The property at 8 Market Place, Holt, was built in 1631, the date set in the west gable. It has continuously served the area as a shop since 1730 or thereabouts, with the involvement of the Baker family beginning in the 1760's or 1770's.  The offer to our customers went through several incarnations before developing into the multifaceted emporium of today: Blacksmith, Brewer, Builders' Merchant, Ironmonger, Plumbers to mention but a few, and expanded throughout the period. On 22 November 1900 the firm was incorporated as CT Baker Ltd. By 1958, having survived two World Wars, the Company employed 29 staff and was heavily into agricultural supplies. With the untimely death of Mr Jimmy Baker, the Managing Director, the next 15 years saw a period of decline, culminating in the near sale of the family business. However, the 70s witnessed a turnaround with a new generation coming onto the Board, Michael Baker (7th generation) a Chartered Chemical Engineer, decided he would return to Norfolk (previously based in Portsmouth) to reinvigorate the 200 year old family business.

Rebuilding started in 1976 and in 1977 the Larner’s store was bought. By the mid 80's the south side of the grade III listed Market Place had been rebuilt, including the excavation of 2000 sq.ft. curtain factory outlet ballards lane finchleyof wine cellar from the glacial deposits forming the Holt/Cromer Ridge.ikea taby curtains In 1989 R Edmonds & Son, a builders' merchant in Stalham and North Walsham was purchased. curtain making wooburn greenIn 2000, the builders’ merchants business which was situated at the back of the main premises at 8 Market Place was moved to the industrial estate off the Hempstead Road, Holt. During the 1980's and 1990's development on the Market Place site continued.

Approaching the Millennium the Company split into the 2 divisions of Retailing and Builders Merchants. 2004 saw the acquisition of Betty (Holt) Ltd, a department store at the other end of the town specialising in Clothing , Home Furnishings and Furniture. Home Furnishing and Furniture still remain, the clothing department was relocated to the main store. In September 2006 the Stalham Builders’ Merchant moved into a purpose built depot on Staithe Road. In 2007 the supermarket, Budgens was added to the Group offering local products from local suppliers to local people. In November 2011 a major extension took place which now makes us the largest Budgens store nationally. In April 2011 www.bakersandlarners.co.uk was launched, the website allows customers to buy any of the thousands of items that are displayed online, knowing that they will receive the same personal service which they would receive instore. In July 2013 Eddie Ray decided to stand down as Chairman after holding the position for 18 years.

Eddie has been succeeded by Malcolm Baker. In his professional life, Malcolm works in London where he is Chairman of one of the UK’s top 20 audit and accountancy firms. On the 15th March 2013 a fourth builders’ merchants was added to the division. A purpose built building of 4000 sq.ft was erected on a just over one acre site in Aylsham. May 2013 saw www.ctbaker.co.uk launched, providing current and potential new customers with all the information they may need about all four of our Builders’ Merchant branches. July 2013 saw the start of our CT Baker Group Twitter and Facebook Campaign. With the ever growing popularity of using social media as a business tool, we have a designated Social Media Assistant who keeps our customers up to date with what’s happening across the group. /bakersandlarnersofholt and follow us on Twitter @bakersofholt. On the 7th August 2013, a website was also launched for Budgens, www.budgensofholt.co.uk, allowing customers to keep up to date with the latest offers, see our local suppliers and apply for our Love Local Loyalty Card.

Our latest addition to the group is Budgens of Aylsham which we took over on 10th September 2013. This brings us up to today. The CT Baker group has a turnover of approximately £20m and employs over 275 staff within the three divisions, Department Store, Builders’ Merchants and Budgens Supermarkets.Students at the University of Cambridge held a historic prayer service in Trinity College’s Wren Library on Monday, using a 14th century Torah scroll from the library’s collection, which is believed to have come from Yemen. Over sixty people attended the morning shaharit service, during which a student of Yemenite origin chanted from the scroll in the musical tradition of that ancient Jewish-Yemenite community, in tribute to the scroll’s provenance. The medieval scroll was discovered in a catalogue of Hebrew manuscripts by Cambridge’s Israeli chaplains, Rabbi Yisrael Malkiel and his wife Elisheva. It took “half a morning” for the librarians to find it in the basement, where the items in the catalogue were stored, since nobody had sought it at least since the catalogue’s completion in 1926.

Upon its discovery, Malkiel inspected the entire scroll together with Hebrew Bible scholar Theodor Dunkelgrün. They discovered that the scroll was written in a distinctive calligraphic style not employed in centuries, involving special decorations called “crowns,” or tagin. By comparing the text side-by-side with Yemenite versions of the Torah (there are minor discrepancies between versions), Dunkelgrün concluded that while the scroll was acquired in Yemen, it is not a typical Yemenite text. “For centuries, Southern Arabia had been a vital node in a network of trade, connecting Europe and the Mediterranean to India,” he said, noting the scroll could have been written elsewhere. The scroll had entered the possession of Trinity College in a bequest of Hebrew manuscripts by former vice-master William Aldis Wright in 1914, but how exactly it made its way via Yemen to England over five hundred years remains a mystery. The service was the initiative of Jewish Society co-president Gabriel Gendler, who wanted this item gathering dust to be restored to its original function.

“Cambridge and other British institutions have never really been places that cared about the artifacts they collected and history it had,” he said, observing that the scroll had been preserved as an item of historical interest rather than as a sacred object. That said, Trinity College “absolutely loved” the idea of removing the scroll for a prayer service, and even paid for weeks of careful restoration of the aging parchment. Under the gaze of marble busts of Greek philosophers and a stained-glass window depicting Isaac Newton and King George III, third-year theology student Eliot Cohen said that “the Jewish tradition felt simultaneously timeless and alive,” noting the “peculiar and endearing fusion of cultures” on this special occasion. The service came as Cambridge considers a campaign by students at Jesus College to repatriate to Nigeria a bronze cockerel looted from Africa in 1897. Should the Yemenite scroll, too, be restored to its original owners?

“It’s a bit upsetting that such artifacts are in the possession of collectors rather than Jewish communities,” said Gendler. “But it’s not a disaster so long as collectors are also thinking about the [original] communities.” If the scroll proves to have been plundered, he argued, it should be restored to a Jewish community; but if it entered the college’s hands by licit means, “there’s not much reason to be angry.” (By coincidence, the Cambridge synagogue contains a 200-year-old Torah scroll donated years ago by the very same Trinity College, and it’s still in use.) The Wren Library was built in 1695 to the design of Sir Christopher Wren, the celebrated architect the magnificent St Paul’s Cathedral. Its priceless treasure trove also contains early editions of Shakespeare, books from the personal collection of Sir Isaac Newton, and even original manuscripts of Winnie the Pooh. The University of Cambridge is also the home of the largest collection of documents from the Cairo Genizah, the set of Jewish manuscripts excavated from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo’s Fustat in 1896-97 by Conservative Judaism founder Dr Solomon Schechter.