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Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales
Derwen bakehouse was one of three small commercial bakeries that were built in Aberystwyth around the beginning of the 20th century. It was built in 1900 by Evan Jenkins, a local farmer, as a business for his two daughters. The building is in two parts: a brick-built preparation room where dough was placed in tins ready for baking, and a stone-built section containing a large brick-lined baking oven.
These early bakeries were in effect communal ovens, to which housewives brought their home-prepared dough for baking, paying for the service. The oven was heated by placing faggots of wood inside it. These were then lit, and when the chamber was hot enough, the ashes were removed and the tins of dough placed inside.
The building, which had been partly demolished, was moved in 1982, the preparation room being reconstructed based on surviving photographs.
Baking oven section of commercial bakehouse; workshop portion demolished and re-created on basis of photgraphic and oral evidence; stone walls strapped by metal bars.
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