About Us

The Cheese Shed is a collaboration between Ian Wellens and James Mann. We both live in Bovey Tracey, Devon - just on the south-eastern corner of Dartmoor.  James' family has been here for rather a long time, having had a farm and a shop in the town since 1829!  The current shop is Mann's Delicatessen in Fore St.  Ian is a more recent arrival: though Devon-born, he only moved to Bovey in 1997. The mail order cheese idea came after he'd been buying local cheeses in Mann's for a few years, and began to wonder how available these wonderful products were in the rest of the country.  Could you, he wondered, buy Blue Vinney in Blackpool? Or Yarg in Yarmouth? An online cheese shop seemed to be the answer.

So he approached James with the Plan: what if there was a website where people from far-flung parts of the country could buy all this fabulous westcountry cheese?  Further research suggested that there were few places on the web which specialised in Westcountry farmhouse cheeses, and some great cheeses were just not available ... unless you lived locally.  Plans were set in motion, and the Cheese Shed you see before you is the result. 

In case you're wondering, the shed - painted a fetching blue colour, and with a great view of the moors - is real ... although sadly it doesn't actually contain any cheese: it's Ian's office. James stores the cheese at Mann's and deals with all the orders. So rest assured that everything we sell has been well looked after by people who really know the dairy business.

If you want to know more about the background to the Cheese Shed, click here.