A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Profile Books 3 Holford Yard, Bevin Way London WC1X 9HD www.profilebooks.com 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset in Sina to a design by Henry Iles. Copyright © Ned Palmer 2019 The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1788161183 e-ISBN 978-1782834755 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. on Forest Stewardship Council (mixed sources) certified paper. A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles Ned Palmer For Imo, my constant solace and in memory of Mary Holbrook 1938–2019 Contents Introduction Fresh out of Red Leicester . 7 Chapter One . 11 Neolithic feasting 4000 bce–43 ce Sleightlett Chapter Two ............................................... 39 What the Romans did for our cheese 43 ce–1066 Spenwood and Wigmore Chapter Three ............................................ 73 The benefit of monks 1066–1348 Milleens Chapter Four ............................................ 115 Market forces 1348–1547 Gorwydd Caerphilly Chapter Five ............................................. 153 Big cheese 1547–1688 Appleby’s Cheshire Chapter Six ............................................... 189 The birth of a brand 1688–1837 Stichelton Chapter Seven . 217 Ploughman’s lunch 1837–1901 Westcombe Cheddar Chapter Eight ........................................... 251 Farmhouse to factory 1901–74 Hawes Wensleydale Chapter Nine ............................................ 283 The Great Cheese Renaissance 1974–99 Lanark Blue Chapter Ten ............................................. 315 Let a thousand cheeses bloom 2000– Postmodern cheese A Brief Directory ...................................... 341 Some favourite cheeses Sources & Further Reading ......................... 355 Acknowledgements . 358 Photo Credits . 360 Index ....................................................... 362 INTRODUCTION FRESH OUT OF RED LEICESTER INTRODUCTION Fresh out of Red Leicester Working as a cheesemonger, you get to hear the Monty Python cheese sketch a lot. You know the one: John Cleese attempts to buy cheese and reels off a list of forty-three varieties, only to be cheerfully rebuffed on each request by Michael Palin as Mr Wensleydale the cheesemonger (‘I’m afraid we’re fresh out of Red Leicester, sir’). People often feel moved to perform a bit of it when they enter a cheese shop. Fair enough – some of them do it quite well, and I’m happy to wait. But the curious thing is that, when the sketch was first performed in 1972, it wasn’t far off the mark. For, back in the Dark Ages of the early 1970s, you would have been hard-pressed to buy a decent piece of British cheese. Of course, there was Stilton for Christmas, and blocks of Cheddar the rest of the year, maybe even some Cheshire or Lancashire. But that was pretty much your lot. British cheese had become virtually extinct, as had the tradition of ‘farmhouse’ dairies. Stilton aside, the cheese of Britain and Ireland was virtually all factory produced – acceptable perhaps for a Welsh rarebit, or as a cube on a cocktail stick poised between a bottled olive and a pineapple chunk. But if you wanted ‘fancy cheese’, for a cheeseboard, it was French or Italian – and even then only half a dozen kinds. Which makes this book something of a miracle. The British Isles today boasts more than eight hundred named cheeses, from soft cheeses like the fresh and delicate goat’s milk Perroche to full-on, funky washed-rinds like the aptly named Renegade Monk. 7 INTRODUCTION FRESH OUT OF RED LEICESTER Renegade is also a great example of a new current in cheesemaking – as a combination of washed-rind and blue, it’s a modern mash up of two distinct cheese styles. At the same time there has been a revival of some classic farmhouse varieties, which had all but disappeared. Rich, smooth and earthy, Sparkenhoe Red Leicester is a great example of this resurgence of tradition. You can buy these local, artisanal cheeses at farmers’ markets and dedicated cheese shops, and there are decent arrays at any respectable supermarket. Charles de Gaulle famously asked, ‘How can you govern a country that has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?’ Well, we too have become that country. But how did all this happen? How did we create dozens of regional varieties, in farmhouses across the British Isles? How did the first British cheese get made, for that matter? How was the world of cheesemaking revolutionised in the Middle Ages by the labours of monks? Why did we then allow our cheeses to disappear, in the first half of the twentieth century, and just how did we get them back in its last decades? That is the subject of this book, and, as you read on, I hope to reveal that its title is not as fanciful as it might first appear. You can, in a very real sense, explore the history of the British Isles through the cheeses its people have made, from the arrival of farming in Neolithic times right through to the present. I have divided the history of the British Isles into ten periods, each of them accompanied by a cheese that characterises the era. Of course, I’m not saying that Stilton is the only cheese that mattered in the eighteenth century, nor that the only way to look at the Industrial Revolution is with a ploughman’s lunch of Cheddar. But the cheese that heads each chapter has something to tell you about that time. I’ll recount the stories of how these cheeses came to be, why they were popular at that time, how they might have tasted or looked, who made them, who ate them, what those people’s lives might have been like, and how they and their cheeses were shaped by the currents of history, religion, war, plague, supermarkets and the Milk Marketing Board. 8 INTRODUCTION FRESH OUT OF RED LEICESTER Along the way, we’ll meet cheeses that have been lost and found, revived, reinvented, industrialised, or returned to farmhouse traditions. I’ll share my own cheesemonger lore and show how to pick a really great example of a particular cheese – and what you might want to consider drinking with it to enhance its flavours. I will also, I hope, explain something of the magic of cheesemaking. How a liquid as bland as milk can be transformed into a rich, savoury and complex food that has graced the tables of the British Isles for thousands of years. G.K. Chesterton lamented that ‘poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese’, but one at least wasn’t. In November 1935, T.S. Eliot wrote to The Times in response to a letter by John Squire, suggesting that a statue be erected to the inventor of Stilton cheese. While Eliot appreciated Squire’s ‘spirited defence of Stilton’, he thought that putting up a statue was not going far enough. ‘If British cheese is to be brought back from the brink of extinction, a Society for the Preservation of Ancient Cheeses must be formed without delay’, he wrote. Eliot was a big Cheshire fan, prizing a ‘noble Old Cheshire’ against a Stilton any day, but quite rightly he finishes his letter with this stirring call: ‘this is no time for disputes between eaters of English cheese. The situation is too precarious and we must stick together.’ Happily for us, the situation is no longer quite so precarious... 9 10 CHAPTER ONE NEOliTHIC FEASTING CHAPTER ONE Sleightlett Neolithic feasting 4000 bce–43 ce One wet and windy February afternoon, I found myself standing on a hill in Wiltshire holding a piece of fresh goat’s cheese. Not just any hill. I was shivering in the rainy shadow of Stonehenge, trying to pay homage to the earliest cheesemakers of Britain, while ignoring the onset of hypothermia. I was also reflecting on the journey that had brought me – and the cheese – to this place. A journey that began nearly twenty years ago in London’s Borough Market. I had found myself short of a job, having exhausted the possibilities of a philosophy degree, and discovered from a stint in Australia that only the most fortunate can make a living as a musician. Which was why I was helping my friend Todd Trethowan sell his Gorwydd Caerphilly cheese. Never having tasted proper cheese before, let alone sold any, the first thing I had to do was to try some, and as the complex, intriguing and delicious flavours unfolded across my palate I experienced what I can only call an epiphany. This might seem a disproportionate reaction to eating a piece of cheese, but proper Caerphilly, as made by Todd on his family farm in Wales, is one of the world’s great cheeses. 11 SLEIGHTLETT It is made from unpasteurised milk (also known as raw milk) to provide a more complex flavour; it tastes of lemon, butter and earth; and its texture varies from a moistly crumbly centre to a rich creamy outer layer, with a grey and white mould rind that has the feel of soft felt. I started asking Todd a lot of questions: ‘How does milk turn into this?’ and ‘Why doesn’t all cheese taste this good?’ Todd did his best, but in the end, perhaps to stop me bothering him, he recommended me for a job at Neal’s Yard Dairy, a shop famous since the 1980s for its range of British and Irish cheese.