Makers near Northwich, Cheshire West and Chester

Salt Town Distillery

Drinks & Cordials · Middlewich

about 5 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.

Tabley Wick Co.

Candles · Knutsford

about 6 miles away

Naomi hand-pours small batches of rapeseed wax candles from a garden studio near Knutsford, blending her own scents from essential oils rather than synthetic fragrance. Every wick is trimmed and every jar labelled by hand before it leaves the studio.

Woven Hollow

Textiles · Knutsford

about 6 miles away

Priya weaves throws and cushions on a hundred-year-old dobby loom, using undyed wool from a flock ten miles from her Knutsford studio.

Copper Pan Fudge

Chocolate & Confectionery · Holmes Chapel

about 7 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.

Lymm Cross Patisserie

Bakery & Patisserie · Lymm

about 9 miles away

Leyla Osman spent six years on the pastry section of a Manchester hotel kitchen before setting up a registered kitchen just off Eagle Brow, a short walk from the village cross. She bakes in small weekend runs for collection, and her celebration cakes are usually booked about a month ahead.

Sandstone & Saw

Furniture · Frodsham

about 9 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.

Spindle & Stave

Woodwork · Tarporley

about 9 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.

Anvil & Ember

Metalwork · Sandbach

about 10 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.

Haughton Fields Dairy

Cheese & Dairy · Bunbury

about 12 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.

Coppice & Canvas

Artwork · Wilmslow

about 12 miles away

Daniel paints and prints from a light-filled studio behind his Wilmslow house, working in oils and hand-pulled linocuts of the Cheshire countryside he walks every morning. Each print is pulled in small numbered editions on a hundred-year-old press.

Brine & Bloom

Jewellery · Nantwich

about 13 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 13 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.

Kiln & Copse

Ceramics · Congleton

about 14 miles away

Rhian throws in a converted barn on the edge of Congleton, firing every piece in a wood-kiln she built herself from reclaimed brick. She digs a little of her own clay from the field behind the workshop each spring, folding it into the mix so every glaze carries a trace of that particular Cheshire ground.

Marl & Wick

Candles · Congleton

about 14 miles away

Jodie pours small batches of rapeseed-wax candles in her Congleton kitchen, scented with botanicals grown on the allotment two doors down. Nothing synthetic, nothing rushed.

Newton Bank Orchard

Drinks & Cordials · Tattenhall

about 14 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.

Grain & Ledge

Furniture · Macclesfield

about 16 miles away

Tom builds furniture from windfallen Cheshire oak and elm, air-dried for three years behind his Macclesfield workshop. Every joint is cut by hand; nothing is rushed.

Treacle Town Bakehouse

Bakery & Patisserie · Macclesfield

about 16 miles away

Jack Emmott bakes twice a week from a single deck oven in a converted unit off Waters Green, feeding a rye starter he has kept going since 2019. The name is a nod to Macclesfield's old nickname — Treacle Town — and his dark rye and treacle loaf sells out most bake days by ten.

Fettle & Fold

Jewellery · Chester

about 16 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.

Weir & Weft

Textiles · Chester

about 16 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.

Asante Cacao

Chocolate & Confectionery · Bollington

about 17 miles away

Kwame roasts single-origin beans from his family's cocoa co-operative near Kumasi, Ghana, in a small unit at Clarence Mill overlooking the Macclesfield Canal. Each batch is cracked, winnowed and stone-ground over three days, then tempered and wrapped by hand — most of his bars have just two ingredients. The farm, harvest and roast date are printed on every wrapper.

Swanbach Smallholding

Preserves & Pantry · Audlem

about 19 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.

Hedgerow & Jar

Preserves & Pantry · Malpas

about 20 miles away

Hannah forages and preserves from a farmhouse kitchen near Malpas, turning hedgerow fruit and garden veg into small-batch jams, cordials and chutneys with nothing artificial. Every jar is dated and hand-labelled the day it's made, from hedges she's walked since she was a girl.

Bridle & Bramble

Leather · Whitchurch

about 21 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.