We still love sausages – and here’s a million reasons to prove it
There are two master craftsmen at work in the backroom of a Northgate Street shop, creating a much-loved product that flies off the shelves by the million each year. For nearly 40 years, Martin Allen has been hard at work, producing 60 tonnes of something that the good folk of Gloucestershire can’t get enough of each week. For the past 27 years, John Armstrong joined him and the pair have since evolved their product that now comes in a variety of sizes and in 12 different varieties. The product they create is the great British sausage and the shop they work for is the Gloucester institution that is Farmhouse Deli To call the rooms behind the Farmhouse Northgate Street store a food factory would be to decry the work of Messrs Allen and Armstrong. Because very little of it is automated or machine made. It’s just two craftsmen using the skills learned over more than a quarter of a century to use each and every day. It’s 50 years since John Clingan set up the Farmhouse shop on Northgate Street, selling sausages and bacon by the tonne to the good folk of Gloucester. And while shopping habits, products and the Farmhouse empire have all changed – the Clingans now run sister stores in Southgate Street and on the Strand in Cheltenham, some things remain the same.
John Clingan's son Rob and daughter Jenny are the current directors of the business. Rob said: "we have kept things the same as we have always done, because it works. “All of the food we produce is made on site at Northgate Street. “All our cooked meats are produced on site too and we have two of the crew who make all of our sandwiches each day. “We have Martin, John and two others who make our sausages, sausage rolls, scotch eggs and pies. “The machinery, what there is, is a bit more modern, but the process is the same, because it works and there’s no point changing it. “With two guys like Martin and John, because they’ve been here for so long, we can guarantee the quality of what we produce. They are experts at what they do.” The pair make 12 different sausage flavours, each made from fresh English pork, but their two most popular and the plain pork and the runaway best seller – their now-famous Gloucester Chipolata. All are sold both for cooking at home, and cooked in their renowned sausage sandwiches, from the three stores. Each one is hand-linked with staggering precision by either Martin or John, both of
104 | December 2019 | www. punchline-gloucester .com
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