History

Jervaulx in Lower Wensleydale

Wensleydale cheese has been made in Wensleydale since 1150, when the Cistercian monks first settled in the dale, and established a monastery at Fors, just four miles from Hawes. Some years later the monks moved, because of hostile natives and inclement weather, to Jervaulx in Lower Wensleydale. These French Cistercian monks brought with them their special recipe for the making of cheese, which continued to be produced at Jervaulx until the dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century. From that time the art, which the monks had developed, passed to local farmers' wives who, for more than three hundred years, produced the cheese in their own farmhouses.

In 1897 Mr Edward Chapman, a corn and provisions merchant of Hawes, began to purchase milk from surrounding farms to use for the manufacture of Wensleydale cheese on a larger scale. The industrial depression of the 1930s made trading conditions difficult leaving the creamery in significant debt to farmers and Mr Chapman's dairy was facing closure

Kit Calvert

Farmers, who were owed money by the dairy, were offered contracts by the Milk Marketing Board to take dales milk to a national dairy miles away. The farmers, although they were creditors, were adamant that the Hawes dairy should continue, and they found a champion of their cause in Kit Calvert, one of their number. In 1935 Kit Calvert called a meeting in the Town Hall and gathered enough support to rescue the dairy, the only one producing cheese in the heart of Wensleydale.

In 1966 the Milk Marketing Board recognised the potential and purchased Wensleydale Creamery. In May 1992 Dairy Crest, a subsidiary of the Milk Marketing Board, closed the Hawes creamery, the only one in the dale, and transferred production of Wensleydale cheese to Lancashire!

The ex-managers took up the fight and, against the odds, eventually persuaded the owners to sell the creamery to them. A management buy-out was agreed in November 1992. With the skilled help of eleven members of the former workforce, cheese making recommenced.

In 1994 the Visitor Centre was opened giving people the opportunity to ‘Share the goodness of Wensleydale’.