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    Orchards
    Orchards
    Orchards
    Ebook101 pages45 minutes

    Orchards

    By Claire Masset

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    About this ebook

    Some of Britain's surviving orchards are almost six hundred years old, and whether laden with summer fruit or stripped bare by the winter are places of great beauty. Throughout history, they have played an important role in life both rural and urban, providing not just food and drink but also a haven for wildlife and a setting for age-old customs and social gatherings. But when did orchards first appear? What is wassailing and who did it? Why has England lost almost two-thirds of its orchards since 1950 – and what is being done about it today? This beautifully illustrated book reveals the engaging story and rich diversity of Britain's apple, pear and cherry orchards.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateJul 20, 2012
    ISBN9781782001140
    Orchards

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      Book preview

      Orchards - Claire Masset

      magazine.

      INTRODUCTION

      ORCHARDS ARE, strictly speaking, spaces devoted to the cultivation of fruit trees, but there is much more to them than productivity. They have that irresistible quality of offering both bounty and beauty – while their fruit pleases the palate, their blossom delights the eye. Over the centuries, orchards have inspired great art and poetry and have been the setting for medieval feasts, harvest festivals and, more recently, picnics. Like forests, they are imbued with a sense of magic and mystery, encouraging tranquillity and contemplation and helping us to commune with nature in a profound way. Old orchards are also astonishingly rich habitats, offering food and shelter for over 1,800 species of wildlife, from birds and butterflies to lichens and mosses.

      Covering cultural and social history, farming and agricultural practices, pastimes and traditions, flora and fauna, this book is a celebration of all the riches that orchards provide. It traces their history from their appearance in England during the Roman era to their revival over the last twenty years. Nuns and abbots, kings and queens, lords and ladies, cottagers and agricultural workers – all have enjoyed the ‘beneficence’ of orchards. Being the most widely grown fruit in Britain, apples have a key place in this story, but many other orchard fruit are considered, from cherries, plums and pears to hazelnuts, walnuts, quinces and the lesser-known medlar.

      Today, after decades of severe decline, the ravages of foreign competition, the appearance of dwarfing rootstocks and intensely farmed bush orchards, and the rise of monoculture, traditional orchards are finally enjoying a renaissance. Regional orchard groups, community orchards and charities such as the National Trust are helping to reclaim a vital part of Britain’s natural and cultural heritage. At sites throughout the country, orchards are being surveyed and restored and new ones planted, while special orchard-related events, such as Apple Day held on 21 October every year, are boosting public awareness towards the plight of local orchards. And in many of Britain’s large urban centres, such as London, Birmingham and Manchester, energetic and passionate city dwellers are joining in the effort to revive orchard fruit growing. Long may it last.

      This image from the Opus Ruralium Commodorum (1304–6) by Pietro de Crescenzi shows a labourer picking apples and pears from a medieval orchard. For his work on the Opus, which presented agricultural skills in unprecedented detail, de Crescenzi has been coined the founder of modern agronomy.

      ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENTS

      ALTHOUGH THE CRAB APPLE, Malus sylvestris, is native to Britain, the orchard apple, Malus domestica, is not. Experts have traced it back to a single species of wild apple, Malus sieversii, which still grows in a remote region of Kazakhstan known as Alma-Ata (meaning – fittingly – ‘Father of Apples’). As the region’s nascent civilisation started to cut down forests of apples, pears and cherries in order to cultivate cereals, its people grafted the trees that produced the best fruit and planted them in orchards. From about 5,000 years ago, this type of cultivation, together with grafts and seeds, slowly spread to the Fertile Crescent and eventually into Europe.

      There is, however, no evidence that orchards were cultivated in Britain before the arrival of the Romans in AD 43. During the invasion, Roman soldiers were given land as an incentive to stay and on their new plots they planted vines and orchards, as they had done back home. Writing at the same period, the poet Horace described Italy as one vast orchard; the Romans would certainly have known how to propagate and cultivate fruit trees. As they settled in Britain, they brought with them their favourite varieties of apples, cherries and grapes. Pruning hooks have been found at the Roman sites of Darenth and Hartlip in Kent, leading historians to believe that some of the county’s great orchards may have first been planted during the Roman occupation. These did not remain intact for long, however. The end of Roman occupation in AD 410 opened the floodgates for attacks by Jutes, Saxons and Danes. Many of these early battles

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