Alston Biltong was established in 2022 in the remote market town of Alston in The North Pennines, Cumbria, UK.
The town's high altitude (England's highest Market Town) and cool air provide the ideal climate for air-cured meats, and Alston has a long history of butchers and meat purveyors who became skilled in this technique of preserving meat before the age of refrigeration.
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Cairns Butchery in the early part of the 1900's - probably around 1905. Alston had several butcheries and three slaughter houses which operated from small buildings just a few metres from these shops. The effluent was simply discharged into a small stream that ran adjacent to Front Street through the town centre and the water powered the ancient corn mill waterwheel (High Mill) which dates from 1769. This obviously unhealthy water prompted the Alston Rural District Council's medical officer in 1899 to ban the practice of effluent discharge into the stream. |
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Waltons Butchery occupied the same shop and traded for many years. This photograph dates from around 1915 - probably earlier. |
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Alston Front Street with "West View" on the right side of the road (dark blue window frames). This shop, and the shop next door were owned by Martin Tindle who set up a general dealer business in 1875, selling a large variety of goods, including cured and salted meats. These buildings date from the mid-1600's but the frontage was modified over the years. From about 1850, no further changes were made to their frontage and what you see now is pretty much as it was over 175 years ago. West View is now home to Alston Biltong. |
Inside West View shop, showing a detail of the ceiling and the hooks used to hang up sides of meat when the shop operated as a general dealer in the 1870's. Today they are just for show. Our biltong is produced in more hygeinic drying boxes. |
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Alston Front Street circa 1920 showing what were once the shops of Mr Martin Tindle on the left side of the street. Tindle opened his shops in 1875 as a general merchant, selling a range of goods, including salted and air-cured meats. Prepared and air-dried in exactly the same way used by the early Dutch settlers in South Africa, Tindle's cured meats are arguably "English Biltong". Over the last 150 years, these shops have changed hands many times and been home to many diverse retail enterprises. Today, the shop is the HQ for Alston Biltong, made according to both English and South African tradition! Enjoy. |
We take advantage of a high altitude environment with fresh, cool air, in England's most remote market town. Surrounded by moorland and rolling hills in the North Pennines, our products benefit from unique enviromental conditions.
As such, we are able to produce some of the finest air-cured meats in the United Kingdom.