Evening Calstock the railway bridge spans the Tamar linking Cornwall and Devon.
In its heyday the Tamar Valley boasted a thriving horticultural industry employing many people, but now only a handful of people still make their living this way. The steeply sloping valley sides consisted of small fields covered by cherry or apple trees, often underplanted by daffodils and soft fruit such as strawberries. During Victorian and Edwardian days the daffodils and fruit trees in flower provided a tourist attraction for steamer excursion trips from Plymouth. Within the last fifty years the small fields have ‘gone to sleep’, reverting to wooded slopes that now blend in with the oak, ash and hazel woodlands whence they came. But there are tell-tale signs of past activities, such as lines of trees that once were neat hedges and the remains of Lonicera, Pittosporum and laurel hedges.
Overgrown hedges – and cart track used for carrying produce to the river key and bring back ‘dock dung’ from Plymouth to spread on the land.
The Valley’s landscape is dotted with sheds of different shapes and sizes, which were fitted out to varying degrees of luxury. In some cases the packing boxes and other paraphernalia associated with preparing the produce for market still survive in the sheds. The baskets of produce were left for collection on the banks at the field margins,. Carts loaded with daffodils, precious cherries, strawberries and apples trundled down the tracks through the woods to the quays on the River Tamar. The carts brought back ‘dock dung’, a rich variety of waste from Plymouth, to manure the fields. The valley was also dotted with lime kilns near the river’s edge, producing agricultural lime to be spread on the land. The paths leading away from the kilns were rich in old man’s beard Clematis vitalba, which flourished on the alkaline soils. Oakland was cleared to provide rich soil for strawberry cultivation – but erosion on the steep fields was a serious problem. Fields were ploughed diagonally and buckets and hoists used to move soil back up.
Near the bottom of one of the valleys, on a bend in the road, a long wall snaking up a steep hillside starkly stands out from the surrounding grassland. Its contours were once softened by fruit trees, and the sloping grassland was once down to soft fruit production. Nearby stands the silent stone shell of a small paper mill.
Paper mill with fruit wall behind
Apples and cherries
James Armstrong Evans and Mary Martin live in a beautiful part of the Tamar Valley. Between their house, which was once a packing shed, and the nearby key on the River Tamar there were once 92 people involved in horticulture, but times change and the last person retired 12 years ago. James’s interests are divided between engineering (particularly narrow- gauge steam engines) and apple trees, while Mary is an accomplished artist (painting the local landscapes) as well as having an interest in apples.
Long Keeper fruit glows in the winter sun. James and Mary’s initial planting of trees they collected – planted here until they were identified.
I arranged a visit for Friends of the Eden Project to see James’ and Mary’s collection on a perfect autumn day. The low sunlight had almost burnt off all the early morning mist that hung in the valley and accentuated the colour of the few remaining apples that still hung on the trees. The fruit on the ‘Long Keeper’ glowed like golden globes. In James and Mary’s more densely planted part of the orchard red and yellow stripy fruit lay on the ground under two still unidentified trees. Mary pointed out ‘Cornish Long Stem’, which was still carrying its appropriately named deeper matt green apples. We tried a pleasant-tasting local cider apple, as James explained the importance of the slight taste of tannin to cider making. The restoration of an old cider press in East Cornwall was one of the catalysts that started them rescuing the fast-dwindling apple and cherry trees of the region. Locals said you needed ‘Pig Snout’ or ‘Colloggett Pippin’ apples for good cider – but it soon became clear that the trees were nearly all gone. Cider these days often contains a range of apples unsuitable for sale as fresh fruit – including dessert apples. James’s own view is that the drink produced should not be called cider unless it contains cider apples, and preferably nothing else! (The lack of added water was a health consideration in days gone by when water supplies could be contaminated.) Traditional cider contains Vitamin C, minerals and trace elements.
James and Mary outside the apple store
Over twenty years James and Mary, aided by other Cornish apple enthusiasts, have searched the county for old varieties. Most they rescued at the eleventh hour; most of their original sources of information are now dead and even the following generation is getting old.
This tree was originally described as Callington Gilliflower as its fruit is similar to Cornish Gilliflower. Over the years James and Mary have been authenticating their collection and they now this tree is ‘Scotch Bridget’ a dessert apple that stores well. Also present as an apple grown locally in the Welsh Marches.
One at least was rescued at five to midnight – the crooked, spindly pear growing at an angle was propagated from the only wood that they could rescue from the original tree’s funeral pyre. This particular cooking pear produced huge 10-12” long fruit.
But sometimes they were less fortunate. James told of a trip to visit an old man who had an interesting orchard – only to arrive half an hour too late. He had just died. ‘If only you had come an hour earlier he would have loved to have told you about them,’ said the relatives.
Mary with a ‘Saw pit’ apple – demonstrating the shape of the fruit typical of some of the local apple varieties.
James and Mary were also inspired by a visit to an RHS show at Vincent Square which coincided with the centenary of the Hereford Pomona, the comprehensive illustrated description of the apples and pears of that county. They have carefully catalogued the information about their fruit collection, with a view to producing a Cornish Pomona which would aid the identification and conservation of local apple varieties. This information is important, as some apples once correctly identified and labelled have subsequently lost their identities and have been propagated but incorrectly named.
Mary holding a Black Rock apple and Cornish Gilliflower apple
As we walked back from their orchard we visited Mary’s apple store, a cool, damp shed where the fruit is stored in good condition, with shuttered windows to keep out the rodents. They like apples too!
For a time in 2004 Mary has been working with the Dartmoor Inn at Lydford to devise a series of variety-specific apple dishes for an autumn food festival, made just when the variety is at its best. Apples often stay on the tree until they are really ripe and are ready when they are beginning to drop. The flavour of naturally mature apples is far better, compared to fruit that is harvested when immature and allowed to ripen in store – but this is often tricky to achieve in practice.
Local cherry trees looking towards the summer house which contains stored fruit
Cherries
The Tamar valley was famous for its cherries, tasty small fruit that survived the moister summer conditions without splitting and found a ready market in Plymouth and its surrounds. Some were turned into jam in local factories in St Dominic and Plymouth. Many local varieties are named after local farms, such as the Birchenhayes and the ornamental white-flowered Burcombe.
James and Mary have replanted a cherry orchard, first growing root stocks from seed of wild cherries (mazzards) rather than from canning-factory cherry stones, which produce root stocks prone to bacterial canker. James then grafted the scions from local cultivars on to the rootstocks. This is a long-term project; the trees take 12 to 20 years to come fully into fruit and will last for about 100 years. While valuable crops such as strawberries were planted on warm fertile slopes, the cherries by contrast were planted on colder north-facing slopes with poorer soils. Traditional cherry orchards probably have a limited economic role in the future – the trees take too long to come into full bearing and are too tall, requiring harvesting with tall 44-bar ladders which these days have health and safety limitations. James has grafted some of the local cherry varieties on dwarf ‘Colt’ cherry tree root stocks, something that hasn’t been tried before and which may make cherry production easier and more economical. As far as James was aware trials of Tamar Valley cherries on the most modern very dwarf hybrid root stocks hadn’t been attempted up to 2004.
As they mature the Burcombe cherry trees will produce the characteristic large outgrowth where the scion and root-stock are grafted together. Most of the old cherry orchards have gone now, and the land has returned to grassland or mixed forest. James has rescued a huge section of stem containing a swollen outgrowth that resembles a church font in size and shape.
James and Mary have observed very similar cherries in France and wonder if there is a Huguenot connection linking the Cornish and French trees. Modern techniques like DNA fingerprinting may one day answer this question.
As in days gone by James has replanted cherries along the road beside their orchard – partly to ward off birds from the cherry orchards themselves. This is a necessity; birds can clear a cherry crop in a matter of hours once the fruit reaches a certain stage of ripeness, leaving nothing but a purple stain from the juice running down the trunks. Once the birds were spoilt for choice, but as cherry trees have become scarcer so the danger has increased.
The inhabitants of the Tamar Valley obviously had horticulture and plant propagation running in their veins; it was second nature for them to graft a beautiful rose on to a wild rose growing in the hedgerow. With increasing interest in local food production it is interesting to get a flavour of a once-bustling area of horticulture that supplied local and national markets. Who knows, perhaps conservation of the last examples of local varieties of fruit trees may at least leave the door open for a future revival of local fruit production, when the circumstances are right.
The collection of apples and cherries have been re-propagated and planted as a ‘Mother Orchard’ that the public can see at The National Trust’s Cothele house – in the autumn Cothele has an apple day with a variety of events taking place. If of interest check the National Trust’s Cothele website.
© Andrew Ormerod 2013
Cornwall and South West Fruit Focus 