I started at Matthes as a trainee engineer in the maintenance department where there was a boiler man, electrician and apprentice, two machine cleaners, a greaser, two fitters and a night man who could tackle anything to keep the factory running during the night. Later this was increased to three electricians with an apprentice, ten fitters, and four machine cleaners/greasers. The firm was totally self sufficient with all work done by its own workers from vehicle maintenance to builders, painters, carpenters and even a printer. I believe there were around two hundred workers at Englands Lane in its hey day. 

On the production side Dick Chambers was in charge of the three baking plants producing thousands of loaves a day, George Collins and later Brian Dixon headed the confectionery department, Derrick "Joe" Crow the wedding and birthday cake department.  A catering department was responsible for outside catering and the firms restaurants.  Matthes also had their own "Windmill" flour and at one time made chocolate.   There was also a subsidiary called "Sunshine Bread" at Norwich as well as various depots, shops and restaurants throughout East Anglia.

Equally important were the many people who produced the goods, sold them in the shops, worked in the restaurants and those who delivered them to depots as far afield as Chelmsford, Lincoln, Cambridge and of course the local delivery men who provided a daily delivery service to our many customers both in town and the local villages including the drivers of the horse drawn  vans for Gorleston deliveries which continued into the sixties with the horses stabled in Drudge Road.   Matthes also an old Canadian army lorry turned into a snow plough to clear roads ahead of the early morning lorries.  This gives some idea of the size of Matthes, one of the largest employers in the town and probably at that time the largest independent bakery in the country.

Charles Woods one of the roundsmen

Not only was Matthes family owned, but you could say it was family run by the many members of the same families working there.  My father was the butcher, my brother a fitters mate. I met my wife there and she had more family members than me.   Her dad Tom Casey was a driver and the shop steward, two aunts worked in confectionery, a cousin was a motor mechanic and her uncle Alfie Holmes was transport manager. 

I am sure it will come as no surprise that Matthes had a good Social Club which in the early days of the firm met in England's  Hero, the pub that used to be on the corner of Nelson Road opposite the works gates.   When I started it sported two football teams, a bowls team, and I think a table tennis team.   Later the younger members started a Saturday football team playing friendlies, then went into the Sunday League and finished up in the top league.   The transport department also had a team as there were too many players for just one team. We also had a ten pin bowling league with about ten teams playing on Monday nights.

We ran a weekly lottery to help finance the Social Club and Matthes had a Welfare Club that gave help when sick.   Once we sent the children's Christmas  party to the circus in a double decker bus which got stuck under the loading bay roof and we had to let the tyres down to get it out.  We had dinner dances catering for four hundred and once at Caister Holiday Camp we took seven hundred in a fleet of coaches and took up two floors.   There were annual coach trips to London and a trip to Blackpool to see the lights.  We even had a beach hut at Gorleston for the use of workers.

I recall one summer day when the people in Sussex Road thought that winter had come when their houses were showered with flour from a split silo.   The fire brigade washed away the flour and the company paid for a window cleaner.   We also had to call the fire service once to a fire in one of the confectionary ovens.  A fireman on top pouring water down the chimney suddenly jumped down because his feet were overheating!   Another time somebody was cleaning his motor bike with petrol where the small delivery vans were kept when it caught light and started to spread.   Fortunately not causing too much damage.

Unfortunately the Matthes family had to sell the business to Spillers and a few years later we were closed down which was a black day for Gorleston and all the families who had worked there through the generations for so many years.

Kenneth Matthes, Brian Dixon and Dick Chambers with Mrs. Matthes as Company Secretary started a small bakery at Belton with a shop in Gorleston High Street, joined by three other workers, Harry Fisher and David Powel were two of them.   It is no longer there as a bakery.   As for myself I now work at Pasta Foods and in this small world I work with my old apprentice, G. "Jumbo" Betts and a Matthes sparks, K. Dye.

Ex Matthes people have you anything to add to this site either photographs or information?

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