Obituary: Moira Adamson, businesswoman

Moira Adamson was a gregarious Fife businesswoman who kept one of the Kingdom’s most iconic exports at the top of its game.

Although she initially had no experience of the bakery trade, she had a keen business brain and, when she became involved in Adamson’s Oatcakes, she used that acumen to its best advantage.

Her unique oatcakes won scores of gold medals and became one of chef Rick Stein’s Food Heroes, sought after by customers as far south as Covent Garden and Knightsbridge.

Steeped in the local community, she was born and raised in Pittenweem and developed a strong work ethic, inherited from her mother, a fish-line baiter.

Her first husband had a fish business and she played an active role in that enterprise, honing skills that were easily transferrable when she met and married baker, Ken Adamson.

He was the third generation of bakers in his family, his grandmother and her brother having started up a bakery in 1887. Over the years, he expanded the business to six shops and Moira would help with deliveries as well as taking on a management role.

The oatcakes really soared in popularity after they also started being sold from the firm’s fish vans and eventually it was decided to concentrate on producing only these best-selling biscuits.

The thick, rustic and crumbly oatcakes, handcrafted from the original secret recipe created by her husband’s grandmother, remain in demand all over the country. It was one phone call, out of the blue, from organic champions Neal’s Yard in Covent Garden that led to regular orders for its stores and Adamson’s Oatcakes have reportedly been spotted on the counters of Harrods.

The Adamsons made a good partnership commercially and personally. “She and Ken were made for each other”, said her son John. “She had an absolute heart of gold. She was part of the community, knew everybody and would speak to anybody and everybody.”

She was fun-loving and outgoing, a brilliant amateur actress who loved to sing. She also enjoyed performing plays and comedies with the local Women’s Rural Institute and fundraising to provide treats and outings for pensioners in her community.

The couple entered semi-retirement several years ago and made frequent trips to their favourite haunt, Gleneagles, in Perthshire, where they had honeymooned after marrying secretly at Auchterarder Registrar’s office.

They counted the Auchtermuchty-based accordionist Sir Jimmy Shand among their friends and would visit him every second Saturday for tea, until his death in 2000. They also enjoyed the company of other musical friends with whom they relished some memorable times. When Ken died in 2008, his widow continued to manage the bakery, in Routine Row, Pittenweem, and kept the business running for almost three years until she, too, saw her health fail.

She is survived by her sons John and David, daughters-in-law Shirley and Nicola and grandchildren Tamara, Natasha, David and John.

ALISON SHAW