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10 October 2008:  THE new tenant of Ripon City's important Wakeman's House says it feels like coming home.  Mrs Tiggy Ferris, along with her business partner, Jane Eccles, is to open Ripon's latest café in this medieval timber building in the south west corner of the world-famous market square. 

 

Those residents and visitors to Ripon in the 1950s and 60s will recall an earlier café, managed by Mrs Burke that provided good quality simple food.  This is where Tiggy began her catering career going on to run a successful public house in Markington, catering at Ripon Golf Club and latterly helping manage the catering at Studley Deer Park.

 

When the doors open later this month Tiggy and Jane will be providing true traditional Yorkshire fayre from home cooking to home baking much like the food made popular by Tiggy's mentor.

 

Tiggy Ferris says she is delighted to be able to open the Wakeman's House as a café again.  She said: "I feel that the building and I have come full circle.  I am sure many of our customers will have been served by me all those years ago and I am looking forward to meeting them again as well as welcoming new customers who are visiting Ripon, which is a great place to shop and eat.  I am also pleased that my mum, Mary Nichol, could be with me to receive the keys as everyone who remembers our farming family from Sawley knows that the Nichol girls learned to bake knee high to their mum's apron strings."

 

Tiggy and Jane received the keys 10 October from landlords Harrogate Borough Council. 

 

When £4m was secured for Ripon City nearly eight years ago, nearly £3m came from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).  The Wakeman's House received a grant of  £205,000 and Harrogate Borough Council added match funding of £69,000 to ensure that this important late medieval timer building was restored to its former glory and included new toilets, kitchen and office storage facilities and it was hoped would become a central base for festivals and promotions in the city.

 

One of the conditions of the grant from the HLF was that the building retained an element of 'community use'.

 

Councillor Andrew Jones, Harrogate Council's Cabinet Member for Resources, is pleased that the new tenants are keen to embrace this community use.  He said:  "I wish Tiggy and Jane every success in this new venture.  With their warm Yorkshire welcome, only surpassed by the quality of their cooking, I am sure the Wakeman's House will once again become a central point in the city."   ENDS