Coventry Bakers and Bakeries

Hello to anyone interested in Suttons Bakeries. I'm Judy, Aubrey Sutton's daughter and Philip Sutton's niece. I saw one post mentioned a Mr Phelps - probably Bert Phelps who worked with my dad. There was also Jack Wood, Joe Serrano, Ben Checketts and lots more! Would be glad to hear from anyone who has any bakery memories, particularly as my brother Peter (who took over from dad at Suttons) has just died. Thank you.

Largest bakery in Europe opened. Anyone have any more details?

My dad named Tommy Hutt used to work there for a while it was in the 1950s. He died around 1960 but I still remember him going, I think he was on nightshift.

It's Mothers Pride, Stonebridge Highway

This was the Mother's Pride bakery on Stonebridge Highway. It produced 75,000 loaves a day for distribution over a 40-mile radius.

Longford's bakery was Jones's on the Longford Road, mid-way between St Thomas's Church and Hackett's funeral parlour (a North American term, and I know that Hackett styled himself a "funeral director"). The bakery, in the 2012 Google Maps street view, was a tattoo shop, but that shop - a part of a large building that included - in the forties and fifties (and probably earlier and later) the family home, the bakery, and the stables for the horses - once sold bread and cakes, and those Longford villagers that did not use the Co-op for bread and such kept the shop, the bread-men and the horse-drawn delivery carts very busy. (Where now there are houses between the once-bakery and the still undertakers' quarters, there once was an open field where the horses would frolic, and - I suppose - eat the grass.) Jones's bakery did not confine its deliveries to Longford; in fact, it delivered as far afield as Holbrooks and Radford, and probably more extensively. This much I know because I once accompanied Les Booth, a Jones's delivery man and a neighbour, on the cart, "helping" - to the extent that a ten-year-old might be deemed to "help" - with his deliveries. This delighted me enormously, but the delight was short-lived. While Les was delivering bread to a customer from whom he needed to collect money, I took in my hand the horse's bridle, to lead it a little farther along the street. My little journey involved passing a parked car, and Sod's Law, not to mention my incompetence, dictated that the cart's inside wheel scrape the side of the car. I was crimson with embarrassment. Les did not chide me at all, but such was my first and last day in the bread delivery business, and rightly so! The little scrape I had notwithstanding, that day has stayed in my memory for more than sixty years. The consequences for Les and his employment I never discovered, for I was unable to summon the courage speak to him of such; indeed, I avoided Les at every opportunity. I know he continued working for the Jones bakery, which means he took the blame for my actions. I have held a bridle upon occasion since, but never one of a horse in shafts, and never have I encouraged a bridled horse to walk beside me.

Jones did indeed deliver to Holbrooks, they delivered to The Empress Stores which has since been absorbed into Coventry Building Supplies. I remember Mr Jones, or rather a man who I assumed to Mr Jones, coming into the shop with a large woven basket full of bread. A short smiling chap with a bald head and gold rimmed glasses, bringing with him the smell of fresh bread. He had a horse drawn cart in 1959 when this memory dates from, but I also remember him having a brown van.

Thank you, Disorganised1. I would offer myself as a candidate for your protagonist - "short smiling chap with a bald head and gold-rimmed glasses" - but such is a far more recent version of myself. In 1959, still suffering the agonies of my adventure with a horse's bridle and the episode's concomitant debacle, I would still have had hair, would still have had eyesight that required no correction. As for your recollection of a "brown van", thank goodness that it was but a horse and cab I led along the road. Imagine the destruction my driving a van might have wrought! Again, thank you. Disorganised you might be, but you never miss the head of the nail.

What about Trouts in Gosford Street

Advert for Nicks' bakery, via Memories of Coventry book