Merseyside has always been home to thriving factories which have employed residents from across the region, as well as different generations of the same family for decades.
Amongst the big names and industries there has been a number of factories specialising in cakes, biscuits and other treats and confectionery, from Cadbury's and Tate and Lyle to Crawford's, Jacob's and more.
While some factories are still going strong, all that is left of others is fond memories from former employees or souvenirs and pictures.
To reminisce, we spoke to a number of former employees of Huntley & Palmers, which was once based in Huyton, to find out what the factory was like before its closure.
Here we take a look back at how the Huyton factory impacted the community, from its opening to closure and what the site became next.
From a small biscuit bakery to a limited company
In 1822, J Huntley & Son biscuit bakery opened in London Street, Reading, and the business continued to flourish throughout the century, later being renamed Huntley & Palmers and becoming a private limited company in 1898.
By the late 1830s, the firm was selling about 20 different kinds of biscuit, from the Captain's, Abernethy and Oliver varieties to the more choice Cracknels, Macaroons, Ratafias, Sponge Tea Cakes and more.
Huntley & Palmers products were also part of historical event in Britain, such as providing ordinary and specially made emergency biscuits to the ill-fated British Antarctic Expedition to the South Pole in 1911 and making army biscuits and artillery shell cases during the First World War.
The business had its first factory in Reading and the brand became recognisable across the country for its biscuit tins full of family favourites like short bread, nice, lemon puffs, custard creams and other products such as cakes.
The birth of the Huyton factory
Huntley & Palmers had been experiencing a labour shortage prior to WW2, in particular the recruitment of women for packing at the Reading Biscuit Factory.
But in the early 1950s, technological innovations that were introduced to the factory led to a massive increase in output that only exacerbated the labour shortage.
The board recognised that a new factory was needed in the north of England and the search for a site started in 1953, with Huyton later being chosen as the location.
Construction started in 1953 and by 1955 Huntley & Palmers had opened a biscuit factory on Wilson Road, Huyton Industrial Estate.
Huyton also maintained the Reading tradition of encouraging members of the same family to work at the factory.
Husband and wife Colin and Moira Davies both worked at Huntley & Palmers in Huyton between 1970 and 1975.
Colin said: "I worked the night shift and my wife worked the evening shift. Moira started in the Christmas pack, we were like one happy family.
"If you wanted a breather you would jam up the line so the biscuits would block up and the line would go to waste straight from oven. This happened quite regularly.
"When you worked on the ovens in the summer, they used to bring cool orange drinks with salt in because it was so hot.
"You always knew the security were at the main gate at finishing time because the locker room was full of bags of biscuits thrown on the floor that were ready to be taken home."
At one point, Colin worked on the lemon puffs machine feeding the biscuit shells into the machine and said we would still smell of lemon by morning.
He said pay night was a big thing in the factory that would see employees come together to play cards.
Colin said: "On a Friday evening there was only security in the office area so we had the tannoy playing music which was the same tape on a loop of Engelbert Humperdinck, so we listened to the same songs all night.
"The shop floor sang the next song before it came on the tannoy."
"Here's my dad!"
After leaving the army and starting his own family, Alexander Easson got a job working at Huntley & Palmers, were he retired in 1976.
His son Andrew, 56, said he and his siblings have happy memories of the dad-of-nine and their childhood in Huyton, many that were centred around his dad's work in the factory.
Andrew told the ECHO: "I remember we would wait for him to come home at the top of the street.
"When the kids saw him they’d shout ‘here’s my dad’ and we knew he was coming into the road.
"He'd have a white bag which would be full of biscuits so he’d be stopped straight away. Sometimes he'd bring a large bin bag home full of broken ones.
"Once you heard that there would just be excitement."
Andrew said the biscuits were just a bonus to their happy memories of their dad and that his loving gestures soon became "family traditions".
Andrew said: "As soon as we woke up for school we’d all look under our pillows and dad had left us two little biscuits each.
"He was in the army so it was like a regimented thing he did every day.
"It was a nice surprise and the biscuits became a symbol showing us how much he loved us. It was a big part of our childhood."
Andrew also has early memories of attending the work Christmas parties and said some of their family photos are still stored in a blue Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin.
'There was always a great camaraderie'
Carol McIver, 66, began working at Huntley & Palmers as a teenager and later returned when she started her own family.
Now living in North Wales, Carol said the business employed many members of the same family - including her own - as her mum, two aunties and two cousins worked there at one point, as well as her best friend's mum.
She said: "We actually lived on Kipling Avenue which backed onto the factory. I worked there from when I left school when I was 15 in the office for about two years as an office junior.
"I had my eldest daughter in 1978 and when I finished my maternity leave I went back and worked in the factory.
"My mum had worked there for years full time and then she went part time.
"She’d do the 8-1 shift and I worked 1-6, so we would swap over my little girl at the gates and my mum would take her home.
"You’d always have to be in your position early, say five or 10 minutes before, so you could do a change over with the person on the shift before you.
"That was to make sure there was a handover and that the machines didn't stop."
Carol said she has funny memories of the social side of the factory, from climbing through a hole in the fence when she was late and friends clocking her in to being carried up a ladder by a colleague and being stranded on top of bags of flour.
She said: "It was good, there was always a great camaraderie."
Working with five or six people on a machine, Carol would see hundreds of biscuits such as lemon puffs and shortbreads coming down a conveyor belt to package and would occasionally sample the products not suitable for sale.
She said: "There used to be a tin at the end of the machine where all the broken or darker biscuits would be put which would then go to the shop.
"They were so tempting. I'm surprised we weren’t all the size of a house."
Famous faces and the Reading factory closure
Over the years, the Huyton factory employed many local people and created memories with well-known faces.
Amongst them was HRH The Duchess of Kent who was shown around the factory by Mr Palmer in 1958. Cilla Black was presented with a 21st birthday cake at a party held in her dressing room at the Palladium by staff from Huyton.
In later years, the company saw big changes, including the closure of their Reading factory in 1976.
Some of the machinery from Reading was sent up to the other factory in Huyton, which included the No.1 oven from the South Factory.
The baker on the No.1 oven wrote a farewell poem which was kept.
The source from Reading Museum reads: "R.I.P. In Loving Memory of No 1 Oven 1938-1977.
"You served us well both day and night. You baked them dark you baked them light.
"You were not left to dream your dreams of Marie - Nice - or Custard Creams. But put into a 'scousers' hand up there in Cream Cracker Land."
Cream Cracker Land' is a reference to Huntley & Palmers 'sister' factory, Jacobs, in Aintree and their famous Cream Crackers.
The final farewell and Ferrari's
In 1983, the Huntley & Palmers Huyton factory officially closed.
And less than a decade later, the site went on to have another life, when the Ferrari's nightclub was unveiled in 1992.
Located in the old biscuit factory on Wilson Road, the club pulled in some of the biggest names in sport and became hugely popular with a generation of clubbers.
At one point in the 1990s, Ferrari's was also one of the biggest nightclubs outside Liverpool city centre , but in September 1997, the club was destroyed by a fire.
By 2004, the brand Huntley & Palmers was relaunched after being sold by Danone to a new company.
