Ruth Hansom joins the Swinton Estate and returns to her northern roots

Ruth Hansom has revealed to The Caterer that she is returning to her roots to undertake a six-month residency at the Swinton Estate in Masham, North Yorkshire.

She will head up the historic Samuel’s restaurant and launch her first signature menu on 1 April.

An opening tasting menu will include dishes such as garden pea custard with asparagus, wild garlic and Ribblesdale gouda; East Coast gurnard bisque with celeriac, fennel and lovage; Swinton Wood pigeon with garden beetroot, smoked turnip and watercress; and buttermilk panna cotta with garden rhubarb, parkin and sorrel. A seven-course tasting will be priced at £85 per person.

Hansom, originally from Darlington, trained at Westminster Kingsway College at the age of 16 and then undertook a three-year apprenticeship at the Ritz London under executive chef John Williams.

She left her last permanent position as head chef of the Princess of Shoreditch in London at the end of August 2022 and has since been working with Williams at the Ritz London and as a chef partner with BaxterStorey to support the training and mentoring of female chefs across the business.

Hansom was a finalist in the Roux Scholarship and winner of The Caterer’s Acorn Award in 2022, and is also a familiar face on TV as a finalist on Great British Menu and with regular appearances on James Martin’s Saturday Morning and Saturday Kitchen with Matt Tebbutt.

Hansom said: “Swinton is a fabulous environment, aligned very closely to my love of cooking with seasonal, local and regional produce. I’m looking forward to developing a signature menu, encapsulating the flavours of produce from across the Swinton Estate.”

The chef will be establishing some new positions in the kitchen alongside the existing team and will be planning the redesign and build of the new Samuel’s kitchen later this year.

Iain Shelton, chief executive of the Swinton Estate, said: “Ruth is an incredibly talented chef and we are looking forward to her developing a menu that demonstrates the amazing produce we have here and reflects the elegance and heritage of the estate."

The Swinton Estate, which has been in the ownership of the Cunliffe-Lister family since the 1880s, extends from the River Ure across 20,000 acres of hill farming countryside up onto the moorland Yorkshire Dales. About two-thirds of the land is farmland and forestry and one-third open moorland.

Most of the estate sits within the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and borders the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

The estate lets a number of farms and farmhouses and is home to forestry operations that combine a commercial timber operation with the conservation of the listed deer park and management of ancient woodlands. A game department manages the wild and driven game birds with a conservation programme.