With the development of the coaching trade, the village soon became a trading post between London and Edinburgh. It is known that one of the innkeepers in the town – Cooper Thornhill, landlord and then subsequently the owner of The Bell Inn  and The Angel Inn – turned this to his advantage by selling the local cheese from the Bell Inn, not only to passing travellers but also into London. As demand for the cheese grew, Thornhill sought out new sources and, in approx 1743, he struck up a commercial arrangement with a renowned cheese-maker from Wymondham in Leicestershire – a lady by the name of Frances Pawlett. It is said that she supplied cheese to Thornhill through a co-operative arrangement and got other cheesemakers in Leicestershire to make Stilton cheese to her recipe. This, we believe, was a blue veined cream cheese. It is unclear whether the blue veining was then achieved through frequent brushing of the maturing cheese, or whether the ageing cheeses simply cracked, allowing some to go blue and others not. Daniel Defoe did write that he was served the cheese at The Bell with maggots and mites with a spoon to eat them so , were the maggots used to produce the veins?  Having found a distinct blue cheese in Leicestershire he had wagon-loads delivered to his busy coaching inn on the Great North Road.

On 29^th April 1745 at about 5.35am, Cooper Thornhill, landlord of the Bell Inn at Stilton set off at great speed for London in front a crowd of bleary eyed spectators. 

Cooper had bet that he could ride from Stilton to London, twice (some 213 miles) between sunrise and sunset. According to local legend the people of St. Neots having bet against him tried to slow or stop his horse as he raced back through St. Neots for the final time by throwing nails and furniture in the street!

Despite this he (apparently) managed this feat in12 hours, 17 minutes and won a pot of 500 guineas (over £60,000 by today's reckoning).

Over time as passing travellers partook of the cheese, the cheese and the village became synonymous!

Learn about the cheese here