Millennium Project
Under development
Rob Forsyth
Click on the Family Tree (l) and all other images for larger versionsI am very much indebted to Kate Grant, the G Granddaughter of John Wallin (b.1859) for the information in this article.
John & Elizabeth were living in Adderbury at the time of the 1901 census.They had six children. One of their sons, Harry Laurence, enlisted in WWI and was killed in 1917. In 2014 one of the roads in a new Adderbury estate was named WALLIN ROAD in his honour.
John died in 1939 and his wife in 1941 by which time their son Bernard and family had moved to Deddington. Kate continues the story of the Wallin’s Bakery:
My grandfather passed away in 1960 but his sons continued with the business - the bakery, the shop, and deliveries within the local area until their retirement in 1989.
Bernard had previously run a bakery in Adderbury, where there had been a tradition of cooking ”Sunday roasts” for villagers in the bread oven. Locals would bring their prepared meat in roasting tins, some before going to church, and collect later in the day. My sister and I can remember a similar tradition in Deddington when on Christmas morning locals would bring along their meat to be cooked in the oil-fired bakery oven by my Uncle Laurence.
My grandmother Dorothy ran the shop with my Mum Peggy, and her other daughter-in-law Mary. Both were local girls, Mum being the youngest daughter of James and Lilly Hayward who ran the greengrocers next door to the bakery (now a dress shop) and Mary whose maiden name was Bliss.
More about the Hayward family can be found HERE and more about the Bliss family HERE
 | Both families still have many members living in the village. Peggy and Mary alternated between shop duties and deliveries with their respective husbands in Deddington, Clifton, Duns Tew, North Aston and Worton. On Saturdays my sister Lauretta would help my Dad John with his deliveries whilst l worked in the shop with my Nan, Mum and Mary. Peggy in the shop (l) |
Various other family members and locals worked in both the bakery and
the shop over the years, in particular our Auntie Joan and Uncle Bernard
from Adderbury, who were Wallin family members, and Heather Bliss as
she was then (now Heather Hope) niece to Mary. Easter and Christmas
required additional hands-on deck, with the traditional offering of hot
cross buns and mince pies creating extra work. Lauretta was a regular
helping hand with the mince pie making!!! Mary & Laurence(r) |  |
l don't remember my grandfather, he passed away whilst l was very young*, but l have very clear memories of my gran bustling around in the shop, preparing lunch for her sons in what by modern standards was a very small and ill-equipped kitchen, and watching the Grand National on a very small TV in her living room - keeping our fingers crossed that the shop doorbell wouldn‘t ring during the race!
* Bernard died in 1960 and Dorothy in 1979. Bernard has a Memorial in the churchyard.
 | l can still smell the freshly made bread - batch and tin loaves were expertly removed from the oil fired oven using what was known as a “peel” and then from their tins using hessian type oven gloves ( a pair of which were recently passed onto me by my cousin Rodney Hayward, who had come across them when renovations had been carried out to the bakehouse after the brothers retired). Laurence (l) & John in the bakery |
The bread was then stacked on shelves in the bakery to cool, then carried through to the shop - which
involved walking through both my Gran’s kitchen and living room, which l‘m sure would not pass current health and safety standards. Bread and cakes that were due to go on the van for deliveries were stored in the "butcher shop" as we called it, now the flower shop, or taken through to the shop. (I believe there was indeed a butcher there years previously). Orders were taken on a regular basis and "put by“ for collection. l believe the biggest favourite of all was their locally famous Lardy Cake - made only once a week, a Wednesday from memory - other offerings were Jam Tarts, Sponge cakes, Donuts, and macaroons. None of which l, or others, have ever been able to find made to a similar standard elsewhere - though personally, the congress tarts available from Morrisons come close to the macaroons.
It was extremely hard work for my family, with the men starting 6 days a week at somewhere around 4 to 5 am, and not finishing much before 6pm each day. Sundays and bank holidays were their only "off" days, other than the regular 5-week days each family took once a year. For our family this meant a regular jaunt down to Woolacombe in Devon, but for Laurence and Mary it was time spent fishing their beloved trout.
The Bakery closed in 1989 as this article about the brothers from the Banbury Guardian foretold.
Laurence and Mary continued to live in Deddington after their retirement, with Mary sadly passing away in 2003 and Laurence in 2016. My Mum and Dad moved into Banbury to be closer to my sister and I and our children. They lived there until their deaths, Mum in 2013 and my Dad John in 2016, just 7 months after Laurence passed away." (7 February 2022)
Peggy and her husband John's lives are Well Remembered in the Deddington News along with Mary Wallin (née Bliss) together with photographs of all three and of Laurence.