Imagine the scene. The date is 1536 and the white-robed abbot speaks to the assembled valley folk. King Henry has looted the abbey of its wealth and evicted the monks, so the young abbot has no farewell gift for his tearful people. All he has left in the world is a recipe. He gives it to the valley folk facing impoverishment for loss of the work that the abbey provides. Then he bids them farewell and walks off, later to reluctantly join the Northern rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. For thus defying Henry Abbot Adam Sedbergh [Sedbar] was to be executed at Tyburn in London in 1537 by the gruesome method of being hung, drawn and quartered, a method too barbaric to describe on a family site.
This is the legend of Wensleydale. The scene is the product of my imagination; the legend is not. What truth lies in it cannot be ascertained, but oral history states that the departing monks gave the valley folk the recipe for Wensleydale cheese. The monks were Cistercians, an austere branch of the Benedictines who sought lonely places for their monasteries, like the valleys of Northern England, where they practised farming of sheep and cattle. The monks, who originally came from France, made a cheese of ewe's milk, which was popular and made them good profit. They made one change, moving from sheep's milk to cows'. This was because sheep only yield milk eight months a year, while the cheese business required the year round milk production that only cows could provide. Not that the valley folk could not make cheese already, they could, but they took over the monks' recipe and made their cheese in their own dairies and kitchens. And so they profited.
But by the later years of the nineteenth century things were becoming more difficult. International trade saw factory-produced cheese from America undercutting the craft cheeses made in British dairies. Moreover, cheap cheeses from Britain's imperial possessions, such as New Zealand, burst onto the market worsening the undercutting. Globalisation did no good at all for craft producers and traditional products.
War worsened matters, because under the appalling pressures of food shortages government standardised cheese production to a limited range of cheeses, the best known of which was known as government cheddar. After the Second World War supermarkets proved to be a force for standardisation, and production of local cheeses produced in small creameries declined. When I was a child in the 1950s I had only ever known cheddar cheese, which is not surprising, as rationing of cheese continued to1954; but I remember the day when my mother managed to get some Cheshire cheese! It was a novelty to me, and a delight.
However, the fightback by lovers of traditional, craft and farmhouse cheese lovers had already begun, and one name stands out, Kit Calvert and the Hawes creamery at the head of Wensleydale in North Yorkshire.
Comments
As Wensleydale is limestone country bogs are not common there, but in the Cheviots on the Scottish border there are many bogs.
This past week I found that the cheese section has the cranberry Wensleydale. I guess I didn't see it for the Irish cheeses. The cheese specialist indicated that it's a longtime favorite with many customers. The pure white is his preference even though as a berry lover he likes the cranberry Wensleydale. He said that Murray's requires a wax that is not on the cranberry Wensleydale in England.
What cranberry bogs where would Wensleydale use (probably not my favorites on this side of the pond in Massachusetts)?
It is made at Beechmount Farm, which covers 200 acres in the Golden Vale, which is an area of fine dairy country in Tipperary.
The farm now makes a sheep's milk cheese as well as Cashel Blue, the only sheep's milk cheese from Ireland. It is known as Crozier Blue. I have yet to sample it.
Cashal Blue is a big favourite of ours. I think it is from County Tipperary.
I once chewed on an Irish cheese, Kerry Farm, that was too hard. It is not now listed with Irish cheeses, so I infer that it has gone out of production. For Irish cheese, choose Cashel Blue. I have never tasted Cornish Yarg.
I love most cheeses . I can 't think of any i do not like except perhaps Cornish Yarg which matures wrapped in nettle leaves.
I thought that you might mention Dad's love of cheese.
I like my cheese medium or soft consistency and creamy. I am not very fond of hard cheeses, though I can take Cheddar. I love goat's cheese, and I am also a lover of Feta, which is made with ewe's milk.
Wensleydale is a protected designation of origin, so it can only be made in Wensleydale. Therefore to be available in the USA it would have to be imported.
The pure white cheese is the nearest, but there are suggestions that the original cheese was blue. Blue Wensleydale is occasionally made nowadays. Farmhouse Wensleydale, which was brine-washed, is now extinct.
Though Cheshire cheese is not mentioned in the Domesday Book, in the early Middle Ages it seems to have been well-established, but it was made in Cheshire, Shropshire. Flint, Denbighshire and Montgomeryshire. I suspect that as Roman legionaries had cheese in their rations, and as Chester was a legionary base, making Cheshire cheese in that region might go back as far as the Romans. For non-British readers Chester is the county town of Cheshire.