Our History
This November 2025 we're celebrating four years since we moved into The Herb Farm! These old buildings - traditional long narrow Cumbrian cottage and barn - have been here several centuries, but our connection to the place goes back to Rachel's grandparents Harry and Rosemary Keogh, who founded The Herb Farm in the late 1940s. Part of that business, inherited by their son (Rachel's uncle) Chris Keogh, lives on in another form as the brilliant Country Flavour Home Made Jams and Preserves, based in Kirby Stephen. The Lemon Cheese is the greatest! I believe that's a classic from The Herb Farm days.
Exactly four years today have passed, as I write this, since we moved here, bringing our furniture in borrowed (and very well pressured washed!) cattle trailers, with our 3 year old son in tow. We were welcomed by Rachel's auntie who lives just down the road, with a huge bowl of soup. I looked around, gobsmacked, delighted, then had one day to put things in order, before I was back to work at the secondary school on the other side of the county where I taught English. I'd just come out of teaching through Covid, confined to remote teaching from a small bedroom/office in Dalston, and moving into The Herb Farm and its gardens seemed like stepping into a dream.
I had long been keen on cooking and gardening and I also loved growing and buying interesting herbs and making teas. When I think about it, my marriage - to a herb farmer's granddaughter - makes more and more sense! I found that traditional remedies and products like lemon balm, echinacea, verbena, peppermint, ginger, ginseng, green tea and gotu kola made a real difference to my wellbeing. We immediately started playing in the garden, planting herbs and lavender, and having successes and failures with projects, from pumpkin patches to shiitake mushroom logs. We started dreaming of ways to get The Herb Farm back up and running.
However, we hadn't quite realised how much work looking after an old house and huge garden would take. It was almost impossible whilst I was teaching 40 miles away, although switching things up to work as a farmhand for Rachel's lovely parents opened up a bit more time here and there. Still, I always had this feeling that we'd never have the time to really bring the herb gardens back to life, and this feeling of dreadful guilt that I wasn't even close to raising the kind of funds I'd need to really do something amazing for my family in this beautiful place that deserved better - although we have had unbelievable support from the family to make some repairs.
It was an autumn evening in The Herb Farm gardens recently, watching the sun set and the stars rise, having some moments of peace as I was away from work to look after my mental health, that we began really talking about it: what if we could restart The Herb Farm. My wife and I have shared a dream since coming here, and we think if we don't chase our dream, no-one else will do it for us. Starting this December, we've decided to try and get The Herb Farm back into business, kicking off by learning the craft of blending teas and herbal teas. It doesn't seem as impossible as we once thought. And a little bit of prayer goes a long way too. Rachel has come into her own planning this - she's a herb farmer's granddaughter for sure!
We're so grateful to have the support of Rachel's family who allowed us to move here four years ago, and hope to restore this place to something more like the way it is so fondly remembered by many. The most encouraging word we have had so far was from Rachel's mother, who told us that Harry and Rosemary, the original Herb Farmers, would be proud of us. - John North
The History of the Herb Farm
Rachel would visit her grandparents at The Herb Farm as a child; she has vivid memories of eating fresh spinach in the sun room, and of catching frogs in the pond. Her grandparents, Harry and Rosemary, had five children including her mother. They have all shared memories of growing up here, working for their parents, and going to the same lovely little village primary school as our son does now.
There are some really interesting notes about The Herb Farm in Midge Todhunter's Ivegill: A Social History of Rural England (2019). Here are some extracts:
"The Herb Farm in Ivegill run by Harry and Rosemary Keogh was a cottage industry, which became famous all over the county and beyond, particularly for its lemon cheese, mint jelly, dried herbs, potpourri, and chutneys. It employed Ivegill women at various times: Mrs Whitfield from Sunny Bank council houses sewed potpourri bags, and her daughter Cathy was nanny for their three children. Joan Downie, a lovely red-haired girl who walked to work across the fields in her wellies, was their housekeeper, and Mrs Glendinning (wife of Andrew) was maker of their lemon cheese.
The herbs and flowers were grown on two acres of land they owned opposite the vicarage. Walking home from school we would often see Harry wrestling with a mighty cultivator in their fields. And a wonderful aroma of herbs and flowers drifted out across the road as we walked past their drying barn in the village...
Rosemary Keogh was a great character of Ivegill village life. Born 1919 at Dalston near Carlisle, she was the daughter of a previous Ivegill vicar Rev. George Hall who had educated Rosemary at home between the ages of five to 11. She then went to Casterton School for Girls at Kirkby Lonsdale where she developed an interest in botany and chemistry. There were plans for her to study horticulture at University of Reading. But she went instead to train at a herb farm at Seal near Sevenoaks in Kent from 1937 to 1938. In 1941 Rosemary went to do war work at the TNT factory at Drigg, Cumbria.
Rosemary met Harry Keogh while staying at a mutual friend’s herb farm at Stoke Lacy, Hereford, in 1946, while he was there on leave from the Royal Marines in which he served as a sergeant. The couple kept in touch by letter while Harry spent two years in South Africa with HMS Nigeria, based at Simonstown.
In July 1948, Harry went to stay with Rosemary at Ivegill, where her father had taken up an appointment as vicar in the village. They were married at Christ Church, Ivegill, in April 1949, by the Bishop of Penrith. At the end of that year they bought the cottage opposite the church and began the Herb Farm business together.
In 1986 aged 67, Rosemary was licensed as a lay reader in the diocese of Carlisle. She served other churches on occasions, but the majority of her ministry was at Christ Church, Ivegill. She was said to be a practical, caring, compassionate person who brought sunshine into people’s lives, and there is a stone monument in her memory at the bottom of Ivegill churchyard in an area called the Peace Garden."
