The Old Bakery

A Memory of Byworth.

The building in the distance is the old bakery. When I was a child/teenager (in the 1960s) my grandparents (Bert and Annie Hurd) lived in a cottage just behind where this picture was taken, and whenever we visited them we would go down to the bakery to see their friends Mr and Mrs Shoubridge (and Joyce Gumbrill who ran it and the little shop. Mr Shoubridge used to bake fresh bread daily in the oven which was heated by burning bundles of small branches called faggots. Then the ashes were raked out and the bread/cakes were baked in the oven by the residual heat. My memory says that one of the houses on the right of the picture was occupied by one Dr Death, but I cannot swear to that.