Spotlight on baking

It’s Shrove Tuesday tomorrow, heralding the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday.

Many of us may be whipping up pancakes like the crew aboard HMS Cochrane, Rosyth in the first photo from 1979. Wrens Sue Thompson and Lovella Swimhoe are shown with leading Wren Kim Wilkins but does anybody know the identity of the fourth participant?

The second photo is set in 1974 and shows workers at Dundee’s Sunblest factory putting the finishing touches to bridies before they go into the oven. The factory operated for more than 70 years before closing in 1995.

This 1933 picture in the bottom right has no caption other than “Baking in Dundee” so the actual location where all the loaves are being prepared is a mystery. Do any readers have any suggestions as to where the picture might have been taken?

Seventh generation baker Iain Campbell has shops in Crieff and Comrie but it was his great-great-great-great grandfather Donald who founded the original bakery in Callander in 1830. Bottom left, two assistants pose in the doorway next to a window display brimming with baked delights and jars of sweets. There’s no date on the photo but the fashions suggest the 1920s.

Do you recognise anybody, or are you featured yourself? Let us know by emailing

The actual location is a mystery

Bread making somewhere in Dundee, 1933.

Pancake day on board HMS Cochrane, 1979

A window of delights, date unknown.

Bridies get the final flourish, 1974.