Coventry Bakers and Bakeries

I think you'll find that the entrance to Sutton's was where Bakers Lane is. The factory lay between Oldfield Road and the Massey Ferguson plant. I spent a short period of my early working career driving one of the electric delivery vans. The entrance to the Massey Ferguson plant was where Madeira Croft is now. Charlie Porter, the Evening Telegraph sports reporter lived next door to Massey Ferguson. His son was my best man. We used to nip next door to Massey's and borrow their differential pulley to lift the engines out of our old cars.

When did Savage's Bakery come into its own? Their bread was sold in mum's shop in the late 40's early 50's.

I think you'll find that Savage's became Mother's Pride and Sutton's Crown Bakeries became Sunblest. The Co-op model bakery in Torrington Avenue was from where we had our bread delivered. We used paper strip bread checks from the local Co-op grocery store by Earlsdon Island. We also used to have the Co-op milkman. The milk checks were originally paper strips, but became plastic disks in the early 1950s. The difference between the two services was that, if you didn't leave any bread checks out, the baker would leave you what he thought you needed and charge you at the end of the week, whereas the milkman would only leave you a pint for every milk check. So, if you forgot the milk checks, you didn't get any milk!

Thank you, I remember the most recent plastic milk checks - yellow or blue - well that was 30 years ago. Great milk in the long neck bottles, made great rice puddings !!!

When we lived in Bond Street we used to shop at the big Co-op in Corporation Street and I remember being jealous of families who also got their milk delivered by them as I thought the milk tokens were play money!

Sorry to harp on about music, but some nice things come from bakeries as well as bread. A Coventry family, long associated with our local bakeries the Overs, produced a star in the form of one of the finest classical organists, Simon Over. His profile is on Wiki for anyone to see. He is without doubt in my opinion, the most competent and articulate organist that I have ever known. In his early days, he played at Salem Baptist Church in Longford.

I remember the red and blue plastic milk checks for pasteurised and sterilised milk (in the long neck bottles) and the way my mum used to say "I must put the checks out" last thing before bedtime. Sometimes the lads in the street would pinch the checks overnight so the empty bottles would be collected and no milk was left. The poor old milkman would get a telling off from my mum and demand to know why he had "missed" her. The sight of all those lovely cakes in the back of the electric float as the bread delivery man slid out empty trays and replaced them with full ones lower down combined with the smell of new baked bread is a lovely memory.

I remember Gladdings, but was Wimbush anything to do with "Cov"? I know they had shops in the city, but where was their bakery ? Sandy Lane.

Wimbush was, if I remember correctly, a Birmingham bakery - they had a number of shops in and around Coventry

Yes I thought that was the case. Anyway their cakes were nice. LOL.

Does anyone remember Storers bakery in a road at the back of the Red House pub?

Although owned by Sutton's it was officially known as the Crown Bakery.

Yes I remember Storers. I only remember going there once and that was to order cakes to be delivered to the offices at Alfred Herbert, Red Lane.

My girlfriend worked at Storers, didn't know what I liked best. I think the cakes won.

In the 1950s, the vehicles carried either the name "Crown" or "Suttons". I also remember "Sutton's Crown Bakeries". By the time I went to work for them, they had been taken over by Weston's Associated British Foods and the branding had changed to "Sunblest", athough all the old employees still referred to it as Suttons. The main competitors were the Co-op Model Bakery in Torrington Avenue and Savages, which was later absorbed by Mother's Pride, now part of the Premier Foods group.