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Bakers and Confectioners

Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire

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The delivery van of baker H.J. Penny, outside Christchurch in Bath Road

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Bakers used to be found on almost every street in the town and villages. The concentration of the trade into large factories means that there has not been one operating in Bradford for some time, except for in-store in supermarkets, where dough that has been prepared elsewhere is finished.

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The earliest evidence for baking so far in the Bradford Hundred are Iron Age saddle querns found in the Budbury hillfort excavations. Later came this lower stone of a Roman rotary quern, a hand operated mill for grinding flour. It was found near the the villa site at St Laurence School, Budbury. An upper stone, which hasn’t been found, would have been turned so that grain was ground into flour between the two stones.

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William Summers’ bakery was at 2 and 3 Shambles, where he advertised as pastrycook, confectioner, fancy bread and biscuit baker. The printing on this paper bag makes much of his hygienic steam oven, made by T. Collins & Co. of Bristol, in which the bread and the fire are separated. It was perhaps the oven that was at the back of 15 Market Street, next to where George Summers, followed by Frank Summers, ran a blacksmith’s forge from at least 1830 until 1922, recently destroyed.

The building that is now the Georgian Lodge in Bridge Street was Charles Dainton’s bakery from early in the 20th century until 1937. In this 1953 photograph it belonged to Howard W. Phillips and was decorated in celebration of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It subsequently became the Georgian Wine Lodge, then a restaurant and hotel. The small shop window on the right has been replaced by a restoration of the one that would have been there when this was built as a house.

The Burgess family were bakers at 12 St Margaret’s Street, where they succeeded James Duck (recorded in 1851 to 1864) and Richard Stent before him (1841). Jeremiah and Sarah Burgess had been bakers in Church Lane (Winsley Road) in the 1870s. The shop later became an estate agent and is now the Backhouse betting shop.

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Even a small place like Turleigh had its bakery. This is the fancy bow-window of the shop there that is now a house and, inevitably, called The Old Bakery.

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The Bradford Co-operative Society had its bakery near the bottom of White Hill. Other 20th century bakers were A. Viner, W.L. Ware, W.R. Francis and H.J. Carter.