Trouble may be stirring in sleepy Peak District village over new plans for cheesemaking heritage centre and visitor experience

Hartington Creamery has notified Hartington Town Quarter Parish Council of its wish to build the attraction on land north of Stonewell Lane, once adjacent to the former Dove Dairy factory where many of the company’s staff got their first taste of the industry.

Today, the creamery ensures that cheeses such as Stilton, Dovedale blue and Buxton blue are once again a source of local pride, and they are granted protected status under UK law, specifying their Derbyshire origins and manufacturing methods.

Managing director Robert Gosling said: “Dairy farming and cheese making are very much part of our historic landscape. I am determined to make what is the last chance to create such a facility on the original dairy site in the centre of Hartington a commercial reality.

“As the ‘smallest Stilton producer in the world’, still making award-winning cheese by hand in the traditional way, getting close to our customer and consumer is crucial to what we are about.

“There is an increasing desire for authentic artisan food, allowing us to educate further and inform. We want to give visitors an insight into cheesemaking in this area, the importance of our protected cheeses and how we are keeping those traditions alive. ”

He added: “This facility will be our shop window promoting the Hartington Creamery brand, celebrating all the aspects of our shared history, previous achievements, and future prosperity.

“The investment will help safeguard the current jobs at Pikehall and create more skilled jobs for cheese makers for the future at the creamery as it expands and new jobs for local people at the heritage centre itself.”

The factory was established by the then Duke of Devonshire in the 1870s, and generations of expert cheese makers gained experience working there before going on to develop other famous cheeses all over the UK.

The site was a major hub of local life until it closed under the ownership of Dairy Crest in 2009, and was eventually given over to the Peakland Grange development of 26 homes – now in its construction final phase – after the national Planning Inspectorate overruled the Peak District National Park Authority (PDNPA), which had twice rejected housing proposals.

At this stage, no plans for the heritage centre have been submitted to PDNPA, but the creamery sent them to the parish council as part of an informal public consultation.

Robert said: “It’s something we have wanted to do for some time, and there was a planning application back in the 1990s, when Dairy Crest wanted to do something similar.

“It will affect local communities and businesses, but I don’t see why most of that won’t be positive. Parking in Hartington is quite a major issue, there is no children’s play area in the village – so this initial consultation will be about seeing what else we can do to benefit people.”

However, there already appears to be a likely source of disagreement regarding the land where the heritage centre is being proposed.

Having called a village meeting to discuss the plans, on Wednesday, April 5, the council does not want to pre-empt public opinion, but chairman David Annat says history suggests reactions may not be favourable.

He said: “This isn’t the first time something like this has come up. We had very, very similar plans circulated to us in 2021, discussed them in the council and our opposition is a matter of public record. A scheme of this type would not be one we could support.

“While we welcome the new residents of Peakland Grange, we fought two planning inquiries over the factory site and the greenfield agricultural land involved in this proposal has never had buildings on.

“Planning inspectors have noted the importance of retaining this traditional agricultural land, and acknowledged that filling in these fields would form an ‘anomalous limb’ to the village, to the detriment of its character.”

He added: “As to the scheme itself, it’s essentially a giant café and shop – an extremely large two-storey development, with parking for 50 cars. We already have a cheese shop and a public car park with many spaces. These plans are totally disproportionate in scale for a village of 175 dwellings and 300 people.

“We are in the process of creating a Neighbourhood Plan, to try and put some constraint on the continual development of the village, and all our consultations have shown that residents want this land protected, and retained as it is.”

Unlike previous versions of the idea, there is currently no intention to move the creamery’s commercial production operations to the visitor centre from their present site in Pikehall, though there would be space for hands-on workshops where people could try making their own cheese.

The parish council and its constituents recognise past and present importance of the area’s cheesemaking, but they may be unwilling to honour it by sacrificing the rural and architectural character of the village.

David said: “Of course I can see the argument for celebrating our heritage. We were so proud of it before modernisation destroyed the product, and people still know us for the creamery – but it doesn’t take building something of this size on green fields to demonstrate that heritage.

“There was plenty of opportunity to showcase that heritage on the factory site, or you could do it at the creamery itself. Planning policy clearly states that the first port of call is to use existing buildings where possible and, as far as I know there have been no attempts to investigate that possibility.”

The public meeting on the plans will begin at 6pm at Hartington Village Hall.

For more information, see https://hartingtonparishcouncil.co.uk or hartingtoncreamery.co.uk.

Support your Buxton Advertiser by becoming a digital subscriber. You will see 70 per cent fewer ads on stories, meaning faster load times and an overall enhanced user experience. Click here to subscribe.