When Andrew Currie, whose father Harold founded Isle of Arran Distillers, set his sights on repeating the success this side of the border, it was mum who helped find the spot marked x.

A regular customer of Lakeland Limited, the Windermere-based creative kitchenware company, Mrs C decided to ask managing director Sam Rayner if he knew of somewhere suitable in the Lake District for her son to spread his wings.

Indeed, Mr Rayner knew just the man his pal David Brockbank who, since the early 90s, has been working his special brand of entrepreneurial magic on the former Staveley wood mill and yard which has been in the Brockbank family for three generations.

When David decided to develop the prime four-acre site for business, rather than make a handsome killing by selling it off for housing, he set the wheels in motion for an extraordinary success story.

"My dream was to create a community within a community," explained David when we met over a coffee at Wilf's, the mill yard's renowned eatery.

"And within the next three years it will be complete."

Had the yard continued as a wood mill, it would no doubt have bit the (saw)dust by now, crippled by burgeoning cheap imports.

As it is, David looks likely to realise his dream of eventually having 400 people working on site at the moment some 36 businesses employ 200 people between them.

It is an eclectic mix. For alongside the techies', engineers, and joiners, you will find craftsmen and women of the culinary variety - chefs, bakers and cheese-makers.

It seems to me that Staveley wood mill is still very much a work in progress. But there's no doubt that food (and soon drink) has become the flavour of the day.

Such diversity has been a boon for business partners Wilf Williamson and Charlotte Webb who together run Wilf's, at the heart of the mill yard.

The caf uses bread from on-site bakery Pain de Paris, and cheese from Phil Latham, who runs The Cheese Stall in Kendal's indoor market and has recently taken a unit at Staveley.

Wilf's also use fairly-traded tea and coffee from another Mill Yard resident, The Fairground, run by Neil and Sue Ferguson. There's even a handy catering supplies company and, when Wilf's caf was extended recently, all the necessary building and joinery skills were available courtesy of companies based in the mill yard.

Keeping the distillery construction in-house also will hopefully help keep capital costs down until the amber liquid is ready which won't be for at least another five years. Although, according to David, there is talk of pre-selling the whisky. Its birth' will be greeted with much celebration, I'm sure.

Water will come from the Kent (David's is one of the few remaining businesses with extraction rights); and a couple of farmers have already indicated a desire to grow the necessary barley.

"We think the whisky will be very similar to a Scottish lowland malt," said David.

He expects the distillery to be a big draw visitors will certainly be assured an all-round delicious experience when they visit Staveley Mill Yard.