I was exploring the world with Google Street View recently, and decided to have a look at places I’ve known. I was keen to see the bakery of Sayers Confectioners in Norris Green, Liverpool, where I worked for a couple of memorable years as a graduate trainee. I’d heard that the place had closed in questionable circumstances last year, but I was still shocked to find that the place had been completely demolished.
As it was in 1996. The bakery stretched quite a long way back from the front, and quite a long way down the road behind the houses at the left of the photograph.
Doughnut Plant. This only operated on nights, which did mean that fresh doughnuts were available for morning meetings with important guests!
Mince Pie plant. Can’t remember the correct name of it, but it spent 3 or 4 months of the year just doing mince pies, which were then sent to a huge frozen warehouse somewhere. It made millions every year, so my family were never short of a mince pie, whatever time of the year!
The ‘Dec’, or cake decorating department. Employing almost exclusively women (hand picked by Phil the manager), this department churned out thousands of delicious cream cakes. It always had an unusual smell due ot the gallons of cream, chocoalte, jam and other fattening stuff present it’s cool, slightly damp atmosphere.
Bread plant. The Bakery had three forty foot long travelling ovens, and two required the bread to be taken off by hand, which was hot, hard work. It did smell fantastic though.
Rear yard. The Bakery had several yards for storing it’s fleet of vans, this was at the rear of the site. To the left is the works garage where the vans were all serviced and repaired, along with the former cooked meats area, and the tray wash, where all the trays from the vans were washed, and all the returned food was dumped into a skip for sale to a pig farm.
Today and there’s absolutely nothing left. You can see how big the site was. Very sad, a lot of people spent their entire working lives there, and sad on a personal note as two of the four companies I’ve worked for in my career have now closed for good.
Mechanical Landscapes 
I worked at sayers too happy days
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My father.James Gaffney.was a.mechanic.there and helped.mr. Fred.Sayers set.up buisiness and.when.mr Gaffney.retire age 65 got.commendation
from.ministry.transport.as.not
One of
Sayers.vans had crash. Mechanical.failure or .failed mot.s
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Hi i was a van boy at sayers in the late 50s and remember your father in the garage , he was a likeable man as i recall he ran the garage with one other mechanic ,at the time we had a right rag tail and bobtail fleet and were just starting to get a modern fleet of vans i think mr gaffney was in charge of about 30 large vans and a host of smaller vans for the supervisors ,i wonder if you have any photos of the sayers fleet
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Worked in Sayers in the late sixties early seventies, worked a week on day shift then a week on nights cake decorating great place and friendly people,
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My mum worked there for many years Edie Mottram
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Hi I worked at Sayers on Saturdays when I was at school. I was at West Derby high school on Queens drive. It must have been 1964/5 and I worked as a van lad. I got 14 shillings and sixpence for the Saturday.
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I worked at sayers from 1965 to 1969 as a van lad then a driver from 67 to 69 great memories so sad to see what s happened
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I agree Harry, I worked on the cake decorating floor in the late 60s for a couple of years, long hours but great times and people, real shame it’s gone.
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