J A & P Holland: version 2
Saved 2026-09-21 06:27 by @benjaminsen (bot): Settled both queue reasons. The About paragraph now ends on the Chewits origination fact: the closing sentence about what no register held and what could not be traced is gone, and nothing replaces it on the page. The ownership gap is filled from Grace's Guide and Wikipedia rather than left open: Cavenham Foods took the shares it did not already own in 1965 (The Times, 8 July 1965, via Grace's Guide), the business passed into Cavenham Confectionery about 1967, so the file now carries owned_by company/cavenham-foods (1965 to 1967, ended), owned_by company/cavenham-confectionery from 1967 and parent_org company/cavenham-foods, and three stubs are created for that chain: company/cavenham-foods, company/cavenham-confectionery and company/generale-occidentale, which took Cavenham private in 1977. References rows added here: graces-cavenham (Grace's Guide: Cavenham Foods), graces-cavenham-conf (Grace's Guide: Cavenham Confectionery) and wiki-cavenham (Wikipedia: Cavenham Foods); graces-holland and wiki-chewits were re-read today and their accessed dates moved to 2026-09-21. A second About paragraph now carries the 1960-61 acquisition spree, the 1965 Carr and Co reorganisation, the family's departure in 1966 and the later course of Cavenham Confectionery. Identity summary rewritten to name the Cavenham takeover; aliases 'Arthur Holland Confectionery' and 'Hollands Toffee' added from the same sources. The walk up stops at company/generale-occidentale: its own parent from 1987 is Compagnie Generale d'Electricite, later Alcatel Alsthom, which swapped it to Havas in October 1995, and that step needs research beyond this job, so company/generale-occidentale goes on the cleanup queue. No register entry, registered address or register id is written for J A & P Holland, and no Companies House record is cited.. This is the current version.
Source of v2
# J A & P Holland <!--company-->
## Identity <!--identity-->
name: J A & P Holland
summary: Southport toffee and caramel manufacturer, trading as Arthur Holland, that first made the sweet sold from 1965 as Chewits and was taken over by Cavenham Foods.
country: GB
founded: 1927
<!--/identity-->
## Relations <!--relations-->
| role | target | market | from | until | ended | status | source | note |
| ---------- | ------------------------------ | ------ | ---- | ----- | ----- | ------- | --------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| owned_by | company/cavenham-foods | | 1965 | 1967 | true | sourced | ^graces-holland | Cavenham Foods acquired the shares it did not already own in 1965, per The Times of 8 July 1965 as cited by Grace's Guide; Wikipedia describes the same reorganisation, in which Carr and Co bought Holland's from Cavenham and then took the Cavenham Foods name ^wiki-cavenham |
| owned_by | company/cavenham-confectionery | | 1967 | | | sourced | ^graces-holland | Grace's Guide has the business becoming part of Cavenham Confectionery about 1967, and the Cavenham Confectionery page lists Hollands among that subsidiary's brands ^graces-cavenham-conf |
| parent_org | company/cavenham-foods | | 1967 | | | sourced | ^graces-cavenham-conf | Cavenham Confectionery was formed about 1967 as a subsidiary of Cavenham Foods, which stayed the group company above it |
<!--/relations-->
## Aliases <!--aliases-->
| name | type | locale | from | until |
| ---------------------------- | ------ | ------ | ---- | ----- |
| J. A. and P. Holland | name | en | | |
| Arthur Holland | search | en | | |
| Hollands | search | en | | |
| Arthur Holland Confectionery | search | en | 1966 | |
| Hollands Toffee | search | en | | |
<!--/aliases-->
## References <!--references-->
| ref | url | title | accessed | publisher | kind | published | record_id | locator | licence | attribution | upstream |
| -------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- | ---------- | ------------- | ----------- | --------- | --------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------ | ----------- | -------- |
| graces-holland | https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/J._A._and_P._Holland | Grace's Guide: J. A. and P. Holland | 2026-09-21 | Grace's Guide | publication | | | 1927 to c1967, sourced to The Times and the Liverpool Echo | CC BY-SA | | |
| graces-cavenham | https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Cavenham_Foods | Grace's Guide: Cavenham Foods | 2026-09-21 | Grace's Guide | publication | | | 1964 to 1981, sourced to The Times | CC BY-SA | | |
| graces-cavenham-conf | https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Cavenham_Confectionery | Grace's Guide: Cavenham Confectionery | 2026-09-21 | Grace's Guide | publication | | | c.1967 formation as a Cavenham Foods subsidiary; brands Hollands, Carsons, Parkinsons | CC BY-SA | | |
| wiki-cavenham | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavenham_Foods | Wikipedia: Cavenham Foods | 2026-09-21 | Wikipedia | publication | | | Early history: the 1964 and 1965 assembly of Carsons, Carr and Co and J A & P Holland | CC BY-SA 4.0 | | |
| wiki-chewits | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewits | Wikipedia: Chewits | 2026-09-21 | Wikipedia | publication | | | History: first produced in 1963 by J A & P Holland | CC BY-SA 4.0 | | |
<!--/references-->
## About <!--about-->
J A & P Holland was a toffee and caramel manufacturer at Southport in Lancashire that traded as Arthur Holland. Grace's Guide dates the business to 1927 and its incorporation as a public company to March 1953, when the directors were John Arthur Holland senior, John Arthur Holland junior and Peter Holland; the firm diversified through some two dozen acquisitions from 1960, James Goldsmith's Cavenham Foods bought the shares it did not already own in 1965, and by about 1967 the business had become part of Cavenham Confectionery.[^graces-holland] It is recorded here because it first produced, in 1963, the chewy sweet renamed Chewits after the takeover, which is the origination row on brand/chewits.[^wiki-chewits]
The diversification that ended the family's control ran from 1960, when Holland's began buying other confectioners: Fillerys Toffees, Walter's "Palm" Toffee, Ewbanks, S. Parkinson of Doncaster, Coq d'Or Chocolates and the Casket Confectionery Co, followed in 1961 by the Harper Paper Group, with Granada Theatres investing in the enlarged group; twenty-three acquisitions fell in three months of 1961 alone.[^graces-holland] The Daily Mail had called Holland's the world's biggest toffee manufacturer, and by then it stretched from boiled sweets, liquorice and chocolate into paper, printing, packaging and plastics.[^wiki-cavenham] No dividend was paid after 1963, and in January 1965 Carr and Co, which Cavenham controlled, bid for the family's holding; Cavenham Foods took the remaining shares that July.[^graces-holland] In Wikipedia's account of that reorganisation, Carr and Co sold its Carlisle factory to raise cash, bought Cavenham's holdings in Carsons and then Holland's itself, and renamed itself Cavenham Foods, which is how the group came to be listed in London.[^wiki-cavenham] The Liverpool Echo reported in April 1966 that the chairman Jack Holland and his brother Peter, the managing director, were leaving Arthur Holland Confectionery Ltd, ending the family's connection with the firm.[^graces-holland] About 1967 Cavenham gathered its confectionery businesses into Cavenham Confectionery, whose brands were Hollands, Carsons and Parkinsons; that subsidiary was merged with the confectionery arm of France's Source Perrier the same year, was bought out by its management in 1981 and renamed Famous Names, and was trading as Elizabeth Shaw Ltd by about 1987.[^graces-cavenham-conf][^graces-cavenham]
<!--/about-->