Our business began to take shape after the ending of the second world war, when Richard Pinney decided he had had enough of London and headed for the countryside. He found a derelict cottage just outside Orford next to the Butley Creek on the Suffolk coast. He began to look for ways of making a living and turned his attention to the river, where he set about restoring oyster beds that had lain derelict. Oysters had been cultivated here for centuries and had a fine reputation but the trade had died down at the end of the 19th Century. He started laying down oysters from Portugal, which grew and fattened very well, and the oyster business began despite being warned by local fishermen, that if you want to lose all of your money, oysters was a good way of doing it! At the same time, being a keen fisherman, he caught some large sea trout off Orford beach. Not knowing what to do with it, he began experimenting with smoking in a disused outhouse at the end of the cottage. The results were so good that he decided to buy some salmon, and the smoking business began from there. He developed a unique system of burning whole oak logs, a system which has been refined but hardly changed to this day.
