William Nash started a bakery that was Bicester's second-oldest family business Family and friends said their final goodbyes to a popular baker who died earlier this month, aged 103.

The funeral of William George Nash - who started Nash's Bakery, Bicester's second oldest family business - took place in St Edburg's Church, last week.

The Bicester baker came to the town from Oxford in 1930, where he had been in a bakery partnership that broke up after three years.

He died peacefully at his home in Banbury Road with members of his family around him on December 7. Mr Nash's son Lawrence said the key to his father's long and prosperous life had been hard work. Lawrence, of Fleming Close, Bicester, said: "My father left school at 12. But before he could leave he had to sit an exam.

"He trained as a baker at 14 and, after running a bakery with his partner for a few years, he decided to go it alone and came to Bicester."

Mr Nash and his wife Winifred had a large family, including six other sons - Clifford, Stafford, Trevor, Graham, Clive and Paul, two daughters, Jean and Isla, and 24 grandchildren.

They lived above their first shop - which stood where the Halifax is now in Sheep Street - with the bakery behind it. They also had a shop in North Street.

More than 30 years ago, the shop moved to its present site in Sheep Street. The bakery now owns Bicester Bakery, also in Sheep Street, and has branches in Bucknell Road, Bicester, Oxford Covered Market, Blackbird Leys and Chipping Norton.