Image 1: The Gornall patent cheesemaker.
The Lancashire County Museum Service is 50 years old this year. To celebrate are exploring the history of Lancashire, its people, places and traditions through 50 objects in our collections. In this blog we look at number four in our series, the Gornall patent cheesemaker and it’s inventor Joseph Gornall who paved the way for the famous Lancashire cheese we know today.
Best described in his own words in the patent application:
Image 2: Patent Application for the Gornall cheesemaker, 1892.
By the late 19th century farms all over the county were producing Lancashire cheese, but with wide variations in consistency and taste. The general method involved draining the whey, breaking the curd, and placing it in a vat and pressing it with a cheese stone. The resulting curd was then clothed and salted over two days to make a final cheese. However, on the small farms of the Fylde, it was common for there to be insufficient milk from a single day to make a full cheese. Each day’s milk was curdled and the curd added to in subsequent days until there was enough to make a cheese. This method of mixing curds to make cheese brought problems of consistency, exacerbated by each farm having its own method adopted through family recipes handed down through generations. Nothing was accurately measured or recorded, milk was cooled by guesswork, and neither salt nor curd were weighed.
Joseph Gornall was born on the 16th June 1856, the tenth and youngest child of Joseph and Mary (nee Jenkinson) of Upper Birks Farm, Eagland Hill. This is where he worked as a labourer until marrying in 1880 and then going on to farm in his own right at Clay Lane Head Farm, Cabus.
On his farm Joseph earned a good reputation specialising in quality cheese making. During the 1890s and early 1900s he was employed by the newly established Lancashire County Council and worked with Miss Knowles of the new County Council “Dairy School” at Hutton Agricultural College. His role was to give instruction in cheese making to the farmhouse cheese producers of the county. With the huge variation in taste and quality, Gornall advised the producers of the importance of keeping detailed records “especially the temperature of the dairy and the milk at night, and the night’s milk in the morning “which had an important influence on the quality and nature of the milk and thus the cheese produced. He developed a standardised method of blending curds of differing maturity to create a Lancashire cheese which became known as the Gornall Method. Cheese made with the blended curd could be eaten ‘young’ after two to three months as creamy Lancashire or matured for up to two years as extra special tasty Lancashire.
In 1892, Joseph patented the “Gornall Cheese-maker”. He describes its use in “Lancashire Cheese-Making”
“After letting the curd settle, fasten the cloth over the opening, and put on the perforated lid. Having taken all the water from the cistern, turn the cylinder gradually till the lid is underneath the curd…. After being turned down one side, turn back and down the other side…The curd should then be sufficiently dry to cut into blocks, and be lifted out with the hands into the drainer”. He engaged the talents of a local ironmonger Henry Singleton in Garstang to produce the machines, along with curd knives and cheese moulds. The most popular model was the 50-gallon edition which cost £9.5s in 1903, although cheesemakers with a capacity of up to 90 gallons were also available. It was sold from 1892 to 1919 and was used for many years after that, though few survive today.
By the 1930s cheese production in Lancashire was booming with over 200 farms and creameries producing around 4800 tonnes of Lancashire cheese per annum. This production ended abruptly with the outbreak of the Second World War and the introduction of rationing. When production resumed in the 1950’s, there were only 22 farms making Lancashire cheese. In the 1960s a new cheese Lancashire crumbly entered the market. It was developed specifically to compete with other white crumbly cheeses such as Cheshire, Wensleydale and Caerphilly. Today Lancashire cheese is still produced using the traditional ‘Gornall method’ by specialist dairies in the county, and can be found at supermarkets and artisanal farmers markets.
The cheesemaker is on display at Garstang Library until the Monday 19th August.
You can find the latest object here 50 objects from Lancashire Museums – Lancashire County Council
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