Now one of the country’s biggest and most modern creameries

Born seventy years ago out of the enterprise of a Torrington grocer and provision merchant, Mr Robert Sandford, bartering groceries for butter, eggs and poultry from local farmers, the Torridge Vale Dairies’ factory has grown into one of the biggest and most modern creameries in the country.

Fifty farms began supplying cream to the dairy in 1931 but now the company buys milk from some 2,600 farms, the collections by its fleet of 50 lorries along the network of roads over an area extending from Hartland to Lynton, down east of South Molton, to the boundaries of Okehampton and across to the coast in North Cornwall south of Bude and Marhamchurch.

Gazette article 24 June 1955