Galashiels baker John Gorman passed away recently at the age of 90, having spent 60 years in the trade.

He started working as a baker in 1940 at the age of 14, for Andersons of Bridgeton in Glasgow.

Gorman then met his future wife, who was working in the bakery as a shop girl. Having worked in various bakeries in Glasgow he enrolled in national service and served the army in Palestine and Greece as a baker until 1948.

On his return from the army, he married and moved to Pumpherston, West Lothian, to work at the Co-op bakery there.

Gorman then ran his own bakery in Mid Calder before working for Milanda in Sighthill, Edinburgh. In the late 1960s he became production manager at Border Bakeries in Galashiels, which later became Robertsons (Bakers) Ltd.

Robertsons subsequently moved production to Carlisle but closed in 1983, and Gorman became a partner in Border Wholesale Bakery before retiring at the age of 75.

His son, Eric, described him as “a true baker and a hardworking man all his life, leaving us so many memories of his life in the trade he loved. He worked seven days a week to earn a crust for his family and spent over 60 years as a journeyman in the trade”.

Eric remembers reading British Baker from cover to cover as a child in the 1970s, “whilst waiting for my father to finish his shift in the bakery”.