VH

VALLEYFIELD HOUSE

THE CRAFT OF GOOD FOOD

Valleyfield House Partnership, off 17 High Street, Penicuik

Now in its seventeenth year.

Organic and fair trade exchange and market

run by volunteers on Saturday mornings

Valleyfield House is tucked away in the heart of Penicuik through a High Street archway. Since 1990, every Saturday morning from 10 o'clock till noon, organic and fair trade supplies are brought together and taken away by local people at Valleyfield House. People join in for the fun of it, there's no mark-up and everything changes hands at cost price, which makes a big difference to family food bills. Organic breads are brought in weekly by Trusty Crust from East Saltoun, stacks of fruit and vegetable boxes and other produce come in weekly from East Coast Organics at Pencaitland, there’s a weekly shuttle from nearby Whitmuir Farm (take a visit or watch the video!), organic milk & cream from Clyde Organics and glass-bottled pints from Hawick, organic eggs from the Ettrick Valley, organic cheese from Connage and Lye Cross, with Peeblesshire grapes and Penicuik honeys in season. Pretty well everything else in the way of organic flours, pastas, tea, coffee, oats, chocolate, juices and general groceries, is there to supply a household’s needs, brought every week by wholesale co-operatives in Glasgow and Halifax. It’s a great chance to meet people, drop in on Penicuik’s well known High Street pâtissier and the other shops and galleries nearby, and check out upcoming local events and exhibitions.

Valleyfield House is open from 10am till 12 on Saturdays.

-through the vennel and down the drive at

17 High Street, Penicuik, EH26 8HS

01968 677854

also at Valleyfield House: Penicuik Pottery

Quiet social enterprise

–a Penicuik tradition on Edinburgh’s doorstep

-Weekly supplies at Valleyfield House since 1990 revive an older pattern. Marjory Cowan (1734-1819) had a no-nonsense approach to social enterprise as far back as the 1790s. When living at Valleyfield, of which she was very fond, she paid great attention to her dairy, poultry and garden, selling with her own hands her spare milk to those who wanted it, and keeping cans set in order, each labelled for its own customer. Every egg laid was marked with the date and the hen's name. Marjorie had wry contempt for grand ways and would-be grand people. One day she was in the garden with a large lapful of cabbages &c., which she had been cutting for the kail, when her husband Charles came in with a strange gentleman. She walked past him, dropping a curtsey, and saying 'your servant, Mr Charles', thus sparing his blushes for a wife so employed. She had a keen sense of humour and a high spirit of honour, and she detested deceit. She knew Allan Ramsay's works almost by heart. In her cellars in those days she kept barrels of American apples, a barrel or two of salted beef from Shetland and huge American cheeses as big as cartwheels.

Read more about Marjory Fidler Cowan here on the Penicuik Trust website

PENICUIK HOME KOSMOID HOME

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