Ryde Social Heritage Group research the social history of the citizens of Ryde, Isle of Wight. Documenting their lives, businesses and burial transcriptions.
RYDE SOCIAL HERITAGE GROUP
Based at Ryde Cemetery Heritage & Learning Centre. Preserving, documenting and promoting the social history of Ryde on the Isle of Wight.
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Hot Cross Buns

Shaplands Shop & Bakery, Union Street, Ryde

History of the Hot Cross Bun
In the use of hot cross buns on Good Friday we are to trace the survival of a very ancient custom.  While the folk of England were yet pagans, they were all in the habit of eating cakes at their festivals in honour of the Goddess of Spring.  So strongly rooted was this practice that the Christian missionaries found it impossible to get the people to give it up.  Therefore they tried to lead natives away from the heathen notions mixed up with the custom by marking the cakes with the sign of the cross.  The Rev P.H. Ditchfield says that in the West of England hot cross buns are believed to have the power of preserving friendship.  If two persons broke a bun in half, exactly at the cross, on Good Friday morning, and stood the while within the church doors, and repeated this couplet:

“Half for you, and half for me,
Between us two goodwill shall be.
Amen”

then, so long as each kept his or her half, no quarrel would occur between them.  Eggs laid on Good Friday were kept, because they were supposed to have the power of putting out fire.  –  Little Folks’ Magazine.

Note:
No doubt Shaplands Bakery, Union Street, Ryde (image right), made exceeding good hot cross buns

Sources: Little Folks’ Magazine, IW Observer 16 April 1892
Image: RSHG Archive
Article: Ann Barrett