"Quickies" 16 - Jacka Bakery

This unassuming little shop has an astounding history. This is 38 Southside Street in the Barbican area of Plymouth. This little shop site is so old that this spot was not even called Plymouth when it started selling baked goods. It is so old that Sir Francis Drake could well have bought his bread here and the Mayflower pilgrims, on their way to the New World, almost certainly did too. The Mayflower pilgrims stopped off here about 300 yards to the left on the quayside, so that repairs could be made to their ship, some of them stayed at the friary about 300 yards to the right, which later became The Plymouth Gin distillery. I will stick my neck out in that case and say they certainly walked past this door.

Jacka Bakery is the undisputed oldest commercial bakery in Britain and it was founded when the year started with a 15. It is documented as far back as 1597 at least. It has operated continuously since then.

Biscuits made history, and The British Empire, and the world's largest navy would not have existed without them. It is no accident that a biscuit maker stood right here next to the quayside. By the mid 1800's the navy was mass producing them at nearby Royal William Yard but if you were a pilgrim, 200 years earlier, making your own private passage to a continent you knew little about, across the second widest ocean on the planet, it was biscuits that you needed.

You can find out more about ship's biscuits here in another post of mine.

It wasn't always the Jacka Bakery though. John Jacka bought the business in the early 1930's. The shop front itself is late 19th century, while the street is one of the oldest in Plymouth.