The following extract is from the booklet Memories of Witham, by Janet Gyford, 1983, (also available on http://www.gyford.com/janet/books/memoriesofwitham/fulltext/) who interviewed many Witham residents in 1983, and based the book on their recollections going as far back as 1910:-

You'd get up at two in the morning for the dough . . All the baker boys would board in . . the sacks of flour - they'd all got to be lifted and popped in.

In those days a butcher had a very hard job. My father used to get up at four o'clock in the morning very often at the end of the week - tail end of the week, say Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and be at work by five or half past, cutting out . . and he used to wake me up sometimes when I got a bit older, and say 'Come on, I want you to bone out some of the joints' - and I used to have to bone out what they called the clod and sticking.

We had to get up in the morning at six o'clock and get the ponies up. We used to come up the Maldon Road full gallop, feed them, brush them down - then go and have us breakfasts.

We opened before eight - about seven - well, they'd be knocking at the back door if you didn't - and then they used to bring their meat and things, to bake in the bakehouse on a Sunday.

The drapery travellers used to come round . . Morleys . . and they used to bring all their great big wicker hampers on the train when I first was there, and the carriers used to bring them down from the station and dump these things, you see, and they used to try and sell you stuff, and then they'd take orders, and then it'd come afterwards. That's how the buying was done.

The worry at Easter time on the Good Friday - everybody in those days always had something new to wear for Easter, you see - a new suit, that sort of thing. And I'd have so and so wasn't there - or might be someone getting married at Easter - dash up to the station - on every train to see if it was there.

We used to get vegetables for the shop from Freebornes - I used to get my cabbages and stuff from . . Benton Hall . . and Shelley's down the Maldon Road - buy locally if we could. There used to be two little men, I used to think they were like the dwarfs, you know. They had a garden field or allotment up Hatfield Road - they used to have like a box on wheels, you know, a barrow, and bring their marrows and cabbages and things.

There were no abattoirs or whatever they call them now - there was nothing like that - the butcher simply went to the farmer, bought the cattle, had them drove home, on the road - used to walk them home into the slaughterhouse yard - and there were all proper places for them to stay for two or three days, or perhaps a week or more.

And the sheep used to be drove in just the same. They had two meadows down the Maldon Road where we used to bring the sheep . . perhaps you'd buy a flock of sheep of about 30, and they'd all got to be fed and looked after till they were ready, you see.

He used to pride himself on the quality of his meat, I must say that . . There was a farmer out at Braxted, he had a brother in Devon, and he used to send cattle up here, and my grandfather used to go there and inspect it, and buy it, and they'd be haggling for hours . . I'd go and sit in the car, and they'd walk round this farm yard . . and I'd think they were never coming back.

And they'd talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, and eventually my grandfather'd come back and we'd drive off, and after a few days some drover would come up to the back gates and deliver about half a dozen bullocks, and they used to be grazed in that field, the second field from this room here, which is now full of houses.

Christmas time they used to have the bullock in the shop so you could see it before they slaughtered it . . on show . . used to have some lovely cattle at Witham market . . and they all used to have the rosettes on . . and if they'd got a red rosette that was a first prize in its class, the butcher'd probably buy it and have it standing in his shop a day or two for people to look at.