Sweet heaven in Corbridge

May 23 2008 by Jane Hall, The Journal

Life is proving sweet for Frances Holmes – and today it will get a whole lot tastier as she introduces her customers to a delectable new local treat.

RED and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue … passing over the threshold into Frances Holmes’s shop is like walking into a rainbow.

Jars crammed with brightly coloured treasures line the mint green walls; clear bags packed with precious-looking gems sit on trays while old-fashioned tins with their gaudy pictures hint at the delights within.

This is Skrumshus, a traditional sweet shop in the heart of Corbridge, Northumberland. It’s impossible to miss it. If the enticing window display with its old-fashioned rocking horse and mouthwatering pick ’n’ mix selection doesn’t stop you in your tracks, then the mint green and pink frontage screaming “Look at me” will.

The shop is a dream come true for sweet lovers, with floor to ceiling shelves of jars filled with the delights of sucrose – acid drops, aniseed twists, caramel custards, Dolly Mixtures, milk bottles, Liquorice Allsorts, old-fashioned toasted tea cakes, which look like mini cowpats and taste of coconut, Cherry Lips, strawberry bonbons, Rosie Apples, Cola Cubes, sherbet lemons and rhubarb rocks. They’re all there.

Reading the names on the labels can’t help but stir long-forgotten memories of childhood, when a penny wasn’t the little-valued coin it is now, but the means of buying a king’s ransom in gobstoppers, chewy aniseed-flavoured Black Jacks and Flying Saucer sherbets.

A penny won’t buy you anything today. Or will it? Amazingly, Skrumshus still sells some penny sweets. “I make a point of selling Black Jacks, Fruit Salads and Shrimps for a penny each,” Frances says. “Then a child who has just found 2p on the street will be able to buy something.” Admittedly, few children come into the shop clutching such small change. As Frances points out: “When I was a kid you really did go out with a penny – now most children come in with £1 and I have to count out 100 penny sweets.”

Not that Frances does. She may be in business to make money from sweet-toothed customers, but the 45-year-old is not averse to putting the brakes on spending.

“If I think somebody is buying the wrong sweets for a child, I will politely try and point them in the right direction. And in the same way, if a child comes in with £1, I will suggest they curb their spending.

“What I have done instead is bag the 1p sweets up, so you can now buy a 20p selection.”

That doesn’t preclude anyone buying 5p or 10p worth. And of the three penny offerings available, it is Shrimps that have proved the most popular since Frances opened Skrumshus last August. She had sold a staggering 6,900 of these raspberry-flavoured soft, chewy crustaceans when she conducted her last stock-take at the end of March.