Site of Four Crosses creamery

Link to French translationSite of Four Crosses creamery

A large creamery occupied the land south of the B4393 road here, collecting milk from farms across the region. Some was distributed as milk, some was used for cheese production.

The need for a similar facility was outlined by a frustrated local farmer in a letter to a newspaper in 1895. He wrote that "tub butter” (made at home) was fetching “ruinous prices” in the markets and suggested opening co-operative butter factories in Welshpool, Pool Quay and Four Crosses, to provide butter of “a more uniform and a fresher quality for market”.

After the Second World War the Four Crosses creamery came under the control of the Milk Marketing Board, which had been set up by the government in 1933 to help dairy farmers who were suffering during the great depression.

In the 1960s the MMB established the Dairy Crest brand for its cheeses and butter. Dairy Crest became a separate business in 1980 and closed the Four Crosses creamery in 1992, four years before Dairy Crest was fully privatised. The creamery’s three-storey stone building beside the B4393 was converted into residential flats. Other buildings have also been re-used.

The creamery’s growth depended on the railway line which ran north to south past the east of the site. Trains carried most of the milk until after the SWW. The line was opened in 1860 by the Oswestry & Newtown Railway, based at Welshpool station. It later became part of the Cambrian Railways main line from Whitchurch to Welshpool and Aberystwyth. The station at Four Crosses, originally named Llandysilio, closed in 1965. It was one of the stations whose listing for closure was mourned by Flanders and Swann in their popular 1963 song The Slow Train.

Just to the west of here, a cul-de-sac called Y Clawdd celebrates the proximity of Offa’s Dyke (known as Clawdd Offa in Welsh).

Postcode: SY22 6LP    View Location Map

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