I had never been to Stroud until last week. On my first visit there I was tempted by the wares on offer at Hania Cheeses, who operate out of a van parked outside the Shambles Market on Fridays and Saturdays. From their excellent selection I opted for some Wigmore sheepsmilk cheese from Berkshire and a wedge of Single Gloucester made by local producer Jonathan Crump. Both were thoroughly enjoyable.
In contrast to the ubiquity of Double Gloucester, its Single counterpart is nothing like as widely-available. Its relative rarity can be explained by its humble origins. Historically, the rich and creamy Double cheeses would be made for sale, sent off to the nearby towns and cities, then further circulated and exported, thereby spreading their renown; while the local farmers were left with only the lighter, quickly-made and less-esteemed Single cheeses, whose fame did not increase in the same way.
In the relevant article in The Oxford Companion to Cheese, Charles Martell writes “as late as the mid-twentieth century, there were people who grew up on farms in Gloucestershire who had never eaten Double Gloucester cheese because it was too valuable. It was always sent away, they complained, to provide the farm with its income…” A plain and ‘basic’ foodstuff it may be, but made with care, and in accordance with tradition, it’s still a delicious one.
The cheese revived a dim memory that I’d read something comedic about (nonexistent) Triple Gloucester in one of Thomas Pynchon’s novels. As is often the case with faint recollections it proved not to be entirely correct. I’d been thinking of Chapter 16 in Mason & Dixon: “Twas at the annual cheese-rolling at the parish church in Randwick, a few miles the other side of Stroud. And May-Day as well, in its full English Glory […] Every young woman for miles around would be there, although Mason adopted a more Scientifick motive, that of wishing to see at first hand, a much-rumored Prodigy, styled ‘The Octuple Gloucester’— a giant Cheese, the largest known in the Region, perhaps in the Kingdom…”