Western Morning News (Saturday)
WEST’S KING OF SAUSAGES
A Devon-based meat producer is learning lessons from the past. MARTIN HESP hears more
AWELL-KNOWN Devon sausage-maker has bought a veteran bacon-slicing machine and he is admiring his 64-year-old purchase with pride and a hint of excitement. Which might sound like the most trivial and irrelevant start to a food article you’ve ever read, but there’s quite a story behind Charles Baughan and his 1956 Berkel and Parnall flywheel bacon-slicer.
Because Charles (pictured left) is a man who normally looks to the future. An innovator who likes to wrestle with new challenges and new ideas. His Newton Abbot company, Westaway Sausages, made national headlines earlier this year when it became the first meat-producing outfit in the UK to sell its products in 100% eco-friendly, compostable, packaging.
But when Charles is gazing at his razor-sharp red and chrome slicer with love and affection, he is looking in exactly the other direction. His inventive mind is filled with images from the past – he sees huge hams, pork pies, beef patties, sausage rolls and other examples of what we nowadays call charcuterie alongside countless fresh meat pies.
He does all this because they represent his own family’s history. His grandfather became famous in another part of England more than a century ago thanks to the quality of the sausages and other meat products he made, and Charles is wise enough to know that the past can often influence and sometimes dictate the future.
“I don’t really know why I spent over £2,000 on this old bacon-slicer,” he shrugs. “But having spent the last couple of years concentrating on things like reducing plastic in the environment, I thought it was time to touch base with my past. I am proud of what we do – proud of the sausages we make – but where did all this passion and knowledge come from?
“I’ve started to think about the Baughan family and its connection with sausages and other meat products. My grandfather started making sausages way back in 1898. He built up a big and impressive business – and, when you look back at the old photos, they really were making very delicious things to eat.
“So, I thought it was time I had a
look at that rich past and started to think of how my own family’s past could shape our future.”
“My grandfather, Charles Ernest Baughan, was born in 1875 and he trained as sign-writer and worked on Clacton Pier – but, while he was painting signs there, he couldn’t help noticing the success of traders selling sausages to the public arriving by steam ship and those promenading.
“So, aged 23, Charles started making his own sausages in the evenings and selling them on a market stall and to other traders during the day. By 1911 he had grown the business and made a name for the quality of his meat products – and he opened a shop where he continued to diversify into fresh meat, bacon, hams and savoury baked goods.
“He also sold cooked meat and cut sandwiches. He served the local community by doing rounds on a motorbike with a refrigerated sidecar.”
During the 1920s, the Baughan family continued to flourish, opening more shops supplied by a large meat processing factory which they built in Bury St Edmunds.
In the 1930s, Charles’ uncles started to take over the business from their father, and together they opened more premises – mainly pie and cake shops.
At this point there was a bit of a break in the generational link (if one dare use that word in this context) with sausages. It occurred – as was the case with so many family businesses – with the outbreak of World War Two. While Charles’ uncles carried on with the family business in the East of England, his father went off to war.
“My father was keen on challenges and he joined the RAF and trained as a pilot. By 1939 he was a senior pilot – still a bachelor aged 28 – and he was known as
‘Bacchus’ Baughan on account of running a good bar wherever he was stationed. Then, in September 1939, he was shot down and spent the war as a POW in Germany. My grandfather died in 1942, so my father never saw his father again.
“Post war, the three older brothers developed a van sales business – selling the Baughan’s brand of pies which, by this time, was distributing to retailers around the country. My father returned from his POW camp and was immediately posted to India, where he was awarded an OBE for his contribution in the partition of India. He also got married to my mother. By a quirk of fate, my father had been best man at my mother’s first wedding. Her first husband had been killed on the same raid where father had survived, only to be captured.”
As the uncles aged, they started to sell off the remaining parts of their meat-based business – with
the last being sold to Freshbake in 1982.
By this time neither pilot Reginald, nor his young son Charles, had anything to do with sausages, meat pies or anything else carnivorous, s, save as consumers. Indeed, deed, after his father had retired to the South outh Hams, Charles was probably an avid consumer of such things, having joined the Royal Marines.
“Then in 1998 8 – exactly 100 years after my grandfather had started making sausages – I started rted in the same trade. I joined Steve Turton, a well-regarded butcher in Exeter – again with a long family history in butchery. Together we grew
Westaway Sausages and in 2008 we went separate ways, with Steve and his family concentrating on butchery and myself and my family looking after the Westaway brand.”
So, there you have the story behind o one of the Westc Westcountry’s best best-known food bu businesses. Charles and his team at Newton Abbot now make over 30 miles o of best British b bangers every w week – using the mo most enviro environmentally friendly methods they can can. The various vario award-winning sausages and other meat products can be found on sale around the UK.
So, what about the 1956 Berkel
and Parnall flywheel bacon-slicer? “I don’t know…” shrugs Charles. “I just couldn’t resist it. Because, having led the way in plastic-free packaging – having spent a lot of time looking into the future – I started to look at the old family photographs and even found myself drooling over some of those fantastic looking bacons, hams and pies.
“I thought: I wonder? I wonder how we could use some of those amazing products – or ideas from those products – in what we do here today? For example, maybe there’s a recipe for a sweet pickled, air-dried bacon that would go well if the finished result was combined in some way with a classic frying sausage? Who knows, the concept could lead to the ultimate breakfast banger…”
Those of us who love a classic plate of sausage and mash or the archetypical ‘full English’ would be wise to watch this space…