CHEESE FACTORY
The first cheese factory built to make cheese on a larger scale than was possible in small farmhouse dairies opened in Switzerland in 1815. It was many years before one was introduced in England. The first opened in Derby on May 4th 1870 in a converted warehouse. Later that year a purpose-built cheese factory opened nearby at Longford under the management of a Dutch-American named Cornelius Schermerhorn with local support including Lord Vernon and the Coke family. It was a wooden structure, boarded outside and plastered inside with an open space between for the circulation of air. There is also an artesian well some 370 feet deep, the water of which is “very cold and clear as crystal”.
Within six years ten more factories had begun production in the same region.
The factory was a cooperative and produced 20 cheeses a day also butter but was eventually overcome by competition from imported cheeses and larger factories.
