Indeed, hidden in the pages of history, it turned out liquorice’s arrival dated to around the 11th Century, when monks or Crusaders first brought the medicinal Mediterranean root to the county, depending on who you ask. I was intruiged by the list of attractions related to the history of liquorice: a fairytale castle, a festival, a farm, a museum and sweet shops. In particular, one place name kept cropping up: Pontefract, a town with liquorice sprouting between the cracks, which was located just one hour to the south-east of Pateley Bridge. I was keen to find out more.
A visit to the ruined Pontefract Castle gave me some clues. Built from the 1070s onwards, and at the tail end of a £3.5m refurbishment, the medieval keep was the site of multiple royal seizures and as many civil wars. It was a stomping ground for historical figures such as the Grand Old Duke of York, defeated at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460, and King Richard II, who was supposedly imprisoned and starved to death for treason on the site. Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, pops up in the story, too, having had an affair at the castle in 1541.
But perhaps the most surprising part of the story is that by the early 18th Century, Yorkshire’s imposing fortress had an entirely different purpose. By 1720, as demand shaped the local economy for medicinal liquorice (at the time physicians used it as a cure-all for everything from stomach ulcers and heartburn to colic, bronchitis and tuberculosis), the castle was rented out and roots were stored in the castle dungeons instead of weapons, gunpowder and prisoners.
“You’re standing on what was once a massive liquorice field,” said Dave Evans, curator of Wakefield Museums and Castles, as he showed me around the castle remains. “You need deep trenches to grow liquorice properly – up to 6ft in depth – which is why the castle hillock and its elevated grounds were the perfect environment. Beneath you is what was once a gigantic liquorice store.” While England was hardly short of imposing castles, one overriding factor prevailed: Yorkshire’s climate and geography suited the liquorice’s temperament far better than it did the warmongers’.