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About Us

Meet the Teesdale Cheesemakers!

Who We Are?

Teesdale Cheesemakers was formally Leaside Cheesemakers, founded by Brian and Esme Dedman in 2012. We are a husband and wife team Allison and Jonathan Raper, who took over the business in January 2016.

We use milk from the family farm to make our cheeses.

In January 2019 we moved to new premises and our café and small shop Cheesedale opened on November 15th 2019.

Cheesedale is a cheese-centric cafe and shop where the menu revolves around the cheese we make on the premises. You can take a peek into the dairy and see where the cheese is made, meet our rare breed pigs who are fed on the whey from the cheesemaking and enjoy a great cheese board and cup of coffee in the cafe.

Our menu changes in line with our produce on the farm but we always have our award winning cheeses.

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Our Products

We make eight soft cheeses:

  • Teesdale Blue - a mild creamy Blue (cow's milk)
  • White Hilton - a complex creamy white cheese that changes as you chew it
  • Teesdale Goat - a mild mellow goat with our distinct rind to finish it off
  • Barney Brie - a robust farmhouse brie
  • Doris - a dales style cheese, crumbly in the middle with a soft edging
  • Allison's Garlic Special - inspired by a maltese recipe and a nod to Allison's maltese roots.
  • Nanny Blue - a blue goat cheese with a mild rocquefort flavour
  • Ronnie - using a similar recipe to Doris but cut, waxed and matured for a tangier more acidic flavour
  • Durham Blue - our newest addition to the range and only available here at the farm. A red blue cheese that is creamy with a rich blue taste with an acidic twang that rounds the flavour off nicely.
  • & our flavoured Teesdale Dessert Cheeses: Velvet, designed to pimp up your pud or have as a sweet treat!
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How to get your hands on our cheese?

We sell at a limited number of food festivals and events, we'd love to see you there.

You can enjoy our cheese at our licensed Cheesedale cafe & shop or we now sell it online!

About Us