![]() ![]() The project’s orchard at West Raynham in Norfolk holds examples of around 270 varieties of apple, pear, plum and cherry varieties from all over East Anglia. “Some of these ‘lost’ varieties were last recorded less than a century ago,” their website says. Over the last two centuries, Suffolk has given rise to 11 apple varieties, including St Edmund’s Russett, Miller’s Red Seedling (which arose as a sport on a tree owned by Peter Wheldon), and Late Gold, a cider apple. The East of England Apple and Orchards Project claims the acreage of Suffolk’s orchards has decreased by more than 50 per cent over the last 50 years. No more Wheldons holiday jobs for teenagers. No more locally-grown heritage Beurre Hardy pears with their fat, luscious bottoms, distinct flavour of rosewater and flesh that yields like butter in the summer heat. No more paper cartons of Wheldon’s strawberries and tubs of Suffolk Jersey cream for pudding. Apple, ricotta and marjoram cake with a burnt honey glaze Peter Wheldon’s pick-your-own at Ley’s Farm, whose apple and pear orchards surrounded Cramphorns, has closed down, and the land, upon which generations of fruit trees and bushes grew, all of which had their own stories, has reverted to arable use. However, some orchards remain to produce apples for apple juice-making at Copella and fruits for Tiptree & Sons, near Colchester. Over time commercial fruit-growing around the Suffolk/Essex border has declined. Today, the fields of Cramphorns roses have been grubbed up, as have many orchards. ![]() It seemed as if the production of food dominated almost every vision of the landscape.Įast Anglians of a certain age may remember the drive from Sudbury to Colchester along Newton Road, which in summer would be perfumed with the scent of flowers and ripening fruit from the acres of orchards and rose and fruit bushes that edged its route. There was the geometric patchwork of fruit trees, neat lines of roses and rows of strawberries cossetted in straw, and in the distance, sugarbeet, wheat and corn fields rose and fell towards Boxford. She’d use a small pair of rose clippers to snip chives onto our plates. Kay planted radishes – small breakfast ones, pink and golden – and butter lettuces. ![]() There’d be smoky bonfires of rose prunings (which must be swiftly destroyed lest they spread disease), and we’d eat potatoes and salads dug straight from the ground. Their hands and arms were tanned to mahogany and sticky with pine resin that oozed from thousands of conifer cuttings. Her friend Kay lived and worked at the same place, her home a bungalow on its grounds surrounded by thousands of rose bushes and prehistoric conifers.Įvery day, Kay and my grandmother had to tweeze thorns from their bodies. Prior to this, she worked in a nursery filled with children instead of plants. When my grandmother moved here from the Midlands, she worked for the old Cramphorns garden centre in Newton Road, near Sudbury, and became a competent nurserywoman, growing and grafting roses and fruit trees. ![]()
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