Secret of fine sausage making is so safe with this old master
Last updated 19:41, Thursday, 24 April 2008
THE WORLD of Cumberland sausage making has long been renowned as a secret society; each family is under an omerta not to disclose the secret of their herbs and spices recipe and special preparation method.
No, we're not talking about the Mafia. Rodney Flett would chuckle at the idea, but he cuts an imposing figure behind his sausage-making machine in Great Clifton.
“I keep the recipe in here," says Rodney, pointing at the back of his head.
Once, five villains with a pick axe handle jumped on him as he returned home and demanded the keys to his house.
He fought back so vigorously that his attackers fled, to eventually be caught by police.
Was he targeted for his secret recipe? “No," he says, laughing off such a suggestion as preposterous. “They were just thugs."
Today, Fletts sausages are a byword in West Cumbria.
From his sausage-making emporium at the village stores, which he runs with daughter Julia, he sends his sausages to top restaurants in London.
Although Rodney has already retired once, he forgot to remove his telephone number from the book.
Former customers dragged him back from his well-earned retirement.
At first it was just to make a few sausages but this soon turned into hundreds of pounds of the famous links, and now he is back at work in his spotless whites once more.
From the Orkney Isles, and arriving in Workington at the age of 14 in 1954, he remembers an idyllic childhood.
He and his pals would explore the shores of Scapa Flow where the Grand Fleet was scuttled when Germany surrendered in the First World War.
“My mother had rheumatism and we came to West Cumberland because it was said to have better weather," he says. “We had relatives here. My older sister married a sailor during the war and he came from Workington.
“We lived on the golf course side of town at Schoose Farm.
“After only a short time, however, father went to work in the steelworks at Chapel Bank."
He remembers living in a little house down on the quay in Workington.
Henry Street was the address, long gone now.
He had previously attended Kirkwall Grammar School and on arriving in Workington only had two months of schooling still to do.
These he finished off at Newlands School where he made lifelong friends,
One was Keith Graham, who went to work at Chapel Bank as a fitter.
He now has a narrow boat at Preston Brook, near Warrington.
Another was Billy Wilson who became a van driver.
Then there was Malcolm Durham who lives in Seaton. “We met in a fight," he says. “We both had gangs. We had a wrestling match for half an hour or more.
“We couldn't make anything of each other, shook hands, and both gangs joined together. The school couldn't understand why I opted for butchering. I was gifted at art and technical drawing. They wanted to slot me into Chapel Bank.
“But I said no. Of course I didn't know what industry was, coming from the Orkneys.
“I was lucky that I ended up at the Co-operative as an apprentice. Not all the butchers could make the sausage like old Ike Muir, who kept pigs, and Billy Clague.
“They were skilled craftsmen and I had my rear end kicked a few times."
He still remembers having to taste the raw blood of the black pudding to learn what the seasoning should taste like.
He adds: “Billy Clague was the recipient of a Cumberland Sausage recipe handed down through the years. People would be making it in the 1800s.
“They would teach the next butchers and so on and on to my day when they disclosed it to me.”
The shop Rodney was to rent in Murray Road for his own butcher's enterprise came up for a new lease in 1969. There were many applicants for the lease.
This is, he says, is where he “worked the oracle" on the opposition.
“I went missing for six weeks," he remembers. “Everyone wondered what had happened to me and where I had gone.
“In reality the landlord lived in London and I went to camp on his doorstep. I took a job in a butcher's shop in Chiswick, near his office, and was even offered the job of manager of the several shops owned by that firm.
“But that wasn't my purpose. I was simply out to impress the landlord at first hand so he would give me the lease of the vacant shop."
Mission accomplished, and lease acquired, he returned to Workington, and set up in business.
“You can do things like that," he chuckles, “when you look a little bit stupid."
Stuart, his son, joined him in 1977, learning his craft also from Billy Clague who by then had returned to work for Rodney.
Rodney mentions his son joined the police in 1990. This was as a result of his interest in following the extensive investigation that had followed the attack on his father by the five men.
He became a police sergeant in Barrow, and has since moved on to Dalton in Furness.
There is no half way it seems with Rodney Flett.
When he discovered the joys of scuba diving, for instance, he put his heart and soul into it.
He has plumbed the depths of England's deepest lake Wastwater, and the sea off Harrington, with its risk from tidal waters.
He took up running to keep fit for the diving and ended up running the New York Marathon in a time of just over four hours.
He ran it with Harrison Mitchell, who then had Workington's biggest bakery.
“The rotter," he says, “he ran it an hour faster than I did, but he was thin and skinny.
“I had set myself on an eight-minute mile and Harrison would be on a seven-minute mile."
But that did not discourage Rodney Flett. At the age of 68, he is still “running.”
