The Oldest Sweet Shop in the world is a child’s dream and a dentist’s nightmare

The citizens of Yorkshire’s North Riding are noted for their modesty, so it is no surprise to discover that the shop on Pateley Bridge High Street calling itself The Oldest Sweet Shop in England is, indeed, the longest continually opened purveyor of aniseed balls, liquorice and sherbet flying saucers on Earth.

When it opened in 1827, George IV was King, the Duke of Wellington commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces and the country was running through prime ministers at a then unknown rate.

‘I don’t think of myself as owner so much as custodian,’ admits Ben Howie, a former agriculture student who fulfilled every child’s dream by buying his local sweet shop in 2021. ‘Everything in here has history attached. It’s a living, working museum. I grew up in nearby Knaresborough and came here as a youngster. My mother did, too, so I know the place the shop has in people’s lives and memories.’

The timing of the shop’s opening was propitious, because Britain was entering a golden age of confectionery. The world’s first branded sweet, the liquorice Pontefract cake, had been created 60 years earlier some 50 miles away. Toffee was invented in about 1800. In the 1820s, these sweetie-jar staples were joined by the mint humbug. With increased mechanisation and the abolition of punitive sugar taxes, an industry emerged.

In 1847, Fry’s of Bristol made the world’s first chocolate bar. Barley sugars, marshmallows and acid drops appeared on the shelves in the 1850s. A decade later, jelly babies (first sold under the disturbing name of ‘unclaimed babies’), coltsfoot rock and Victory V lozenges made their debuts.

Fry’s created the chocolate cream as its rival in York, Rowntrees, produced the first fruit pastille in 1881. Wine gums arrived in 1893. Yorkshire was the epicentre of the British Empire’s sweet trade and Pateley Bridge was well placed to enjoy the fruits of its invention.

'We sell all sorts, but the traditional hard-boiled sweets — pear drops, humbugs, cola cubes and rhubarb and custards — are by far our bestsellers,’ Howie notes. ‘I’ve sampled every sweet here. When I came here, there were old-fashioned items such as sweet peanuts that were popular with an older generation of locals, but of which I’d never even heard.’

By 1900, the sweet shop — selling chocolate, ‘aerated water’ and Pateley Bridge rock — had become a fixture of the High Street. There were bumps along the way, of course. The confectionery trade in Yorkshire suffered fallout from the infamous 1858 Bradford Sweet Poisonings, in which trader ‘Humbug Billy’ Hardaker caused the deaths of more than 20 people after adulterating his boiled sweets with what he thought was gypsum (a cheap sugar substitute), but which turned out to be arsenic.

International events have also disrupted business at the sweet shop. Rationing during the Second World War limited Britons to 2oz of sweets a week. The relaxation of the ration, in 1949, caused troubles of its own. The Pateley Bridge & Nidderdale Herald reported that the shelves of the sweet shop were empty due to ‘bulk buying, mainly by adults’ and scolded that the ration might not be repealed fully if people didn’t get a grip and ‘show some restraint’.

As it was, sweet rationing stayed in place until 1953. It was at the start of the new millennium, when Keith and Gloria Tordoff took over what was then called The Olde Sweet Shop, that its days in the international spotlight truly began. Keith Tordoff is a former police detective with a gift for entrepreneurship (he was awarded an MBE for business services in 2018).

The appearance of the shop in Julian Calder and Alastair Bruce’s 2005 book The Oldest: In Celebration of Britain’s Living History sparked regional and national interest. Then, in 2014, the newly named Oldest Sweet Shop in England was crowned by Guinness World Records the world’s oldest confectioner, creating further headlines.

Today, customers come from as far afield as Australia and China and the tiny shop — no bigger than the average sitting room — is often filled by coach parties from Germany and the Netherlands. They find an interior that would be recognisable to its Edwardian patrons.

There is a long, wooden counter polished to a sheen by thousands of elbows, dark wooden shelves lined with hundreds of sweet jars, an ancient cash register that rattles up totals with a sound like a tommy gun and weighing scales that might have been used by Mrs Beeton.

There’s an antique vending machine that once dispensed Beech-Nut chewing gum, stacks of striped paper bags, tin signs advertising Ovaltine and Velvet Lady ice cream, wicker baskets filled with packets of cinder toffee and candy walking sticks hanging from a string above the fireplace.

Reputedly, the building, which dates from 1661, is haunted by a ghostly pipe-smoker whose spectral tobacco smoke still wafts from open doorways, although how you would smell it over the jolly scent of pear drops and Turkish delight is anybody’s guess.

The sweet shop’s array of what Yorkshire folk call ‘goodies’ is immense and sometimes bewildering. ‘We often get people standing trying to decide between raspberry bonbons and Black Jacks for 20 minutes,’ notes Howie. Not that he minds. ‘Sweets conjure up a lot of memories. It’s great to hear people’s stories.’

Despite financial crises since he took over, including the pandemic, Howie reports that the appetite for sweets has not diminished. In fact, it’s increased. In tough times, people find comfort in sweets, he explains: ‘Whatever’s happening, most can afford to buy a quarter-pound of Midget Gems or sherbet lemons. For a small amount of money, the enjoyment, well, it can last a lifetime.’

All this bodes well for the future. ‘It’s my hope that people will still be coming in 200 years’ time, to buy a bag of dolly mixtures and have a chat,’ avers the shopkeeper.

This feature originally appeared in the July 22, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.