This is my mother's recipe for gingerbread, which, on her recipe card, was called “Gloucester gingerbread”—an indication that gingerbread in England (like shortbread in Scotland) comes in a wide range of regional variants.
        My mother used to make this regularly at Christmas; but she also made it for afterschool snacks when I was a kid.   It is quite a ‘hot’ version, and goes well with a tall, cool glass of milk.   Or (speaking as an adult) with a cup of café au lait.
        I haven't made this for several years.   I eventually rebelled at making so many of my mother's recipes for Christmas, instead of her, and she offered to make this, couldn't find her old recipe card, borrowed mine, and mislaid that as well!   It was a couple of years before she located it again; and by that time I was buying gingerbread from Marks & Spencer.   They closed the last of their Canadian stores just around the time my father died; and, since then, I have found a bakery that makes a version that is very like my mother's.
       In the rest of Europe, the traditional Christmas gingerbread is made as a relatively thick moulded cookie, usually using a patterned mould.   The recipe here, however, is a loaf gingerbread by type, though it is actually made in square cake pan.

Ingredients

4 oz. butter (unsalted)
6 oz black treacle
2 oz golden syrup
½ cup milk
2 eggs
10 oz flour
2 oz brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp cloves
2 tsp ground ginger (or to taste)
1 tsp baking soda

Directions

Making the Batter

Filling the Cake Pan
Grease a square 7-inch cake pan, and sprinkle the bottom and sides with flour.   Pour in the gingerbread batter.

Baking
Bake at 310°F for at least one hour, until the top is gently browned, the sides of the cake are pulling away from the sides of the pan, and a cake tester comes out clean.   (It could take as much as half an hour longer.)   Remove from the oven, and cool in the pan on a wire rack.   When cool, cut into squares.

Makes at least sixteen squares
depending on how it is cut.