A sugar bench on Manor Street

The workshop runs on one idea: children do the work. Not a demonstration with a tasting at the end — actual weighing, actual boiling, actual thermometers, and the mess that comes with it. A class of twelve makes twelve different batches, some of which fail, and the failures are the part people talk about on the way home.

Why twelve

Because thirteen is the number at which a member of staff stops being able to see every pair of hands. We have been asked many times to take more for parties and the answer has stayed no; the whole-workshop package exists precisely so a bigger group can come without the ratio changing.

Who teaches

The workshop is staffed by confectioners and by teachers, and the difference matters. Sugar work needs someone who has boiled a thousand batches; a room of twelve nine-year-olds needs someone who has held a room before. We do not name individual staff on this site — the team changes and a workshop should not be sold on one person's name.

What we do not do

• Sell sweets. There is no counter and no shop; everything made here belongs to whoever made it.
• Run classes bigger than twelve, for any price.
• Photograph children for the website. Every picture here is of sugar, not of somebody's child.
• Allow nuts in the building, including in packed lunches at camp.

The building

Two rooms and a yard. The front room holds twelve benches at three heights; the back room is the pan room, where the heat is and where children only go with a member of staff. The yard is where honeycomb gets made in summer, because it smells so strong that the front room becomes unusable for an hour.

Where we came from

The first year was one class a week, run around other jobs. It became six a week within two years, mostly by word of mouth from birthday parties, and camps followed because parents kept asking what happened at midterm. That is still the pattern: we add something when enough people ask twice.