Cheshire Cheese



Every Roman legionary got an ounce of cheese in his daily ration. With 5000 men in a full-strength legion, that’s 5000 ounces or about 140 kilos a day. Only hard cheese can be cut into one-ounce pieces, and because the Romans also introduced large-scale sheep farming to the British Isles, it is possible that much of this was sheep based. Roman era cheese moulds have been found at both Corbridge Roman Town on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland and Wroxeter Roman City in Shropshire.

Cheshire cheese is one of the oldest recorded named cheeses in British history: it is mentioned, along with a Shropshire cheese, by Thomas Muffet (also Moufet, Mouffet, or Moffet, c.1553 – 5 June 1604) in Health's Improvement (c. 1580). While there are no other specific mentions of the cheese, the importance of Cheshire as a major diary-producing region in England was highlighted in William Malmesbury’s Gesta pontificum Anglorum (‘History of the Bishops of England’) in the mid-twelfth century. Cheshire cheese was originally the generic name for cheese produced in the county and surrounding counties. It has been said that the cheese is mentioned in the Domesday Book, but this is not true.

Cheshire cheese's rise to prominence began in the 1650's and had a significant impact on the economy and landscape of Cheshire.

Manufacture
In the past, milk production was far more seasonal. Lots of milk was produced in the summer months, when there was plenty of grass. Much less milk was produced in the winter, as the hay made then was a poorer feed than the silage made today. The farms made cheese in the summer, to use up the surplus milk and lay down a store of food for the winter months. Salt, which is freely available in Cheshire, helped to preserve the cheese. Men traditionally played virtually no part in the production or processing, which - from milking the cows to selling the products at market - were controlled by women. Dairy farming to produce cheese for the London market was different from traditional farming: it required unremitting attention to the health and well-being of the cows, combined with skill and care in making the cheese.

The author of "European Agriculture and Rural Economy", Henry Colman, got some instructions for the making of Cheshire Cheese from a dairy wife in 1851. He reproduced them "verbatim and in full" in his book.


 * “Take thirty gallons of new milk to make a good-sized cheese, and then put the rennet into the milk. When come into curd, break it very small; then bring it together into one side of the tub; then dip the whey from it, and put it into the cheese, with a cloth inside of the vat, and put it under the press one hour; then take it out and break it up very small, and warm a small quantity of whey and pour over the curd, and stir it around; then take the whey from it, and put the curd into the vat again, and squeeze it well with the hand. When putting it in the vat the last way, take a small quantity of salt, and put it into the middle of the cheese, and put it under the press. Apply dry cloths to it several times, and salt it every twelve hours four tiimes. A little flour is a very good thing to put in the middle of the cheese with the salt – about one tablespoonful.”

Colman notes:


 * "What the use of the flour is in this case, it would be difficult to say. It may be like the horse-shoe upon the door-post. But I chose to give her directions verbatim and in full. Her cheese is of the best quality, and her dairy-room a model of neatness and order."

Commercial cheese production started on the large farms which already had dairy herds. By such simple techniques as hurrying the calves off to the butcher they could increase milk available for cheesemaking and so switch from meat to cheese production. These were mainly freeholds but the dairy herds seem to have been quite small, averaging only six cows in 1664. Until 1674 the average size of herds increased, but between 1675 and 1686 a large number of small cheeses were produced. From 1687 cheeses grew steadily in size until by the end of the century an average weight of 20-24 Ib. became standard. This implies a growth of the average herd to ten to twelve cows, which would inevitably have involved the creation of larger farms as ten acres per cow seems to have been needed in the seventeenth century. However there was also a period in which farms started to pool their milk to make large cheeses for export in specialised dairies, a practice then sufficiently unusual to draw comment from travel-writer Celia Fiennes in 1698:


 * "This is a pretty Rich land; you must travell on a Causey; I went 3 miles on a Causey through much wood Its from Nantwitch to Chester town 14 long miles, ye wayes being deep: its much on Enclosures and I passed by severall large pooles of waters, but what I wonder'd at was yt tho' this shire is remarkable for a greate deale of greate Cheeses and Dairys I did not see more than 20 or 30 Cowes in a troope feeding, but on Enquiry find ye Custome of ye Country to joyn their milking together of a whole village and so make their great Cheeses. "

Many historians of the North-West have described new enclosures in the period 1660-1750 and have noticed the reduction in the numbers of small farms. An important driving force was the desire to create viable dairy farms with herds of ten cows or more. Both the market and the production techniques favoured this size. The London buyers preferred larger cheeses and so paid a higher price for them, and a dairy-woman was not fully employed with fewer than ten cows.

Red Cheese
Red Cheshire, coloured with annatto to a shade of deep orange, was developed in the hills of North Wales and sold to travellers on the road to Holyhead. In cheese, the yellow and orange hues naturally vary throughout the year as the cow's feed changed: in the summer, with fresh grass and its natural carotene content, the milk produced would have a natural orange tint, as would the cheese made from it, while at other times of the year, the tint would be greatly reduced. As the pigment is carried in the cream, skimming the milk, which some farmers did to make butter or to sell it separately, the lesser-quality cheese from such milk would be white. To fool the consumer, the cheesemakers introduced colorants to imitate the more intense colors of the finer summer cheese. Initially these colors came from saffron, marigold, and carrot juice, but later annatto began being used. This trade was so successful that the travellers came to believe that all Cheshire cheese was orange, and producers in its home county were obliged to dye their cheese in order to match the expectations of the market. The white (actually ivory to pale yellow in colour) and red (deep peach to orange in color) are identical in flavour.

Blue Cheese
Like many of our historic blue cheeses, Blue Cheshire was often an accident arising from the traditional Cheshire making process. Whole cheeses would be stored in barns and as they dried out their coats might crack and allow environmental moulds to enter the cheese. The penicillium roqueforti mould is endemic and particularly so in areas where leather saddles and reins might have been stored. Some cheeses went blue and were seen as a highly desirable accident.

Sales
Cheshire cheese captured a large share of the London market after the supposed first shipload arrived in 1650, such that the principal cheese eaten in London in the late 17th and 18th century was Cheshire. However there are many gaps in the series of port books surviving for Chester and Liverpool and it is possible that there may have been shipments before then. A stable series of port books only begins in 1674. Cheddar and Stilton were also known in London during this time, but were extremely expensive - three to four times the price of Cheshire. The new cheese gave its name to many eating places. In 1678, Samuel Pepys is recorded visiting "The Cheshire Cheese", probably in Crutched Friars near his house beside the Tower of London. In September 1678, Dr Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith (Robert Hooker’s diary 1678) often dined together in the Cheshire Cheese Tavern in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street: now Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub at 145 Fleet Street. Cheese was not sent by land, unless as an extra in a carriers’ cart – the carrier would have to buy a few cheeses at £20 a ton.

It is recorded that the ship the James (Robert Mills master) arrived in London with 20 tons of cheese on 21 October 1650 (PRO, E190/45/6, London coastal for 1650). This was a marketing coup for William Seaman, a London merchant who came from Cheshire – his family financed the voyage. Port books for London show no less than 364 tons of cheese was sent to London in 1664. They also show that sales increased – ships from Chester brought 1000 tons in the 1670s and nearly 2000 tons by the 1680s. Cheese was virtually the only freight going from the north-west to London. The type of ship used in the cheese trade throughout this period was the ketch. It was, without a keel, a manoeuvrable vessel that was extensively employed in the coasting trade. It drew 11-13 ft when laden so it could take refuge in shallow bays and estuaries when storms threatened, and it had a flat enough bottom to lie upright on the mud at low tide. It increased steadily in size from 20-30 tons in the 166Os to 50-100 tons in the 1740s. A ketch usually carried ballast to compensate for its lack of keel, so when Welsh lead required transport to London it could be accommodated as ballast in addition to the normal cargo of cheese.

The voyage of ketches could be as little as nine days from Chester in the 1680s, but the average voyage (from Port books) was 26 days. Return loads to the north-west for cheese ships was a more exotic cargo of teas, spices, currants and silks.



In the 17th century, a cow probably produced 240lb (109kg) of cheese per year. So 1,000 tons of cheese represented the output of some 10,000 cows. Dairy herds in the Northwest, therefore, must have been increased by some 20,000 cows between 1650 and 1688. However, in 1689, French privateers and war meant trade virtually ceased by ship. The land carriage put the cheese up by £5 – £8 a ton, and slowly reduced demand. With the end of the long war with Louis XIV, in 1713 the cheese ships started to sail again, and at least 2,600 tons were shipped from the NW in 1717 and 18. The market had more than doubled since the 1680s. Because the efficient operation of ships required a stock of cheese to be ready in a warehouse for them to load, the London cheesemongers soon realised they had to employ "factors" to buy cheese in advance of the ship’s arrival. Originally factors bought cheese from fairs and markets, but buying on the farm became universal in the 1700s. The "New Cut" made the city accessible during spring tides to ships drawing up to 15 ft. in the 1770s. By the mid 1740s a wharf had been reestablished west of the Roodee and there were large timber yards near by. About 1760 the city built a new warehouse for cheese, with its own quay, just to the north, and was planning a further dock, warehouses, and a new road from the Watergate, later called New Crane Street.

As well as the cheese sent to London, much was eaten locally – 40lbs a year consumed by each inhabitant (of Arley Hall) in the 1620s. This total rose to over 120lbs in the 1750s and 60s. To accommodate this local consumption, there must have been about 20,000 cows in Cheshire, occupying a third of the suitable land in the county, and the rest of the area around. There was a driving force to create viable dairy farms with herds of 10 cows or more, so mergers of those with freehold took place.

By 1870, the Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales estimated that over 12,000 tonnes of cheese were produced each year. 100 years later and this reached an astounding 40,000 tonnes, at the peak of sales. As more and more cheese varieties were introduced, including the likes of Cheddar, Cheshire cheese has faced some strong competition, but still remains one of the most popular.

Cheese and the Military
Cheeses native to England were ideal for military transportation and storage. They were salted, hard-pressed and long-lasting, and could be stowed in the hold of a ship for delivery overseas, or for use by the ship's company. The realization of this advantage came as early as Henry III's reign, when the commissariat ordered 20 weys of hard cheese for his maritime expedition to Gascony in 1253.

In November 1644, William Harris and partners were paid £833, 16 shillings and 11 pence to take Cheshire cheese to Ireland – the first shipment of the Civil Wars to have had a named source. Previous shipments had just been called "cheese". In 1646–1650, there were cheese shipments from Chester and Liverpool to Dublin and Derry, which were presumably of Cheshire cheese. These were shipped by various parties, including John Davies and Charles Walley, the latter being a sometime mayor of Chester.

The cheese ration in Nelson's navy was 4oz every other day. Prior to 1758 it is not clear which brand of cheese the navy purchased for supply, but it may have been Suffolk as mentioned in the 1745 edition of the "Regulations and Instructions Relating to His Majesty’s Service at Sea". A contract to supply Essex and Suffolk cheese to the people of Calais was concluded after the Treaty of Leulinghem (1389) briefly ended the war with France. In October 1595 the Suffolk Justices of the Peace were instructed to give the navy victualler first choice of cheese, with all other sales to be held back.

Suffolk was a very hard cows' milk cheese, possibly similar to Parmesan, the unique hardness and durability of which was celebrated, or decried, in poems, songs and jokes. In 'The Hampshire Chronicle' - Monday 19 December 1825;


 * "As characteristic of Suffolk cheese, it said that a vessel once laden, one half with grindstones and the other half with the above commodity, on arriving at its destination it was found that the rats had consumed all the grindstones, but left the cheeses untouched."

By comparison with Essex and Suffolk, Cheshire cheese was a relative newcomer. It was as late as 1607 that William Camden commented:


 * "..the grasse and fodder there is of that goodnesse and vertue that cheeses be made heere in great number of a most pleasing and delicat tast, such as all England againe affourdeth not the like, no, though the best dayriwomen otherwise and skilfullest in cheese making be had from hence."

Suffolk cheese is no longer made. By 1850, most of the pasture land of High Suffolk was gone, long since ploughed up for crops. There were frequent complaints against it, and in 1758 the decision was taken to switch to Cheshire and Gloucester Cheese, even though they were considerably more expensive and probably did not keep so well. It may be significant that two early sources instruct that Cheshire Cheese be issued at two thirds the weight of Suffolk, whereas none of the later sources mention any such provision. The reasons for the change appear to have had little to do with the complaints, cattle disease and floods in the 1640s seriously affected the Suffolk cheese trade. Not only that but Suffolk cheese doubled in price and farmers skimmed-off the cream for more lucrative butter production (Robert Royce ‘Breviary of Suffolk’). This reduced the quality of Suffolk cheese so much that by the 1660s "even servants complained about being asked to eat it" (Samuel Pepys’ diary). Cheshire cheese, unlike the Suffolk cheese of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was made with whole milk. There was not much of a local butter trade in the county in the 1660s when the first surviving recipe for making the cheese was reported to the Royal Society by William Jackson, so the eating quality would have been noticeably better than cheese made with skimmed milk.

Dennis Gauden
Another influence on this trade was the adoption from the early 1640s by England's state-appointed victuallers of Cheshire cheese as one of their standard commodities. They then supplied it in bulk to the navy and also to army garrisons in theatres of war such as Ireland and Scotland. The victualler who played the principal role in this provisioning from the 1640s to the 1670s was Denis Gauden. Gauden played a minor role in supplying Royalist troops in the First Civil War (August 1642–June 1646). Because of its portability, cheese was important in the commissariat of both sides. In 1646, he and two colleagues proposed shipping cheese at their own risk to the English garrisons in Ireland. They wanted £3,000 at three and three-quarter pence per pound (approximately equal to 85 tons).38 They did not specify a source of the cheese but their rival, John Davies, suggested sending £1,500 worth of Lancashire and Cheshire cheese at the slightly higher rate of four pence per pound. These offers were discussed first in the House of Lords in 1646 and then in the Commons the following year. Gauden's main chance came later, with much activity recorded in the State Papers between April 1650 and October 1652. In 1650, he became the dominant supplier of cheese among the five recognized naval victuallers. He was appointed to weigh and receive into the stores the cheese of other merchants and:


 * "also to take warehouses, and employ persons to dress and look to the same until shipped for Ireland, and also to hire vessels to transport the cheese, and to set carpenters on work to fit the vessels"

Gauden became the main supplier of cheese to the armies in Scotland and Ireland, some of which was "upon his own adventure". He shipped 7,000 tons and more to Leith, Berwick, Dublin, Limerick and other ports, to a total value of over £70,000. The two main sources, at over 2,000 tons each, were Suffolk and Cheshire. The gross yield for Gauden from cheese in this period was £56,828 but it is not known how much profit he made. He bore much of the risk, which was considerable, given the possibility of shipwreck, piracy and delays due to adverse weather.

One risk for Gauden was the possibility that he might not be able to procure the cheese in the vast quantities required. In this he had help from Captain Whitworth, newly appointed in 1650 as commissary at Chester and Liverpool. Gauden also worked with Timothy Liveing and Francis Chaplin, the government's agents in Cheshire and Lancashire for shipping cheese and meal to the army in Ireland. Gauden continued with his duties throughout the 1650s and, after the Restoration, was appointed the "surveyor general of all the victuals to be provided for His Majesty's ships and maritime causes". In his diary, Samuel Pepys detailed what in modern terms looks like a corrupt relationship with Gauden. In 1665, for instance, Pepys received the ample salary of £300 from the state, as the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty, but this was dwarfed by a payment of £500 from Gauden. In 1668 and 1673, new naval victualling contracts were issued, with Gauden again responsible and now at sixpence per diem per man in harbour and eight pence per diem at sea. This equated (at sea) to one pound of biscuit, one gallon of beer, two pounds of beef or pork and one pint of peas daily for four days, and one-eighth of a stockfish, two ounces of butter and four ounces of cheese daily on the other three days.

Gauden's downfall came during the Third Dutch War (1672–1674), which increased state outlays at a time when it was still dealing with the aftermath of the Plague and the Great Fire of London, and its debts from the first war. Such was the financial crisis that a stop was put on the Treasury in January 1672 – a temporary measure that was eventually made permanent. Gauden struggled on through a number of Chancery lawsuits before his final financial ruin in 1677. The fall of Denis Gauden did not mean the end of cheese supplies to the navy, or even the end of the Gauden name in victualling. Two of his sons carried on the family business: Jonathan and Benjamin were both prominent in the maritime supply of Cheshire cheese to Tangier towards the end of its occupation by the English (1661–1684).

Consequences of Cheese
From the earliest times Cheshire has been described as grassland country, and it is often said that there was no more land under the plough than was necessary to feed stock. This view appears to be based on the work of H. J Hewitt, who possibly based his argument on the work of William of Malmesbury which described the region around Chester as barren and unproductive of corn. This is now not thought to be the case, as there is extensive evidence for ridge and furrow cultivation over much of Cheshire, showing that different agriculture was practiced before the land was put down to pasture. Specialist dairy farming only appears to have emerged in the late middle ages, with cheese production only becoming predominant later.

The modern landscape is in origin a landscape of enclosure and very high levels of dispersed settlement (as in the southern half of the adjacent Lancashire Plain), with blocks of more large-scale and regular enclosure such as on the Cheshire Sandstone Ridge and in areas profoundly affected by farm amalgamation and the activities of estates. Traditionally – and since the 14th century – cattle rearing and fattening has taken place in the north of the county and dairying in the south and west where soils are heaviest. By the 16th century families with 10 to 50 acres and generous common rights formed the stable core of Cheshire’s rural communities. In the forests of Macclesfield and Delamere a different system of grassland farming was adopted, where both cattle and sheep were reared and forest husbandry employed. Agricultural developments to meet the demand for cheese were spearheaded by large farms (including tenants renting them from the demesnes of gentry) and estates, notable features being a massive increase in the dairy herd sustained by improvements in the management of cows and pastures, and the development through amalgamation and enclosure of ring-fenced dairy farms.

Chamber's Book of days is a much quoted work but is often problematic as a source because it does not give its own sources except in a few places. It is therefore difficult to determine whether the information given is reliable. One such section is that under December 24th for farm labourers. Chambers states that:


 * "From a contributor to Notes and Queries, we learn that on Christmas Eve, in the town of Chester and surrounding villages, numerous parties of singers parade the streets, and are hospitably entertained with meat and drink at the different houses where they call. The farmers of Cheshire pass rather an uncomfortable season at Christmas, seeing that they are obliged, for the most part, during this period, to dispense with the assistance of servants. According to an old custom in the county, the servants engage themselves to their employers from New-Year's Eve to Christmas Day, and then for six or seven days, they leave their masters to shift for themselves, while they (the servants) resort to the towns to spend their holidays. On the morning after Christmas Day hundreds of farm-servants (male and female) dressed in holiday attire, in which all the hues of the rainbow strive for the mastery, throng the streets of Chester, considerably to the benefit of the tavern-keepers and shop-keepers. Having just received their year's wages, extensive investments are made by them in smock frocks, cotton dresses, plush-waistcoats, and woolen shawls. Dancing is merrily carried on at various public-houses in the evening. In the whole of this custom, a more vivid realization is probably presented than in any other popular celebration at Christmas, of the precursor of these modern jovialities—the ancient Roman Saturnalia, in which the relations of master and servant were for a time reversed, and universal license prevailed."

However this annual influx of droves of farm-workers is not represented in the vast majority of other works. In many places in east Cheshire the hiring year was from October to October, and while Hole mentions hiring from January 2nd to the following Boxing Day, she does not give her source either - it may be Chambers. Counties for which data is available have types of agriculture which is quite different from that of Cheshire, and the records which are available show that yearly hiring may have been a relatively short a short-lived phenomenon which occurred at a time when farming was becoming intensified and labour was scarce due to migration to industrial districts.

By 1850, Cheshire cheese was being overtaken in popularity by Cheddar from Somerset, and over the following decades there was also increasing competition from cheeses made in the Netherlands and America. Cheshire dairies began to adopt modern production practices pioneered by Somerset innovator, Joseph Harding, but were slow to adopt industrial cheese-making practices developed in America. The proximity to rapidly growing urban centres, together with the expanding railway network, also led to an increase in the production of milk during this period, although cheese remained the county's major dairy product. Epidemics of cattle disease, including foot and mouth disease in 1839, several outbreaks of pleuropneumonia, and rinderpest (cattle plague) in 1865–66, led to the formation of numerous friendly societies and mutual associations to provide assistance to farmers; several were sponsored by the landowners of the county's major estates, particularly Cholmondeley, Crewe and Peckforton. A short-lived cattle insurance company was also established in Knutsford in 1865. The 1865–66 rinderpest epidemic affected much of England but was particularly devastating in Cheshire; entire herds died and the county's economy collapsed for 18 months.

Related Pages

 * Weather;
 * Borrow;
 * Stanley Street;
 * Portpool;

Online

 * Cheshire Cheese on Wikipedia;
 * Navy victuallers and the rise of Cheshire cheese;
 * Academy of Cheese;
 * CHESHIRE CHEESE: FARMING IN THE NORTH-WEST IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES;
 * FOUR CENTURIES OF CHESHIRE FARMING SYSTEMS, 150O-1900;
 * FARMING FOR PROFIT' IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY;