IT is not just the faces that are changing on Victoria Street, with buildings which look like simple terraced houses hiding their pasts as integral parts of the local community.

Number 31 was Jeffrey Davies' Bakers from 1965 to 1995, with the only sign of that incarnation being a now double glazed window on the side of the end terrace house which was used to sell food to the community.

At its peak, it was producing 4,800 loaves a week, as well as rolls and cakes, and supplied most small shops around Abergavenny as well as pubs and farmers from areas such as Llanfoist, Gilwern and Crickhowell.

Mr Davies, now 77, said: "My mother owned a cafe, so I wanted to follow her and applied to do a catering course at Cardiff College.

But that was full so I went to Cardiff Technical College for two years to learn the baking trade instead."

After working in the industry for six years, the house in Victoria Sreet, which was then a cobblers became available and Davies and his father-in-law bought it.

"We used to have our delivery vans going around and we supplied a lot of farmers as they would eat a lot and take around ten loaves off us each week.

"We also supplied a total of 24 shops and pubs and were one of the biggest bakers in the area.

"But like with a lot of smaller shops, the supermarkets killed it off and our business ebbed away until 1995.

"We supplied our customers until Christmas time of that year and then I retired and closed the bakery for good."

Of 70 houses, Mr Davies believes that only seven are still owned by the same people who lived there when he moved in 42 years ago.

One person who wasn't there then but has a great affinity with Victoria Street and Davies' Bakers is Evelyn Price, 60.

She has lived on the street for 20 years, but grew up on nearby Union Street, attending the old Grofield Secondary Modern School which was open from 1951 to 1972.

From her doorstep, she points to the site opposite which is now residential homes for the elderly, but a plaque on the wall pays testament to the fact that Victoria Street was once full with bright-eyed youngsters throughout the day.

Mrs Price laughs as her memory seems to be jogged: "We used to get in a lot of trouble because of that baker's when we went to Grofield.

"The music hall wasn't in the school, but a bit further up the road in the building which is now the Salvation Army's.

"They would send us up there, but instead of going straight there, we would stop in the bakers to buy doughnuts and cakes."