AS the sun sets on Terry's, York waits to see what the dawn will bring.

With each production line closed - All Gold, Twilight, York Fruits - so an era's end rolls nearer.

Tomorrow more than 100 staff leave, the largest tranche of redundancies so far.

Many of these workers have spent years at Terry's and they face a difficult period of readjustment.

We hope bosses are giving them all the support they need.

Spare a thought, too, for the 100 or so left behind, rattling round a huge works once filled with noise and commotion. Their long goodbye is the strangest of all.

Although its demise has been more protracted than that of Rover, Terry's is arguably a bigger loss to York than the car maker is to Birmingham.

Consider the relative size of the two cities, and the fact that the confectioner has been in business nearly a century and a half longer than Rover.

Strangely, though, the Prime Minister and Chancellor never offered millions of pounds to save Terry's, or diverted their campaign helicopter away from the marginal Birmingham constituencies to this seemingly safe Labour seat.

However, we must look to the future. If Terry's is symbolic of old industrial York, then the expansion of the Science Park represents new, high-tech York.

Perhaps one of these fledgling companies will last as long, and mean as much, as that which first opened in Bootham in 1767.

Updated: 10:41 Thursday, April 28, 2005