Inglorious Baxters: Baking in mediaeval and early modern Aberdeen

History is a broad field, and one that can easily find itself focused on pivotal moments, grand causes, and big names – the factors that tend to stand out when one is looking at the past. It’s an oddity of history that it’s a lot easier to piece together the life and movements of a Prince or Lord (something which most of us have little day-to-day experience with) than it is to get a detailed look at the life of a baker.

In May of 2026, I delivered a talk in Aberdeen's Maritime Museum on the subject of mediaeval and early modern bread, with the intention of getting to know more about the daily life of the mediaeval Aberdonian baker. Over my time working in the Archives, I’d seen a lot of information about the Baxter trade and the lives of bakers in passing, and I was keen to be able to flesh that impression out – to fill in the details.

I got to know more. I got to know a lot more. When our researchers look for ancestors in Victorian-era school log books, the general rule is that an individual is unlikely to appear in the record unless they had either been particularly lauded – to an unusual degree above and beyond any normal merit – or they had been particularly naughty. I discovered that there wasn’t much difference with the Council Registers – those who caused the most mischief got the most attention. Thus, I got to find out about mediaeval Aberdeen’s naughtiest bakers.

Living a life at the mercy of the seasons, the harvest, the weather, the town’s mills, and the appetites of their customers, the bakers were trying to do nothing more than earn a crust (I’m very sorry and won’t do that again), while contending with interference and dictates from the local authority. Bread was important in the mediaeval era – it accounted for between 50 and 75 percent of the daily calorie intake of the average Scot. It follows that the making of that bread was important, and an examination of the historical record demonstrates that it could get pretty fraught.

CA/1/1/1 p57 – Rentals for 1398 of three fishings – Midchingle, Pot, and Ford – as well as the town’s Mill (the fourth entry on the page, labelled “Molendinum”)

The town’s first mill – the Upper Mill, on what is now Flour Mill Lane, was built in the 13th Century and operated until 1865. In the 15th Century a second mill was constructed on the Green, called the Lower Mill. It was followed in the late 16th Century by two mills out at Justice Mills, as well as tidally powered grain mills over at the Harbour, though those took up valuable shipping and fishing space and did not last long.

The mills were of pivotal importance to the town and were maintained to the best of the City’s ability. The Archives retain documentation concerning the repair of mill workings from 1770 that contains a diagram of the workings of mill gears – the town’s magistrates comment extensively on every aspect of the documentation apart from that one, indicating that it may have bamboozled them a little.

CA/8/P/230/5/18 – Diagram of the Wheels required in a flour or malt mill, 1770

The rental of the Town’s only mill in 1398 comes in at about 20 Merks Scots money in 1398. The last rental income I checked, at around the time of the Civil Wars, was £24 sterling, meaning the rent had increased by a factor of around 12 in about 250 years. As well as the money, the mill’s tenant owed the Council a portion of all grains dried and milled on the premises, measured by volume rather than by weight. 

Boll – City of Aberdeen, 1707 official weights and measures, AAGM

This Boll would have held approximately 80 litres of grain or flour, which would have been stored by the City to guard against the possibility of a poor harvest or famine. Measures like this and the Firlot (a tapered jug with exactly a quarter of the capacity of the Boll) were used to calculate the value of the raw grains – barley, oats, and above all wheat – that were brought into town by farmers and tenant farmers, sold and processed through the mill.

Weights and measures were a vital part of fair trade within the City, but they were not standardised throughout Scotland. In the mediaeval period, the act of standardising between cities would have been incredibly difficult – an assize or judgement was made on what the weights and measures should be, and this was passed on to the Burghs who then crafted their own individual weights and measures. These would be close to those of other burghs, but their use in market trade within their home town was vital. Someone making a sale or measuring a commodity using a measure that had not been made by the Council but by an individual merchant was open to being cheated if they used inaccurate instruments. In fact, an occurrence like this is the first recorded instance of the work of bakers within the Council records. In 1398, on page 64 of the first volume of the Council Registers, all of the town’s bakers are fined for using unjust weights and measures with the intention of cheating their customers.

This is repeatedly warned against, then legislated against, and then the Council eventually has to regulate the trade of baking. Baking could only be done by someone with a bakehouse – and usually a staff of apprentices to assist in the work, in order to operate at any kind of scale – and was time-consuming and difficult, particularly compared to baking an oat or barley Bannock, which needed only an open fire and a metal or stone surface to heat the dough. By 1458, the act of fining and cautioning the Baxters of the town wasn’t sufficient to ensure a uniform high standard of bread, so the town undertook what we can look at as an early experiment in brand identity.

CA/1/1/5 – Council Register 5, p. 337, 1458

This page shows the names of the eleven bakers in Aberdeen that were permitted to bake bread in 1458, and opposite their names are the symbols that they were required to cut and prick into each loaf that they baked. If a member of the public’s bread was found to be wanting, all they needed to do was present it to a magistrate, who would recognise the mark and issue a fine as needed. An additional effect of this would have been that certain marks and certain bakers would now be quantifiably more trustworthy, and their sign would be seen as a mark of quality.

The Fifteenth Century saw a lot of work put into the definition of trades and their role within the Burgh. At the tail end of the century, in 1498, the Council passed an ordinance that was to remain in effect more or less indefinitely – a Burgess of Guild, who had merchant privileges in town, could not operate as a Burgess of Trade, who was allowed to manufacture and sell his own goods. Additionally a Trade Burgess couldn’t operate as a merchant within the burgh. This allowed the town to more easily regulate and deal with trade fairly, rather than allowing one class to create monopolies and dictate their own preferred prices to the populace.

Solidarity was not a given factor among the Bakers; even when they were using their own weights and measures, there were still disagreements among the craftsmen of the trade that could become heated. In 1484 there was a significant personal and professional conflict between John the Ross, a baker, and William and William Umfray, brothers who had complained against him previously about his work. The entry in the Council Register deals with an escalation in the disagreement. In the Council’s judgement, John the Ross was forbidden from carrying a sword around town, or any other usable weapon, and is sworn to never in any time coming again attack or harm either William Umfray or his brother William Umfray. In return, the Umfray brothers are forbidden from falling upon and attacking the now defenceless John the Ross at night. What begins as a customer complaint to a baker eventually escalates to opportunistic assault with a deadly weapon with the intention to intimidate or spill blood – we can’t be entirely sure – and is concluded, to the best of our knowledge, with the reassurance that the brothers who initially brought the complaint against John The Ross will decline the opportunity to initiate a revenge attack against their disarmed tormentor. A small thread in a larger tapestry, but one of many that go to illustrate how important bread was to the people. In so many ways, it was a matter of life and death.

I was also able to find a possible origin for the concept of the Baker’s Dozen; in 1399, 13 of the town’s bakers were hauled up in front of the Court for selling 13 loaves to customers as if they were 12 loaves. The idea was that the loaves in question were light, and a 13th loaf, baked at the top of the oven and left hard and unleavened, would be added among them, so that their weight would tally with bread that was of good quality and weight.

CA/1/1/1 – 13 bakers compelled to swear an oath to not sell 13 loaves under the pretence that they are 12 loaves, 1399

Other oddities present themselves – some even favourable to the Baxter trade, such as the Council’s crackdown on “Caik Baxters”, or Cake Bakers, who bake unregulated oat Bannocks during times of hardship in the Burgh. These were made on metal griddles, which were cheap and easy to set up and furnish with oat flour. As the Council could decree and monitor what went in a loaf of bread due to the size of the operation and the requirements – bakehouse, apprentices, ingredients – that made baking easy to deal with compared with the Caik Baxters, who produced oatcakes anywhere and using any ingredients they wanted to use. The first instance of the Council dealing with them comes on 21st October 1544, when the town’s Baillies are instructed to patrol the streets and confiscate any griddles they find, keeping them permanently for the town’s use.

CA/1/1/18 – Statute against Caik Baxtars, 21st October 1544

The situation worked in this way for much of the 16th Century – the town would enact a measure to regulate a trade, and the practitioners of that trade would find some way to work around that regulation. Matters came to a head in 1613 when every single baker in Aberdeen was arrested, tried, and convicted of diverse outrages. They were locked in the Tolbooth overnight, with a dispensation in their sentence that their doors be unlocked during the hours of day so that they could practice their trade. This drastic measure kept about two generations of bakers out of the Council’s notices – the next time we hear of the trade’s business is in the 1650s, when the Deacon of the Trade is jailed for “usurping the powers of the Magistrates”, primarily in relation to issuing their own assize of bread.

CA/1/1/46 – “Baxters Convict Unlawit and Wardit” – the entire baker trade is convicted, 1613

The next two mentions of the trade following that incident are as different as it’s possible to be – in 1674 every baker in town is barred from baking and all are forced to learn from Alexander Bruce, a baker brought up from Edinburgh to educate them as “no baker in town can bake any sort of good bread.” Eight years later, in 1682, the Baxter trade is granted precedence at civic and ecclesiastical events that is second only to the Hammermen, marking a new high point in the trade’s honour and recognition.

CA/1/1/57 – An Act in Favour of the Baker Trade, 1682

By Martin Hall, Archivist