Barry: the Fry’s sign

What a treat this was to see!

I was slipping and sliding down the rain-wet pavement in one of Barry’s many steep streets, Canon Street, when I looked up and spotted this fabulous old advertising sign on the side of one of the houses, on the corner with Romilly Road.

The house didn’t look to have been a shop and it’s not exactly a prominent street, so I don’t know why this particular site was chosen to advertise the products of J.S. Fry and Sons, chocolate-makers extraordinaire. I’m sure every chocolate aficionado knows their name: Joseph Fry and John Vaughan began the chocolate dynasty, when they purchased the chocolate business of Walter Churchman, in Bristol, way back in 1761. The company passed through various family hands and name changes, becoming J. S. Fry & Sons, the biggest commercial producers of chocolate in Britain, in 1822.

Dentists have a lot to thank them for, as they produced the world’s first mass-produced chocolate bar in 1847 and, in 1873, Britain’s first chocolate Easter egg. Fry’s merged with Cadbury in 1919 so their famous name has almost disappeared, though Cadbury (now part of the Kraft empire) still produce at least one Fry’s-branded product, Fry’s Chocolate Cream.

As the trademark for Fry's Pure Concentrated Soluble Cocoa was first registered in 1885, I imagine the Barry sign dates from some time in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Certainly, in the newspapers of those years there are many advertisements for the product, at that time designated a food and endorsed by the medical profession. The examples above are from, left, the Chepstow Argus of 18 September 1899 and, right, the Weekly Mail, 10 February 1906.

Now, all this talk of chocolate has made me peckish …