GORDON Cann sent in a picture of his grandfather's shop F.J. Cann's cake and confectioner's shop at 117 Poole High Street taken in the 1920s.

Born in 1860 at Morchard Bishop, near Crediton in Devonshire, Mr. F.J. Cann was a baker as was his father James Cann.

Mr F.J. Cann was already an established baker when he moved to Poole in 1890. Gordon still has an inscribed clock in excellent working order given to the baker the year prior to him leaving Bideford.

He thinks the picture was taken circa 1922 and 1928, a few years after Mr Cann's death in 1919. The young lady in the doorway of the shop is aged between 15 and 21and could be Gordon's mother as other pictures he has of her suggest a definite likeness.

It is speculated that she met Gordon's father, who was 14 years her senior, at the shop and they got married at Parkstone Baptist Church on her 21st birthday in 1928.

"My father was in the army in France during the Great War and must have witnessed the slaughter all around him. He was taken prisoner of war in terrible fighting at Villers Brettoneux in April 1918 and survived physically but must have had terrible memories of what he had seen and took his life at exactly 11 o'clock on November 11 1953", said Gordon.

Mr. F.J. Cann moved to a new four bedroomed house called Torridge at Wimborne Road at a cost of £750 for the house and £500 for the land in 1912, which remained with the Cann family until 1956.

The bakery was taken over by Jo Bright, later the Mayor of Poole, and today is still a bakery called Bennetts.