Searching for Stilton Cheese and Pork Pies in the Places they are Made
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| Leicestershire |
Melton Mowbray
With the rain just holding off we walked past Anne of Cleves’ house towards the market square. A much restored medieval building it once housed the priests of the town’s chantry chapels. After the dissolution of the monasteries Henry VIII gave the house to Thomas Cromwell who lived there in 1540 but fell from grace after recommending Anne of Cleves to be Henry’s 4th wife and was executed in 1541. Ironically, the house passed to Anne of Cleves as part of her divorce settlement but although it bears her name she probably never even visited. It is now a pub.
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| Anne of Cleves' House, Melton Mowbray |
The Butter Cross
Tuesdays and Saturdays are market days, so on Wednesday only a couple of forlorn looking stalls sat alongside the restored Butter Cross. Once there were four market crosses, today they would have outnumbered the stalls. We retreated to a coffee house and watched the rain splattering onto the flagstones.
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| Butter Cross, Melton Mowbray Market |
Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe
Conveniently the shower stopped as we finished our coffee so we made our way up the High Street to ‘Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe’ (sic and yugh!)
where we bought a Melton Mowbray pork pie. Dickinson Morris have been artisan
pie-makers since 1851 but are no longer a family business and in 1992 were acquired
by Samway Brothers, whose food empire stretches from Leicester to Cornwall
(Ginsters Pasties). It is well laid out, but an artisan shop should have enthusiastic
and knowledgeable employees and the staff gave the impression they would just
as happily be selling baked beans or footwear.
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| Dickinson & Morris, Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe, Melton Mowbray |
The Carnegie Museum
Back past the market square….
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| Market Square, Melton Mowbray |
We continued towards the Tuxford and Tebbutt creamery. The Carnegie Museum is next door….
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| Carnegie Museum, Melton Mowbray |
…and as it is free we dropped in. There is a display of foxhunting which in its modern (and now illegal) form was developed locally. The rest of the small space was aimed at school groups, which visit regularly. It feels strange to see items from our own childhood in museums (are we that old⁈) but it was well presented and I did like the chemist’s shop.
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| Chemist's shop, Carnegie Museum, Melton Mowbray |
Tuxford and Tebbutt, Stilton Producers
Tuxford and Tebbutt, established 1780, also give the impression they are a family company but are wholly owned by Arla – the dairy farmers co-operative. Next to this quaint building is the forbidding modern creamery and there did not seem to be any factory shop. Morrison’s was across the road so we decided to peruse their Stilton. It was ‘own label’ and gave no clue to the manufacturer, though I know Tuxford and Tebbutt supply a lot of own label Stilton. Down the road a butcher was advertising Tuxford and Tebbutt Stilton so we bought some there.
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| Tuxford and Tebbutt, Melton Mowbray |
In 1923 the winemakers of Châteauneuf du Pape, fed up with others cashing in on their reputation, sought legal protection for their name. Ten
years later, after carefully defining the area and method of production, they succeeded
and the appellation contrôlée system was born. The idea spread throughout the
wine world, and then to other drinks and foods like olive oil, honey and ham.
In England, where food is considered a commodity rather than a cultural asset, the idea hardly caught on, though Stilton cheesemakers bucked the trend by forming
an association to protect the origin and quality of their product in 1933. In
1966 it became the only British cheese to be protected by a trademark and 1996
they applied for and received Protected Designation of Origin status from the
EU, so Stilton now stands alongside such delights as Parma Ham, Camembert and
the Almonds of the Douro. In 2009 Melton Mowbray Pork Pies joined the EU’s elite
band of protected geographical designations.[Update: Now that we have blundered out of the EU I am not sure what the situation is]
With two such products Melton Mowbray might appear justified in styling itself ‘Rural Capital of Food’, but with one pie shop and no visible effort put into promoting Stilton, it feels an overblown claim. It is worth taking another look at the picture of the market square, zooming in on the van in the centre. ‘Classic Cuisine - Cheeseburgers, Fries.’ I say no more.
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| Classic Cuisine, Melton Mowbray |
Colston Bassett
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| Nottinghamshire |
We headed north through lush countryside towards Cropwell Bishop, home of the northernmost of the five Stilton dairies. Melton Mowbray may have looked down at heel but the rural villages were full of prosperous well-kept homes and flowery lanes.
We paused for lunch in Colston Bassett, which also has a dairy, but one we would leave until a little later. The Martins Arms was a delight…
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| Martins Arms, Colston Bassett |
… and the weather had perked up enough for us to have lunch in the carefully tended garden. The staff were attentive and friendly, the Black Sheep well kept and the Colston
Bassett Stilton sandwich substantial enough to share. But, and it seemed an
important ‘but’, the chutney in the sandwich overwhelmed the cheese
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| Martin Arms, Colston Bassett |
Only when I paid the bill and read that the Martins Arms had been voted Nottinghamshire’s Best Dining Pub did I realise we had crossed the
border from Leicestershire.
PDO rules allow Stilton to be made in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire or Derbyshire from locally sourced cow’s milk. The method of production is defined and the quality protected by a taste test. Perhaps uniquely the village which gave the PDO its name is not included within the designated area. Stilton, in Cambridgeshire, is another 50mins drive east. It was the coach stop on the road north where cheese was marketed, not where it was produced, though this has been disputed.[Update: I suspect the rules are, for the moment at least, unchanged, though no longer backed by the EU]
Cropwell Bishop, Stilton Producer
Cropwell Bishop, also in Nottinghamshire, is a large village on the northern edge of the Vale of Belvoir. The Skailes family founded Somerset Creameries in 1941. They originally owned creameries in Somerset and Melton Mowbray but bought Cropwell Bishop in 1973 when they closed the West Country operation. Major investments were made here in the 1980s and the Melton Mowbray dairy was closed. The ‘Somerset Creameries’ name lingered until 2005 when the company, still run by the Skailes family, became Cropwell Bishop Creamery.
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| Cropwell Bishop Creamery |
There is no access to the creamery, but they do have a proper shop, which offers a proper tasting. They let us loose on their fine classic Stilton, Shropshire Blue, harder, yellower and less interesting than Stilton, a rather ho-hum mature cheddar and the excellent Beauvale, a soft blue cheese reminiscent of Dolcelatte.
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| Lynne attacks classic Stilton, Cropwell Bishop Creamery |
The shop stocks their full range including white Stilton (to my mind, Stilton with something missing) and Stilton with fruit inclusions,
cranberries, apricots etc, for those who fail to realise that what white
Stilton is actually missing is the blue veins.
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| Cropwell Bishop shop |
Colston Bassett, Stilton Producer
We drove back to Colston Bassett….
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| Colston Bassett, definitely in Nottinghamshire |
…..where the creamery shop only offered one cheese, but at least it was the right one. The company was started in 1913 when the local
doctor persuaded farmers and others to invest in starting a creamery. The enterprise
has thriven.
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| Colston Bassett Creamery and shop |
The wide Vale of Belvoir is top quality agricultural country, though
we saw no cattle despite cheese being its most famous product.
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| The Vale of Belvoir (pronounced Beaver - don't ask me why) |
Long Clawson, Stilton Producer
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| Leicestershire |
Long Clawson (back in Leicestershire) lives up to its name, being an extraordinarily long thin village. The dairy, right at one end, is not set up for visitors, but there is a fridge by reception from which sales are made.
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| Clawson Creamery reception (there's a fridge for sales in there) |
Another home-grown enterprise, it was founded in 1911 by local farmers and now employs 200 people who make almost 7,000 tonnes of cheese yearly
from the milk of 40 farms.
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| Clawson Creamery, Long Clawson |
Saxelby, Alleged Stilton Producer
Websters, in the hamlet of Saxelby, is the fifth local producer. It is a family concern run by two sisters who, according to their website, welcome visitors. Unfortunately we could not find it, though we drove up, then down the main street. Looking at Google street view I can see where it should be, but if they had a sign, I could not see it.[Update: in 2016 I wondered if they had gone out of business. But not so - or at least not then. In December 2020 the Melton Times reported that the pandemic had produced a 16% drop in Stilton sales and as a result Websters had closed. There is no indication as to whether it will ever reopen.]
And so, with four pieces of Stilton and a Melton Mowbray pork pie we set off home. Apparently neither Melton Mowbray nor the Stilton industry are very interested in marketing themselves to visitors (though Cropwell Bishop is trying), so although it was a good day out, it was not a great one. Quality food and tourism have much to offer each other, if this was France there would undoubtedly be ‘route de fromage’, so why not here?
Hartington, Stilton Producer
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| Derbyshire |
For completeness I will also mention the sixth Blue Stilton producer based in the Derbyshire Village of Hartington – rather a long way from
the other five. Once owned and then closed by Clawson, the creamery reopened in
2012 and has been making Stilton since 2014. I should also add there are other producers of White Stilton, but I have made my opinion on that clear already.
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| My friends and walking companions Brian and Francis in the Peak District village of Hartington (Feb 2012) |
So that is the tourist bit, now on to the tasting - it is the next post.
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