Cheddar Gorgeous

Simon Stabler visits the birthplace of the country's most popular cheese

- Simon Stabler

One of the most popular styles of cheese in the world, and certainly the UK's favourite, cheddar takes its name from the Somerset village where it was first produced in the middle ages. Originally made in farmhouses as a way of using up surplus milk, there was a time when the cheese could only be called cheddar if it had been made within 30 miles of Wells Cathedral.

It was Somerset dairyman Joseph Harding who standardised the method of cheddar production in the mid-19th century, improving hygiene standards in dairies and introducing the cheese to Scotland and the United States. Today, the US produces around five times more cheddar than the UK and is that country's second favourite cheese after mozzarella.

With the creation of the Milk Marketing Board in 1933, offering dairy farmers a guaranteed minimum price for their milk, there was less incentive for farmers to make their own cheese.

However, it was World War Two that was to prove the final nail in the coffin for many farmhouse cheese producers and indeed cheese styles, when the government took control of all milk production. Closing many smaller dairies in order to divert milk supplies elsewhere, the government instructed larger-scale creameries to produce one style of cheese - cheddar.

Before World War Two, there were 514 farms making cheddar in the south-west of England. By 1974-20 years after the end of food rationing - there were only 33; none of which were in Cheddar itself.