Biscuit Museum

Biscuit Museum

Mancunians' love for biscuits is famous. We eat more acts sweeter than anyone else in the UK.

Now Manchester's passion for all things biscuit has placed him on a list of three cities competing for a national biscuit museum.

Retired academic, Dr. Gordon Harris believes the city is the obvious choice.

73-year-old Dr Harris says "Having the National Biscuit Museum in Manchester will be a huge boost for the local economy." "Biscuits are big business. The British sweet biscuit market is valued at around £ 2 billion a year. A museum brings thousands of biscuit enthusiasts from all over the world to Manchester every year."

Dr Harris believes Manchester has the strongest case compared to other short listed cities, Carlisle and Norwich.

The biscuit addict who admits himself says "Manchester is not the most important place in the history of the country's biscuit production and consumption." "One of the most important places in the world.

“Not many people know of Manchester's biscuit heritage. Biscuits for Mancunians are more than just snacks. They've played a big role in our diet for a long time, so it's fitting that a national biscuit museum is the place. A biscuit museum will recognize the role biscuits played in making Manchester a great industrial city.

“We have an industrial science museum, a natural history museum and a football museum. We even have a costume museum. Why not a biscuit museum? "

Dr Harris is an expert on biscuits. He has just completed his life, The Secret History of Biscuits, a huge 600-page book that he has spent over twenty years researching and writing and will be published next year.

Long before the Romans built a castle in Mancenion, it was not until the Industrial Revolution that mass production began, although the history of biscuits is far back.

"Biscuits were a cheap source of energy for the ships building the canals and the people working in mines and factories," says Dr Harris. “If Manchester were the engine of the Industrial Revolution, biscuits were the fuel that powered it.

Everyone in the Heaton Chapel has heard of McVitie. But in the 19th century there were dozens of biscuit producers all over Manchester feeding the hungry masses.

“The Industrial Revolution meant that the infrastructure for biscuit production and distribution was in place. The first commercial biscuit dough mixer was a barrel with a shaft driven through a steam engine. The first furnaces were fired with coal.

"Tin biscuits were distributed by the channel network in order to reduce the damage that would occur if they were transported by road."

There is a very good reason why Dr Harris is passionate about biscuits. You can say they are in his blood.

He was born in Crumpsall right after the war and grew up in the shadow of the CWS biscuit factories where generations of his family work�% B