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Coulton’s Bakery, Windmill Avenue
Coulton’s Bakery, Windmill Avenue

Coulton’s Bakery, which still stands today on Windmill Avenue
In 1901, Thomas Coulton (1870 – 1936) had a small grocery shop at 22 Wigan Road with a bakery at the rear owned by William Fryer. Thomas had served his apprenticeship with Ainsdale baker Robert T. Duerden but had been born in Halsall/Rufford.
The bakery was taken over by Thomas Coulton and the new factory was built in 1903 on Windmill Avenue. By 1911, Coulton, the Managing Director of the bakery, had moved his family into the large family home Blairgowrie, Ruff Lane, later to become the Nurses Home.

Blairgowrie, the house on Ruff Lane that was owned by Thomas Coulton and would later become the nurses home
Thomas travelled to the United States in the early 1920s to look at the mechanical processes used there in bakeries and his son Wilfred also travelled to North America in the 1920s as the Bakery Manager visiting factories in the Chicago area. Wilfred is recorded as travelling to the USA quite a few times in the early 1920s. On one journey he appears to have travelled with a Mr Warburton.

Machinery from Coulton’s factory on Windmill Avenue
Bakery factories in Canada were visited by Wilfred in 1921, the Harrison Wholesale Bread Baker factory in Montreal, and the Ideal Bread Company in Toronto, Ontario.
The Ormskirk Bakery business thrived and modern methods of production were brought into the factory. Local deliveries, domestic and commercial, meant that the Coulton Vans became familiar sights around the area, with the business expanding to a factory in the Southport area, where Thomas Coulton lived in the later years of his life.

A Coulton’s delivery van based at the Southport factory
Thomas Coulton took a keen interest in local civic matters and he sat on several committees at the Workhouse in Wigan Road during the 1920s.
If you have any of your own stories relating to Coulton’s Bakery or any of the other businesses in the town we would love to hear them, so get in touch with us here.

An advert for Coulton’s Purity Bread
Time In A Bottle
Time In A Bottle
Ormskirk’s history is being preserved and displayed by Ormskirk Bygone Times and many of our friends, through a myriad of media and artefacts. One relatively inexpensive, and quite simple way that this is being done is by the collection of discarded bottles, storage jars and other empty vessels, long since emptied of their contents.
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Image 1. A selection of glass and earthenware bottles from Ormskirk businesses
The first image is of a group of rescued glass and earthenware bottles and vessels that covers a vast array of manufacturers across the decades, all with links to the town. From left to right:
Richard Taylor, Brewer of the Wheatsheaf Hotel, Burscough Street. Bottles like this were sold through the off license hatch to the side of the old pub way back into the early 1900s.
The Sterling Manufacturing Company of the old factory on Bridge Street produced a range of household cleaning products in the 1940s and 50s, including bleach, distemper and oils.
The partnership of Ellis, Warde & Webster based at Bath Springs brewery on Derby Street, originally built by Philip Forshaw mid 19th C., supplied many pubs across Lancashire and were a huge business in the town.
Woods Dispensing Chemist, 9, Church Street. William Beaconsfield Woods had been an apprentice to his Pharmacist father who was probably working at the dispensary in Burscough Street in the late 1800s.
Ellis Warde & Co Ltd. Originally brewed their ales at the Snigs Foot before merging with Daniel Websters Brewery from the Malt House Southport Rd and moving to Derby Street
Hyde’s wine and spirit dealers had a couple of premises along Aughton Street late 1800s into the early 1900s but along with the licensing restrictions on pubs at the start of WW1, retailers of beers and wines were also hit and the Hyde family moved to Liverpool.
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Two bottles recently dug up locally, these came from the Knowles Brewery, operating from behind the Snigs Foot, Church Street. Richard Knowles announced his venture into brewing on the front page of the Advertiser in September 1904, when Ellis & Warde moved their operation to Bath Springs.
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Image 3. Mineral Water bottles from Mason and Cammack
Mineral Water was big business in the town in the late 19th early 20th century. It was clean, safe drinking water and these two examples are from the firm of Charles Mason of Skelmersdale and George Cammack of Ormskirk & St Helens.
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Image 4. Disposable Inkwells found in the fields around Ormskirk
This type of throw away clay inkwell surfaces regularly in the fields around the town. Thrown into middens in Liverpool City in the 19th century and transported out of the city on canal barges buried in the rich natural fertiliser West Lancs built it’s agricultural industry on. Clay pipes have been ploughed up in the fields around Ormskirk for decades and sometimes they are still lit……
Ormskirk Bygone Times would like to say a special thanks to David Pye, our local bottle expert, who regularly attends our displays and spends a lot of time identifying all manner of vessels relating to local businesses.