Charles Macleod

Charles MacLeod has made Stornoway Black Pudding from Ropework Park since 1947, when Charles Menendez MacLeod opened the butchery after returning from wartime service. His father had worked for a Patagonian employer, Jose Menendez, who asked that his own name be given to Charles's firstborn son, the source of the unusual middle name. After Charles died in 1967 his sons Iain and Charles Jr split the business, one running the butchery and the other the family's Crobeag Farm, bought in 1958. The pudding recipe has barely changed: beef suet, oatmeal, pork blood, onion and spice, cooked daily on the premises rather than at a central factory. Stornoway Black Pudding now carries Protected Geographical Indication status, meaning only pudding made this way in this town can carry the name. The shop still trades from its original site on Ropework Park.