In the years of and on either side of the First World War, the College kept a small herd of cows to provide fresh milk for the boarders and staff. But what of that other staple of the daily school diet, bread?

The College had a kitchen, but no baker and our bread most likely came from a source nearby. In 1910 a large brick bakery was built on Percival Road, just north of the Stanmore railway station, on recently subdivided land from the ‘South Annandale Estate’, now the suburb of Stanmore. In 1914 the NSW Government purchased the bakery and established the State Bakery, producing bread for the city. While financially successful, the main purpose of the Bakery appears to have been to regulate the market and prevent profiteering, a significant issue during the War. The Bakery also provided training and testing facilities for the 3rd Australian Field Bakery in 1916 before it left for the Western Front.

The State Bakery was sold in about 1925 but continued in operation as the Automatic Bread Baking Company (ABBCO), one of the largest independent bread bakers in Sydney for many years.

The Bakery was built with a ‘Federation arts and crafts’ façade which can still be seen at 92–96 Percival Road, while its location there is commemorated in the name of the Old Bakery café (where I bought my coffee this morning).

This photograph, taken in April 1916, shows a motor lorry which could carry 1800 loaves and represented cutting edge delivery technology at the time. The photograph is from the State Archives collection (NRS4481 MS3822P) and features in their current exhibition, ‘Windows into Wartime’. It also appears in a great new book, New South Wales and the Great War, by Naomi Parry and Brad Manera, which has been distributed to schools across NSW. Our copy is available in the Library.

Mr David Roberts
College Archivist