ACCORDING to the enchanting 2020 book Orchard: A Year in England’s Eden, apples originated in the Tian Shan mountains of Kazakhstan. Their seeds were disseminated by hungry brown bears and, later, by horses traveling the Silk Road into Europe, where they cross-pollinated with the native crab apple. Eventually, the Normans brought the seeds to Britain.
By the 1880s, a necklace of orchards was strung across the Cotswolds from Sharpness to Evesham, producing apples with distinctively local names: Arlingham Schoolboys, Longney Russet and Hagloe Crab. Farm laborers were each supplied with a gallon of cider as they arrived in the morning—the best workers went where the best cider was. In the 1950s, orchards covered 15,000 acres of Gloucestershire.
This has now reduced to 3,000 acres, but there are signs of a revival: Gloucestershire Orchard Trust and Day’s Cottage cidery have created a seven-acre museum orchard to preserve the county’s 180 known varieties, farmers and landowners are replanting trees and there are new entrants to cider making.
Cider can be produced from a variety of apples, and either be blended or offered as a single-variety that’s sweet or dry
In search of the disregarded apple
This story is from the September 22, 2021 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the September 22, 2021 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
