[BITList] Her whey

[John Feltham]

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Appleby  [née Walley],  (Florence) Lucy  (1920-2008), cheese-maker, was born on 1 February 1920 at Lighteach Farm, Whitchurch, Shropshire, one of eight children of Alfred Edward Walley (1886-1954), a farmer and Baptist minister, and his wife, Sarah, nee Pierpoint (1891-1964). She was educated at the high school at Whitchurch, before being sent to Reaseheath Agricultural College at Nantwich, where she learned cheese-making from a Miss Bennion, an inspirational teacher who believed in the virtues of unpasteurized milk and unwaxed Cheshire cheese. Soon after leaving college in 1940 she met and on 16 October the same year, at Wern Baptist Chapel (she later became a Methodist), married a local farmer, Arthur Lancelot (Lance) Appleby (1908-2003), son of Arthur Appleby, farmer. In 1942, already an accomplished cheese-maker, Lucy and her husband moved to Hawkstone Abbey Farm in Shropshire, where she halted her cheese-making temporarily to bring up their seven children. Though the front view of the Applebys' farmhouse looked very grand, in fact the house was never part of an abbey, but was gentrified in the late Victorian era, giving it windows that might well have graced a monastery. The more prosaic back of the house gave onto the dairy.

In 1952 it was Lucy Appleby's idea to revive a cheese that was nearly extinct, and it was always known as Mrs Appleby's Cheshire. Though in the 1930s more than 400 farms made genuine, unwaxed, cloth-bound Cheshire cheese from their own unpasteurized milk, at the time of her death only the Applebys kept this tradition alive, and they sold more than 1 tons of it each week. Although in Shropshire, Hawkstone Abbey Farm was on part of the Cheshire plain, and only 10 miles over the border with Cheshire. Its soil contained the alum and the salts that gave the cheese its particular tang, and supported the plant life that expert tastes could identify in the milk from the farm's Friesian herd.

Cheshire cheese is made much like Cheddar or Lancashire. The cheese-maker introduces a very small amount of starter into the milk, then the vegetable rennet that causes the separation of curds and whey, plus some natural dye made from annatto seeds (the latter to give the cheese its characteristic reddish colour, a substitute for the less controllable carrot juice formerly used). The finesse of Appleby Cheshire was due to the small quantity of starter, which protected it from the over-acidity that marred some other Cheshire cheeses.

Wax binding was just becoming fashionable when Lucy Appleby resumed her career as a cheese-maker, but she refused to have anything to do with it, on the grounds that the proper ripening and flavour of the cheese depended on its ability to breathe; so she stuck to her principles and her calico. She also flatly refused to use pasteurized milk, which killed the flavour-giving enzymes in the cheese. In these respects, as in others, she was out of step with her contemporaries. However, in the early days she followed most other Cheshire cheese-makers and sold her product, superior though it was, through the Milk Marketing Board. This was before the board turned bully, and began discouraging small producers from marketing their own cheeses. When this happened in the early 1980s, most cheese-makers caved in to the pressure from the big supermarkets, who insisted on buying cheese in industrial quantities. This, of course, meant that it had to be made by industrial methods. Lucy Appleby then went her own way, and insisted on marketing her cheese under the family name. This allowed her to continue to make artisanal cheese, but it was not always easy to sell.

In 1982, having broken with the Milk Marketing Board, Lucy Appleby found herself with a good deal of surplus cheese. So she loaded a 40 lb wheel of it into the family's Land Rover and drove to the Covent Garden premises of Randolph Hodgson's Neal's Yard Dairy. Her natural ally, Hodgson said he had never before tasted anything like Mrs Appleby's cheese, and that it gave him a different view of what Cheshire cheese ought to taste like. Hodgson's marketing skills made Appleby cheeses a commercial success, and in 1989 he and Lucy Appleby together founded the Specialist Cheesemakers' Association, with the aim of lobbying for the preservation of cheeses made with unpasteurized milk at a time when public hysteria over listeria prompted most supermarkets to ban such cheeses. She encouraged fellow cheese-makers in Lancashire to return to using cloth binding.

Until near the end of her life Lucy Appleby remained crucial to the cheese-making part of the business. She was her own cheese's most severe critic and a one-woman quality control. In 1994 the prince of Wales visited the farm and in 2000 both she and her husband were appointed MBE. She died on 24 April 2008 of heart failure and chronic kidney disease at Whitchurch Hospital, Shropshire. Her achievement was nothing less than to have rescued, preserved, and secured a future for a vital part of Britain's cultural heritage. She was survived by four daughters and two sons, one son as well as her husband having predeceased her. The family cheese-making business was continued at Hawkstone by her son Edward and his wife, Christine.

Paul Levy 

Sources  Daily Telegraph (3 May 2008) + The Times (10 May 2008) + The Independent (13 May 2008) + The Guardian (30 May 2008) + personal knowledge (2012) + private information (2012) [R. Hodgson] + b. cert. + m. cert. + d. cert.
Likenesses  photograph, 1960-69, priv. coll. [see illus.] · obituary photographs · photographs, priv. coll.
Wealth at death  under £164,000: probate, 5 June 2009, CGPLA Eng. & Wales



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