KENDAL mint cake is to feature in the 50th anniversary celebrations being organised to mark the memorable ascent of the world's highest mountain.

The sugary confectionary helped power Sir Edmund Hillary to the top of Everest on May 29 1953 and half-a-century later its contribution to this remarkable conquest is still recognised.

Sir Edmund Hillary's son, Peter, who is organising the 50th anniversary festivities, has contacted George Romney Ltd to request that a supply of the bars is shipped out to Nepal to help celebrate his father's great achievement.

Romney's Kendal Mint Cake became synonymous with Everest after the British Everest Expedition, led by Colonel John Hunt, approached the then owner of the company, Samuel Thomas Clarke, to ask if he would do them a good deal because they were short of money.

He said they could have a free supply in exchange for some publicity. After the successful climb the company produced a celebratory Mint Cake, Romney's Original Everest Mint Cake.

The present managing director of the company and third generation owner, Shane Barron, grandson of Samuel Thomas Clarke, remembers as a ten-year-old boy packing the specially made mint cake. It had to be made in small tablets that were then sealed in tins and packed into tea chests.

"I was small and was one of the very few people who could get into the tea chests to pack the sweets. I remember putting the glucose on them. I also got some pocket money for helping," said Mr Barron. "I remember it was Coronation Day that we heard that they had made it to the top. We were watching the Coronation on a TV we had just bought second hand for the occasion.

"When the news came through my grandfather was over the moon, especially by the fact that Edmund Hillary had actually eaten Mint Cake on the summit. He complained because he hadn't been able to take enough with him to the top."

Everyone who has climbed the mountain over the past 50 years has been invited to the 50th anniversary celebrations.

Mr Barron said Peter Hillary, who has climbed Everest twice, approached Romneys to see if it could supply some Kendal mint cake.

"We were delighted to be involved again and to help celebrate his father's great achievement," he said.

In 1936 Sam Thomas Clarke established George Romney Ltd. He owned a wholesale confectioners in Kendal, but found it difficult to obtain mint cake. So in 1919 he decided to buy an old mint cake recipe, and started a factory in Leightons Yard, Highgate. This was later moved to Waterside Works and then to a purpose-built factory on the Mintsfeet Industrial Estate.

Today the factory, now in the hands of the fourth gener-ation, is still going strong.

However, the 1953 Mount Everest expedition was not the first time that Kendal mint cake has supported Britain's adventurers. In 1910 a Mr Robert Wiper inherited a mint cake business from an uncle. It was he who realised the potential of Kendal mint cake as an energy supplier, and it was he who supplied the 1914-1917 Transarctic Expedition under the command of Sir Edward Shackleton and also the first Everest Expedition.

In 1987 the Wiper business was sold to Romney's.

April 10, 2003 09:00