The Carding Shed, Holmfirth: The hidden gem garage and cafe in Yorkshire located within historic mill
In the heart of Holmfirth - the home of Last of the Summer Wine - sits a garage and cafe called The Carding Shed located within a historic textile mill with vintage-themed car memorabilia.
The Carding Shed was founded by Ian Kellett, who was a mechanic at a classic car garage in Huddersfield.
After being made redundant at his previous job in 2012, Ian used the money to set up his own classic car garage in Holmfirth.
As the business grew, he started doing restoration work on race cars and storing cars for customers.
The Carding Shed was moved to a bigger unit within a historic textile mill that dates back to the early 20th century and the cafe was introduced, run by Ian’s wife, Nicola.
It is now run by Ian and Nicola’s son, Ben, 33, from Halifax, who said that 99 per cent of customers are ‘shocked’ when they walk in for the first time.
“They see the outside and they're probably expecting just a cafe and then when you walk in... there is a lot to look at,” Ben said.
“We have military memorabilia on every square inch of the walls at the cafe.
“Hanging from the ceiling are cars, including a whole body shell of a Lotus F1 car.
“We’re not a museum but there is a lot of stuff to look at like a museum so I think people are often a bit blown away by the juxtaposition.
“They obviously come having seen or heard about it and see the outside but don't really know what to expect.”
The majority of the garage work is restoring enthusiast cars.
“From the garage point of view, 90% of the vehicles we work on are enthusiast cars, something that you would expect a car person to own,” Ben said.
“It might be a modern Lotus or it might be a supercar or invariably it’s a Jaguar. We offer everything from just a straightforward service up to complete restoration.
“So that would be like stripping a car down, getting it shot blasted, go through the full paint process, restore every nut and bolt, redo all the wiring, all the electric and then put the car back together.
“Depending on the time of year and day of the week we get a really different customer base.
“On the weekend we have a lot of car people there on a drive out or motorbike people there on a drive out and they obviously hear about it through the car scene or the bike scene.
“During the week it tends to be more local people I would say who just know it as a good local cafe.”
They sell thousands of Yorkshire Tea a month at the cafe, making it the most popular product, Ben said.
“We do twice as much Yorkshire tea as anything else, it's many thousands a month,” he said.
“It always baffles me when I look at the software and what the sales figures are. Yorkshire tea is always double anything else.
“The burgers are really popular, so we do like a beef brisket burger where you get a homemade beef patty, it's got candied bacon, smoked bacon and beef brisket and that comes with fries and homemade coleslaw, that's really popular. We’re known for our cakes.
“The most popular cake we have is a three-tier caramel drip cake; salted caramel three layers with lots of whipped cream, caramel drip outside. Victorian sponge cake is always good and the bakewell tarts are always really popular.”
They grew so popular that in 2018, they moved to a bigger unit.
“The idea was going to be that it was just a cakes and baking sandwiches type place with a bit of a vintage theme,” Ben said.
“A place for garage customers to come and also like to sit whilst we did work on a car or make a bit of a club relay.
“But that business grew into its own and became really popular quite quickly. Then about eight years ago we moved from there to where we are now.
“It changed a little bit. At the old premises we used to have a vintage shop but we had a couple of shops, a bookshop, a gift shop, and we had a vintage clothes shop.”