BUN 125 
Formerly in England the famous Chelsea Bun house, at the 
corner of Jews’ Row, (now Pimlico Road), was kept by a Mrs. 
Hands. So many persons were in the habit of flocking thither 
on a Good Friday for eating “hot cross Buns,” that on one 
occasion fifty thousand assembled there, and two hundred and 
fifty pounds were taken in the day for these Buns only. The 
Royal Family, and many of the aristocracy used to frequent 
this house in the mornings ; and Queen Charlotte even presented 
Mrs, Hands with a silver half-gallon mug containing five guineas. 
Sir Charles Phillips, writing a few years before the destruction 
of the Chelsea Bun house, after admitting that for thirty years 
he never passed the house without filling his pockets, goes on 
to say: “ These Buns have afforded a competency, and even 
wealth, to four generations of the same family ; and it is singular 
about the Buns that their delicate flavour, lightness, and richness, 
have never been successfully imitated.” Even as late as in 
1839 twenty-four thousand Buns were sold there on a Good 
Friday alone. In many households at the present time a Good 
Friday Bun is superstitiously kept for ensuring a healthy, and 
prosperous time until another such Bun comes to be made in 
the following year. Moreover, the crossed Bun is believed to 
protect the house from fire, whilst serving to cure diarrhea, 
as well as all manner of other ailments, in men, and cattle. When 
used as a remedy the Bun is grated into a warm drink, or a mash, 
and given at night. A special virtue of this Bun, as the allegation 
goes, is that it will not grow mouldy like ordinary bread. Loaves 
of consecrated bread, each marked with a cross, were found at 
Herculaneum, showing that the hot cross Buns of our day had 
really a Pagan origin. The Romans called them “ quadra. 
Earlier still, cakes dedicated by the Jewish women to Astarte, 
Queen of Heaven (afterwards the Roman Diana), were marked 
with a cross, which was the symbol of the goddess 3 OF with 
horns, in allusion to the crescent moon. “In April, 1902 
(Pall Mall Gazette), “a baker in a large way of business confessed 
to making a free use of the cheapest sherry in his manufacture 
of Good Friday Buns, also intermixing therein spices of 
various sorts, and small currants; but the compound proved 
abominably indigestible, and the idea of thus eating the Cross 
seemed little short of barbaric.” c sie 
In South Africa, at the Cape, is compounded the delicious, and 
wholesome Grape Bun, “ Moss Bolletje (bun).’”’ moss being the juice 
