Interview with: Anne (in passing at Newcastle Museum)

Date:27/05/14

Location: Newcastle-Under-Lyme

Interviewer: Hilary Hughes

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

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

I was brought up in Smallthorne, I was born in 1941, and I remember the horse and cart from the Co-op used to deliver the bread and milk everyday.

And my husband came from Middleport where the bakery was, the Co-op bakery, and all the horses were based there. they used to go down there and play. Only the other day he was telling us, because he's invested in a bread-maker me husband not me, he was making his bread and doing very well. He was saying that the bakery was open at Middleport when he was little and they used to sneak into the yard of the bakery and if there were any cobs there, they used to just take one and go. I said, you'd be in borstal now, although it's not called that now is it. Fresh bread.

Me Mum used to send us up the corner shop at Smallthorne for bread, they never went town, they had the whole street you know, did all their shopping in the village, groceries, butchers, bread. She used to send us for a cob, a new cob and on our way home we'd pick little bits off it. She'd say, have you ben eating this cob again, those were the days. I'd be about three or four years old, but when they stopped delivering with a horse and cart I wouldn't know, probably in the 50's.

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Interview with: Aiden Herrick

Date:16/08/14

Location: Hanley

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 get fresh bread from the local shop.  It doesn't taste the same from the supermarket, the loves gone out of it now.

I make my own pizza bases with all proper fresh ingredients, stretch 'em out to any shape, not round.  They're just the nicest pizza I've ever tasted.

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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.

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Interview with: Lady 2 from Age UK knitting group

Date:20/08/14

Location: Tunstall

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 put a piece of bread in the toaster now and when it comes out it's little. I had bread and cheese for my tea, it didn't do me any harm and I'm 93, we didn't know what cholesterol was!  When i was young we use to have a piece of rolled up pudding and gravy before dinner.

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Interview with: Woman 1 from Age UK knitting group

Location: Tunstall

Date:20/08/14

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”.

It was beautiful bread was, it was lovely.  During the war I got bread from the Co Op.

My dad was a chef and he would make his own bread, it was alright but it wasn't like bought bread.  During the war he worked where they made the food, I was never hungry.

If I could get bread delivered now I'd have a loaf a day.

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Interview with: Elain Hughes & Karen Beardmore (sisters)

Interview with: Elain Hughes & Karen Beardmore (sisters)

Date: 21/08/14

Location: Stoke

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”.

EH

I was a good cook at school and when my sister was a baby my mother was poorly so every lesson that didn't matter like cookery and P.E. I had to be at home.  So it's my sisters fault I can't make bread.

KB

We were brought up in Penkhull and at that time there was a little bakery up London Road.  Marsh's it was called and they use to deliver up to the shops in Penkhull.  The bread was wrapped up in tissue paper.

EH

Our dad worked at a bakery for 30 years, that's why we're fat 'cause we ate all the cake.  It was 'Champion' when he first went, then it was 'Mr Kipling'.  He hurt his back there pushing a barrel to the mixer.  He was off for a while and when he went back he worked in 'hygiene', it was posh for a cleaner.

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