Clodagh Finn: Sweet nostalgia with the return of favourite chocolate bar

Jo Kerrigan Nostalgia Urney Bars

I HAVE a bit of breaking news. Well, that might be overstating it at a time when the world is facing so many real and urgent crises. Then again, it’s at times such as these that we need a little bit of sweet nostalgia.

So here’s the update. The Two and Two, the luxurious, almost decadent chocolate bar once made by Urney Chocolates, is on the way back. Not straight away, but Leo Cummins at Hazelbrook Confectionery in Kildare says the return of the bar is one of the company’s next major projects for the year ahead.

Fans will recall the double fondant filling, coated with plain chocolate on the top and dark chocolate on the bottom, not to mention the signature leprechaun stamp on each of the nine squares.

Another is a plan to expand Iced Caramels — oh, those little folds of sweetness wicked enough to ruin your dinner — into a gourmet range with new flavours and colours.

If you think talk of such things is frivolous at a time when Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine and the world is facing a climate crisis, you are entirely right, although it’s interesting to recall that Urney Chocolates developed during one of the most turbulent periods in our own history.

Humble beginnings

It all started in Eileen Gallagher’s back garden after she moved into the former Church of Ireland rectory in Urney, Strabane, with her husband, businessman and lawyer Henry Gallagher, in 1918.

The local area was devastated by emigration, and so Wexford-born Eileen started a market garden on the grounds of her home in an attempt to generate employment.

She gathered flowers for Covent Garden in London first before developing a fruit farm with a range of fresh and preserved products.

In 1919, she applied for rationed sugar to make jam, but was offered chocolate instead. She readily accepted and went into her kitchen to attempt to make sweets. A phase of what we might call research and development followed.

With her husband, she picked up tips at the Glasgow Confectionery Exhibition in 1920. They bought chocolate-making equipment, hired a Dutch expert and, by 1924, Urney Chocolates Ltd employed about 40 workers.

But I’m getting ahead of myself because what jumps out from the story of the early years of Urney Chocolates is the fearless determination shown by the woman at the helm. She became one of Ireland’s first commercial travelling saleswomen, venturing to towns all over the country during the War of Independence and the Civil War.

According to the wonderful Dictionary of Biography, she carried two passes to provide for either Free State or Republican roadblocks. 

The entry by Terry Clavin continues: “Once, after the only bridge into Dingle was blown up, she was obliged to wade across a river and hitch a ride into the town on a cart of manure. On another occasion, she saw a mound of corpses at Castleisland following an ambush.”

That vignette is not only a measure of one woman’s incredible tenacity, but an illustration of the need for some sort of sweet relief, even at the worst of times.

Although we need sweet relief at all times. I remember being struck by that when I heard rugby star Tommy Bowe talk about the joy of biscuits in 2016 as he spoke about gearing up for a new season, post-injury. Biscuits, he said, were his guilty pleasure; his ‘go-to’ after dinner with a cup of tea.

Tommy Bowe loves a Jammie Dodger. Picture: Pat Good

Here’s the line that made an impression: “At the moment, I’m on a bit of a Jammie Dodger phase, but it can go from Jammie Dodgers to Toffee Pops to caramel digestives. I could talk all day about biscuits.”

Toffee Pops. Now there’s a memory that is as old and as enticing as talk of the return of the Two and Two. 

Is there anything more evocative than the memory of a sweet or biscuit first tasted in childhood? 

I still find it hard to believe that sweet cigarettes were once on sale, but I remember the box, the ritual of opening it and the illicit thrill of smoking/eating one of those little white sugar sticks with their red tops.

Ask anyone; they will have a list of childhood treats that send them off into misty-eyed raptures. I’ve read that our taste buds change over time, which partly explains why there is nothing to rival mother’s cooking and, by extension, the sweets we gobbled as children. Mind you, a cup of tea with a Penguin bar tastes as good now as it did then.

Enduring appeal

Then there’s the heady appeal of tripping along memory lane. Mere mention of the words ‘pineapple chunks’ sends me back years to our regular stop at Moriarty’s shop in Tralee before taking the road to Dingle. I didn’t know then that Eileen Gallagher had taken the same road many decades before in the hardest of circumstances, but the enduring appeal of her products tells its own story.

Which brings me back to Urney Chocolates. The chocolate manufacturer featured in one of Gay Byrne’s earliest broadcasts. And, as Eamonn Mac Intyre wrote in a letter to the Irish Times in 1999: As he says in his autobiography, “In those days people used to shout across the street: ‘Any time is Urney time’.”

Mac Intrye, a native of Strabane, goes on to say that the famous slogan is silent now, but it is not forgotten locally where Ireland’s first chocolate factory came into being.

Perhaps it will be back, in a new form at least, when the bar returns.

As Leo Cummins explains: “It is a project I have been working on for many years.

 A week hardly ever passes without me getting a text or email from a few people enquiring when we are bringing back Two and Two. 

The guys in Aunty Nellie’s Sweet Shops have always said it is their most requested nostalgia confectionery item.”

Cousins Noah O'Reilly, 3, from Carrigtwohill and and Joey O'Reilly, 4, from Midleton, pictured enjoying all the delicious sweets on offer in the Aunty Nellie's Sweet Shop in Midleton. Picture: Diane Cusack

For the uninitiated, Two and Two was a major seller from the 1960s to 1985, when production ceased. It had a successful relaunch in the 1980s, under the Cleeves banner, but was again taken off the market when cocoa prices soared.

Around that time, Leo Cummins bought the brand with another company, but Clara Candy, as that company became, did not have the space to facilitate the bar’s production line.

And here’s the Willy Wonka bit, courtesy of Leo Cummins: “The Two and Two required four stages of depositing with cooling after each stage, and even with a vertical cooling chamber for the last section. 

On its own, it required more than 12,000 sq ft of space, which we simply did not have. 

"We retained the moulds with their leprechaun motif and they remain in excellent condition ready for reuse while we also have the wrapping machines for the exact same foil and band format in which Urney wrapped the bars.”

The good news is that technology has moved on, making production easier. Trials have already been carried out.

“So,” says Leo Cummins, “I remain optimistic that we will have Two and Two bars back on shelves within the next two years.”

Meantime, let’s work on a slogan to go with the relaunch. How about: ‘Any time is Two and Two time?’