‘Thor Cakes’
Image: http://www.wirksworth.org.uk

“THARF CAKE is a circular cake made from oatmeal butter and treacle In Sheffield it is eaten on the 5th of November. As All Souls Day is the second day of November it may be that the custom of eating tharf cakes which obtains in Sheffield on the 5th of November has reference to the soul mass cake formerly eaten on the Feast of All Souls and on that day distributed to the poor. But as these cakes are of a coarse hard kind the custom may relate to the old fast of Advent called La Potite Carème Quadragesima S. Martini or little Lent, a fast which one might call the autumnal Easter. A year or two ago I noticed that a shopkeeper in a good street in Sheffield advertised tharf cake for sale by a conspicuous handbill in his window. As a rule I find that people are ashamed of tharf cake. They call it parkin instead of using the old word. Tharf-cake, and tharf-bread meaning unleavened bread are common in early English literature

On Caking day, which in Bradfield is the first day of November, boys and young men dress themselves like mummers and go to farm houses collecting money to buy tharf cake with.