A plum job

Once the mainstay of Cumbria’s Lyth and Winster valleys, damson orchards declined steeply after the Second World War. Tessa Waugh meets the farmers working hard to revive the fruit’s fortunes

- Tessa Waugh

A LITTLE way from the tourist honeypots of Cumbria’s Lake District is an area filled with snowy blossoms in spring and dusky, purple fruit in autumn. The Lyth and Winster valleys, near Kendal, are a bucolic mosaic of stone walls and small, rolling fields. On a glorious September day, apple trees groan with unpicked fruit, but it is the smaller, purple jewels hanging on wispy branches that are the real stars of this region. Damsons have been grown in Westmorland since the 1700s, benefiting from the nutritious limestone soil and the mild microclimate of Morecambe Bay. Each farm has its own orchard and fruit trees flourish in gardens and hedgerows. Despite this natural bounty, the damsons have long been in decline. ‘Many young people have never heard of them,’ observes Mark Basey-Fisher, chairman of the Westmorland Damson Association (WDA), which was established in 1996 to preserve the orchards. The harvest was early last year, after the dry summer, but, when I visit, there are still a few unpicked fruits on the higher branches at Witherslack, where association members collect and freeze the damsons. ‘They are essentially small plums, smaller and tastier than the ones that grow further south,’ he explains, handing me an example. The damson is not much bigger than a large acorn, but the flavour is intense, sweet, then sharp; a fine-dining fruit, in a different league to its spongier, soft-textured cousin.