Village Maid was launched by Anne in 1986 after she had worked for the National Institute for Research in Dairying for 10 years. She began in microbiological development and then learnt the craft of cheese making in their research dairy. During her time there, Anne also spent time visiting the (then) very few artisan cheesemakers in the UK, which ignited her passion for artisan made cheese.
Anne took a six month sabbatical after leaving her job in 1985, and sailed around the world with some friends in their self made yacht. They stopped in Sardinia and she fell in love with the native Pecorino so upon return home, started creating her first cheese, her own English version of Pecorino called Spenwood.
After struggling to source excellent quality milk when launching her own business, Anne decided to take full control and keep her own animals for milk, so bought a herd of East Friesian ewes.
In 1987, Anne was approached by the Duke of Wellington and asked to make a cheese using the milk from his herd of pedigree Guernsey cows, which would be matured on his estate. Anne created a Cheddar like cheese which was made until the Duke’s retirement.
Anne then teamed up with James Aldridge, an acclaimed cheese affineur, and began working on semi soft cheeses, which are not matured for as long as hard cheeses, so could be experimented with more easily. The Guernsey milk Waterloo was developed then and is still made today.
In 1991, Village Maid moved to their current site in Riseley. As a growing business, they were approached by Neal’s Yard Dairy and encouraged to create a semi soft ewe’s milk cheese that could sit alongside their award-winning firm ewe’s milk cheese, Spenwood. After months of experimentation, Wigmore was born and has since won countless awards and placed in the top 20 cheeses in the world.
In 2017, Anne’s son, Jake, and his fiancée, Kayleigh, joined the business and began developing Maida Vale, a semi soft Guernsey cow’s milk cheese washed in an IPA called Soundwave from Siren Craft Brewery, which is made just 6 miles from the dairy. It has since won Great Taste Awards four times.
In 2019, a larger cheese store was built, which would allow for the maturation of twice the quantity of hard cheese. In the same year, Heckfield Park, a biodynamic farm just two miles away, approached Village Maid and suggested hosting a herd of Guernsey milk cows on their vast estate and supplying the dairy with cow’s milk. The cows were introduced and live on 400 acres of secluded herbal ley pastures which cover river meadows, hilltops and valleys surrounding the farm. They eat ryegrass, fescue, red clover, white clover, chicory, plantain, cocksfoot and sainfoin which provides an incredibly wholesome and nutritional grazing food for most of the year, and which also goes into their homemade silage in winter.
In 2024, Village Maid took over Two Hoots Cheese from Anne’s cousin and now produce their much loved cheese, Barkham Blue. It is still made using the same local Guernsey milk (the two dairies have long shared their supplier), meaning that the legacy of the cheese can not only continue, but continue under the same family.
The carbon footprint of free range cows is significantly lower than their barn kept counterparts. The Lacey’s Guernsey herd, who live a short distance from the dairy, spend most of the year outdoors, but their buffer feed is entirely home grown and consists of chopped straw, rolled barley and bales of grass silage, meaning there are no food miles involved in the cow’s feeding and very few in the cheesemaking process.
