Back on Sunday 13th July Pontefract held host to its annual liquorice festival. I hadn’t gone to this in over ten years but had clear memories of what it used to be like.

There are three main roads in the shopping centre of Pontefract. Each of these used to be lined top to bottom with stalls and dotted around these there used to be entertainment spots. Not only that but it used to be an all weekend event and as you can see from this set of photos it used to be busy too. This isn’t just my memory playing nostalgia tricks on me there is physical proof of all these things.

But now, in this even reduce to one single day, there are maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the stalls there used to be and there was no street entertainment dotted around them all. There was supposed to be a Haribo parade, as they have a factory in the town and sponsor the event, but I seen no details on when it was actually happening.

It was just lack lustre and the stalls that were that lacked a little bit of variety. And I’m not sure if it’s that times have changed and small businesses don’t want to attend that sort of thing any more or if it’s the organisers that have put stall prices up so high people can’t afford to take that risk especially when people have less spare cash in their pocket than they used to but whatever it is the festival has greatly declined in quality.

Also for anybody curious I discovered that we’re pretty much on our own in the UK for spelling it liquorice and most of the world go for licorice instead. But there is a reason that Pontefract hosts this festival and if you’re a fan of liquorice you might know why; Pontefract cakes are little liquorice coins with a stamp on them and you can take a guess where they came from. This town is steeped in liquorice history, much like Croydon is saffron, but looking around in general or even on festival day you would never know that connection existed or be able to learn about it there.

I certainly left feeling a twinge of sadness inside to see what used to be an incredible event, that pulled people from a significant distance, is now just another shambles of nothing more than a food market.