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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
A Lusitania Survivor Visits Ormskirk
A Contemporary painting of RMS Lusitania by Odin Rosenvinge
A Lusitania Survivor Visits Ormskirk
On May 7th 1915 RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U boat U20 off the southern coast of Ireland. Of the 1,960 souls on board bound for Liverpool from New York, 767 survived.
On that voyage was Sarah Lund nee Mounsey of Chicago Illinois and her husband and father. Sarah’s mother, Fanny Mounsey nee Sewell had been lost on the Empress of Ireland in the St Lawrence Seaway on May 29th 1914. Fanny Mounsey was travelling to visit family in Keswick, Cumberland at the time of the sinking of the Empress of Ireland and her body was never recovered.
A year later, Sarah Mounsey received a letter out of the blue at her home in Chicago from the Superintendant of the Ormskirk Union Workhouse, possibly Albert Horsfall Whittaker. An unidentified lady, in considerable distress, had been admitted to the workhouse in Wigan Road, Ormskirk and the poor wretched woman was only able to utter repeatedly the name ‘Mounsey’ and the letter went on to explain that this lady, known as ‘Kate Fitzgerald’ had a fear of water. For whatever reason, a link was made to the Empress of Ireland sinking a year earlier and the Superintendant sent a letter to Sarah, (who knows how he sought out her address) asking if this might be her mother.
Ormskirk Workhouse as it was around the time of Sarah Lund’s visit
Sarah immediately left her home, with her husband and father to travel to Ormskirk, via New York and Liverpool, aboard the ill-fated Lusitania with the aim of meeting this mysterious lady. Fate intervened and Sarah, though suffering the terror of being flung into the sea as the ship exploded and being showered with debris was, after several hours in the water, pulled into a lifeboat.
Sarah lost her husband of just 1 year , and her father that day, she spent time in Queenstown, Ireland recovering but insisted on pressing on to Liverpool and then Ormskirk to meet the woman she was praying, now more than ever, was indeed her missing Mother, Fanny Mounsey.
Sadly, that was not to be, the lady in the workhouse was nothing like Sarah’a dear mother and Sarah was forced to return home to Chicago a widow, and without either parent.
Sarah did re-marry and lived until 1978, dying aged 92.
A tragic story amongst a tragic event.