THE CRAFT House in Bingley runs expert-led arts and crafts workshops as well as selling a carefully curated selection of handmade art and gifts. It is also home to a popular café. We spoke to owner April Chamberlain.
Q: How long has The Craft House been open and how did it come to exist?
A: I opened The Craft House on 29 January 2020, just seven weeks before the first UK lockdown. I started my workshops business in Saltaire Village in 2016 but outgrew the space and opened in fully refurbished, larger premises – with the addition of a café – in the centre of Bingley. The premises were in a very bad state of repair when my husband and I bought them and we undertook an extensive refurbishment programme to create a new ground floor café and purpose-built first floor workshop space which involved knocking down several walls and creating new ceilings and floors.
Q: How did you find the premises and what occupied it before?
A: My husband spotted the premises up for sale with a commercial agent. They were being marketed as a large charity shop. The building had serious structural issues, with the back wall gradually moving away from the rest of the building – you could fit your hand through the crack in what is now our little workshop on the first floor.
The front of house team, L-R: Louisa Wood, Jennie Sanderson, April Chamberlain, Miya Baldwin and Sarah Jones
Block printed tote bags made with help from expert Aidan Liggins
Bookbinding with Sara Daniel
When I was a little girl growing up in Bingley the building was two separate shops. I remember getting my school shoes with my mum in Freeman Hardy & Willis, in the side of the building which now contains the café counter. The buildings were knocked together in the eighties and traded for years as a travel agents, before becoming a charity shop.
Q: When is The Craft House open and what sort of food does the café serve?
A: We are open seven days a week, Monday to Saturday, from 9am to 4.30pm and Sundays 10am to 3.30pm.
We serve a combination of café classics and exciting contemporary café cuisine, often drawing influences from contemporary South East Asian cookery. We also cater for vegans and people eating a gluten free diet.
We reflect the changing seasons in our café menu and offer lunchtime soups and specials made from fresh seasonal ingredients.
Q: Who are your chefs and what are their backgrounds?
A: We have a team of three fantastic chefs and a kitchen assistant.
Our head chef, Niall Scott, has many years of cooking experience, having worked for commercial catering chains as well as a gastro pub before joining us. He has developed our contemporary café menu and introduced our diners to some wonderful plant-based and South-East Asian inspired food options, as well as creating café classics.
Niall says: “It continues to be an exciting culinary journey for me at The Craft House, where I have been given the creative freedom to develop a unique menu and bring my passion for food into the café. I love the challenge of coming up with exciting restaurant-standard specials, so that our diners have new dishes to try out.”
Chef Liz Dearden comes from a family of chefs and produces beautiful-looking and tasting plates.
Chef Ian Burdall has decades of catering experience, having cooked in various high-end venues in Scotland and England and has kept thousands of diners happy and fed during his long career, including royalty.
Q: What are the most popular dishes?
A: Eggs, eggs, eggs! Our number one menu choice has always been eggs. To that end, Chef Niall has developed two permanent menu sections devoted to the yummiest egg dishes around: Classic Eggs and Crafty Eggs – the latter includes our homemade Scotch egg, eastern-inspired curried eggs and naan and traditional Turkish Cilbir eggs.
One of the appetising dishes from the menu
Another appetising dish
Chefs L-R: Ian Burdall, Niall Scott and Liz Dearden
Q: What sorts of activities are held in the workshop?
A: We offer a wide range of expert-led workshops, from oil and cold wax painting with Yorkshire artist Paula Dunn, to textiles, candles, ceramics, glass, drawing and jewellery making. Every year I add new classes to the programme so that we offer a great variety of activities for our regular and new visitors, most of which are aimed at beginners.
Q: Who leads the workshops?
A: All our workshops are expert-led, so we connect with a wide range of professional artists and makers to offer high quality, enjoyable and informative arts and crafts classes. Our team includes well-known local artists such as Paula Dunn, Kim Searle, Linda Hollingshead and Justine Hardisty, local ceramicist Richard Hedges, well-loved florist Julia Umpleby and print designer Millie Rothera. I always try and find upcoming creative talents too.
Q: Do people visiting the cafe usually visit the workshop too?
A: Lots of people come just for the café but we’ve got plenty of customers who come to try out a workshop and treat themselves to a lovely lunch and an indulgent homemade brownie.
Q: Do people come from across Bradford, and further afield?
A: We get lots of lovely local visitors from across Bradford but many people come from much further afield for our specialist workshops, including visitors from Scotland, Ireland and France. This is a great addition to the local economy, as we regularly have people staying overnight in the area to attend courses.
There’s a wide choice of dishes
Drawing with Linda Hollingshead
*What sort of feedback do you get from people?
Really positive – we are so grateful for the fantastic local support from Bingley and beyond. My aim when I opened was to be a welcoming venue for everyone and we have lots of people who visit us regularly by themselves as well as groups.
*What are your plans for the future?
To continue to grow our following, both for food and arts and crafts.
We all work very hard to make this a happy and welcoming creative venue, offering friendship, fun, great food and great coffee.
Adds April: “We have come so far since we opened our doors in 2020 and it is an absolute pleasure to be on this exciting journey with my enthusiastic, creative and joyful team.”
The Craft House, 109-111 Main St, Bingley BD16 2HT. Visit yorkshirecrafthouse.com
