At Butlers Farmhouse Cheeses our journey into Soft Cheese making began over 15 years ago. Renowned for our Farmhouse Lancashire and our soft creamy blues, the development of a soft, creamy white cheese was a much-wanted addition to our family, as it provides the finishing touch to the perfect British cheeseboard.

Button Mill, a small and soft, cow’s milk cheese was born in 2014. Through careful parenting it has evolved into a truly unique cheese. The soft, creamy centre is encased in a thin, chewy white rind, which is just as delicious as the savoury tasting squidgy middle. These little baby cheeses have very specific environmental needs as they develop, they like to be matured in close proximity to each other. This is why we make them in batches of 600 at one time, to ensure they have lots of siblings.

Creating Button Mill in our dairy is a labour of love. Button Mill cheese starts life in tiny artisan basins, which produce small batches at a time. We treat each cheese as an individual, right from the beginning, when it is placed into its own mould. Thereafter, it is reliant on the skill of our master cheesemakers to parent the cheese through its short ripening and maturation period to create its distinct flavour.

In Button Mill we have a truly great British soft cheese - the perfect accomplice to watching the day go by – get your favourite warm drink, possibly a few delicious crackers, find somewhere comfy and only get up to get another one from the fridge…

Our dairy is situated on Button Street, which is named after the water-powered button mill that once stood proudly on the street until the 19th century. The street also had a butcher and a tannery; the animal hide was sent to the tanner, and the bones to the mill to make buttons - ensuring nothing was wasted. The water needed to power the mill ran through our farm at Lower Barker, and today you can still see the old pipes in the farm land. 

When deciding on a name for our new little round cheese, reminiscent of those beautiful bone buttons - we could not think of anything more fitting!