Lamb & Potato Pie from County Durham chippy wins British Pie Awards 2024

A Minted Wensleydale Lamb & Potato Pie has taken home the title of Supreme Champion at the 2024 British Pie Awards.

The winning product, made by Middleton in Teesdale Fish & Chip Shop near Barnard Castle in County Durham, was described by one judge as a “come eat me pie” while another declared “the pastry is a poem”.

It has already claimed top honours in the Lamb Pie Class at the 16th edition of the annual competition, which held its judging inside St Mary’s Church in Melton Mowbray on Wednesday 6 March.

Lydia Sumter has been making her own pies for the past 12 years to sell at the Teesdale Fish & Chip Shop, she runs with her partner Jonathan Scott.

“I was very overwhelmed, shocked and quite emotional as well,” she told British Baker. “I was in tears when they made the announcement.”

All the meat used in her pies is sourced from a traditional hill farm in Wensleydale, North Yorkshire, run by Sumter’s mother and brother. “The sheep graze on the heather moorlands and limestone pastures, so it has its own unique flavours,” she commented.

As for the poetically flaky shortcrust pastry, Sumter claimed she makes it slightly different to how people would normally would.

“When you eat a pie, it’s the first thing that you put on your tongue, and it’s important to get the right thickness and even bake,” she said, adding that it had taken time to perfect.

All pastry is rolled by hand by Sumter with help from her team of seven at the shop. They only sell between 60 to 100 pies per week, with customers often taking them home for dinner after a fish and chip lunch.

Sumter admitted it had been a difficult start to the year, affected by the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, but said she hoped the award would help boost trade a bit. “I’m not planning on expanding into any supermarkets or anything like that because we’re just a very small enterprise,” she added.

British Pie Awards chairman Dr Matthew O’Callaghan OBE, who is also chairman of the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association, noted that the number of pies sold in fish and chip shops is increasing. “That’s why we have a Fish & Chip Shop class,” he said, adding that Sumter hadn’t entered that category as she’d wanted to put her product up against the best in lamb pies.

Around 140 judges had congregated in Leicestershire’s pork pie capital last week to scrutinise almost 900 entries.

O’Callaghan asserted that it had been a “cracking competition with a star-studded judging panel” that included former England cricket player and broadcaster Jonathan ‘Aggers’ Agnew and Royal Chef Mark Flanagan, who travelled up from Buckingham Palace. International judges had also flown in from as far away as Japan and California. 

Winners were decided across 24 different categories (see the complete list below). The Fusion Pie Class, featuring the likes of chicken tikka pies and lasagne pies, was new for this year.

Along with Supreme Champion, there were also awards handed out for Small Producer (Bowring Butchers in Mansfield), Newcomer (Martins in Whitchurch), and Young Piemaker (Ethan O’Hare from WeeCook in Carnoustie).

West Sussex-based Turner’s Pies was the most prolific with a hattrick of victories in the Meat & Potato, Vegan, and Dessert pie classes. Trophies were collected by managing director Phil Turner, who is currently starring in the series 18 of The Apprentice.

The lamb & potato pie succeeds last year’s winner, a steak, ale & stilton pie, and a gluten-free vegetarian pie, which triumphed in 2022.   

”We eat a billion pounds worth of pies each year,” said O’Callaghan. “The British do pies like no other country and I believe the pie is Britain’s major contribution to World Food Heritage.”