IT is Great British Pie Week - and people all over the country are celebrating their love of a delicious British classic.

That is certainly the case for prize-winning south Cumbrian butchers Higginsons of Grange, where pies are an institution.

Pauline and Stuart Higginson set up their small family butchers over 30 years ago and when they branched out into pie making, they never looked back. Since then their business has gone nationwide and they have been named Britain's Best Butchers.

Higginsons general manager Mark Porter said: "The best thing about pies is that you can keep diversifying them and they can change according to the season. We make about 60 different types of pie throughout the year and generally we have 25-30 varieties in the shop each week.

"We make 2,500 pies each week and we have a huge online demand from people all over the country, wanting our pies to be delivered by post. They are carefully wrapped in something I can best describe as a yogurt pot for a pie. We now have a huge customer base in London and Scotland as well as our amazingly loyal local customers."

Higginsons have also been at the forefront of the new national trend for "wedding pies". They have been receiving a vast number of orders from London for Celebration Pies, often for weddings or birthdays, and what better way to say "I love you" than with a personalised pork pie. 

The Celebration Pies can be built up into a tier like a traditional wedding cake, or else stacked cup-cake style and decorated with names or dates written in the pastry. Pauline Higginson has been known to turn her hand to creating elaborate designs and creating truly innovative recipes. 

She said: "The Celebration Pies are a bit of fun and travel better than cake so we can mail order them.

"Clients might choose something traditional like turkey and cranberry or go for a delicious chicken, pork and apricot or even something more unusual like black pudding, pork and apple or an exotic Moroccan spiced chicken and pork."

Higginsons have many secrets behind their incredible pies but Mr Porter said that over the years they have learned that although their hot-water pastry is incredibly popular, cold-water pastry holds gravy better and is therefore used for gravy-heavy pies. They also use only the best local meat and Mrs Higginson insists on making sure the pies are bursting with filling as nothing is more disappointing than a pie that is all pastry.

Last week Mr and Mrs Higginson won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Cumbria Life Food & Drink Awards 2016.