HE spent decades baking bread and pies for people across the south – and even made cakes for the Beatles.

Ken Lamper spent a lifetime at Lampers Bakery, in Bishops Road – one of Southampton’s last family bakeries.

But last night family and friends said their final farewells to the 81-year-old, who died at Southampton General Hospital on February 13.

He was laid to rest yesterday after a celebration of his life at Wessex Vale Crematorium.

The bakery was taken over by Ken’s parents Ernie and Ivy in 1939, after its previous owner and Ernie’s boss retired.

Ken, who was born in the house next door, began helping out in the bakery as a child and on leaving King Edward VI School he trained to be a baker so he could follow in his father’s footsteps.

He studied at a bakery school on the site of Southampton City College before qualifying as a master baker and confectioner at Borough Polytechnic Institute in London (now London South Bank University), after completing a three-year course in just 12 months.

In 1954, after completing his National Service, Ken began working at the business full-time aged 21 alongside his father.

A year later he met Shirley at a friend’s wedding. The couple married at The Priory Church in Christchurch in July 1957.

The family also ran a shop in Bridge Road, Woolston, and in 1958 they opened a third shop in Hillside Avenue, Bitterne Park, which Shirley ran while bringing up their two children Tricia, now 55, and Mark, 53.

When Ernie retired in 1973 Ken took over from him and the family closed the Hillside Avenue shop.

After being in the family for 58 years, the business closed when Ken retired in 1997 after being in the family for 58 years. Neither Tricia nor Mark wanted to take it on, having both embarked on other careers.

Throughout the years the family had supplied British Telecom and British Gas’s Hampshire branches, Owen and Owen department store and Plumbers, as well as schools and colleges across Southampton.

Ken baked for the family of circus owner Charlie Cole, former Southampton Itchen MP Christopher Chope before his defeat to John Denham in 1992, and for the Festival of Britain in 1951.

Daily Echo:

He also made a cake for the Beatles, which was ordered by manager Brian Epstein when the band performed at The Gaumont (now the Mayflower Theatre), in 1963 – the third date of a tour alongside acts including Roy Orbison and Gerry and the Pacemakers.

In his spare time Ken enjoyed taking his cabin cruiser onto the Solent and socialising with Shirley, now 79, at the Royal Southampton Yacht Club.

Before closing the business the couple holidayed in New York and after their retirement the grand-parents-of-four were members of the Probus Club for retired businessmen and women.

He also attended annual reunions with the Poole Evacuees of King Edward VI School.

Paying tribute, Tricia said: “He was a sociable man. He was a good orator and he enjoyed his life. He lived life to the full for as long as his body allowed him.”