The first mention of the village of Winchmore Hill in the history books is in 1319AD. Although it was then only a small village, it was not isolated as it was located on the ‘King’s Highway’ from his palace in London to the royal hunting ground in a large forest nearby. It is thought that the beautiful wood in our local Grovelands Park is what remains of that ancient forest.

In the 17th century, Winchmore Hill became a centre of early Quakerism, (also known as the Society of Friends). In 1661, within ten years of the creation of the new religious movement in the North of England, one George Chalkley was converted by an itinerant preacher at a meeting held in a barn off The Green, Winchmore Hill.

George Chalkley went on to found a Quaker community here. One of his sons, Thomas Chalkley, emigrated to North American in 1701 and became a prominent American Quaker. The old Quaker Meeting House, a beautiful listed building, which still has an active community, is just 200 yards away from The Old Bakery.

Until bread ceased to be baked here in 1960, The Bakery was run by several generations of the Chalkley family. It is intriguing to think that these Chalkley bakers may well be descended from the 17th century Quaker Chalkley's, although, as yet, this has not been proven. Thomas Chalkley died in 1745. The family of the later Chalkley's have traced their ancestry back to Thomas’s namesake, born in 1795.

In the 1890s, a railway line was built to bring workers of central London swiftly to new homes being built on the edges of the rapidly expanding Capital city. Winchmore Hill ceased to be a farming village and became part of London. Today, it remains a popular place for Londoners to live, due to its ease of access to the West End and the financial district. Remarkably, it retains at its centre the original village layout around a Green, and many of its historic buildings have been preserved.