British Pie Week

It’s British Pie Week! Never ones to miss a food-related opportunity, we have taken the chance to bake, and eat, a few extra pies this week.

In the Tea Rooms, in our 1900s Town, we have been whipping up individual chicken, bacon and leek pies or family sized Weardale cheese and potato to cut huge wedges out of to enjoy with gravy. Our mouths are watering already!

We will also be making various pies in Herron’s Bakery with proper hot water crust pastry made from scratch. So far, we have done cheese and leek, and traditional pork, perfect as part of a ploughman’s lunch or just to be enjoyed straight from the bag walking down The Town street.

Regular visitors will know of our offering of pies in The Sun Inn, but this week we are also offering hot pies, including steak, cheese and our usual pork, a perfect combination made even better when they are hot!

The more we discussed British Pie Week at Beamish, the more appropriate it seemed to be celebrating it here at the museum. Firstly, all of the Food Team (and the teams beyond ours!) seem to love pies – making them, eating them, the list goes on. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, these pastry-topped beauties just seem to fit in so well with the daily lives of the people we are representing in our museum. For example, you can just imagine enormous pies being made up at Pockerley chock full of game and other goodies from the surrounding land to celebrate a good harvest, or the Land Girls up at The 1940s Farm experimenting with potato pastry and trying out Woolton Pie, which was so popular at the time, making the most of the vegetables they could grow in their own back gardens. Or just a miner on Francis Street down in The Pit Village coming home after a long shift to finally sit down and rest his aching bones next to the fire and enjoy a pie made from the leftover roast beef from Sunday, bliss.

So, pop down this week (British Pie Week is running until this Sunday 12th March) and enjoy a hot steak pie and a pint at the bar in The Sun Inn, or sit down and relax with a plate full of pie, mash and veg (not forgetting lots of gravy!) and a cuppa (and maybe a slice of cake for afters?) in the Tea Rooms, or just feel inspired to make your own from scratch. There is a lot of pride to be had in our humble pie, so let’s show them some appreciation!

Enjoy everyone!