Stanforths

Jim Stanforth founded his Celebrated Pork Pie Establishment before the Second World War, and the shop has stood at Mill Bridge below Skipton's church for more than eighty years, its window of hot pork pies functioning as the town's true landmark; Paul Shearer, who came up through the shop rather than the family, runs it now with the long-serving staff — the apprentice-to-owner succession told as it happened. The pies leave by the thousand on market days, the tiered celebration pork pie stands in for wedding cake across the Dales, and an online counter now posts the famous article nationwide. Skipton means sheep-town; the pigs, evidently, had the last word.