The last word in modern factories. Now it does breakfast.

In October 1906 the first butter factory opened on Doepel Street, built by the well-known local builder George Moore for the Upper Bellingen Co-operative Society Ltd, at a cost of £554. It was equipped with a 15hp steam engine, a 30cwt compressor and a cream cooling plant. In its first week it produced fifteen hundredweight of butter.

A bacon factory was added in 1919, the income that carried the site through the next forty years. When the government required weatherboard structures to be replaced with brick or concrete, construction of the new factory began in May 1926, led by the consulting engineer Richard Wildridge and built by Thackray & Gallagher of Sydney.

Reinforced concrete walls and unique concrete arch beams in the roof earned it the description “the last word in modern factories”. It was completed in July 1927 at a cost of £9,229, one of the finest facilities in the state.

Milk processing was introduced in the late 1940s to compete with Cow & Gate, who had bought the Raleigh factory, but the building had been designed for butter and the attempt did not succeed. After the devastating flood of 1950 the Raleigh factory was sold; the two societies amalgamated in 1960 and centralised production there. Butter ceased here in 1963, after fifty-seven years.

The building was converted to a private home in 1975, bought and developed as a craft and tourist complex in 1985, and opened to the public in 1991. The centenary plaque was unveiled on 1 October 2006. Breakfast has been served in the same room ever since.