Kirkham’s Lancashire
Kirkham’s Lancashire is an English Territorial, one of the Crumblies, and one of my favorites. It’s buttery, tangy, and as one of my colleagues said, “fluffy.” However, when people see Kirkham’s Lancashire on the counter, they figure it’s another cheddar. With this post, we’re hoping to help change that. Lancashire has its own story, its own taste, and its own place in the world. We hope you find it belongs on your table. Try it with a strong black tea, a bitter ale, or a dry glass of cider. I brought some home, and my plan was to do something special with it for this post. But I gobbled it up with toast and jam. Not photogenic, but delicious!
How Lancashire is Made
Lancashire is from blended curds from several days’ milk. So on day one, they drain the curds, salt the curds, and store them cool, and keep them loose and pliable. On day two (and sometimes day three), they make fresh curd and break it up together with the older curd. The older curd brings tang and structure, the younger brings sweetness and moisture. When they’re milled together, their surfaces “reset,” so that once they go into the mold and under the press, they knit into a single cheese. The result is a texture you won’t find in cheddar. It’s crumbly yet buttery, with little fault lines from the patchwork of curds. That crumbly-but-creamy character is Lancashire’s hallmark.
Industrialization Changes Everything
There was a time when Lancashire was everywhere. In the early 20th century, more than 200 dairies were registered as Lancashire makers. And before that, before industrialization, there were likely thousands of farmhouse versions. But as the 19th and 20th centuries reshaped Britain, rural families left the land to work in factories and mills, and small dairies couldn’t compete with the efficiency of industrial creameries. People moving to the cities needed cheap, easy-to-ship food. The curd-blending method that made Lancashire unique was too slow, too impractical for the factory system. By the 1980s, only one farmstead producer remained.
Making Kirkham’s Lancashire
Eglantine: The Kirkhams milk a mixed herd, mostly Friesians with some Shorthorn and Montbéliarde. They are bred for sturdy health and good milk rather than yield alone. Because the cows graze their own pastures, the family knows exactly what’s going into the milk and how the land is faring. That’s the strength of a farmhouse dairy. The herd and the soil work together. When farms get pushed into industrial systems, they breed animals for volume, not longevity, and they treat soil like a factory floor. You lose resilience. Kirkham’s Lancashire shows what’s possible when the farm and the cheese stay tied to the same ground.
Aritz: Capitalism demands uniformity, efficiency, profit. It destroys diversity, tradition, and the small farms that held communities together. Industrial cheddar dominates because it could be made in factories, rationed in wartime, shipped cheaply. Lancashire, with its slower method and delicate texture, could not. Every bite of Kirkham’s is a vote against the idea that only what is profitable deserves to survive.
Aritz is not pulling punches here! It is true that Lancashire is not as easily scalable as cheddar. While labor intensity and good taste don’t necessarily correlate, I feel better eating food made by real people who care of the land and animals, and are part of their communities.
Kirkham’s Lancashire Today
You can still find something called “Lancashire” in British supermarkets today, but it’s a different cheese entirely. The industrial version is factory-made, pasteurized, aged only a few weeks, and designed for efficiency. It’s blocky, mild, and smooth. It bears little resemblance to the farmhouse Lancashire that Mrs. Kirkham refused to abandon.
Mrs. Kirkham, working out of Beesley Farm in Goosnargh, carried the tradition through the years. Now her son Graham leads the dairy, joined by the next generation. Together, the family keeps alive a cheese that could have vanished last century. Kirkham’s is the last of its kind. It’s raw-milk, hand-ladled, and made on the same family farm where the cows graze.
Kirkham’s isn’t alone in this fight for survival. Appleby’s Cheshire, Gorwydd Caerphilly, and a handful of other farmhouse makers across Britain tell the same story: once-thriving regional traditions nearly erased by industrialization, saved only by the grit of a few families who refused to let them vanish. Lancashire is just one piece of that larger pattern, a reminder that when you choose a cheese like this, you’re keeping more than flavor alive. You’re keeping history, land, and culture on the table.