Emmett's Store, Peasenhall

Emmett's Store sits on The Street in Peasenhall, a small Suffolk village a few miles inland from the coast, and has been doing more or less the same thing since 1820. That thing is making ham. Not sourcing it, not rebranding it — making it, by hand, on the premises, in the brick smokehouses that stand directly behind the shop. The production and the retail have never been separated, which is unusual enough that the business describes itself, with some justification, as probably the most unique retailer of its kind in the UK.

How the ham is made

Each ham takes around ten weeks to produce from start to finish. The process runs through curing, marinading, smoking, maturing and cooking, all of it happening behind the store. The pigs are sourced from the Butler family at Blythburgh on the Suffolk coast, farmed 100% free range — a designation that applies to only 3% of pigs farmed in the UK. The gammons arrive as whole rear legs; nothing else is used for the hams. The most distinctive product is the Suffolk black ham, which is marinaded in a black porter beer mixture for up to six weeks before being smoked over beech in the heritage brick smokehouses. That extended marination, followed by the beech smoke, produces a depth of flavour that is specific to this process and not easily replicated elsewhere.

The bacon

Emmett's has been making naturally cured bacon — meaning no nitrates, no chemical preservatives — since 2002. The pork comes from the same Blythburgh source as the gammons. Upon arrival, the sides of fresh pork are dry cured using natural ingredients only. The Suffolk black bacon, which shares the porter-and-beech-smoke treatment of the hams, was featured on James Martin's Saturday Morning Show, and the store itself appears in Felicity Cloake's book Red Sauce Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey, in which Cloake — a Guardian columnist — works through the components of the British breakfast with some rigour. Being included in that particular book is a specific kind of endorsement: Cloake is not easily impressed by bacon.

The store and café

Beyond the cured meats, Emmett's operates as a fine foods store and café. The shop stocks a range of chocolate tablets — plain chocolate varieties finished with edible flowers, marcona almonds, orange peel, dried raspberries, fruit and nuts, and gold leaf. These are also sold as gifts. The café side of the operation draws visitors who come as much to eat on site as to buy provisions to take home. The proprietor listed in business records is M. Thomas, reachable at the store's Peasenhall address.

Two centuries in one place

The fact that Emmett's has operated continuously from the same premises since 1820 is not incidental to what it is — it is more or less the whole point. The brick smokehouses are heritage structures. The production methods are not a revival or a reinvention; they are a continuation. Most food businesses that invoke history are doing so metaphorically. Emmett's is doing so literally: the smoke going into the beech-fired kilns today is going into the same structures it went into two hundred years ago. That is a rare thing in British food retail, and it gives the place a physical weight that is hard to manufacture.

The setting

Peasenhall is a village on the B1116, a few miles north of Saxmundham in the Suffolk coastal belt. It is not a destination in itself, but it sits within easy reach of Aldeburgh, Southwold and the broader stretch of the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The store is on The Street — the village's main road — at IP17 2HJ. Visitors coming from the coast will pass through or near Peasenhall on routes between Framlingham and Blythburgh, which means a stop here fits naturally into a day already oriented around this part of Suffolk.

Practical details

Opening hours vary slightly across sources, but the store is open Monday to Friday from around 9:30am, with Saturday hours starting earlier at 8:00am. Closing time is typically between 4:00pm and 5:00pm depending on the day. The telephone number is 01728 660250. Hams and bacon are available to buy in store and can also be ordered for delivery — the business ships nationally, and gift hampers are part of the offer. The website is emmettsham.co.uk. For those who want to eat rather than shop, the café is on site. Parking on The Street is limited, as it is in most Suffolk villages of this size.