not just a farm
Our Family
This is a whisky made from friends and family. The Thompsons and the Mellors have been great friends, ever since the day some time in the 80s that a young David headed in to the stackyard to meet a young Tom, to talk about fertiliser and barley seed. The farm has been in the Mellor family since 1945, with the fifth generation growing up there now. Here's our history.
Setting the Scene
How it Started
Back in 1945, Tom’s father Thomas was a young lad with a poorly heart. He was prescribed fresh clean coastal air and so the family moved from West Yorkshire, way over to the coast...
Thomas thrived here at the Hunmanby Grange, met Shirley at a Young Farmers dance and they married in the 1950s, having two children, Tom and Josette. Over the next twenty years, they continued to develop the farm, with barley, wheat, oilseed rape, and livestock.
next steps
The 1980s
When Tom came home from Wye Agricultural College in the 1980s full of exciting and innovative ideas about farming his father was happy for him to get cracking. Always ambitious and entrepreneurial, Tom and his new wife Gill developed the farm and gardens considerably, welcoming Kate and Jenni to the family too.
It was at this time that a young chap called David Thompson first called into the farm to sell Tom some barley… and a lifelong friendship was formed - Dave and Tom, and Gill and Bec!
and then
The 1990s
Free range eggs, cows and arable led the way in the 1990s and early 2000s, with a successful pioneering planning application for a wind turbine (a new thing!) This was unable to come to fruition due to the proximity of an RAF base but set the tone for Tom’s renewable energy ambitions.
New millennium
The 2000s
A need to diversify was evident in the early 2000s as UK Farming encountered major challenges. Along with another farming family, the Wold Top Brewery was started in 2003 to make the most of the malting barley and fresh water from the farm.
a spirited idea
The 2010s
Never one to sit still, Tom saw a space for farm-led malt whisky and alongside his best friend David, set about putting plans in motion to create Yorkshire's first whisky from field to bottle. In 2016 the stills were first fired, in 2019 Filey Bay First Release was bottled… and the rest is history!
here we are now
The 2020s
As we joined the new decade, our hearts broke when we said goodbye to Gill in November 2020. Wife to Tom, mum to Jenni and Kate, best friend to Rebecca and Dave, and a super Granny to Beth, Tilly, Arthur and Max too, we know she's directing proceedings from somewhere, keeping us all in check with her encyclopeadic knowledge of plants and crops.
This was the time on the farm that we began trialling direct drilling, cover crops and chopping, significantly reducing cultivation as well as inputs. With no impact on yield but a positive impact on the environment, we quickly moved to this way of farming as standard.
