The Women Who Built York’s Chocolate Industry

The story of York's chocolate industry is often told through its great companies — Rowntree's, Terry's, Cravens — and the men whose names appear above the factory gates. But look more closely at the history, and another story emerges: one in which women were not peripheral to York's chocolate heritage, but foundational to it. From the eighteenth century to the present day, women have shaped this industry at every level — as traders, entrepreneurs, factory workers, campaigners, and makers.

This is their story.

Mary Tuke: The Woman Who Defied the Guild

The earliest and perhaps most remarkable figure in York's chocolate story is Mary Tuke. In 1725, Mary — a Quaker woman — opened a shop on Walmgate, trading in coffee, tea, cocoa, and chocolate at a time when such goods were luxury items, the preserve of the wealthy and fashionable.

The Company of Merchant Adventurers, the powerful guild that controlled trade in York, demanded she join their ranks. She refused. It was an act of extraordinary defiance for a woman in early eighteenth-century England — and it worked. As the Guild's authority waned (ships had grown too large for the River Ouse, and trade was shifting to Hull), they eventually conceded and made Mary an automatic member.

Mary's legacy extended far beyond her own shop. It was with the Tuke family business that a young Henry Isaac Rowntree served his apprenticeship — the man who would go on to build one of the most famous chocolate companies the world has ever seen. The Rowntree empire, in a very real sense, grew from the roots Mary Tuke planted.

Mary Ann Craven: The Woman Who Kept Three Businesses Alive

In 1836, Mary Ann Hicks married Thomas Craven, uniting two of York's most prominent confectionery families. When both her father and her husband died within a short period, Mary Ann found herself responsible for three businesses — and three small children.

She did not step aside. She ran the businesses, steered the company through its difficulties, and built M A Cravens and Son into one of York's most respected confectionery names, renowned for their toffees and humbugs. By 1881, the census records they employed 100 hands. Mary Ann was known for her high wooden armchair, positioned so she could oversee the factory floor and ensure her workers were focused — a detail that speaks to both her authority and her presence.

Today, Mary Ann Craven is remembered opposite the factory she built, with a beautiful stained glass window at All Saints Church on Pavement — paid for by her children as a tribute to a driven and determined woman.

Kathleen Leetham: Love Letters and a Chocolate Legacy

The Terry's story has its own remarkable woman at its heart. When the Terry family business was struggling in the early twentieth century, investment came from Henry Ernest Leetham — a powerful York figure whose daughter Kathleen was secretly in love with Noel Terry, son of the family. Her father disapproved, and the two kept in contact through hundreds of letters exchanged in secret via brothers, sisters, and family friends.

In one letter, Noel described being tasked at the St Helen's Square shop to sort through an old box of cutters and moulds used to make Conversational Lozenges — sweets that carried messages such as “Will you Marry Me?” He wondered what her answer might be if he sent her half a pound of the confection. It is one of the most quietly romantic stories in the history of British chocolate — and it unfolded in the middle of a family business dispute that would shape the future of Terry's for decades.

The Women of the Factories

Beyond the founding families, York's chocolate industry was built on the labour of thousands of women who worked in the factories of Rowntree's, Terry's, and Cravens. These were not passive workers — they were skilled, organised, and central to the social fabric of the city. The factories provided not just employment but education, healthcare, and community. Every York family had a connection to the chocolate industry, and for many of those families, that connection ran through the women who worked the production lines, the packing rooms, and the confectionery floors.

The Rowntree family, driven by Quaker values of social responsibility, were particularly progressive employers for their time — providing adult education, healthcare, and decent working conditions at a period when such things were far from standard. The women who worked at Haxby Road were part of a community as much as a workforce.

Agnes Pilopaso: A Modern Chapter

The tradition of women shaping York's chocolate story does not end with history. When we visited Agnes Pilopaso at her Tupughotua Cocoa Plantation in Guadalcanal in September 2024, we found a woman who had built a cocoa business from the ground up, won national recognition for her entrepreneurship, and created a cooperative in which the majority of farmers are women. Agnes is part of the same lineage as Mary Tuke and Mary Ann Craven — a woman who built something remarkable in the face of considerable odds, and whose work makes our chocolate possible.

And Then There Is Sophie

York Cocoa Works itself was founded by a woman who has been in love with chocolate since she was four years old. Sophie Jewett started making cakes at four, had her own chocolate fudge recipe by eight, was tracking the Cadbury share price as a school project at twelve, and taught herself to temper chocolate that same Easter. She launched her first company, Little Pretty Things, in 2009 — offering chocolate making workshops, demonstrations, and tastings from her own kitchen, working full time and studying alongside it, going to fairs and delivering workshops at weekends and evenings until she was ready to go it alone.

York Cocoa Works — the manufactory, the cafe, the workshops, the bean-to-bar chocolate — is the result of that obsession, that resourcefulness, and that refusal to wait for permission. It is, in the most direct sense, the continuation of a tradition that Mary Tuke began three hundred years ago on Walmgate.

The women of York's chocolate industry have always been here. It's time their story was told.

Explore more of York's chocolate heritage through our Chocolate City pages, discover The Confectioners of York, or read about our visit to Agnes Pilopaso's farm in Guadalcanal.