Preserving Heritage Apple Species in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire
How many varieties of apple can you name? Golden Delicious, Pink Lady, Granny Smith? These are the varieties we most often see on our supermarket shelves, but this is just a sweet, or sometimes sour, taster of the range of apples on offer in Ramsey’s Walled Garden. Its extensive collection of heritage apple trees all originating in Cambridgeshire, emphasise the importance of horticulture to the County.
The Apple Tunnel
The Victorian Garden included a wooden ‘apple tunnel’ all along the east-west axis of the garden. By the time restoration work started in the late 1990s, these apples were cropping extremely poorly or not at all. The old apple tunnel was replaced with a metal pergola and 20 varieties from across Cambridgeshire were planted. With careful training, they now cover the whole pergola to make a fully enclosed tunnel.
Ramsey Walled Garden with the apple tunnel displaying 20 varieties of heritage Cambridgeshire varieties.
Every Colour, Size and Flavour!
Traditional Cambridgeshire apples come in all sizes, colours and flavours! Wayside tastes of raspberries, Lady Hollendale is a bright red apple ripening in August, and Green Harvey is a cooking apple which is ready to use after Christmas.
The Huntingdon Codlin was introduced by the Wood and Ingram Nursery in Brampton in around 1883. It’s a fairly early variety of cooking apple with attractive red lines on the skin.
The Cottenham Seedling – one of the 20 varieties of heritage Cambridgeshire apple seen at Ramsey Walled Garden.
Conserving Apple Varieties at Risk
The Morley’s Seedling produces abundant large cookers and was first bred in Fordham, although there are none growing there today. So, the garden is helping to conserve old varieties which might otherwise be lost.
The Chiver’s Delight is a tasty eating apple. Does the name sounds familiar? Well, that’s because it was bred by the Chiver’s jam company which used to be based in Histon, Cambridgeshire.
Of all the varieties, the oldest is Harvey, a yellow cooking apple, dating back to the 16th century. It was named after a master of Trinity Hall in Cambridge.
The beauty of these local varieties is that the names reflect local historical connections too, such as Lord Peckover, Barnack Beauty, St Everard, Emneth Early and Lod Burghley.
Visit the Garden in Ramsey
Visit Ramsey’s Walled Garden to see how many of the 20 varieties of heritage Cambridgeshire apple you can spot!