Sometime around the late 1940's the Lemon's Sweet Factory in Drumcondra was built. This was the Lemon family of the landmark "Confectioners Hall" ( 49 Lower Sackville Street, that got a mention in James Joyce's Ulysses).
Over the years Lemon & Co. produced such lines as Lemon’s Saturday Assortment, Lemons’s Seasons Greetings, Peggy’s Leg, Lettered Rock, Lemon’s Luxuries, Lemon’s Romance Assortment , Lemon’s Fruit Gems, Lemon’s Rum & Butter Toffees, Lemon’s Liquorice Toffees, Lemon’s Irish Butter Toffees, Lemon’s Taste of Ireland Tins, Lemon’s Orchard Jellies, etc.
In 1984, because of financial difficulties, the factory closed. Eventually the site was sold and "College Manor" a modern in-fill housing development replaced the distinctive factory building.
The brand name was bought by the Robert Roberts company who continue to supply a lot of the old Lemon's favourites.
Remembering Lemons Sweet Factory
"Lemon’s Sweet factory gave employment to hundreds of young men and women from the city and surrounding suburbs of Dublin, especially Cabra. Early morning traffic would see lots of cyclists heading into the factory to start work. Each Friday evening they would dash out of the gate on their bicycles heading home with their weekly wage packet in their pocket. The money was too quickly spent at the pictures or on a dance. The lads would make sure to buy their jar of Brylcream for to style their hair and the girls would make a mad dash into Woolworths for their make-up."
"I remember I worked in Lemons and it was coming into summer time. They had to close down the boiler for two weeks on the Friday. On Monday then they would clean the boiler. It was a big boiler and on each side of the boiler was a round hole, a porthole like on a ship. It was just enough to climb into. You had your old overalls on you and it was hot in there. You would put sacks down on the bottom. There were little cinders that would form in it from the side of the boiler. You had to go in there and scrape it all out. We had to get in there but I wouldn’t do it today. Talk about claustrophobia. It was so hot in there that by the end of the first week, I think everything must have moister in it, because our overalls were so dry that you could do that and your overalls would fall away. From crawling in there like that I got boils on me thighs, both of them. I was covered in boils from crawling along because there was only that much room. I don’t know why we even done it. It was like going back to Queen Victoria’s time putting the boys up the chimney. It was really that bad. My pores opened up and I attended the hospital. I was there one day and my trousers were down and this woman was, the nurse was taking care of the boils and she done that and like the bottle it burst and the puss hit the wall." – Bernard Coffey.
