The Creamery
Stonewood Design has given a century old former creamery a new lease of life as a cheese-making facility.
Located adjacent to Castle Cary railway station, the building is a well-known local landmark courtesy of its distinctive chimney, which once played a role in the dairy production process. Its latest incarnation – which also includes an associated shop and café/restaurant - returns the building to dairy function.
The original creamery’s proximity to the station reflected its use of the railway network to distribute the dairy products. Now, more than a century later, the relationship has been recast. While dairy products from locally sourced milk are once again being manufactured on the site, in its new format, the building is also a hub for people. As well as receiving visitors arriving by train - the café serves as a rather deluxe, unofficial railway waiting area with screens displaying live train times. But if customers would rather gaze at mozzarella cheese being stretched, that’s also possible – this is a building designed to, quite literally showcase the dairy manufacturing processes, with views from the café directly into the factory floor.
Stonewood Design’s first move was to decide what to keep out of the accretion of extensions and alterations made over the years to the original 1912 creamery. Briefed by the client that the outcome should be ‘1912 or invisible’, the architects removed the majority of these additions with the aim of giving the brick building back something of its original industrial character.
The next move was an extension to supplement the retained original. Old and new are linked by a glass entrance pavilion, which also frames the 13-high chimney, now exposed on all four sides for extra visual impact. From the entrance, visitors can either proceed down into the café/restaurant or enter the ground floor shop, which sells dairy products made on site such as mozzarella, butter and yoghurt.
Stonewood Design’s aim was to retain and restore as much of the original structure as possible, but with some decisive interventions. A double-height void was cut in the ground floor to enable views down into the lower ground floor cheese-making area from a glass viewing bridge. The much-altered front of the building facing the station was rebuilt with the introduction of a large glass window, a nod to the semi-open, lean-to of the creamery’s original façade. The building’s landmark chimney was found to be structurally unstable, and had to be taken down brick-by-brick and rebuilt with a more stable internal structure. Meanwhile on the lower level, the rear projection housing the café was given a new roof and floor, and now opens onto a landscaped garden.
New interior details take cues from the original building and its Edwardian era. The creamery floor was originally tiled in cast iron grates infilled with concrete, which made it easier to move the milk churns around. Stonewood Design sought to emulate this with bespoke, perforated tiles filed with screed that are used throughout the entrance and café. The lift to the café/restaurant is inspired by typical 1920s ‘birdcage’ lifts, while the suspended metal ceiling panels in the lower ground lobby and café toilets also reference examples from that time.
In acknowledgement of the original creamery’s relationship with the railway, the design of the café interior references vintage railway waiting room furniture and railway carriages. Original waiting room seating formed the model for the perimeter upholstered banquettes, while in the centre, new tables and high backed benches were created as modern interpretations of seating from that era.
Café-goers are encouraged to appreciate the cheese-making process via curved glass windows onto the adjacent, double-height cheese-making area. This facility includes three stainless steel vats clad in timber with copper bands, their design inspired by equipment of that time. Further dairy production and administrative areas are located out of public view on this level.
The creamery’s reinvention provides a new chapter for a heritage building of significant local importance.
