Picture Post: Rolling hills which are home to a slice of history

Stretching some 25 miles from east to west, Wensleydale lies between Wharfedale to the south and the remote communities of Swaledale to the north.

One of the most picturesque of the Dales, it’s also one of the most popular, attracting thousands of visitors each year, many of whom take home a truckle or two of Wensleydale cheese.

Today, the famous creamery at Hawes is a hive of activity, but in the early 1990s it was almost consigned to history. At the time the site was owned by Dairy Crest, which operated a number of creameries around the country and in 1992, the food giant announced the Wensleydale operation had been earmarked for closure.

“To some people perhaps it didn’t look like there was a lot to lose, but a few of us realised that there was 1,000 years of history here that was in danger of disappearing,” says David Hartley, who helped manage a takeover and is now managing director. “I was 29 years old and took a calculated gamble. I thought it was worth trying to save the creamery and if it didn’t work within the first few years, well, I was still young enough to do something else.”

It was not the first time the company, which had grown out of a cottage industry, had defied closure. While cheesemaking in the area may have begun with the monks, it thrived thanks to farmers’ wives and in 1897 when the first creamery was built in Hawes, it moved onto large-scale production.

However, the depression of the 1930s hit the business hard and it was only thanks to the ingenuity and determination of local businessman Kit Calvert that it lived to fight another day. It was Calvert who started a co-operative to rescue the company and it was he who standardised the manufacturing process to ensure every slab of cheese which left the creamery was the same as the last. His efforts are remembered today with a special Wensleydale cheese which bears his name.

Technical details: Nikon D3s digital camera with a 80-200mm lens at 155 mm with an exposure of 1/1000th sec at f11 at ISO of 640