Totally toasty
Warm bakery rooms are hub for hard-up locals
IT’S a chilly afternoon and Ed HamiltonTrewhitt is plumping cushions and topping up supplies of free tea, coffee and biscuits ready for locals to enjoy.
The chef, 55, recently opened a “warm lounge” above the busy community bakery he runs.
And it won’t be long before these cosy rooms – with plush armchairs, shelves of “help yourself” books – will be full of people again, glad to get out of the cold.
Ed, who founded the Brickyard Bakery and Academy cookery school in Guisborough, North Yorks, says with winter coming and the cost of living still rising, spaces like these are essential. He says: “People need somewhere warm to go. With prices like they are, people are too scared to put their heating on, they’re just not using it.
“We know there will be people who freeze to death this winter. People are being left out in the cold, literally. It’s dangerous.”
It was a conversation with an elderly customer that inspired Ed to act.
“She told me her plan for the cold weather was to ride on buses all day – as that was the only way she could afford to keep warm.
“That just got me. I couldn’t have that. Our bakery oven is huge and gives out a lot of heat which
means our storage rooms above stay warm.
“Fuel rises meant I’ve gone from paying £1,000 a month to £2,200 a month to keep the oven on so I thought, ‘if I’m paying that, let’s make the most of it’.”
So Ed and his team cleared a room above the shop. He says: “We started off with one room but now we’ve opened three.
“We’ve got books, newspapers, everything you need to have time to yourself or, if you want, to be sociable. Here you can stay as long as you like,.”
Ed, who has cooked for the Queen, has signed up to Warm Welcome – the subject of the Daily Mirror’s
Christmas Appeal – a safe space hub for communities.
We are collecting donations to help buildings stay warm and open.
Ed’s colleague, marketing manager Eve Le-Fay, 58, says: “I met an elderly lady here who wanted to sit in the warm and read and she wanted conversation. A lot of people are cold – but they’re also very alone.”
As we leave Ed to his baking, a retired couple are on their way up for a cuppa.
Smiling, the man tells us: “In this day and age I didn’t think you could get anything for free but this really is. It’s brilliant.”