Wensleydale

The Wensleydale Creamery, in the market town of Hawes, is the only place in Yorkshire now producing Wensleydale cheese. In 1992 it was closed by Dairy Crest, the processing arm of the Milk Marketing Board; it reopened six months later following a management buyout, and now employs 190 local people.

The creamery is seeking to obtain Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) recognition for Yorkshire Wensleydale Cheese. But there are other producers of Wensleydale cheese elsewhere in the UK – mainly in Shropshire and Cheshire.

Wensleydale cheese was first made in 1150 by Cistercian monks, who had come across from France and settled in the dale. It was originally made from sheep's milk, but over time cows' milk came to be used as well. Today, it's made mainly from cows' milk but with a little sheep's milk added to enhance the flavour.

Sales of Wensleydale received a boost in the 1990s when it was endorsed by the animated cheese connoisseur Wallace. Ardman Animations granted the creamery a licence to produce a special brand of "Wallace and Gromit Wensleydale", which proved to be an enormous success. Following the release of the feature–length Wallace and Gromit film Curse of the Were–Rabbit in 2005, sales of Wensleydale increased by 23%.

Wensleydale is unusual amongst the Yorkshire Dales (or the dales of any other county, come to that) in that it isn't named after its river. The river that flows through Wensleydale is the Ure; the dale was in fact once known as Yoredale, and there is a group of rocks known as the Yoredale Series – a name introduced in the mid–19th century. Wensley is a village in the lower reaches of the dale, which was once its market town. It suffered badly from the plague in the 16th century.

The Milk Marketing Board was established in 1933 to regulate the UK's milk market, acting as a buyer of last resort and so guaranteeing a minimum price for producers. Its responsibilities effectively ended in 1994, with the deregulation of the UK milk market, and it was finally dissolved in 2002. Dairy Crest survives to this day, as an independent company.