Makers near Malpas, Cheshire West and Chester

Bridle & Bramble

Leather · Whitchurch

about 5 miles away

Owen learned to cut and stitch leather from his father's saddlery on the Welsh border, and still tans and dyes every hide by hand in his Whitchurch workshop. Each bag is stitched with waxed linen thread, built to age like a good pair of boots.

Newton Bank Orchard

Drinks & Cordials · Tattenhall

about 7 miles away

Owen Roberts presses apples from a three-acre orchard on the family farm below the Peckforton Hills, planted by his grandfather with Cheshire varieties that never made it to the supermarkets. Juice is pressed and bottled within a day of picking; the cider ferments slowly through winter on wild yeasts, in a shed with no heating and no hurry.

Haughton Fields Dairy

Cheese & Dairy · Bunbury

about 8 miles away

Robert Huxley milks forty Friesians on land his grandfather farmed between Bunbury and Haughton Moss, and makes cheese with the morning's milk twice a week. His cloth-bound Cheshire is pressed, bound and larded by hand, then aged on wooden shelves in the old shippon for anywhere between two and nine months. It's the crumbly, faintly salty cheese the county was known for before the creameries took over, made the slow way because that's the only way it works.

Spindle & Stave

Woodwork · Tarporley

about 11 miles away

Freya carves spoons and small vessels from green wood cut on a friend's smallholding near Tarporley, working entirely by hand with an axe, hook knife and a lot of patience. Nothing is sanded smooth — the facets of the blade are left to catch the light.

Brine & Bloom

Jewellery · Nantwich

about 11 miles away

Isla casts and sets from a bench in Nantwich, working recycled silver and gold alongside hand-set stones into forms borrowed from the wildflowers along the Weaver. Every piece is finished by hand with a burnisher that belonged to her grandmother, a silversmith in Amritsar.

Stillwater Ceramics

Ceramics · Nantwich

about 11 miles away

Elena throws every piece on a wheel her grandfather built, in a converted dairy on the edge of Nantwich. Her glazes are mixed from ash gathered on the Cheshire plain — no two firings are ever quite the same.

Swanbach Smallholding

Preserves & Pantry · Audlem

about 11 miles away

Priya grows most of what she preserves on three acres of heavy Cheshire clay just outside Audlem, where a polytunnel, a veg plot and six beehives keep the kitchen busy from June to October. The chutney method comes from her grandmother in Leicester — whole spices toasted in the pan before anything else goes in — applied to whatever the plot produces in glut. Everything is jarred the day it's cooked, then rested in the pantry until it's ready to sell.

Weir & Weft

Textiles · Chester

about 13 miles away

Grace weaves on a floor loom set up in a converted chapel just outside Chester, working undyed and naturally dyed yarns sourced from British flocks. Every throw, runner and cushion cover carries the slight irregularity of cloth made slowly, by one pair of hands.

Fettle & Fold

Jewellery · Chester

about 13 miles away

Maria hand-forges each piece at a bench overlooking the Chester rows, working recycled silver into forms drawn from the city's medieval ironwork. Every ring is finished with a hammer she's used for fifteen years.

Salt Town Distillery

Drinks & Cordials · Middlewich

about 18 miles away

Nisha Bhamra distils in a canal-side unit off Brooks Lane, close to where Middlewich's brine pans once stood. Her gins run through a 100-litre copper still she calls Vera, with a pinch of Cheshire salt in every botanical basket — a nod to a town that has made salt since the Romans. Batches rarely top 200 bottles, each one numbered by hand.

Anvil & Ember

Metalwork · Sandbach

about 19 miles away

Connor forges at a coal-fired hearth in a Sandbach industrial unit, hand-hammering steel and iron into functional pieces built to outlast him. He trained under a fourth-generation blacksmith and still lights the forge the same way every morning.

Sandstone & Saw

Furniture · Frodsham

about 19 miles away

Callum builds solid furniture from timber felled within twenty miles of his Frodsham workshop, seasoning every board himself before it touches a saw. His joints are cut by hand and pegged, never screwed — furniture built to be mended, not replaced.

Salt & Sill

Home Décor · Northwich

about 19 miles away

Louise gathers and finishes small pieces for the home from a workshop near Northwich's old salt works, pairing locally thrown ceramics with hand-poured candles and woven textiles she sources from makers she trusts. Everything on her shelf is chosen, never mass-bought.

Copper Pan Fudge

Chocolate & Confectionery · Holmes Chapel

about 21 miles away

Meera makes fudge, caramels and truffles in a forty-year-old copper pan in her kitchen on the edge of Holmes Chapel, with cream collected twice a week from a dairy farm three miles up the road. Everything is boiled to temperature on a sugar thermometer, beaten by hand and cut with a wire the same afternoon. Boxes are packed to order, so nothing sits on a shelf.

The Budworth Buttery

Cheese & Dairy · Great Budworth

about 21 miles away

Aneta Kowalczyk learned to make twaróg in her grandmother's kitchen outside Kraków, and started The Budworth Buttery from a converted outbuilding behind her house in Great Budworth in 2019. She collects milk twice a week from a single herd at Comberbach, two miles down the road, and everything is made, potted and labelled within a day of it arriving.