IT was an obvious choice when a Nelson sweet maker was deciding on a new name for a lozenge.

It would be the Victory – and the Victory V went on to become the most successful winter flavoured tablet ever made.

In 1959, a giant ‘Victory for Cold Journeys’ neon sign hung outside the Nelson sweets factory, which had grown from a humble shop to a six-acre complex.

Half a century and more ago, it drew its ingredients from all around the world and exported to just as many.

It used peppermint from Japan and China, liquorice from Italy and Turkey, pineapple from Honolulu, sugar from Mauritius and timber – for its packaging – from Russia.

In the midst of its sweet manufacture was a ‘museum’ with mementoes of its early days, such as a red hand cart used for deliveries and a post bag used by the office boy in 1899 – he was Jack Haythornthwaite who, by 1959, had risen to be managing director.

Also on display was century old sweet making equipment and a donkey engine, which ran the first electric light bulb to shine in Nelson, for Queen Victoria’s jubilee.

Fryer and Co (Nelson) Ltd, Victory V Factories, had its origins way back in 1830 when Nelson man Thomas Fryer met a travelling confectioner over a pint of beer and they decided to open a small shop in the town making peppermints and lozenges.

Eventually Fryer built a factory but when he ran out of cash 20 years later, Dr Edward Smith bought the business for £1,000 and ran it with his brother William Their formula for combining ether, liquorice and chloroform – it took five to seven days for the whole process – to produce Victory V Lozenges was still being used in 1959.

William took full control of the company in 1864 and it became a private company in 1906.

When he retired two years later, Jack became manager.

Down the years, the company had many notable firsts – it was the first to make jelly babies, slab toffee and decorated tins as sweet packaging.

And for more than 40 years – before it became law – the workers enjoyed their holidays with pay.

In 1959, it employed 400 workers, Jack’s son, John, was a director, including its own engineers, plumbers, electricians and carpenters.

It had its own laboratory, where every raw material from every corner of the globe and every batch of sweets were tested.

It had the only boiling plant of its kind in the world, the first automatic crystalliser known in the world and machines on which four operatives could produce six tonnes of wine gums a day.

Its representatives would also call on every confectionery wholesaler in the British Isles, once every five weeks.

In the depression of the 1920s, the company had also opened a toy factory, in a bid to find work for the unemployed.

Forty years later, that was still an all-round-the-year operation.