Ram Hall stands on a knoll surrounded by a 200 acre estate (and the remains of its moat!) near Balsall Common in Warwickshire. It has been farmed for five generations by the Fletcher family and at present by Stephen Fletcher with his parents, Peter and Sheila. Stephen left Shuttleworth College in the 1980s with an interest in sheep. At that time the farm was milking 100 cows but Stephen decided to milk sheep with the object of selling frozen milk to health food shops, starting out with 45 ewes. The product wasn’t a success and a neighbouring farmer’s daughter, who had trained in cheesemaking, came over and made some cheese from the ewe’s milk using kitchen utensils. After some further development work, the first Berkswell cheese was born.

So in the early 1990s Stephen was milking the sheep, Peter milking the cows, and the cheese business was having some success. In 1994 came the turning point. Berkswell cheese won at Bakewell, Nantwich, and was awarded a Gold medal at the first British Cheese Awards. In 1995 they decided to sell the cows and concentrate on milking sheep and producing cheese. “The quota income helped to expand the flock, and the Berkswell Estate assisted in providing the facilities for the expansion.” They are now milking 350 ewes and all the milk (700 litres per day at the moment) goes into Berkswell cheese and the new soft cheeses, “Marlow” and “Kelsey Lane”.