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63 Priory Road Bicester Oxon OX26 6BL
How Nash Bakery Started

Our Story

The Nash family have been baking in Bicester since April 1929 when Will and Winnifred Nash opened their first bakery shop in the heart of the town.

Thanks to Will’s know-how and baking excellence, the third generation of the Nash family are still baking the freshest breads, confectionery and savouries available anywhere.

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Our Timeline

In 1917 William (Will) Nash, aged 13, left the family farm near Leighton Buzzard and was apprenticed to the small bakery business of Edward E. Page of Aylesbury as a Baker and Confectioner.

In 1923 he moved from Page’s Bakery to a variety of other bakeries around the country from which he gained valuable experience and different skills.  It was at one of these bakeries in Newbury that his life-long love of horse racing begins.  It was also in Newbury that Will met his future wife of 57 years, Winifred Billing.

In 1926 he moved to Oxford and with a friend started a small business called the Grandpont Bakery selling his soon-to-be famous Oxford Lardy Cakes from a stall at the city’s market.

In 1929 he moved his wife and the first of their 9 children to Bicester where he bought a shop and founded Nash’s Bakery.

In 1949 having outgrown their original bakery premises, Will bought out George Cannon’s bakery business in Bicester, renaming it W.G. Nash and Sons and moved the baking side of the business into Cannon’s much larger bakery building in Priory Road with elder sons Clifford and Lawrence.

In 1971 Will officially retires and hands over control to his two sons Trevor and Graham.  Bill and Winn finally have time for their first foreign holiday- Romania here we come!

1986 is a busy year!  Graham and Trevor repeat their father’s feat of becoming The National Hovis Bread Champions in the final ever year of the competition and they still find time to build and move into a brand new 6000 square foot bakery building off Priory Lane in Bicester.

In December 2007 Will Nash passes at the age of 103.  He still helped out in the bakery well into his nineties.  A wonderful man and a wonderful baker!