THEY MADE biscuits that graced tea-tables for generations: Kimberley, Mikado and Coconut Cream and, of course, the mysterious Fig Roll.
But sweet nostalgia was the flavour of the hour as former employees of Jacob’s factory in Tallaght, Dublin, walked through the gates for the last time yesterday.
Many “Jacob’s girls” gathered to reminisce about friendships and romances forged at the factory, where manufacturing ceased this week.
Close friends Mary O’Reilly, from Balrothery, and Madeline Cullen, from Springfield, started at the plant on the same day in May 1983. They found the job difficult at first.
“It was very hard, physical work. Some machinery looked like it was taken from the Ark. But because we made such great friendships, we encouraged each other,” Ms Cullen said.
They disliked wearing the cerise pink overalls that marked them out as trainees, and laughed as they recalled a workmate whose uniform shrank after she tried to dry it quickly in her new microwave oven.
May Whelan, from Crumlin, who started in the early 1970s, observed plenty of social change in Jacob’s.
“It was mostly women doing the packing and men were always in the high-up jobs. It was a man’s world in Jacob’s for a long time, very regimental, but that changed. The men do the same jobs as the women now.”
May revealed she was briefly suspended for going to a pub to watch television coverage of Princess Anne’s wedding. A laughing male colleague chipped in: “That was Queen Victoria!”
Founded in Waterford in 1851 by two Quaker brothers, William and Robert Jacob, Jacob’s was soon established on Dublin’s Bishop Street. It transferred to Tallaght in the 1970s. The Jacob Fruitfield Food Group last year announced it would gradually move biscuit production out of the country, with the loss of 220 jobs. The group will continue to employ close to 100 people in Tallaght, Drogheda and west Cork.
Fig Rolls and other biscuits will be produced in the UK.
“That’s the Jacob’s brand gone now as we knew it,” says Maria Breen, from Old Bawn in Tallaght, a third-generation Jacob’s employee.
A Jacob’s girl remains loyal to the end, however. One of the great unanswered questions of our times – how do Jacob’s get the figs into the Fig Rolls? – is answered with a secretive smile.
“We’ll take that with us to our grave.”
