A piece of York’s history has been honoured with a new blue plaque at the Cocoa Works on Haxby Road, marking the former Rowntree factory and the role it played in shaping the city’s famous chocolate story.
The plaque was unveiled at a ceremony hosted by York Civic Trust and Clarion Housing Group, alongside the Rowntree Society and the Borthwick Institute. Former Rowntree’s colleague and D-Day Normandy veteran, Ken Cooke, also shared memories of working at the factory, before Councillor Martin Rowley BEM, Lord Mayor of York, revealed the plaque. We were proud to attend, represented by Kevin Shrimpton, York Factory Manager, and Sarah Peck, Community and Charity Lead, Nestlé UK and Ireland.
For generations, Haxby Road has been at the heart of York’s chocolate-making history. It was here that Rowntree’s became one of the city’s defining names in chocolate and the site was branded as the ‘garden factory’, a place built not just for making chocolate, but for the people who made it too. Alongside production, there were dining spaces, education rooms, a gymnasium, and gardens, reflecting an approach to colleague wellbeing that was ahead of its time.
And it wasn’t just the place that made history, it was what was made there. Over the decades, the site created some of Britain’s best loved confectionery brands. From KitKat, which has been produced in York since its invention in 1935, to Aero, and later Polo and After Eight, which continue to be made across Yorkshire.
The plaque itself includes a subtle nod to that heritage. Its design draws on York Civic Trust’s familiar blue plaques, while also referencing a historic KitKat wrapper. During the Second World War, milk shortages led to a temporary recipe change, and KitKat was sold in a distinctive blue wrapper to signal this wartime variation.
While the original factory building is now home to 279 apartments at Cocoa Works, chocolate making hasn’t left Haxby Road. We’re still right next door in York, continuing a tradition that goes back generations and keeping the city’s chocolate story very much alive.
Our York chocolate story goes back even further than the Haxby Road site. In 1725, an orphaned Quaker named Mary Tuke began making cocoa as part of her grocery business. The business was later bought by Henry Issac Rowntree in 1862. When Rowntree’s faced bankruptcy, the family asked Henry’s older brother, Joseph, to help save the company, and his push to strengthen the sweets and confectionery range led to the first Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles.
This proved successful and by 1890, Rowntree’s had outgrown its small production sites in mills, warehouses, and even above a pub in Tanner’s Moat and North Street. Over the next 20 years, Joseph moved the business into the purpose-built factory on Haxby Road.
With Swiss roots, Nestlé also has a long chocolate-making heritage through our brands like Milkybar and Callier. We acquired Rowntree Mackintosh in 1988, and we’ve continued to invest in York ever since.
Since 1988, we’ve invested more than half a billion pounds into our Haxby Road site. And 90 years after KitKat was invented here, millions of KitKat bars are still made on site every day. Around 2,000 people work across our York campus, spanning manufacturing, research and development, logistics and head office, with Aero, Yorkie and Polo also made on site.
From the original Rowntree’s site to Nestle's campus today, Haxby Road has been at the heart of York’s chocolate-making story for well over a century and we're proud to carry on that legacy.
Credit, Rowntree's Factory Photograph: Borthwick Institute for Archives.
