Say Cheese! (Part One)

Ask anyone what their favourite cheese is and they’re likely to say Cheddar. Well, they would. Cheddar’s the single most popular cheese in the world. However, running a close second place (the ‘cheese and onion’ to Cheddar’s ‘salt and vinegar’ if you like) would be Lancashire…we reckon.
At least, it would be if people had any sense, which for the most part they don’t, but that’s beside the point. Whatever the case, Lancashire cheese is certainly world famous despite the fact that the version they sell of it outside of Lancashire nowadays is pre-packaged, heavily processed and revoltingly bland swill.
If you want a real Lancashire cheese you have to travel to Garstang (or Fleetwood market…or anywhere else in Lancashire that sells the proper Monty) its birthplace, and yes, we are implying that Lancashire cheese has a life of its own. In fact, you haven’t tasted proper cheese until you’ve sampled a slice of Lancashire Blue (or, as Terry Pratchett would have it, Lancre Blue, a cheese so full of life that it follows his heroine around under its own steam for two of his books).


Cheese making, of course, could be found in Lancashire as far back as the 13th Century, and historical records attest to its popularity by the number of Lancashire cheeses being transported from Liverpool to London in the 1600’s.
Yet, Lancashire cheese as we know it today, (well…as us proper Lancastrians know it today…the rest of the world will just have to accept our boasts about how marvellous the genuine article is until they’ve been here and tasted it for themselves) hasn’t been around for particularly long.
That horribly crumbly stuff you get in most supermarkets was actually created about forty years ago when competition against other cheeses such as Wensleydale (more cheese Gromit?) demanded a less expensive and considerably quicker turnover. Originally, however, every farmhouse in the county produced cheese of a different texture, shape, colour and taste, depending on how many mice fell into their vats.
As we say, though, that was ‘originally’, before the early 1890’s when the hero of our piece, Joseph Gornall, appeared on the scene.


There he is, look, a local official (you’d never have guessed it, would you?) born in Cabus, with a passion for untamed facial-fungus and an uncanny resemblance to Rowan Atkinson. (No, seriously, that is him, although I might have added the ‘I Luv Cheese’ logo to his bowler hat.)
In his capacity as council steward appointed to standardise Lancashire cheese making practices (a job he took seriously enough to visit every farmhouse cheese manufacturer he could find, lodge with the family and stick his nose into their curds, so to speak) he invented the famous Gornall Lancashire ‘Cheese Maker’ (illustrated below).


The machines (the one above, incidentally, can be found in the Fylde Country Life Museum) were built by Singletons of Garstang and were available in three different sizes: Medium, Large and Massive. (This was obviously the standard measure by which McDonalds and KFC later started to name their side dishes.) By the 1900s the Gornall Cheese-maker had proved so successful that it was said: “The Cheese-maker is now used in most leading Lancashire Dairies and most of the Prize Cheese at the county and other local shows were made with them.”
Having completed his earthly mission Gornall retired to Smallwood Hey, Pilling, and died on March 25th 1928. There were no suspicious cheese-related circumstances connected to his passing.
Now, obviously not everyone could afford the Gornall Cheese-maker (even in its diminutive ‘medium sized’ package’) and, nowadays, they’re extremely difficult to get hold of. (Well, ‘rust-free and hygienically suitable’ they’re extremely difficult to get hold of at any rate.) For those pitiful Gornall Cheese-maker-less households the process of cheese making was somewhat more complicated. Here’s how it was done.
First milk was poured into a tub along with bacteria (don’t ask us…we got this information from the curators at the Fylde Country Life Museum so we’ve no idea how you capture a bacteria or even how you can tell which bacterium are good and which are bad) to increase the milk’s acidity.


When the correct acidity had been reached (and, again, we honestly don’t know how that figure is determined) ‘Rennet’ (pictured above in a typical contemporary stoneware jug) was added to the mix.
Rennet was a liquid created from the stomach membrane of an un-weaned calf. Ah yes…for all those vegetarians out there who like to take the morally superior upper hand with us carnivores that might be worth making a note of. ‘Nibble of cheese…one dead un-weaned calf.’ Ethically pure points scored – none.
In the 1870s standardised commercial rennet became available.
It was still made from dead baby cows though.
At which point (if there’s anybody left reading this) we’re going to take a break for no other reason than this article’s rather long so we thought that we’d make the most of it by stretching it out over a full week.