A Craven butcher has set a diamond standard after landing a brace of top national awards.

Drake & Macefield Butchers, of Skipton and Settle, was the only butcher in the UK to win two top-rated diamond awards among a gold awards hat-trick in a leading national product evaluation event.

Two of the three gold award-winning products – oak-smoked ham and sweet chilli chicken pie – achieved maximum marks, before going on to receive diamond honours as the overall winners of the evaluation in their product categories, and two of only eight awarded throughout the entire country.

The annual Smithfield Awards, organised by the Butchers Q Guild, the UK’s leading independent butchers’ organisation, were held at The Butchers Hall in London. More than 400 products from Q Guild members across the country were assessed by an independent panel of judges, made up of both industry experts and lay judges.

The oak-smoked ham was developed specially by Drake & Macefield for the Russian Tea Rooms for its restaurant in Skipton High Street.

The pork used is from Yorkshire free-range pigs, which is then dry-cured and smoked in the business’s own smokehouse.

Yorkshire-reared birds are also used in the sweet chilli chicken pie, with the recipe refined by 25-year-old butcher Steven Teal, son of partner Richard Teal, who heads up the business with fellow partner Ian Thompson.

At what is dubbed the ‘Butchers’ Olympics,’ Drake & Macefield won its third Smithfield gold with pork, honey and red onion sausage, the brainchild of Richard’s elder son Andrew, 27, who also works in the business.

The two diamond award winners will now feature alongside all other award-winning products at Drake & Macefield’s two shops in Otley Street, Skipton, and Market Place, Settle.