Sarah Nelson's gingerbread shop
Between the Lakeland poets, Beatrix Potter (creator of Peter Rabbit and friends) and Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons franchise, there is plenty in the Lake District for tourists to buy into. There is also Sarah Nelson's gingerbread shop in Grasmere; the shop was started in about 1860 by a local cook, Mrs Sarah Nelson, in the former village school (built about 1630) and is still staffed today by jolly people wearing costume of an indeterminate period looking like characters out of a nursery rhyme:
(Please click on the image for a less squinty size.)
The gingerbread itself is curious - quite peppery and dense and rather hard, like a compressed mass of fudge and biscuit crumbs flattened into a gritty layer about as deep as a pencil is wide. It gives the impression of being built to last!
The story of Sarah Nelson is a hard one, as she started selling cake (as well as taking in washing) out of a desperate need to earn money. Her husband's wages as a farm labourer were poor and not enough to support their two daughters, although both children sadly died of the scourge of their age, TB. Sarah outlived all the rest of her family and continued baking into her 80s. She died in 1904, aged 88.
(Please click on the image for a less squinty size.)
The gingerbread itself is curious - quite peppery and dense and rather hard, like a compressed mass of fudge and biscuit crumbs flattened into a gritty layer about as deep as a pencil is wide. It gives the impression of being built to last!
The story of Sarah Nelson is a hard one, as she started selling cake (as well as taking in washing) out of a desperate need to earn money. Her husband's wages as a farm labourer were poor and not enough to support their two daughters, although both children sadly died of the scourge of their age, TB. Sarah outlived all the rest of her family and continued baking into her 80s. She died in 1904, aged 88.