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This story was submitted to the people鈥檚 war site by Stephanie and Molly from Bodsham Primary School and has been added to the website on behalf of Miss Eileen Bartlett with her permission and she fully understands the sites term and conditions.

I worked for Tappendens shop in the bake house with Mr. Morris the baker.
He got to work at 5 am to make bread by hand.
I went to work at 6 am to cut the dough and weigh each loaf large and small. I would then put two at a time on large trays.
After they had risen they were put in a coal fired oven which the baker lit. The bread was baked for 45 minutes, in that time I came home for breakfast and came back when the bread was baked. The baker would have his breakfast in the bake house. He made a pot of tea by putting an old saucepan of water on the red hot coals to boil.
The bread was removed from the oven with a peel, which is a wooden shaft with a blade on the end. I tipped each loaf out of the tins wearing thick gloves I then stacked tins and bread ready to cool so that my father who was a rounds man for the shop, could deliver bread, grocery and paraffin bottle gas, to other villages and farms like Bodsham, Elmstead, Stowting, Stelling Minnis, Stone Street also to Petham, Waltham and Wye.
After the bread was cleared, we started on making cakes; we supplied a variety of cakes in flat wooden boxes to three army camps, Big Coombe Search Light Unit, Eastwell Towers and Wye Petrol Dump Army boys.
My day ended at 10 pm I had a half day on Wednesday and Saturday. My sister Connie worked in the shop counting coupons for her husband Claud, who also worked on rounds delivering bread, cakes and groceries etc. In addition to that he did A.R.P (Air Raid Precaution) and fire watching at night in villages.

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