The Girdle

There is a fire on a large flat stone. Now it dies down and the ashes are swept off when the hot stone is ready for a ‘girdle’ baking.

More sophisticated methods use the flat cast-iron plates which were originally made in Scotland at Culross in Fife by the Company of Girdle-makers in the eighteenth century. These Culross girdles, of all shapes and sizes, which found their way to many parts of the country, were often huge. One baker describes his as being five feet (1.5 m) long! Normally they were made to fit the shape of the fire, some round, some rectangular, some oval. The thicker the better to conserve and distribute the heat – antique girdles (sometimes available at auction sales) can be up to half an inch (1 cm) thick.