QUEEN VICTORIA’S CHEESE PRESS

We’re immensely proud of our grandmother Ivy’s place in Cheddar history, but we’re almost as proud of Somerset’s even longer history of cheesemaking. One part of that tale is represented by the story of Queen Victoria’s wedding cheese – and perhaps this cheese press.

This magnificent piece of machinery sits in pride of place at Ivy’s Reserve home in Wyke Champflower. It’s engraved with her name and also scenes of cows being milked under trees. We can’t be sure, but we think it also has a link to one of Cheddar’s most famous – and oddest – moments.

When Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840, dairy farmers in Somerset got together to create a giant wheel of Cheddar – nine foot across and weighing over 1000lb, made from the milk of 750 cows. They presented this to the happy couple, who had their fill of the Cheddar (Queen Victoria was famously a fan of Cheddar) and then sent it on a tour of the country.

Since this story dates back even before the time of our grandmother, details are a little vague, but we’re reasonably confident of its royal connection. Cheese presses were used to press whey out of the milk curds, which made the cheese more solid, and we have a few (less ornate) examples a tour dairy. Back then, cheese-making was hard, manual work and the cheese press was one of the first ways to make it a little easier. (Back then, Cheddar was still produced in huge sizes, even if they weren’t nine feet wide.)

We’ll never know for sure the history of this cheddar press, but it’s certainly a beautiful example. We cherish it as a reminder of the long history of Cheddar-making and our part in that tradition, and it’s a link between our own Queen of Cheddar and another.

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