Bread Walk

Bread Walk

Seth Randall-Goddard

*He follows the smell of bread, way back in time. We recommend checking out his website and taking one of his tours*

https://sethrgoddard.wordpress.com/walking-tours-of-south-london/

Walking tours of south london bread making

I do these walks as an extension of my political belief - of my communal hope - that if a history of oppressed people can be found and given back to people, they can take pride and courage in their history and so their present too. My walks, therefore, are about bread, and also not. Primarily, they are about the people that make bread.

The following is an excerpt inspired and complimenting one of my bread walks:

Near here stood windmills, 200 years before. Both sketched out in drawings by anonymous artists; Freeman’s Mill derelict already. Perhaps after Albion, they recovered a little, lasted for a few more years? But already Camberwell was changing. The newly formed industrial proletariat were coming; over 230,000 people bloomed in the area by the late 19th century. The small village was swallowed, the rowdy and necessary fairs that once sprawled on the surrounding fields were cracked down on, and soon even the industry itself withered, was replaced by grand homes for the new middle classes. Later squatters breathed new life into the area, danced rowdy over the wet earth.

From the mud comes fired earth – moulded into brick, into itinerant bread ovens which will appear again and again much later. In a way the destruction of Albion Mills returned the power of millers and bakers back into local jobs, odd jobs and backscratching; messier, far greater personal benefits than industry and capital when amassed. Subsistence, but on their terms. Now even the act of subsistence is chivvied out beyond our control; subsistence now means making £100,000 a year, can you bear to stay in the new hotel-apartments up the road? When Existence means living isolated in a block of 3,000 flats – no need to meet your neighbour, a concierge will tell you to take your hoodie off instead, “not in here, sir”, and shove you through your expensive front door themselves.