Lunchtime Talk: Sweet Remembrance - Confectioners of Sheffield General Cemetery

Was Sheffield a sweet city? Join Andrew Littlewood from Sheffield General Cemetery for a deep dive into the familiar names, forgotten characters and intriguing products that make up Sheffield’s confectionary past. 

Alongside a team of volunteers, Andrew has discovered some fascinating stories of the confectioners who reside in the cemetery. Names like Bassett, Butler, Dixon and Simpkin may be familiar to us, but people like Thompson, Lodge, Johnson, Peckett, Reckless, and Melhern not so. Equally, the products of the local confectionery industry, like British wine, funeral biscuits, comfits, LLC Lozenges, liquorice allsorts, mint rock, barley sugar and ‘spice’, are just as fascinating as the people who made and sold them. 

The book Sweet Remembrance – The Confectioners of Sheffield General Cemetery will be available to purchase after the talk and in the museum shop. Please be aware that this talk has been delivered previously at Weston Park Museum in 2023. 

This talk forms part of the programme of events complementing the exhibition Bittersweet: The Story of Sugar in Sheffield which opens at Weston Park Museum on 27 November 2026.

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