The Bakery (Paperback)

This is the remarkable and unlikely story of how a bakery came to be built in a small Derbyshire village. Of the two orphaned traumatized children living in no more that an improvised wind brake (a cott.) on the edge of the great forest of Sherwood, and the common lands that stretched for miles to the north and east, who schemed, firstly just to provide enough food to survive. Many didn't in the harsh economic climate, of the cruel, pre-Victorian times in which they lived. Of childbirth, that could be a death sentence, and medical advancement's that came gradually, and through unlikely ways. It is the story of trickery and superstition, bordering on witchcraft, and the remarkable advancement through the industrial age. Of how illness, or injury, blighted the lives of all, and success could be no more than the ability to stay alive and healthy. Through it all, runs the theme of the bakery, based on the people who lived, worked and died there. It is also a history of the area and the age through which they lived, from the days of the highwaymen, the coming of the roads, canals, and railways, of the expansion of the church, and it's often eccentric priests. And of how disease was largely conquered by the event of clean water. And a population that was dragged kicking and screaming into the modern age.