YOU can buy them all year round now, but they were once a special treat for Good Friday.

Hot cross buns, those spiced sweet buns made with currants or raisins and marked with a cross on top, were a ‘must’ on housewives’ shopping lists in the run-up to Easter.

Oxford bakeries worked flat-out to produce thousands of buns to meet demand. These pictures were taken at the Cadena Bakery in the 1960s.

There was talk at that time that national bakeries were cutting corners with their buns to reduce costs. Some were said to be buying rice-paper crosses that they could stick on. And, most outrageous of all, there were reports that large concerns were making their buns in the lull just after Christmas and putting them in cold storage until Maundy Thursday.

But Bernard Clark, manager of the Cadena Bakery in Mill Street, Osney, assured Oxford Mail readers that was not the case with Cadena buns. They were assured of a fresh bun if they bought one made at the Cadena.

He told Mail columnist Anthony Wood in 1966 that he would be working 15 hours non-stop – from 9pm to midday on Maundy Thursday producing buns in exactly the same way as he had done for the past 35 years.

In those 15 hours, he and his staff would produce 90,000 buns in batches of 3,000.

Mr Clark had his own thoughts on what made a good hot cross bun. “The better the ingredients, the better the bun. And a hot cross bun isn’t a hot cross bun unless it’s got eggs.”

That is why nearly 4cwt of eggs went into his mix at Osney with two tons of flour, 12cwt of currants, 8cwt of fat, 8cwt of sugar, 2cwt of peel, 2cwt of yeast, 1cwt of milk powder, 1cwt of salt, and 30lb of bun spice.

Oxford Mail:

  • Sheila Belcher and Mrs N Bradbury loading trays of hot cross buns for dispatch at the Cadena in 1960 – about 90,000 buns were made that year

Another feature that hadn’t changed over the years was the cross on top of the bun – at the Cadena, it was still piped on by hand, Mr Clark had learned his trade as a youngster in an underground bakery in London. He recalled: “You went to work in the dark and you came home in the dark in winter. You were lucky if you saw daylight all winter except on a Sunday.”

He won his first prize at the age of 15 for a single-tier wedding cake at the Master Bakers’ Exhibition in the London borough of Islington.

He joined the Cadena in Oxford in 1931 as a cake decorator. He took over as bakery manager just before the start of the Second World War and held the post until he retired in 1975.

He won 2,000 awards for baking and confectionery, including the British Baker Shield, the highest award in his profession.

The Cadena – the word means ‘chain’ in Spanish – had a long association with Oxford. As we recalled (Memory Lane, July 22 2013), the cafe in Cornmarket Street was a popular venue for shoppers, workers and visitors for more than half a century.

At first, the bread and confectionery for the cafe and shop were produced in a small bakery on the top floor of the building.

Oxford Mail:

  • Master baker Bernard Clark, manager of the Cadena Bakery for 35 years

It later moved to larger premises between Friars’ Entry and Red Lion Square, with the entrance opposite the stage door of the New Theatre.

The bakery moved to Mill Street, Osney, in 1964, but the firm’s days in Oxford were numbered.

Amid many tears, the cafe and shop in Cornmarket Street closed in 1970 and was replaced by a shoe shop and fabric shop. The bakery was later taken over by Rank Hovis McDougall.