Built by Corey → See the live rebuild
Proposal · prepared for Plumgarths Farm Shop · 19 May 2026

A few specific fixes for plumgarths.co.uk

Plumgarths Farm Shop · Kendal, Cumbria · website rebuild

I rebuild small-business sites in my spare time when I can see they are leaving conversions on the table. Three things stood out on a careful read of plumgarths.co.uk on mobile. Below are the three findings, then a working rebuild you can click through at /preview/.

Open live preview  ↗ Read the three findings Reply to the proposal
Kendal · Lake District · since the horse and cart

One hundred years of the Geldard family on the same Kendal field. Open the live preview ↗

Three findings, in order of revenue impact

What the current site is leaving on the table.

A walk-through of the live plumgarths.co.uk on 19 May 2026.

01

One hundred years of the Geldard family on this Kendal field, from a horse-and-cart milk round to Victoria and Anna at the counter, and not one date or family name above the fold of plumgarths.co.uk.

Observation
Victoria Hodgson’s great-grandfather (John Geldard’s grandfather) began renting the Plumgarths field around 1920 and delivered milk into Kendal by horse and cart. Four generations of Geldards farmed the land. In the late 1990s the A591 Kendal bypass was driven straight through it and split the holding in two. John Geldard, with Rachel, turned the severed ground into the Lakeland Food Park. The farm shop opened on the site in November 2001 as the first venture. In 2017 their daughter Victoria and granddaughter Anna took over the management. 2020 was the family centenary on the land. None of that lives on the homepage of plumgarths.co.uk. The H1 reads "Locally Sourced. Hand Reared. Locally Produced." The about page (/about/) holds the story two clicks deep.
Revenue impact
The premium that justifies an independent Lake District farm shop is the named family and the line that runs from the field to the counter. Plumgarths has four generations of named Geldards, the lamb on the bench comes from Victoria’s parents at Low Foulshaw, and the eggs come from Victoria’s brothers at Geldard Farm Eggs Limited. A Windermere-bound visitor who pulls into the car park from the A591 reads three generic adjectives at the top of the homepage and never learns which family they are buying from.
Cause
WordPress + Beaver Builder homepage built around a product carousel and shop-now buttons. The heritage page exists but does not surface anywhere on the entry pages. og:title and og:description on the homepage scrape the CTA text, so the WhatsApp / iMessage unfurl reads "Shop Now Shop Now Customers Reviews Read more customer reviews Shop Now."
After rebuild
The rebuild leads with the family and the founding image. Hero H1 names Plumgarths as the Cumbrian farm shop the Geldard / Hodgson family have worked since the horse and cart. Heritage band on a deep fell-green carries the 1920 to 2026 timeline in seven entries with the bypass and the 2020 centenary pulled out as fixed points. Per-page og:image of the counter and a real og:description so the unfurl carries the family story, not three "Shop Now" labels.
02

No GroceryStore, LocalBusiness, Restaurant, FAQ, or Person JSON-LD on the page Google indexes for "farm shop near Windermere".

Observation
A crawl of plumgarths.co.uk surfaces no application/ld+json blocks of consequence. No GroceryStore or LocalBusiness with the LA8 8QJ Crook Road PostalAddress, the +441539736300 telephone, the Mon to Sat 8:30 to 17:00 openingHoursSpecification, or the Sunday-closed exception. No Restaurant schema for the adjoining 2 Sisters Café even though it lives on the same car park and serves Plumgarths bacon and sausage. No FAQPage despite repeat customer questions ("where are you off the A591", "do you open on Sunday"). No Person schema for Victoria Anne Hodgson the director or Anna at the counter. The og:image is a sitewide WordPress default rather than a hero photo of the shop.
Revenue impact
When a visitor in a Windermere cottage asks Siri "farm shop on the way home from the lakes" or a Kendal local asks Google "salt marsh lamb near me", the answering layer of the web is built from structured data. Plumgarths is silent in that layer. The 4.7-star adjoining café, the four-and-five generation Geldard provenance, the named butchery counter, all of it is invisible to anything that is not a human scrolling slowly.
Cause
WordPress + Beaver Builder + a Yoast-shaped scrape of CTA text. The structured-data layer for a destination Lake District retail business has never been authored.
After rebuild
After rebuild: Astro-built static page with GroceryStore + Restaurant + LocalBusiness + Person (Victoria + Anna + John + Rachel Geldard) + FAQPage + AggregateRating generated at build time. Per-page og:image pointing at the counter. AreaServed entries for Kendal, Windermere, Bowness, Ambleside and the A591 corridor so Lake District search surfaces the shop.
03

The names behind the counter and the field appear nowhere on the public site.

Observation
Victoria’s parents John and Rachel Geldard raise the salt marsh lamb at Low Foulshaw Farm (576 acres, 150 breeding cows, 1,000 sheep on the Cartmel peninsula). Victoria’s brothers Richard and Charles run Geldard Farm Eggs Limited next door, a six-million-pound turnover business that supplies the double-yolk eggs on Plumgarths shelves. The wider Food Park is anchored by Plumgarths and tenanted by The Wagtail Kitchen (a 2024 Gold British Food Award winner for Steak and Mushroom pie), Lovingly Artisan, Ginger Bakers, Rinaldo’s Coffee, Cumbrian Chef, Yardies, and the 2 Sisters Café (4.7 stars, 742 Tripadvisor reviews) run by Monika and Magda. Almost none of those names are surfaced on plumgarths.co.uk.
Revenue impact
The trust signal that closes a Lake District farm-shop sale at the price point Plumgarths commands is not "locally sourced". It is "from John and Rachel at Low Foulshaw, butchered on the bench, alongside The Wagtail Kitchen’s award-winning pies." The Geldard family own the lamb and the eggs and the building. The site does not tell that to the visitor.
Cause
The homepage was structured around the e-commerce shop button and a slider of best-selling SKUs. Supplier and tenant naming was treated as About-page detail.
After rebuild
The rebuild surfaces Low Foulshaw (John and Rachel Geldard), Geldard Farm Eggs (Richard and Charles Geldard), and the Lakeland Food Park tenants (The Wagtail Kitchen, Lovingly Artisan, Ginger Bakers, Rinaldo’s, 2 Sisters Café) by name on dedicated counter and food-park sections. Each card carries the named lead and the named provenance. Person schema on each.
Current vs proposed

A side-by-side of the current stack against the proposed rebuild.

Current ↗ plumgarths.co.uk
Platform
WordPress + Beaver Builder + LiteSpeed cache + Gravity Forms
Hosting
Shared WordPress, 13 stylesheets + render-blocking inline scripts on first paint
Mobile UX
Carousel hero, three generic adjectives above the fold, family story two clicks deep
Heritage
Buried at /about/, no date or family name on the homepage
Named producers
Low Foulshaw, Geldard Farm Eggs, Wagtail Kitchen, 2 Sisters not on the homepage
SEO schema
No GroceryStore, no LocalBusiness, no Restaurant, no FAQ, no Person
OG card
og:description reads "Shop Now Shop Now Customers Reviews Read more customer reviews Shop Now"
Proposed
Framework
Astro 6 static site, no framework JS on first paint
Hosting
Vercel edge, sub-100ms first byte across the UK
Mobile UX
Single hero photo, family-led H1 with the 1920 founding date, butchery + food-park grids
Heritage
1920 to 2026 timeline in the dark fell-green band, five generations named
Named producers
Low Foulshaw + Geldard Farm Eggs + Wagtail Kitchen + 2 Sisters on the page
SEO schema
GroceryStore + Restaurant + LocalBusiness + Person + FAQ at build time
OG card
Per-page og:image of the counter and a real og:description on the family story
Pricing

Fixed price. No hourly billing. No surprise upgrade tier.

£2,000  Fixed for the rebuild, one-off.
£150    Per month for hosting and ongoing care.
£50     Optional. Embedded chatbot trained on FAQs.

No retainer. No contract. No in-person visits, fully remote from Switzerland.

  • • One round of revisions before launch
  • • DNS cutover handled (you keep the domain in your name)
  • • 30 days of post-launch tweaks at no extra cost
  • • Source code handed over on day 60 (you own everything)
Close

If the proposal lands, reply with two or three 20-minute slots in the next ten days for a video call. I take on three Cumbria and Lake District builds this quarter, and first confirmed wins the slot. If I do not hear back by 29 May 2026, the proposal site comes down.

See the live rebuild

A working preview you can click through · opens in this tab

Open /preview/  ↗