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Cheese has probably been made in England for well over four thousand years.  A cream cheese would have been made by the very first farmers who planted their crops and reared their cattle and sheep on the fertile fields of the East Midlands.  There is plenty of evidence of stable farming activity throughout Leicestershire from the early Neolithic Period.  Cheese was part of the staple diet of the marching Roman legions.  It is repeatedly referred to in Roman cook books.  Leicester was a major Roman centre known as Ratae on the main road artery of Roman Britain, the Fosse Way which runs from Exeter to Lincoln.  Archaeology shows that Leicestershire was farmed by numerous Romano-British communities.  We still unearth Roman coins on our farmland.

To produce good quality milk, the correct type of soil is essential.  The East  Midlands is mostly comprised of heavy clay over limestone.  This clay is superb at growing grass.  From an early period grass has been a major part of farming in the East Midlands.  During the Middle Ages sheep production was so profitable that large areas were converted from arable farming to grass.  At home our grassland has not been ploughed since the Middle Ages, witnessed by the huge diversity in grassland flora.  In some fields we have over 100 varieties of grasses and flowers.

All farms and estates would have been self-supporting from the earliest times.  Cheese would have been one of the staple products on the farm.  The animals that produced milk in sufficient quantity to make cheese in the medieval period would have been ewes.  Wool was the biggest export of the East Midlands, being sold into the Flanders cloth cities via the largest port in England at the time Boston in Lincolnshire.  In Leicestershire a distinctive type of unpressed cheese was made at first with ewe’s milk. As the wool trade declined sheep were replaced by cows which supplied the growing urban centres of the 16th to 18th centuries with beef.  In turn this unpressed cheese was made mainly and then exclusively with cow’s milk.

At Quenby, the large dairy building in the main courtyard pre-dates the main house and originally would have been a general purpose barn.  However, from a very early date it would have contained a dairy.  The main house was built by George Ashby in the early 17th century in the fashionable style of the time which became known as Jacobean after James I of England.

The estate was owned for well over 500 years by the Ashby family.  They were local gentry with several branches in and around the country.  In the 17th century a drum shaped cheese was made at Quenby from a recipe supplied to the Ashby’s by one of their relations, Lady Beaumont.   This cheese was known as Lady Beaumont’s Cheese or Quenby Cheese and gained a considerable reputation when offered at local markets such as Stamford and Leicester.

In the early 18th Century, Henry ‘Parsnip’ Tottering went to visit his Eton school friend Waring Ashby who was the then owner of Quenby for a spot of fox-hunting, the new exciting sport over his fast hedges and grass fields.  Over a glass of port at the end of a fine day of sport Ashby wheeled out his fine blue veined cheese.  Tottering was utterly taken by this creamy and tasty cheese and declared that he had to have it at home every day of the week.

By good fortune Ashby’s housekeeper and cheese maker at Quenby at the time was a Mrs Elizabeth Scarborough.  Her daughter was married to the inn-keeper at The Bell Inn at Stilton.  George Ashby immediately suggested that as Mrs Scarborough, being a diligent mother, was in constant touch with her daughter, she should each time send a couple of cheese to be picked up by Henry Tottering.   This would be very convenient as the village of Stilton is on the old Great North Road from London to Edinburgh and was the first major stop on the coach route north, Tottering always stopped there when travelling back and forth from London to Tottering Hall. 

Henry Tottering’s love of ‘Quenby Cheese’ became notorious and many of his fellow travellers started to share his passion.  The cheese therefore became associated with Stilton.  However, it has never been made in the village.  

So successful did the cheese become that In the mid-18th century Shuckburgh Ashby, Waring’s nephew and the then owner of Quenby, fitted out the dairy to the highest cotemporary standards.  This building can be considered the earliest purpose built factory dairies producing Stilton.  The cheese became an important cash commodity to the estate, generating considerable income to the family and improved the standard of living of all on the estate.  It is at this time that the local village was completely rebuilt – on the profits of Stilton.

Henry Tottering’s son, the 2nd Viscount Frederick ‘Port Barrell’ Tottering, was so fond of the cheese that he nearly became known as ‘Stilton’ Tottering.  However, his love of port still beat his love of Stilton.  It is said that when he died in 1844 the end of his consumption of Stilton forced the Ashby family to close the dairy as it became unprofitable overnight! 

After a break of 150 years, the link between Quenby and Tottering was re-established.  Daffy Tottering had known Freddie de Lisle, current owner of Quenby Hall, at Oxford in the 1970’s.  When Freddie inherited Quenby in 2001 he was as passionate about Stilton as his old friend Daffy.  He also knew that the Totterings’ enormous consumption of Stilton would get his new venture off the ground!  He contacted Daffy who immediately booked the first cheeses.

Still under modern “appellation controllee” regulations the cheese cannot be made in Stilton itself – which confuses most people!  Stilton can only be made with the milk and in the three counties of Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.  Today there are only seven dairies producing Stilton – four in Leicestershire, two in Nottinghamshire and one in Derbyshire.