Mr Tappertit looked immensely big at a quartern loaf on the table, and breathed hard.

'Why here's one man that, in consideraton of his wife and large family, has a quartern loaf and a good pound of cheese, full weight.

The countryside was a poor one, even before the black famine of the closing years of the eighteenth century, and while the quartern loaf stood at 2s.

Wheat was at a hundred and ten shillings a quarter, and the quartern loaf at one and ninepence.

Historically, the loaves used were of the archaic quartern loaf size, but this particular part of the tradition ended when Biddenden's last bakery closed in the 1990s.

The family were largely dependent on poor relief under the Poor Law: in later life Key often remembered collecting 1 s. 6 d. and two quartern loaves of bread, being two-fifths of a pound.

We have given away, Mrs. Corney, we have given away a matter of twenty quartern loaves and a cheese and a half, this very blessed afternoon; and yet them paupers are not contented.'

Who can describe, and how few can feel, the charms of these repasts, consisting of a quartern loaf, a few cherries, a morsel of cheese, and half-a-pint of wine which we drank between us?

By Easter heavy frosts had ended hopes of a good harvest that year, and in the summer and autumn food riots broke out in the country at large as the price of a quartern loaf - where one could be had at all- rose from 3d. to over 1s.

On 5 January 1786 an announcement appeared in the Public Advertiser that Mr. Brown, a baker in Wigmore Street, Cavendish Square, was to "give a Quartern Loaf to every Black in Distress, who will apply on Saturday next between the Hours of Twelve and Two".