The gingerbread tradition that led to so many claims of being the original

WITH a tradition of selling packets of gingerbread to travellers at the coaching inns and then the railway station during the 18th and early 19th Centuries, when the town began to grow in population the gingerbread business developed into a commercial success.

Several shops claimed to own the original recipe.

Looking at the old images of the streets of the town there are several signs with which shops lay claim to being the supplier of Ye Olde Original Gingerbread.

Although several businesses developed from the original gingerbread sellers bringing the trade into a family grocery business, the Mawdesley family established their gingerbread trade straight from their shop at No 1, Aughton Street very early in the 1800s.

Their family name became so well known for the product that the term Mawdesley’s Gingerbread was a very identifiable brand.

Church Street had a couple of shops which also claimed to be the original gingerbread shop.

Sharples at 18 Church Street, formerly Horton’s Cafe, was run by Elsie Sharples and her sister.

Elsie later married Harold Searle.

Number 18 was adjacent to the White Lion pub and later became the Ormesher sister’s sweet and tobacco shop.

Dorsets was another cafe and bakery which claimed to have been established in the 1790s and also to be the town’s original old gingerbread shop.

It was lower down from the Sharples Cafe but the family had also held the Chester House Cafe further up Church Street decades earlier.

The Dorset family were connected by marriage to the Mawdesley family but both families carried on their businesses selling Ye Olde Ormskirk Gingerbread.

The tradition of Ormskirk gingerbread is highly valued in the town as a local commodity that has become identified with the past but also very much a part of the future.

The recipe may have changed but the old bakers always said that it was the way that it was mixed and baked rather than the ingredients.

At the Ormskirk Gingerbread Festival on Sunday, July 15, the focus will be on all aspects of the town’s musical and culinary heritage.

The events 11am. start at

Mawdesley’s shop, stood at No 1 Aughton Street, seen behind the clock tower on a busy market day

Clockwise, from above left, Horton’s Cafe, Church Street (later Sharples), with Chester House Cafe visible in the background; Chester House Cafe; a Sharples wrapper; a decorative wrapper from Mawdesleys