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About Us

Who we are

Email: nightowlcakery1@gmail.com

Tel: 07594436560

We are the third generation of a family who have been involved with the hospitality business for almost ninety years. Our maternal grandmother, Gertrude Thomas, single-handedly ran a tea room in Huntington, Chester, in the 1930s.

In the 1950s, her daughter, our mother, Kathleen, created the Red Umbrella cafe, and later, a guest house, both in Chester.

The Red Umbrella Cafe, Chester.
Mother with two daughters
The three of us!

Our Mother taught us both to bake, starting with pastry rolling, At the age of five, we were wielding her huge rolling pin. As our Mother controlled her electric mixer, we would add the beaten eggs to her cake mixture, one trickle at a time. Our tiny roles in this creative process were insignificant, but it didn’t seem that way at the time!

By the age of twelve, we were making our own toffee and fudge. We spent hours constructing presentation boxes so that our hand-made sweets could be beautiful gifts for friends.

As young adults, we studied art and architecture, archaeology and literature and, between us, have had careers in teaching, journalism, and script writing. However, whatever our main occupation, we each continued to help our Mother in her guest house.