Number 5 St Mary’s Gate has been a combined home and commercial premises for many years and was a bakery shop for decades before it became the Salon hairdressers. For much of living memory, it was Killer’s Bakery.
The building is more substantial than its neighbours. Its gable end probably indicates that it has always been deeper than it is wide. Hutchinson’s map of 1710 shows Wirksworth properties owned by the Gell family. It identifies No. 5 as the only Gell property on that side of St Mary’s Gate and its shape is the same as today. This would suggest that it has had some commercial use from the outset.
Bakers in Wirksworth
Trade Directories between 1791 and 1857 generally record about five bakers in Wirksworth at any one time, often members of these families: Mather (St John St), Taylor (St John St), Anable (North End), Bowmer (Wash Green) and Macbeth, residing in Coldwell St but there is some evidence that the family also used the St Mary’s Gate premises. If so, then the Macbeths probably gave up the St Mary’s Gate bakery around 1850, because by the 1851 census Thomas and Martha Baggeley are recorded at No. 5 as grocers, then as grocers/bakers in 1861.
In 1860, seven bakers were recorded in Wirksworth. This seems a lot for the size of the town at a time when larger families would also have baked their own bread. However, many of these bakers were also grocers and confectioners and it is not clear how many had large baking ovens. Baggeley and Palin were both recorded as bakers in the short St Mary’s Gate –what was going on and which shops were they using?
Luke Hall took over the bakery business from the Baggaleys in around 1910, although the family held ownership of No. 5 until 1973, when Adam Killer bought No. 5 and next door No. 4.
A. Killer’s Bakers (1945 – 1989)
In 1939 Adam Killer (1913 – 1981) was an apprentice baker with Luke Hall in Bolehill. During the war, Adam married Kathleen Webster (1919 – 2015), who had been born opposite No. 5 in the house that became Webster’s café and then Wirksworth Heritage Centre. Adam’s father, also Adam, offered the couple the opportunity to set up their home and bakery business in Nos 4 and 5 St Mary’s Gate. They built up the business until in 1973 Adam Killer took over the premises from Thomas William Baggaley.
Killer’s Bakery became a legend over the years. Killer’s bread was renowned for its unique flavour, thanks to the coke ovens, and the shop often sold out. Customers queued all down the road, especially for their hot-cross buns on Good Friday. Even the Duchess of Devonshire once had a Killer’s loaf – paid for by local Barry Joyce. New-fangled electric ovens were not well received and the old coke ovens were soon back in use, burning 2cwt (over 100kg) of coke every single day of the year to maintain the 480oF temperature.
Adam died in 1981, but Kathleen Killer continued working there after her son Philip took over the business from 1980 to 1989. Kathleen was full of stories about the ‘old days’. She remembered local residents using the coke ovens for their Christmas roast and how she and Addie allowed a local vagrant to sleep in the bake house when it was too cold to sleep outside.
