38

Nelson Stenning [38] was the Rottingdean village baker. Angela Thirkell (grave [13b]) describes the excellence of his buns in her book ‘Three Houses':

"Then crossing the Newhaven Road... we came to Stenning the baker whose buns perfumed the air".

"He was undoubtedly the stoutest man ever made, and rumour had it that he spent all his holidays at Dieppe... where his bulk, discreetly veiled in a black alpaca jacket was less noticed among the portly Gauls than on his native beach. But I have never known a man with such a noble conception of buns. His penny buns were larger than the largest Bath Buns, fine upstanding voluptuous creatures warm from the oven with a deep brown ambrosial varnish on their outsides, heavy with currants and sultanas and more spice-flavoured than any ordinary hot-cross bun".

Nelson Stenning and his family moved to Rottingdean from Bighton, where he established a bakery in the High Street [view].

On Boxing Day 1892, a photographer invited the Stenning family to pose outside Nelson Stenning's baker's shop on the High Street (see below). Nelson and his wife Elizabeth were still wearing their work aprons when the photograph was taken, but their children put on their best clothes for the family portrait.

A second family photo, taken 14 years later in 1906 is also shown below. By this time the four eldest Stenning children had married.

His son, Ernie Stenning, was the last village blacksmith and is pictured below at the village Forge [view] which stood opposite The Plough Inn next to the village pond (where, as a child, Angela Thirkell would get her toy go-cart repaired!)

_{Stenning family photo, outside their baker's shop - 1892}

_{Stenning family photo - 1906}

_{Nelson Stenning}

_{Ernie Stenning}