Before dawn on the morning of the village fair, old Hollis lets someone else feed his oven for the first time in forty years. Meg is the newest apprentice at the bakehouse. Hollis has taught village boys and girls for forty years, and lost three in as many years to the hours, the heat and the silence. Tonight she learns the trade the way he learned it: the fire first, always, because stone takes four hours to come right. Then the long night of dough, the slow heat, and the first loaves out before the stalls go up. A Victorian story about a craft passed from one pair of hands to the next, in a windowless stone bakehouse that has never once gone cold. Behind the story: village bakers heated brick ovens with bundles of wood, raked out the embers and swept the floor with a wet cloth before the bread went in; the heat stored in the brick did the baking. Further reading: Sally Lunn's – The Ancient Faggot Oven: https://www.sallylunns.co.uk/about/the-faggot-oven/ No music. Narrated with a calm synthetic voice. Also on Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer and iHeartRadio — links on the channel page. #BedtimeStory #Bakery #VillageLife