News

After three generations, the ovens at Hayes bakery, in Chesterfield Road, Two Dales, will be switched off once and for all as on Saturday, June 14.

Owners – brother and sister team Stephen and Julie Hayes – are struggling to keep up with the workload due to ill health.

Stephen, 63, said: “Our great aunt Jessie started up the bakery in a little tin shack in Brook Bottom, Two Dales, in around 1912.

“She set it up while our grandad, Walter Hayes, went to the First World War, and when he returned he joined her.”

Stephen and Julie’s parents, Jack and Gladys, took over the business when Walter could no longer do it in the late 1950s

“My dad was a deisel engineer by trade,” Stephen, of Swanwick, said.

“He adapted himself to doing baking – he had to learn from scratch.”

When Jack Hayes took over he bought a number of vans which were used for home deliveries.

“We had a shop in Buxton, a shop in Ashbourne and then we had a shop in Firs Parade, in Matlock,” Stephen said.

“Then we had a coffee shop and bakery in Bakewell, which Julie ran for quite a number of years.”

Stephen got involved in the business in 1966, having been taught to bake by his grandfather.

Julie, 59, of Darley Dale, added: “I used to come in the bakery and help out when I was about five years old. “

She explained that ill–health has meant she and her brother have to give up working at the bakery.

Both she and Stephen suffer from diabetes, and Stephen had a stroke a couple of years ago.

Julie said working in a bakery is hard work.

“It’s getting up at three o’clock in the morning – it’s like the middle of the night, but you’ve got to get up because you have got to bake because everybody wants their produce fresh,” she said.

They told their customers that they were closing this week.

Stephen said: “They were very, very sad because they’re not just customers they’re friends as well.”

He said some customers have been with them for decades, such as Hollands Butchers, in Youlgrave, Lady Manners School, and Winster village shop.

“It’s an extremely sad time and it’s not what we want, but I’m afraid health comes first and we have got to try and muddle along from now on,” he added.

The pair thanked their loyal customers who have stuck by them over the years.

They also thanked their brother, Ian Hayes, who owns Mills and Black accountants, in Matlock, and has helped them with their finances over the years.

The pair will continue to run their sandwich business, in Somercotes.