Butcher and Baker

Bottesford c1900. Courtesy of the Records Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland.

Mrs Challands: Three butchers, Mr Bugg, Mr Miller, and Mr Taylor. Now there’s still a Taylor going, it’s the great, great grandson. In my day when the butchers went out they used to take the meat to the various villages, Mrs Taylor used to sit on a very high cart, it was like a big box, it was high up, and inside the box was all the meat, there was no refrigeration or anything like that. They used to have horses, you know.

Interviewer: What about a baker’s, was there a baker’s?

Mrs Challands: Yes, we had a baker’s. In fact it was only in the paper the other day, they’re going to put a conservation on this old bake house, it dates back many, many years.

Interviewer: Could you take things to be baked there?

Mrs Challands: Yes, yes. And I know after the last war when the British Legion was founded there, they used to have their annual remembrance service and dinner. My father was secretary and he used to write to Duke of Rutland, Sir Dennis Bailey, and General Lamott, and all the big, you know, men round about, and they used to come. And the ladies of the village used to cook this dinner, but the bake house used to do the meat and come and carve it. And they used to have portable coppers to do all the vegetables, and one lady was very clever at sauces, and do all that sort of thing, and it was really a great time that they used to have. And then afterwards they used to have what they called a smoking concert. Various people would give their song or whatever it was, you know, but sing the same song year after year, you know, ‘The Galloping Sergeant Major’, and ‘Little Grey Home in the West’ which was Dad’s, and Grandfather’s was ‘Dot and Carry One’. They were great times those were, a lot of that’s gone now.

©EMOHA