The Chippy, Traditional Fish and Chips in Clacton on Sea

     Fish & Chips have been around for over 150 years, and have become a national institution here in the UK.  They were first served together about 1860 with two families claiming to be the first to have served these "Good Companions" as a meal- they were the Malin family from London and the Lee's of Mossley near Manchester.

     From the 1870's Fish & Chips spead at great speed, notably in London and the manufacturing towns of the Pennines, and quickly became an easily available nutritious meal for many industrial workers.

      This growth of Fish & Chips can be associated with the mechanisation on land and at sea, such as the development of trawl fishing in the north sea providing unprecendented supplies of white fish that could be transported promptly thanks to the development of the rail network that connected the ports to the heavily populated cities where there were lots of hungery workers to feed.

     From 1880 through to the post war years Fish & Chips sustained and brought comfort to the lives of the people who could just about afford to buy it, giving them a meal that the whole family could share and providing them with an important supplement to thier basic diets.

     By about 1910 there were an estimated 25,000 Fish & Chip shops in the UK, this peaked at around 35,000 shops by 1927 and between the two world wars most industrial towns had a Fish & Chip shop on almost every street.

     Today there are around 10,500 Fish & Chip shops in the UK and most of these are independant shops and greatly outnumber other fast food outlets such as Mcdonalds and KFC.

     One of the most interesting claims that Fish & Chips has to its name is that it helped win the First World War! It was so important was it to the nations working classes that it was kept off ration by David Lloyd George's war cabinet.

     During the years between the two World Wars the trade consumed around two-thirds of the UK's wet fish catch and in turn this demand necessitated the development of further rail links and the development of the great industrial fishing ports.

     When the Second World War broke out the deep sea trawling industry provide experianced recruits for the wartime Navy, and once again Fish & Chips were not subjected to rationing and were discribed by Sir Winston Churchill as "Good Companions".

     During the D-Day landings British soldiers identified each other by calling out 'fish' and waited for the response password of 'chips'.

     Although the number of Fish & Chip shops in the Uk are unlikely to be the same as in the 1920's and 30's the demand for the nations favorite dish remains the same.  And today's 10,500 shops supply the nation with a similar amount of Fish & Chips to those of the post war years.

     Many of these shops are 2nd or 3rd generation of the same family and are the focal point of many communities, Together these businesses use 10% of the UK's potato crop and 30% of all white fish sold in the UK and the industry generates an annual turnover of around £1.2 Billion.

      Our favorite fish to buy at the chip shop is cod which accounts for around 62% of fish sales, followed by haddock accounting for 25%.

     Most Fish & Chip shops today use FAS (Frozen At Sea) fillets caught by large modern trawlers in carefully managed fishing grounds in the icy, clear waters of the Barents Sea and North Atlanic, these fish are caught by vessels from Iceland, Norway, Russia and the Faroe Islands under stringent and strictly enforced regulations which have ensured good management of the stocks of cod and haddock in these waters and catches from this area account for 97% of the total cod quota for the Northern Hemisphere.

     'British' Fish & Chips are still going strong and are now a global phenomenon and this trend looks set to continue.