The Great Treacle Tart Debacle and Dead Lion Oddity

[lang rabbie]

Did Lyle's ever make their own Treacle Tarts

I think that there was a baker of Treacle Tarts (Hoppers Farmhouse Bakeries of Herne Bay, suggests Google) that marketed their tarts as "made with real Lyle's Golden Syrup" under a co-branding deal with Tate & Lyle.

However, Hoppers were bought out by Interlin Foods, which promptly moved the baking from Kent to Blackburn, before they then went bust last year. Part of the business has been bought by an Irish company, but I think they are concentrating on supermarket own brand stuff now.

 

[fishfinger]

My missus' dad was a senior chemist at T&L. He was (amongst other tasks) in charge of the "goldie run" (golden syrup production).
Unfortunately, I never met the man, as he died in the 1980's. But it was nice to find out, that he was responsible for making something that had given me a lot of pleasure as a child.
</basking in reflected glory>

 

[coccinelle]

Specifically the dead lion could represent the alchemical stage of Putrefaction.

There is a stage in laboratory alchemy where the green lion is used as a vessel to break down gold into its component parts and to release (specifically) the oil of gold which then goes on to make the philosopher's stone.

Bees and birds in alchemy always signify either distillation or sublimation, where the substance moves from one level to another, becoming 'philosophical' rather than just material.