Lucy Appleby

Florence Lucy Appleby MBE (née Walley; 1 February 1920 – 24 April 2008) was an English traditional cheesemaker.

[7][8] The stables at Hawkstone Abbey Farm were converted into a dairy where Appleby made cloth-bound Cheshire cheese to a traditional recipe using unpasteurised milk from their herd of Friesian cattle.

[7][12] Appleby rejected this method because she believed that calico allowed the cheese to breathe and better flavours to develop as a result.

[13] As was customary at the time, the Appleby's cheese was initially sold through the Milk Marketing Board (MMB).

But over time the MMB became less aligned with the Applebys' relatively small scale, artisan approach and in 1982 they broke ties with the organisation.

[8] In the late 1980s a series of public health scares led supermarkets to stop selling cheese made from unpasteurised milk.