Interview with: Sarah Aldridge

Date: 19/08/14

Location: Chesterton

Interviewer: Steve Cooling

Permission given to use interview for website, exhibition and Staffordshire archive: YES

Question asked “What do you remember about bread or bread baking”.

We use to go and get bread a cottage loaf and sometimes a bloomer loaf.  I'd get them from the local bakers when I lived in Ramsgate in the early 1930's.

I moved to Stoke in 1996 and I would get bread from Burgess Bakery.

Bread now is full of water, I have a slice of toast from supermarket bread.  When you've toasted it it's gone down so little.

< Back to the Baking History page

Interview with: Margery Cooper

Date: 19/08/14

Location: Chesterton

Interviewer: Steve Cooling

Permission given to use interview for website, exhibition and Staffordshire archive: YES

Question asked “What do you remember about bread or bread baking”.

There use to be a bloke that made his own bread in Hanley.  I got my bread from the Co Op on Wellington Road.

We use to go past 2 bakeries when we got the bus to Trentham.  I know one of them was called Lack's.

< Back to the Baking History page

Interview with: Mandy Leyton

Date: 02/07/14

Location: Chesterton

Interviewer: Steve Cooling

Permission given to use interview for website, exhibition and Staffordshire archive: YES

Question asked “What do you remember about bread or bread baking”.

My mum use to make bread in 1975, I use to come home from school and there'd be a bowl in the airing cupboard with a towel over the top and I'd think 'mums baking bread again'.  She would make bread and rolls, not all the time just now and again.

She came from Aberdeen and would make Aberdeen Rolls 'Rowies' they called them.  We use to have them warm with melted butter and jam on.

I helped her to make bread once or twice and she would explain to me about the proving and the kneading. She always use to say 'you can't knead it too hard'.  She'd put it in to prove again and then she'd bake it off.

There's nothing like the smell of homemade bread.  I don't know if I'd make it by hand myself, if I had a bread machine I probably would.

< Back to the Baking History page

Interview with: Elaine Williams

Date: 19/08/14

Location: Chesterton

Interviewer: Steve Cooling

Permission given to use interview for website, exhibition and Staffordshire archive: YES

Question asked “What do you remember about bread or bread baking”.

I remember going for bagels with my dad, it was a Jewish bakery.  I was aged 5-12 and lived in Manchester, you don't see them bakeries round here.  They do these American ones in the supermaket in packets but I don't think they're as nice.  We would also get normal loaves from the same bakery, my dad sliced his bread like a door step.

< Back to the Baking History page

Interview with: Dorothy - Woman at Salvation Army Diner Club

Date: 02/07/14

Location: Chesterton

Interviewer: Steve Cooling

Permission given to use interview for website, exhibition and Staffordshire archive: YES

Question asked “What do you remember about bread or bread baking”.

I remember Embery's bakery also Swetenhams use to have a shop on the corner of London Road and Brick Kiln Lane, Chesterton.  Their bakery was down by the roundabout at Loomer Road, it's flats now.

< Back to the Baking History page

Interview with: Brenda Farrington

Date: 02/07/14

Location: Chesterton

Interviewer: Steve Cooling

Permission given to use interview for website, exhibition and Staffordshire archive: YES

Question asked “What do you remember about bread or bread baking”.

In the late 1930's at Christmas time my dad use to take our bird to be cooked at Stones Bakery in Newcastle. We would have a turkey or a duck or fowl.  We had to pluck it at home first.  We would sit there when my dad brought this bird in and we would pluck it and put the feathers on the fire.

< Back to the Baking History page

Interview with: Agnus Billinge

Date:19/08/14

Location: Chesterton

Interviewer: Steve Cooling

Permission given to use interview for website, exhibition and Staffordshire archive: YES

Question asked “What do you remember about bread or bread baking”.

I remember one year Talke Pitts got cut off because the snow was so deep.  There was a Co Op bakery in Butt Lane and my brothers got a sledge and got money off people round about em and went and got bread.

I remember my mother making bread in a dirty great big bowl that we use to put on the hearth by the side of an old range.  My mother always use to make her own bread up 'til during the war when you couldn't get the yeast to make it.  We use to buy it from the shops then.

The bread was gorgeous and while it was still warm you'd put butter on it.  She would make white, brown and malt loaf.  She stopped making after the war 'cos she said it's easier to go and buy it.

< Back to the Baking History page