The owners of a hotel near Keswick have definitely got their pies firmly on the prize.
Ben and Sharon Henderson, who run the Swinside Inn – a six-bedroom hotel with a restaurant – have now opened a traditional pie shop in Penrith.
Henderson’s homemade pies and local produce is located in the Great Dockray premises which, for many years, had been a family-run butchers’ shop.
Near the Swinside Inn they also have a two-acre field where they breed their rare Tamworth pigs.
“It is the original British pig – there are only about 300 registered in the UK. We make our sausage and bacon from them, and the pork,” explained Ben, who first got started making sausage from his Tamworth pigs through lockdown.
“All our bacon and sausage has got no preservatives, no nitrates, no bad things in it. It is going back to absolute basics of how it used to be. It is not mass produced. It is small scale, local, traditional food.”
The pies started off through the hotel and helping them on a few days a week in the Penrith shop is Caroline Thorman, who was head chef at the Swinside Inn which Ben and Sharon have run for about 11 years.
Ben said: “It is just about providing traditional home-cooked fare.
“We are doing pies at first, but eventually it will be a lot more like cooked meats and specialised meals and things like that. We also sell eggs and make our own chutneys and jams on site. Eventually we will be doing things like our own roasted meats and hams.”
The couple, who are both trained chefs, had been planning on opening a delicatessen possibly in the next two years, but when the unit came up in Penrith, they decided to take it as it also has a cellar.
Over the next 12 months, that cellar is going to be fitted out so it can be used for hanging their meats in.
“The whole ethos of the business is that all the meat is provided direct from family farms. That is the business model – where you can come in and have a pie and you know where that mutton has come from or that steak has come from. It is just traditional cooking. It is back to basics,” said Ben.
Although he says that he doesn’t do mainstream butchering, so can’t claim to be a butcher, Ben does butcher his own pigs and sheep – and also butchered the latest cow himself, but admitted that that did take him twice as long.
“Pies are only 25 per cent of what we will eventually do. You will be able to go there and buy Cumberland ham. It will be a local delicatessen eventually.
“When we say local, we have the name of the name person, the farm, what they are fed on. Absolute transparency.
“A lot of our meats are from Deer and Dexter at Penruddock or Gemma Dobson at Simple Farming at Appleby. She raises all her sheep and her cows on herb grass.”
Ben, who hails from Preston, has a background in food, pubs and hotels.
He added: “The idea was that we would open up nice and quietly for a year or two, but the demand is huge. We see the same faces everyday, as well as new faces. It’s brilliant.”
Their range of pies includes vegan, gluten free, steak, mutton, pork apple and leak, plus chicken, bacon and leek varieties, as well as sausage rolls made from pork shoulder which include sage, rosemary, thyme, nutmeg, cayenne and black pepper.
