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
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der September 22, 2021-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der September 22, 2021-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
A tapestry of pinks
THE garden is now entering its season of vigour and exuberance.
Bringing the past to life
An event hosted by COUNTRY LIFE at WOW!house is one of the highlights of a programme that features some of the biggest names in interior design
This isle is full of wonder
GEOLOGY? A bit like economics, the famously boring science? I confess I suffered the prejudice—agriculture and history being my thing, both of them vital in every sense— but Robert Muir-Wood’s voyage through the past 66 million years of the making of the British landscape has biblical-level drama on almost every other page. Flood, fire, ice… or, perhaps, the formation in rock, sand, mud and lava of these isles is best conceived of as fierce poetry.
Empire protest
Without meaning to issue a clarion call for independence, E. M. Forster perfectly captured the rising tensions of the British Raj. One hundred years later, Matthew Dennison revisits the masterpiece A Passage to India
Hops and dreams
A relative of marijuana, hops were a Teutonic introduction to British brewing culture and gave rise to the original working holiday
Life and sol
The sanctuary of the Balearic Islands has enchanted a multitude of creative minds, from Robert Graves to David Bowie
'Nature is nowhere as great as in its smallest creatures'
Giving himself neck ache from constantly looking upwards, John Lewis-Stempel makes the most of a sunny May day harvesting ‘tree hay’ and marvelling at the myriad wildlife including flies and earwigs–that reside on bark
'Plans are worthless, but planning is everything'
Country houses great and small were indispensable to D-Day preparations, with electricity and sanitation, well-stocked wine cellars, countesses to run the canteens and antique furniture to feed the stoves
The darling buds of May
May Morris shared her father’s passion for flowers, embroidery and Iceland, but was much more than William’s daughter. Influential both as a designer and as a teacher, she championed the rights of workers, particularly women, as Huon Mallalieu reveals
Achilles healed
Once used to comfort the lovelorn or soothe the wounds of Greek heroes, yarrow may now have a new starring role in sustainable agriculture