After an initial inspection and poke with a skewer I see no problems. And so after I've recovered from the staggering loveliness of my Solange Luyons I'll split and fill them with jam and whipped cream.
Locals would have you believe that the bakery now known as Sally Lunn's House is where Ms Lunn baked her original buns and that perhaps her real name was Solange Luyon. This legend has been in common use for almost a century. Some suggest that the legend about Sally Lunn's association with 'Sally Lunn's House' 4 North Parade Passage [formerly Lilliput Alley] was invented between 1934 and 1937 by an artist called Marie Byng-Johnson. The truth is nobody knows.
Ms Johnson had arrived in Bath a few years earlier with her daughter, a violin teacher, and for a while they traded from premises in the Abbey Court Yard. At that time 4 North Parade Passage was a grocer's, having previously been a lodging house and cab hire office. The grocer's closed in about 1934 and the building fell into a derelict state. This claim can be contested though by the finding of the various ovens / ranges used to bake buns found in the basement of the house which also acts as a museum now.
Two or three years later Ms Byng-Johnson published a little pamphlet in which she describes finding, in a hidden void naturally, the story of Sally Lunn and the secret of the bun. Despite chancing upon this absolute treasure of historical record, she contrived to lose it, so there is no proof that it ever existed.
The recipe for this bun is said (by the Byng-Johnsons) to have originated in Bath with the arrival in 1680 of a Huguenot immigrant called Solange (Sollie) Luyon who (according to the Byng-Johnsons) brought her native skill and worked at a Bath bakery. A fictional account, Sweet Sally Lunn, tells this story and makes pleasant reading.A photo will be appearing later........
