The colonel's wife certainly used her loaf
WHERE Dicken's restaurant is now on The Green was at one time a bakery and close by was the brewery of which the village hall was once the Maltings. Frank Bowtle talked about his days at the bakery which was kept by his father Basil who also had a steam mill for grinding cattle feed behind it in Mill chase. Frank Bowtle: There was nine of us children and I was the youngest but one. My father almost died in debt. My mother was well over 40 before I was born. When I went to work I had to give my mother all the money. I was only 13 then. Colonel Gordon lived at Wethersfield Place. He was a Scot. I think he was a colonel in the Gordon Highlanders. He was retired. Old Mrs Gordon was a tartar. You would have to take a whole basket of bread and she would be there with the scales and weigh every one. And hold it up and look at it. The Bakery was also the place where you took your cakes to be baked. Connie Elsdon remembered: Mum used to give us a penny and we used to go to Greens bakery there used to be a lovely baker's shop there and we used to have a pad, a bread pad and a great lump of cheese for a penny, the old penny. We used to mix a big fruit cake and I used to take that and as the oven gradually went down with the heat, because they heated the oven					The Bakery, decorated for jubilee of George V and Queen Mary,1935
with faggots, it was sufficient to cook right through this lovely fruit cake. And then my sister went up in the evening the same day to collect it. And for a penny you could do that. They used to put the cake in two or three tins. We had a brick oven at Sandhills there were five houses; the bread oven at the back of No 4 and that was knocked down. Each house had a day when they used to do the washing in one corner in the copper and do the bread in the other. You only had it once a week, they shared it. No sinks in the cottages.
Wethersfield High Street with, right, Saffron House (white) which had a communal copper for brewing beer	Coppers had another purpose apart from washing. Jack Metson: At the end of Saffron House there was a copper where everybody used to brew. John Lovell: Beer wasn’t something you went into a pub and bought, they more or less give it to you at that time of day. Jack Metson: You could buy beer at a ha’penny a pint at that time. What they called seconds, off the brew. The proper beer was a penny. John Lovell: I have heard my father-in-law say you used to get half an ounce of tobacco. a clay pipe and a pint of beer for tuppence. At one time when they had one day off each year to brew the beer. The whole family used to brew beer. They would make enough for a whole 12 months. All of which explains why the village pubs didn't always do a great trade.
back		Click on pictures to enlarge		A Metson family album