ABOUT US

It’s all about the heritage, provenance and legacy for Paul and Sarah Appleby and their five children.

The ethos behind the way we farm and make our produce today is very much influenced by Paul’s grandparents Lance and Lucy Appleby. Lucy came from a line of Cheshire cheesemaking matriarchs, cheesemaking being a female role, and once she and Lance had married and settled here at Hawkstone Abbey Farm in 1952 they founded Appleby’s in the stables next to the farmhouse kitchen. There it has stayed as one of the last ‘farmhouse’ cheese dairy’s left.

This heritage is such an intrinsic part of what we do, from the way we farm to the way we think about maturation. Here in our traditional dairy we make ‘edible heritage’ in a way that still learns from Lucy’s incredible cheese make notes and has an exciting future influenced by those same traditions and values. Master cheesemaker Gary worked with Lucy and now shares his knowledge with our brilliant dairy team, Neil, who makes our delicious whey butter, and John in the maturation rooms.

We are SALSA accredited members of the Specialist Cheesemakers Society.

The dairy and farm are part of the rhythm of family life here at Hawkstone Abbey Farm. Our desire to have a more harmonious relationship with the biodynamics of the land has prompted a recent change.

The farm has undergone a conversion towards a more regenerative and sustainable way of farming. Each cloth bound Cheshire encapsulates a moment in time – the soil, the traditional grass pastures, the gentle cows, the weather, the season. The fresh, raw milk is the master ingredient, to which we add traditional cultures, rennet, salt from the Cheshire Plains and the extract of the annatto seed, which gives our coloured Cheshire it’s warm sunrise colour. These time capsules are matured in old barns with napoleonic timbers. The provenance and flora of our natural surroundings give our Appleby’s cheeses a flavour that is totally unique.

The future of British Territorial cheeses like Appleby’s is exciting. Small traditional farmhouse dairies making delicious, thought-provoking cheeses from a herd of grazing animals that give people pleasure as they eat would be a marvellous legacy for farmers and cheesemakers over the centuries.