STILTON CHEESE

Taranaki Daily News, 14 September 1935, Page 13 (Supplement)

STILTON CHEESE

GENESIS OF AN INDUSTRY

(By

H.E.C.)

Chiefly by reason of a speech made at New Plymouth by the permanent head of the Department of Tourists and Publicity, Mr. L. J. Schmitt, a good deal of interest in “Stilton” cheese has been created throughout Taranaki. Mr, Schmitt spoke of retail prices obtainable in Australia that were high enough to make any cheese factory manager “sit back and think,” especially when he heard also that the demand for New Zealand Stilton cheese in. Australia could be increased considerably. - It is not, however, the economics but the history of Stilton cheese manufacture that is the subject of this article. Cheesemaking in England, like most of her farming, was for centuries intensely individualistic. To make cheese, usually with ekim milk, was part of the duties of the farmer’s wife. For the . “Squire” and his family,” or even for marketing, wholemilk cheese might be made, but for the ordinary individual cheese meant a product of skim-milk manufactured with the skill, or lack of it, possessed by individual farmers’ families. English cheese in the 16th century was not regarded with much favour. Shakespeare sneered at it, and even a century later British cheese was considered inferior to that obtainable —by those who could pay the price—from Italy, Holland and France. Nevertheless some districts were specialising a little. Around the little village of Cheddar, in Somerset, the process —which has sin • developed into one that is in world-wide use—was fairly identical between farm and _ farm. Similar developments were beginning all over England. So the Homed Essex, the Banbury, the Cheshire, the Gloucester and the Wensleydale cheeses gradually achieved a reputation and a market outside the immediate neighbours or customers of the farms where the cheese was made.

For many centuries one of. the most important highways in England was the Great North Road from London tc Edinburgh. Parts of it followed the line of “Watling Street,” that highway made by the Romans so that military assistance could be sent without delay to quell the disturbances that were always ready to break out in the turbulent North. No other, road has been more closely associated with England’s history 7. Along it strode the soldiers of Rome; it was the arterial road to the rich lands of what are still called the “Home Counties” of the capital, which the Norman knights seized after the Conquest of Saxon England; up and down the north road York and Lancaster struggled; and along part of it “Bonnie Prince Charlie” made his thrust towards London and a crown.

For all its history, however, it was neither a pleasant nor a very safe, highway for years after the “Rebellion of 1745” had been suppressed. The traveller from London had still to run the risk of robbery by highwaymen, and it was considered unwise to wait fpr meals at any stopping place until the metropolis was some miles behind and the villages close enough together to make' it difficult for highwaymen to escape detection. Ey the time a traveller was approaching the Midlands he was usually ready for solid mer ’ and the coaching inns of Ei gland gained a high reputation fpr their comfort and good cheer. About ten years after Prince Charles had fled north one Cooper Thornhill became the landlord of the Bell Inn at Stilton, a little village on the Great North Road where a change of horses was made and the passengers given a chance to obtain refr- -hments. Thornhill had a relation, a farmer’s wife residing at Wymondham, a village near Mellon Moubray in Le: restershire, then, as now, the centre of j countryside in which there are many beautiful and comfortable manor houses. The farmer’s name was Paulet, and ,! s wife’s skill in the manufacture of cheese became known at some of the “big houses” in the district, much t. h r profit. She sent some cheese on trial to per relative at Stilton. The travellers by the coaches liked the “brick-bat” cheese, so colled because it was pressed into a rectangular shape -bout the size of a b” :i der’s brick. The fame of the cheese obtainable' at Stilton spread to other coach routes, and the demand soon outgrew the supply obta ! -able from Mrs. Paulet’s farm. It was not long before other farms in the Mellon Mowbray, district were m-k--ing “Stilton” cheese, and still the demand grew. Thornhi” sent for a cheesemaker trained at Wymondham arid introduced the manufacture of Stilton cheese to the district from which it had acquired its name. It was as suitable a spot for the development of a cheese industry as any in England. There were rich pastures in the Ouse Valley, and since Norman days the rich loam of Huntingdonshire has been famous for its cropping capacity and pasturage. A kindred industry to that of grain growing, straw plaiting, is still in existence in districts not many miles from the village of Stilton. The process was evidently one demanding considerable experience and the utmost care, for the manufacture was confined to the two counties for many years. It used to be claimed that Stilton cheese contained a double quantity of cream, the skimming of the night’s milk being added to the morning’s milk before the process of manufacture began. When that had been completed there was still a period of from five to seven months t,j wait before the cheese was fit for sale and much attention was given during the period of maturation. It is on record that long before the study of bacteria had been undertaken systematically by scientists it was found that Stilton cheese matured with a better flavour in certain curing rooms than in others! Stilton cheesemaking is still an active industry in Huntingdonshire and in Leicestershire, although the coming of the factory has, of course, standardised production a good deal. Strangely enough the first cheese factory in England was rot established in any of the then principal cheesemaking 1 districts. It was established in 1871, or just a century after the death of Mrs. | Paulet, at Derby, a town that is usually ■ more associated with huge railway works than with the manufacture of dairy produce. I In New Zealand the manufacture of Stilton cheese has been an established industry for over a generation, and the quality of the output has always been high. It is the chief source of supply for Australia, and the New Zealand product is met with in Singapore and on vessels trading from Australia to Hong Kong and Japan. Apparently the process is highly specialised, and has been confined to one factory. Possibly this has accounted for the uniformity in quality and for the good reputation achieved.