. It is part of the ritual. You open it with a small click, offer it round, and at least one person says they remember these from a chemist, a railway station, or their grandmother’s sideboard.
A sweet with sensible shoes on
Lemon, honey, and camomile is a flavour combination with a calm, old-fashioned confidence. It does not need neon colours or complicated theatre. Lemon gives it brightness, honey gives it roundness, and camomile brings the herbal note that makes the whole thing feel suited to travel, weather, and minor domestic drama. For British shoppers in Canada, that is often the pull: not just the flavour, but the format. A proper tin of British sweets has a way of making a desk drawer feel slightly more prepared for life.
Small comforts travel well
There is something quietly reassuring about a Simpkins tin turning up far from home. It belongs to the same emotional cupboard as cough sweets in a coat pocket, mints in the car, and the emergency tin someone insists is “for visitors” while clearly monitoring it themselves. For expats, it is a small Sheffield-made reminder of chemist shelves, family parcels, and the oddly specific groceries people miss once they are no longer everywhere. The Great British Shop is happy to keep that sort of useful nostalgia within reach.
