Cecil Manning wanted to be a flight engineer – so how did he end up running a family bakery business, writes ROSE DOYLE

CECIL Manning’s story is happy proof that the gang-aft-agley factor about best laid plans can be relied on to hold true. When he left Ahascragh, near Ballinasloe, Co Galway, for Dublin in 1943, his plans did not include starting a family shop/bakery that would become a byword for popular confectionery in the capital. Least of all one that would survive to see a third generation become involved.

His plan was altogether loftier. The youngest son of a farming family, he joined the Air Corps and went on to become a flight engineer with then fledgling Aer Lingus. This career plan might have worked out but for a 1947 crisis involving Lockheed Constellation planes and Taoiseach Éamonn de Valera’s view that Aer Lingus’s proposed transatlantic flight service was overly ambitious.

The Lockheeds were sold and flight engineer Manning found himself with the choice of flying with Quantas or staying at home.

He stayed at home where, these being post-war rationing times and he being entitled to a quota of flour and sugar as a member of the Air Corps, he made a virtue of necessity and set up a shop, and then a bakery, in 1948.

It was a business that grew through the good times and bad of the 20th century and is today going strong as two separately-run Manning’s companies.

One is a bakery/factory supplying the bakery needs of such as Superquinn and Cuisine de France. The other, with headquarters in the flagship Manning’s shop/cafe first opened in Dublin’s Thomas Street 49 years ago, is a trio of shops/cafes producing freshly baked and prepared goods in the Mannings tradition.

This second company is run by Irene Manning, daughter of Cecil and his wife Patsy (nee Martin), a woman of formidable energy and great heart for the business as well as for Thomas Street and environs.

We sit talking over tea at one of the dark, polished tables at 39/40 Thomas Street, ruminating about Manning ups and downs and about the future of the business. Cakes large and small sell at one end of the curving counter, fresh deli goods at the other.

“Thomas Street is a great area,” Irene Manning says, “always has been. It used be the place everyone from Ballyfermot, Dundrum, Drimnagh came to shop. When the Molly Malones were run out of Grafton Street this is where they came.”

She tells the Manning story with similar enthusiasm, recalling how her father and mother met at a dance. “Mum came to Dublin from Fermanagh, worked in Newells, on Grafton Street. She was 23 when they married, he was 26. They had nine children, six girls and three boys.”

Cecil Manning set up his first shop – a general grocers – on Collins Avenue in Whitehall. His marriage proposal involved asking the surprised Patsy to choose the colours for the rooms overhead, since she would be living there. The area lacked a bakery so he built one at the back of the shop.

“He knew nothing about bakeries,” his daughter assures, “but in those days it was easier to start up than it is now. If you were prepared to work and had ideas you could grow a business. Dad is a born wheeler-dealer, an innovator and his own man.

“My parents lived and worked in Whitehall for seven years but by the time I came along they’d moved to live in Drumcondra. We’ve always been lucky to have great staff and from the beginning have had the Sheridans, a family of confectioners, on board. Antoinette Sheridan is my main confectioner today.”

Mannings, in the middle years of the 20th century, was notable for its white, crusty bread and cakes of every kind – wedding, christening, eclairs and fairy cakes. The bakery moved to Coolock Industrial Estate and Mannings Bakeries and Cafes began opening around the city. There were 14 in the business’s prime.

“We did wholesale too, supplying Aer Lingus and hotels like the Crofton Airport and the Shelbourne. We went through the hot bread phase too, when each shop baked bread on the premises. All of us children helped out; once you could see over the counter you were were roped in! We were mainly northside based but began to move into shopping centres when they came along. The shop in Moore Street was a howl, full of character.” She slows, to sadly reflect“this city has changed so much in 20 years”.

Things were going well – and then along came the Celtic Tiger. “We had a couple of freeholds, everything else was rented. Rents doubled and trebled and went out of control.

“The Celtic Tiger closed more small businesses than it helped. There was far too much retail,rents went through the roof, higher than they are in Paris. English and other retailers moved in wanting a bit of the action.

“You had two options: you could pay to stay in your premises, or get out – if they would let you out. The older shopping centres are half empty now, with tenants paying rent for empty shops. We’re one of the lucky companies. “We were able to wind down to survive in the second generation, and split the business in two in 2001. I took over the retail bit (in which I was always involved)and my brothers Brian, Damien and Eamonn and sister Patricia took over the bakery production. I had to rationalise the retail side, had no option but to close down shops to the point where the shutters were pulled and I was still paying rent.”

All of this was a long way from Irene Manning’s original and best laid plans. Swearing she would never work for her father she studied hotel and catering management in the catering college on Cathal Brugha Street and went off to work in Cork.

“I was dragged back, screaming, to help out,” she laughs, “and I’m still here. We own this building, it’s really two buildings bought over time. There used be an abattoir, butchers, bakers and shop all in one place here.

“We started out as a cake shop, then became a bakery. I’m sorry we had to sacrifice the old German butchers shopfront in the interests of saving the building; if it was today we might be able to save it.

“Our customers come from the Digital Hub, the art college, from offices around – though office worker numbers are down since the recession. Anything you buy here we make here: our own pesto, salads, scones. We cook our own meats. We don’t have room to bake our own bread but we DO use an old Dublin baker, one of a small group of Dublin bakers still going strong.”

Her nephew Brian is a chef, passionate about food,and recently on board. “He’s given us a new lease of life,” she enthuses while Brian looks modestly pleased.”He came in to help me, we did a revamp here, ripping the old building apart. Brian studied culinary arts in Cathal Brugha Street and has an MA in product development; he’s helping us research and develop new products. He’s very, very good and has developed lots of our new restaurant ideas. He put up a website for us too (manningsbakeryshops.ie).

“Basically, we’ve gone back to the old Manning way of doing things, here and in our shops in The Square, Tallaght and Blanchardstown Shopping Centre. We make our own apple tarts, all the old familiar confectionery, all freshly made. We hand-make stuff every day, even Sunday. If you buy a cake in Blanchardstown on Sunday it’s been made that Sunday.

“The biggest craze at the moment is still for cupcakes. We were always mid-market and I’ve noticed, which is great for us, that people are entertaining more at home these days, and going back to habit of giving themselves little treats! Any cake, any flavour, we can make it. I like to think we keep on our toes, keep abreast of flavours and what people like.”

Her sisters Sandra, twin Edel, Osnat and Clare all have their own careers but, with any amount of third generation Manning nieces and nephews to keep the flag flying, Mannings doesn’t seem in imminent danger of leaving family hands.

And then there’s Brian who, like Irene all those years ago, is just helping out “for the moment”.