ECCLES - LAND OF CAKES she published the first Manchester Directory listing traders, merchants and civic figures, and offered cookery classes alongside her other hospitality services. In 1769 Elizabeth Raffald published her cookery book, The Experienced English House Keeper, based on her own experience and dedicated to Lady Warburton, which contained the first printed records of many now common recipes, many of which were plagiarised by other authors, most notably Mrs Isabella Beeton. Elizabeth’s recipe for "Sweet Patties" is believed to be the basis of the Eccles Cake - “Take the meat of a boiled calf's foot, 2 large apples, 1 oz. candied peel. Chop the ingredients very small, grate half a nutmeg, mix with the yolk of an egg, a spoonful of French brandy and 4ozs. of currants. Make a good puff paste. Roll this into shapes and fill them. Lay a lid on them and turn up the edges. They are a pretty side dish for supper.” Note the use of real meat as with the original ‘mince pies’. Eccles cakes were first produced commercially in 1796 by James Birch from his shop at 56 Church Street on the corner of Vicarage Road, opposite Eccles Parish Church. In 1811 Birch moved to larger premises across the road at 29 Church Street and his new shop displayed a sign ‘Eccles Cake Makers removed from across the way’. His enterprising former apprentice, James William Bradburn took over the old shop in 1813 so he could claim historic ownership. Bradburn was the 21 year old son of the licensee of the Cross Keys Inn and there was a great rivalry between the two bakers with Bradburn proudly displaying his own shop sign claiming ‘Original and oldest established Eccles Cake Shop. Never removed’! Such was the success that within a decade Eccles cakes were being sold at all the fairs and markets around. In September 1830, the world’s first railway, designed by George Stephenson between Manchester and Liverpool, powered into Eccles to provide the town with access to a seaport. Eccles cakes were so popular they were soon exported to America, Australia and the West Indies, in specially constructed boxes. In 1836 James Nasmyth leased land from Thomas de Trafford alongside the canal and railway at Patricroft to establish an
22 Publizr Home