Chapelfield Chocolate Factory

The Nestle factory seen from Chapelfield Road (2002) Photo credit: John Fielding.

One of my most abiding memories of Norwich as it was when I moved here in the 90s, is the aroma of chocolate wafting past our house in NR1 when the wind was in the right direction. The factory where they made the chocolate was owned by Nestle at that time and stood on the site of what is now Chantry Place. I've heard it said that we often remember smells and sounds better than sights and that is certainly true for me in this case. I only have a vague recollection of dour looking buildings with steel tanks and pipes emerging at various points sitting unobstrusively behind the city wall as I cycled round the inner ring road to get to Blockbuster Video. On one hand, writing about renting videos from a shop makes me feel like a bit of a sepia tinted relic. It also makes me boggle at how long the old Blockbuster Video shop has stood empty.

Despite its anonymous appearance, as someone who had read Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a child, I liked to imagine Oompa Loompas pushing the boundaries of confectionery within its walls as they diligently conducted their outlandish sweet experiments. It is probably easier to reconcile that image with Caleys, the founders of the factory rather than the multinational conglomerate Nestle. Caleys story starts with Albert Jarman Caley who founded the company in Norwich in 1883. Though he hailed from Windsor, he spent much of his adult life in Norwich, working first as a chemist on 31 London Street.

He branched out into selling soft drinks and the success of that operation led Albert and his son Edward to acquire a glove making factory in 1880. The factory began producing drinking chocolate in 1883 and eating chocolate in 1886. Let's Look Again describe Albert as:

a kind and considerate employer who took a keen interest in the welfare of his employees

so we might consider him Norwich's very own Willy Wonka.

Dahl's real inspiration though came from Cadburys where he had the dream job of being a taster while he was a pupil at Repton School. His evident love of chocolate endured throughout his life so he could say with authority that all the classic chocolate bars were created in the 1930s. After becoming a subsidiary of Mackintosh of Halifax, Caleys created Rolos in 1937 in keeping with Dahl's theory. Are we to assume that he wasn't a fan of Munchies which Mackintosh Caleys didn't create until the 50s? On that point, he and I would have to differ.

In 1969 Mackintosh merged with York's Rowntree to become Rowntree Mackintosh who were in turn taken over by Nestle in 1988. Controversially, the Yorkie bar was made in Norwich at that point without rebranding as the 'Norfolkie'. Nestle made the decision to sell the Norwich factory eight years later and it was demolished to make way for Chapelfield Shopping Centre in 2004. The factory had some loyal devotees though. A group of employees fought against the closure, asking:

Don't make it the 'last Rolo' at Norwich!

Although that campaign was unsuccessful they were able to relaunch the Caleys brand using equipment bought back from Nestle.

Chapelfield Shopping Centre opened in 2005 under the ownership of the company that eventually became Intu. It comprised a complex of shops and food outlets with the cornerstone a new Hoose of Fraser department store.

The development also included a number of des-res flats with views of the city wall, Chapelfield Gardens or the back of the Theatre Royal.

The centre rebranded itself Chantry Place following the collapse of Intu and continues to be a popular shopping destination and residence. What though of the exiled Oompa Loompas who regard the site of Chapelfield's former factory as their ancestral home and birthright and have vowed to reclaim it one day?

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