You'd like to have admired their sauce...
In May 1838, the publishers Simpkin and Marshall (London) published ‘A Guide To Henley Upon Thames And Its Vicinity’, and dedicated it to WPW Freeman, Esq. the then Lord Mayor of Henley (and High Sheriff of Oxfordshire, no less.) And with it, an intruging ad...
Project Overview
The pocket-book was a typical guidebook of the time (an early Victorian ‘Lonely Planet’), painting in purple-prose the prospects of the town and its environs.
It might have remained an obscure edition, but for the fact a facsimile was produced by Julian Berrisford of Bell St (possibly of the Bell Street bookshop?) which our daughter bought at some point during her time at The Henley College (and likely a charity-shop purchase.)
The facsimile might have remained an interestingly obscure book on our groaning bookshelves save for the fact that on ‘rediscovering’ it - finding its ‘source’ lol - recently, I turned through the pages and, at 111, the advert for Henley Sauce.
Well, given Worcester has its Lea & Perrins, Sheffield its Hendersons and the House of Parliament its own HP, I thought it high time Henley rediscovered it’s sauce.
The condimental kind, aside from all the things that draw people here now from far and wide.
My contribution to this
So, here’s how I imagined The Henley Sauce could leap from the pages thumbed by people 186 years ago and into the kitchen cabinets of the 21st Century.
It would be amazing if a small business, a local concern, would undertake to revive the delight praised in the original advert. Or even if, unlikely I know, a contemporary bottle and label from the period emerged.
In the stead of that, here’s my Henley Revival. I give you, The Henley Sauce. Since 1838 (sort of ;)
