The attractive little village of Kelmscott, in a remote corner of West Oxfordshire, two-and-a-half miles from Lechlade and just five minutes from the River Thames, is William Morris country.

Built round two working farms, this is the village that the 19th-century socialist, artist, poet and designer made his summer home and described as a heaven on earth.

Very little has changed since Morris lived here. The 17th-century Manor House in which he made his home is now open to visitors once again every Wednesday and Saturday during the summer months, the public house, which suffered dreadfully from the floods of 2007 is welcoming visitors again, and the village still feels like a place where time appears to have stood still.

Perhaps the only real change in this rural landscape since Morris’s time is the fact that whereas once sheep and cattle were the main livestock farmed, it is pigs and pork products that dominate now.

Until the mid 1970s, when Christoper Maughan took over the 1,000-acre Home Farm after the death of his father, it was a mixed farm with a variety of enterprises, both arable and livestock. Now it is a very different picture, with the arable acres worked by a contractor producing wheat for bread and animal feed, oilseed rape, malting barley and beans. The livestock enterprise is entirely Kelmscott Country Pork.

Christopher began concentrating on breeding pork in 2001, largely as a result of frustration over imported pig meat prices that greatly influenced our commercial home production. He says that as a committed farmer and pig producer, also a food enthusiast, it seemed natural to come up with a way of turning his high-quality carcasses into food that the increasingly discerning public would really appreciate.

Many farmers are now concentrating on rare breeds, such as Gloucestershire Old Spot, which are reared slowly. But he has gone for pigs bred from Hampshire boars and Duroc cross sows, which he has chosen because they grow very quickly and produce extremely tender, lean meat, with marbling and a sensible level of fat cover. He explained that his pigs are produced in small numbers, enjoying a happy five or six months on the farm before being transported to a small family-run abattoir close by. The carcasses are then taken straight to Christopher’s local butcher in Bampton, where the bacon, sausages and joints are prepared to his specification.

“One of our secrets is to use wonderful old-fashioned cures for the bacon and ham,” said Christopher. He went on to explain that the Kelmscott prosciutto crudo, which is proving so popular, is air-dried in perfect conditions for a year and then hand sliced thin — but not so thin as to lose the luscious texture of one of the finest proscuitti in Europe. It is produced for him by Trealy, the UK’s foremost charcutier, which supplies Fortnum and Mason and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage.

If you eat out regularly, no doubt you will notice that more and more Oxfordshire pubs and restaurants feature Kelmscott Country Pork on their menu. You will find Kelmscott pork sausages at the Big Bang in Walton Street, Oxford; The Trout at Tadpole Bridge proudly serve Kelmscott smoked bacon and sausages on their breakfast menu; and The Old Parsonage in Banbury Road, Oxford, has Kelmscott pork on its menus.

Thyme Cookery School at Southrop celebrates the fact that Kelmscott pork products are both free-range and local by including the air-dried prosciutti in the ingredients used for their “Doing the Pig” course. Chefs from the school describe it as “thin, but not so thin as to lose the luscious taste of one of Europe’s finest prosciutti”.

Kevin Goodman, general manager of The Fishes, in North Hinksey, uses Kelmscott pork products, too — particularly the loin of pork, which is served as a traditional Sunday roast. He said: “I have worked with Christopher Maughan for many years as he produces some of the finest free-range pork available, easily a match for the best in the country, but with the added benefit that we help to support a local business. Knowing that we can rely on a supplier producing such quality on our doorstep is fantastic.”

Christopher says Kelmscott Pork works for him because he controls the whole process from the birth of the pig to the plate. “ I know exactly where the pig comes from, how it is treated and how it is prepared. “In this day and age when people are more and more concerned about what they eat, it can be very comforting to know precisely where your food comes from.”

He also accepts that the name Kelmscott carries with it a certain magic and that the beauty of the landscape in which his pigs are reared has something to do with the success of Kelmscott Country Pork too.

n To contact Christopher email: cmaughan@supanet.com