The demand for dairy

Picture the scene: a bustling Victorian city ringing to the sound of industry and commerce, the hum and clatter of machinery churning out mass-produced goods interspersed with the distinctive mooing of cows. We’re used to considering 19th-century urban life as characterised by factories, mills and smog, so the presence of large livestock seems decidedly incongruous. Yet strange as it might now seem, city dairies were once a common sight, often situated cheek-by-jowl with residential properties in densely populated areas.

Regency London was home to thousands of cattle, and contrasting estimates place 12,000–40,000 dairy cows in the capital by the mid-19th century. This was echoed in cities across the country, with some small urban dairies still operating as recently as the 1980s.

Among the many factors that saw the rise of the urban dairy, a key ingredient was a growing appetite for fresh milk. The population in Victorian Britain was both rising dramatically and