France has its vineyards. Greece has its olive groves and Britain has orchards. However over the last 30 years there has been a 65% decline in the number of fruit orchards in this country. An orchard is an enchanting, bio-diverse resource for a community, a meeting place where stories, customs and traditions can unfold and in doing so can shape the personality of a place. There are an incredible 2000 noted varieties of apple as well as pears, quince, plums, nuts and berries but we still see apples from New Zealand in our supermarkets at the height of British harvest time. There are many references to orchards in London. The London A-Z includes over 130 street names from Orchard Avenue to Orchard Waye.
Once upon a time there were orchards in:
WESTMINSTER.
‘Orchard Street was so called from being erected on the old orchard-garden of the monastery. It was in Orchard Street that Oliver Cromwell had one of his palaces.’
COVENT GARDEN. "If we add an 'n' to 'Covent,' and say Convent Garden," observes a writer in the City Press, "we shall go back to the old days when nuns or friars studied their missals in the church orchard..”
THE TEMPLE CHURCH AND PRECINCT.
‘Geoffrey de Magnaville, Earl of Essex, a bold baron, who fought against King Stephen, sacked Cambridge, and plundered Ramsey Abbey and while besieging Burwell Castle was struck by an arrow from a crossbow just as he had taken off his helmet to get air. The Templars, not daring to bury him, soldered him up in lead, and hung him on a crooked tree in their riverside orchard.’
WESTMINSTER SCHOOL.
‘As late as the seventeenth century the College Garden contained fruit-trees and an orchard, which was carefully tended. The fruit-trees were ordered to be cut down and superseded by lime-trees in 1708.’
(British History Online)
Illustration from Pictorial Practical Fruit Growing by Walter P. Wright.
This project chronicles London’s orchards from spring to winter including the excellent Apple Day celebrations in October.