Fitzbillies

Brothers Ernest and Arthur Mason opened Fitzbillies in 1920 and its sticky Chelsea bun became Cambridge's edible mascot; the business went bankrupt in 2011, Stephen Fry mourned it publicly, and Alison Wright and Tim Hayward — she a marketer, he a food writer — bought and revived it within months, a rescue now old enough to have produced a centenary book in 2020. The couple remain the company's only directors, with three shops across the city (Trumpington Street the original, Bridge Street from 2016, King's Parade from 2023) and a production bakery moving to Harston for 2026 — the move prompted partly by a railway's compulsory-purchase designs on the old one, disclosed because the guide reads planning notices too. The bun recipe survived every chapter; syrup is a good preservative of institutions.