ProducersThe Makers Behind Wensleydale: From Famous Creamery to Hidden Farmsteads
Most people know Wensleydale from a supermarket shelf — or, if you grew up watching Wallace and Gromit, from a cartoon. But behind the crumbly, mild, faintly honeyed cheese that's become a British staple, there's a whole landscape of makers: a historic creamery that nearly went under, a micro-dairy run by a farming family who decided to stop selling milk and start making cheese, and a lone farmstead using cows that almost went extinct.
This is a deep Yorkshire rabbit hole. Let's go.
Where Wensleydale Comes From
The name tells you everything. Wensleydale is a long, green valley in the Yorkshire Dales — one of the most beautiful bits of England, full of stone walls, wildflower meadows, and rivers that catch the light. Cheese has been made here since the 12th century, when Cistercian monks at Jervaulx Abbey brought the recipe from France.
Those monks used sheep's milk. The modern version — cow's milk, fresh and crumbly — evolved gradually over centuries as farms changed their herds. By the late 1800s, the style we know today had taken shape. And in 1897, a man named Edward Chapman opened a commercial creamery in Hawes to consolidate production. That creamery is still there.
Wensleydale Creamery
Hawes, North Yorkshire
Wensleydale Creamery is the anchor of the whole story. The only producer of PGI-certified Yorkshire Wensleydale, they've been making cheese in Hawes for over a century — though not without drama. In 1992, Dairy Crest shut the place down and put 59 people out of work. The town wasn't having it. A management buyout saved the creamery that same year, and it's been locally operated ever since (well — until Saputo acquired it in 2021, but the cheesemakers and the methods stayed put).
Today, 230 people make the cheese by hand in Hawes. Their range runs from the classic fresh Wensleydale to a Special Reserve aged for longer depth, the Kit Calvert (named for the local legend who rescued the creamery decades earlier), and Wensleydale Blue. Their cranberry version outsells everything else — a bit divisive among purists, beloved by everyone else.
For the definitive expression of the style, this is your starting point.
Curlew Dairy — Yoredale Wensleydale
Wensley, North Yorkshire
This is the one that gets cheese people excited.
Ben and Sam Spence run a micro-dairy in the village of Wensley — right in the heart of the dale the cheese is named for. They're the only farmhouse cheesemaker actually operating inside Wensleydale. Their cheese is called Yoredale (named for the River Ure that runs through the valley), and it's the only unpasteurised Wensleydale made in the dale itself.
The story starts in 2019. Ben's family had been dairy farmers for generations, selling milk to the Wensleydale Creamery. David Hartley from the Creamery — in a wonderfully generous move — suggested they try making unpasteurised cheese instead, and helped them make their first batches. They ran with it.
Yoredale is made to a traditional Dales recipe using raw milk from a mixed herd of Holstein-Friesian, Ayrshire, and Shorthorn cows. Ben and Sam drain the whey a little earlier than the classic method, which gives it a softer, creamier finish. It's matured for 3–4 months. The result: smooth, buttery, with mineral notes developing under the rind. Exactly what good farmhouse cheese should taste like.
You can find it through Curlew Dairy directly, or occasionally through specialist retailers like Pipers Farm.
Stonebeck Cheese
Nidderdale, North Yorkshire
If Curlew Dairy is the most exciting Wensleydale in the dale, Stonebeck is the most interesting cheese near it.
Made at a farm in Nidderdale (the next valley east of Wensleydale), Stonebeck is a raw milk farmhouse cheese made from the milk of Northern Dairy Shorthorn cows — a critically rare breed native to the Yorkshire Dales that nearly disappeared entirely in the 20th century. The farm's own herd carries on a tradition that cheese was made on this land using these exact cows up until the mid-1950s. They revived it.
The production method is pulled straight from early 20th-century references — a 1917 recipe, a 1932 technique. Curds are cut and hung in cloth bags to drain, then milled by a hand-turned peg mill and pressed in a traditional cast iron press. The finished cheese is bound in calico before maturing.
The result is genuinely special. Young Stonebeck is fresh and juicy with real complexity. As it ages, it develops a deeper, buttery, mouth-filling flavour that's hard to find in modern commercial versions of the style. This is what Wensleydale tasted like before the supermarkets got involved.
Find it through Stonebeck Cheese and at Neal's Yard Dairy.
Lacey's Cheese
Reeth, North Yorkshire
Reeth is a village in Swaledale, just over the moor from Wensleydale. Lacey's is a family business making handmade cheese there using local Yorkshire milk — a proper artisan operation, team-scale, not factory-scale.
Their range covers traditional Wensleydale alongside a whole family of flavoured versions: cracked black pepper, garlic and chive, chilli, cranberry. They also make Brie, goat's cheese, and a smoked cheddar. Not farmstead (they source milk rather than milking their own animals), but everything is handmade on-site by a small team in a beautiful part of the Dales.
They also run cheese-making courses if you ever want to understand what goes into the wheel you're eating.
Ribblesdale Cheese Company
Hawes, North Yorkshire
One of the smallest operations in Hawes. Ribblesdale was started in 1978 by Iain Hill, making handcrafted goat's cheeses. His niece Iona and her husband Stuart now run it — a team of two. Everything is still handmade, still small-batch, still goat's milk.
Not Wensleydale strictly, but they're part of the same cheesemaking ecosystem in Hawes and worth knowing if you're interested in what the Dales produce beyond the famous name.
Why This All Matters
Wensleydale has a PGI designation — meaning "Yorkshire Wensleydale" is a protected term, legally tied to a specific region and method. The Wensleydale Creamery holds that certification. The smaller producers around it are making their own interpretations: raw milk, farmstead, tied to specific breeds and specific farms in ways the big creamery can't replicate at scale.
Neither is better. They're doing different things. The Creamery keeps a regional tradition alive at volume. The farmhouses like Curlew and Stonebeck are chasing something older and rarer — a direct expression of a specific farm, a specific herd, a specific hillside in the Dales.
Both deserve a place on your board.
Yorkshire Dales cheese is best explored in person — the Yorkshire Dales Cheese Festival brings most of these producers together under one roof. Worth the trip.