A popular Seascale ice cream parlour is getting ready to move and expand.
Mawson’s, currently situated on Drigg Road, is set to move into the former Village Pantry shop at the bottom of South Parade near the sea front.
Owner Lizzie Mawson – who first started making ice cream on her farm while she was on maternity leave with her first child – said she was incredibly excited to announce the expansion.
She said: “We have been in our little parlour now for almost 14 years and we have really outgrown that space and I’ve had my eye on the corner shop for years and years.”
“I spoke to the guy who owns it who has an investment company in London and he agreed to sell it to me and we’ve just exchanged contracts on it so we’re now hoping to do a massive renovation.
“All day I am absolutely buzzing with excitement and then at night I lie in bed and think oh my god, this is huge! That’s where I am at with excitement levels – it’s going to cost a lot of money to get it where I want it to be, but when it’s done it’ll be nothing like anything we’ve got around here, it’ll be stunning.”
Lizzie added the new parlour will be dog friendly and will include a new delicatessen, a ready made sandwich bar, extra seating and a beach shop for all the beach essentials.
It will continue serving homemade ice cream, light lunches and desserts – only this time, on a ‘much bigger’ scale.
She added: “We set up the business from scratch in 2008 and we didn’t spend a lot of money and so I thought right, we’ll do this big move once and do it properly and make it exactly how I want it to look.
“I’ve been over to Italy to an ice cream trade show and we’re getting some specialised ice cream counters made over there. We’re also going to have big open windows all over the front of the new shop so we’ve got views of the seaside, it’s going to be brilliant.
“It’s definitely going to be a really big job but we’ve made a good start, and if we’re in there by the end of summer I’d be incredibly happy. But the most important thing is that we’ve finally got our hands on the property and it’s all happening now.”
Lizzie said she also plans to expand her current team of staff and said she had received a lot of support from the local community.
She added: “I’ve got such a great team of staff – we’ve got one lady who has been with us for 13 years and everybody loves her, and she said she’s most excited about us having air con! Anyone who has been in the shop will know her, she’s a legend.
“I think genuinely the whole village has been waiting for me to announce this because everybody knows I’ve been trying so hard to get my hands on it the new shop.
“The community could not have been nicer to us, we’ve got cards and bottles of champagne from people – everybody has been so so lovely.”
Mawson’s has continued to prove a hit with people across Cumbria and beyond and is top rated as the second best ice cream parlour in Cumbria on Google Reviews.
Lizzie added: “Our shop means everything to me – when I went to the ice cream trade show in Italy, one of the owners of the stands was 97-years-old and he still came to work everyday and I thought yes, that’s me, that is what I want, I never want to retire.
“Ice cream is like the best anti-aging cream, you can just keep going.”
