A love letter to Spicers... Workers, families and friends enjoy night of nostalgia and storytelling about old bakery

A night of storytelling, nostalgia, deep reminiscence, funny incidents, and the odd bit of poetry – that’s how a former workforce and their children and grandchildren came together at the Solstice Arts Centre to remember the former Spicers Bakery, at one time a major source of employment in Navan.

They were there to tell of everyday life at the bakery when men and women worked long hours, sometimes six days a week, but who were glad to get valuable work in the economically-deprived days of the last century.

There were tales of how men came home in clothes covered in flour, of the days when the company had a stable of horses to draw the bread delivery vans, but also of the “Big Events” – the Big Snow of 1982 when drivers struggled to get bread to rural areas and managed to deliver but became stranded themselves and had to “bunk in” for days in the homes of customers.

And then there was the Big Explosion when an LPG gas leak threatened the very existence of the bakery. Running through the rich tapestry of the history of the company was a deep skein of affection and gratitude to the Spicer family who had not only held the company together for so long but managed to deliver small but very important kindnesses on their journey.

The Stories of Spicers gathering was organised by Lisa Carroll, a native of Navan, a spatial planning student at TU Dublin who is carrying out academic research which will also be included in reports for the Heritage Council for the Collaborative Town Centre Health Check initiative.

Six generations of the Spicer family operated what was one of the most successful businesses in Co Meath for 178 years until it succumbed to the economic collapse in 2012. Spicer family members at the event included Liz Spicer and her son and daughter Kevin and Clare and Gwen Spicer’s son Sean (19).

Pat Sheridan told how he had started work at Spicers 52 years ago and the vans would have to be brought back to the yard in the evenings. “And at that time in the evening John (Spicer) would be there with his green Jaguar and brown leather coat and he’d come out of the gate of the office and shake hands and ask ‘how are you keeping Pat and how’s the family and how are you getting on on the road’”.

Whenever there was a problem he would say “Look after Pat”. “From Wednesday to Saturday my run was Dunshaughlin and sometimes coming down the road I’d have to hit the brakes fairly lively because there’d be a black horse coming down the Ratoath Road and on it would be John Spicer. A man called John Henry used to take in horses from Mr Spicer at Ratoath and many a time I’d meet him and I’d have to take my time. I just had to talk about John tonight because he was very good to me”.

“He gave great employment and he made lovely bread!”

Lisa Carroll, the event organiser, whose aunt worked in Spicers and who attended the Solstice event, said that there was once a strike in the bakery. “She was feisty and she went out on strike as well and when she came back a week later she was scared facing John Spicer but he gave her a full week’s pay and said ‘you were right to stand up for what you believed in’”

A woman named June was also in the office and Ms Carroll told the story about how June’s family home had gone on fire on Christmas Day 1959. The house in Athlumney was destroyed. “It was a few months later and the family was living in my granny’s house and John Spicer gave them the house adjoining the bakery and they tried to pay rent and he wouldn’t hear of it. They lived there for four and a half years and he wouldn’t take a penny. They protested and protested but he wouldn’t take it. I hear so many stories like that. Somebody said he was a quiet man but he also did so much good”.

One woman said that her dad was employed by Spicers. The van driver Johnny Monaghan (Sandy) couldn’t drive so her dad Sean O’Connor used to drive him around on deliveries. One day John Spicer came to the man and said “You’re a better man than I am because you have your own chauffeur!”.

The audience was asked how they feel about modern Navan but the answer came back in poetic form – “all changed, changed utterly” and many people didn’t like it. “It’s like a small city, people don’t seem to have time for one another, the social contact is gone, it’s just rat race, rat race”.

Navan-born Eanna Giles said that in his time a nurse Kerrigan delivered babies in the houses. His father, who came from Longwood, had been a manager in the bakery and left Navan in 1965. Mr Giles said he remembered rows of Spicers stables going right down to the Boyne canal. They were the days when youngsters went around in their bare feet. “The reason our shoes would be gleaming for Sundays was that we never wore them,” he said to laughter. There was also sustained laughter when he recalled the days when GAA members who surreptitiously attended soccer matches could be suspended or fined.

Ita McCormack told her father who was 12 years old at the time, joined Spicers on the eve of the First World War. The young boy’s father had died so he had to go out to work after school to support the family. He started work in the Spicer family garden and remained there until he was old enough to go into the bakery and he was employed there for 57 years. She said that in the early days “everyone was on a horse” and she remembered the first diesel van to be introduced to Spicers. “He used to drive Jack Monaghan, we used to call him Sandy”. There was more laughter when she told the tale of how she had gone down to the bakery to say that her father wasn’t well and that he wouldn’t be coming back to work. “And Paddy Walsh, God be good to him, said ‘thanks be to God, we hadn’t him insured for the last couple of years!’”.

Margaret McCann, originally from Rathfeigh, recalled how the bread delivery men delivered the newspapers, she thought on Tuesday and Thursday but was corrected by a member of the audience who said there were two other days for the paper deliveries (more laughter). People who had Spicer products delivered to their homes “could never forget the smell when the bread van doors were opened and the trays were pulled out, and granny would have the money piled up on the dresser to the penny and we would be told not to keep that man waiting for it.

Michael O’Callaghan told how there was a huge shock at the bakery when there was a major leak of LPG gas and local fire chief Alfie Kavanagh directed that traffic should be blocked off on the nearby road. There was the danger that a spark from a passing car could have set off a conflagration. The local school, St Michael’s, had to be evacuated and its pupils brought to safety. He said he had asked some of the bakery workers where they had gone when the bakery was cleared and there was more laughter when he said they replied “Up to Joe Smyth’s (bar)”.

Mary McLarney, who was accompanied by four other members of her family, said that three generations of her family had worked at Spicers, her grandfather John McLarney who started work with a horse and cart, and her dad who served there for over 70 years, her brother Liam who had taken over her dad’s run, her sister Claire who served in Spicer’s shop (in a summer job including Saturdays) for £6 a week, “so we have great memories of Spicers”. Her starkest memory was that of the Big Snow of 1982. Her dad was stuck out in the snow for three days and had to stay at a house in Castletown. He couldn’t get into Navan and herself, who had just started to drive at the time and Oliver Roberts. Set out for Castletown with huge banks of snow on each side of the road. “Anyway, we met him coming in because somebody had dug him out. People had come walking to his van carrying sacks, bought his bread and left him “with not a screed of it left”. Ms McLarney said that her mother, who is in her 90s, was delighted to be able to attend the Spicers night. “I’d like to say that Spicers were very good to us and we never wanted for anything”.

Clare Roe, formerly McLarney, said that their late father Joseph Keogh worked for Spicers from the age of 13 to his retirement at age 73.

He had once told the family how he was driving over a hump-backed bridge when the horse was “spooked” and bolted. The cartload of bread, cakes and buns went across the bridge and into a dyke. “dad loved telling us how he climbed down and retrieved all the loaves and deliver the bread (laughter). I’m not sure what state the bread was in that day”.

She recalled how on Tuesdays her dad would bring home the cakes and buns that were surplus “and our favourites then were, and still are, the Viennese chocolate buns and the doughnuts”.

The delivery men wore beige coats (and later white) and while they were washed and ironed by her mother Marion other ladies in the family dreaded to be asked to do the ironing because the material in the coats was so “stiff”.

Her dad not only delivered bread but did messages for the country people, bring and collect shoes to the cobbler, bring watches and clocks to the jeweller, posted letters and parcels and even collected medication.

“He may not have had any other contacts but he had a listening ear to the people who may not have had any other contact with other people. He sold Meath Chronicles, Drogheda Independents, cigarettes and flour and sometimes you wouldn’t be able to see him in the van because of the amount of goods he had in it. To this day our family often hear from others of the kindness shown to families by our dad when he delivered bread around the country.

“I worked in Spicers Confectionery in the shop on the Square with Pauline Casey, Deirdre Smith, Helen Rogers and Joe Reilly, all gone to Heaven. Light of Heaven to their gentle souls, we had such good fun. We served the customers, made up the boxes weighed the flour and got them all prepared for delivery. We have great memories of Spicers”.