Happy Birthday Bramley's Seedling - 200 years old in 2009
Malcolm Withnall celebrates 200 years of Bramley Seedling’s history, a traditional English ’cooker’ that continues to be a keystone of the home fruit industry. Malcolm is a member of the group of fruit growers and horticulturists who are marking Bramley’s bicentenary with a series of events staged during 2009.
There can be few apple varieties that can proudly claim to be 200 years old, still going strong and very much alive and well.Bramley’s Seedling can - the original tree of this quintessential English cooking apple is still growing in a back garden in Nottinghamshire producing apples and providing bundles of graft wood. It was raised in about 1809 by a young lady called Mary Ann Brailsford who planted some apple pips left on her mother’s kitchen table. These pips grew into young saplings and one bore fine quality fruit - large green apples, tart and crisp, ideal for cooking and making into apple pies, tarts and pastries. The Bramley mother tree is exceptionally long lived and must be unique in the world of horticulture, while its fruit has proved to be truly versatile - crushed and pressed Bramley makes a crisp juice or a delicious fruit drink when blended with other sweeter apple varieties, and if fermented a really good cider.
To come so far required astute observation by someone with commercial nous, a little bit of risk taking and a degree of faith in its future. Such a man was Henry Merryweather, who quite by chance passed a country gentleman in the street - reputed to be the Vicar of Southwell - carrying a basket filled with large, green apples. Mr Merryweather, being a local plant nurseryman, enquired of the source of these good-looking fruits, located Mary’s tree, now in a Mr Matthew Bramley’s ownership (having earlier purchased the cottage and the tree from the family), and took scions from which he raised the first trees.
Henry Merryweather knew of the Royal Horticultural Society and the value of exhibiting new varieties for adjudication by his peers. When exhibited at the renowned RHS Shows staged in Chiswick and London in the latter part of the 19th century the apples were given huge approval and acclaim. Mr Merryweather kindly called the apple Bramley’s Seedling after the occupant of the cottage in Nottinghamshire, and the rest is almost history. It is gratifying to acknowledge that the direct descendants of Henry Merryweather, Roger and Celia, are still actively involved with perpetuating the good name of this fabulous apple.
By the turn of the 19th century there was clear recognition of the value of this apple, which was in demand from both from market growers and private gardeners. Bramley orchards were established in the fruit growing counties of Kent and Cambridgeshire and in Northern Ireland. Indeed, some of the descendants of those Victorian fruit farmers, four generations later are still growing Bramleys for sale. From 1920 -1930, huge areas of Bramley were planted, peaking to over 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres). Bramley orchards became an integral part of the rural countryside, contributing a wooded look to the local environment, and providing a rich habitat for a wide range of flora and fauna. Bramley’s large, dark leaves and remarkably pink and abundant blossoms brightened the spring month of May and brought alive vast tracts of orchard land in Kent and Sussex, which quickly became famed for their Blossom Tours by coach operators.
Trees were much larger then than today being propagated on seedling rootstocks and grown as ‘standards’ . Long ladders of 60 rungs or scales were needed to harvest the fruit and prune the trees - village women picked into their ‘bodges’ and strong men moved ladders around the tree. In parishes in the south east combining tall, ‘legged’ Bramley trees with sheep production was a successful combination. Many a nostalgic painting or early photograph combines the presence of sheep under a wide-branched Bramley tree. With a nation of housewives that cooked and prepared meals at home in their kitchens, the Bramley apple pie quickly became a national institution along with Bramley chutney and mincemeat.
In more recent times standards have been replaced by smaller trees grown in intensive systems. These modern ‘hedgerow’ orchards planted with trees grafted onto dwarfing rootstocks are more easily managed and able to meet changes in the fruit industry as production costs rose and sale prices dropped. Trees are trained in a pyramidal shape and almost completely looked after from the ground. Advisors, such as Roger Worraker, formerly of the Kent Farm Institute and Hadlow College, the county agricultural college encouraged the growing of Bramley in this way and the establishment of highly efficient, productive and profitable orchards. Fruit growers such as the Smith and Mitchell families combined with other large companies in Kent and Wisbech to found today’s Bramley industry. This industry grows, with fellow fruit farmers in Northern Ireland, some 85-90,000 tonnes of high quality Bramley annually, and stores them in cold storage twelve months of the year to create a year-round supply for consumers.
In today’s much-changed world, less fruit is sold fresh to be prepared in household kitchens and a greater proportion is sold for processing – diced or sliced or pureed (by companies such as Fourayes Farms Ltd in Kent) to be sold to manufacturers such as Mr Kipling, whose Bramley pies are well known. Much of the Bramley crop goes for juice making, which is then sold as fresh-pressed blends or mixed with cider apple juice for making cider. The fashionable Magners Cider made in Ireland uses Bramley juice and since cider sales, attributable in a large measure to Magners, have reportedly overtaken ale consumption in the UK, this is remarkable achievement for a humble, home grown apple.
Although Mary Ann Brailsford had no idea of the potential of her seedling, she would have been immensely proud of Bramley’s journey and the first to raise a glass and toast its success. It is reassuring that this quite remarkable apple has survived as a back garden tree the depression of the 1920s, two World War food shortages and deprivation and even in these present times of recession sales of nursery trees from garden centres are still as buoyant as ever, and commercial growers continue to plant with confidence for future supplies for consumers
So ‘Happy Birthday Bramley’ - we also raise our glasses to this truly enduring English apple. One gets a Royal telegram at 100 years of age, what might you deserve at 200? Bramley remains part of our country scenery and domestic lives – distinctive, resilient, versatile and, of course, most importantly, totally scrumptious!
Malcolm Withnall
To mark the bicentenary of Bramley’s Seedling fruit growers are holding a series of events throughout 2009. For details of these see: http://www.bramleyapples.co.uk/news.html
Photographs of Henry Merryweather and the original Bramley tree reproduced with permission from The Bramley; a World Famous Cooking Apple by Roger Merryweather.
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