Essex orchards, an appeal for information
Mark Hanson 3 Church Cottages, Church Road, Boreham, Essex CM3 3EG
For some unknown reason 1 seem to have got involved in looking at old orchards in
Essex this year and have now visited 5 sites (plus one old garden with a few very old
trees). From experience I know that the trees at such sites are not, at first sight, very
impressive. At most they seem to be in fairly poor condition, often inevitably with some
trees dead and many with dead wood. Ivy climbing up the trunks also seems to be a
feature with the grassland beneath the trees now rank dominated by species such as Cow
Parsley and False Oat Grass but sometimes with the odd indicator for old grassland such
as Lady's Bedstraw or Cowslip managing to cling on in a far corner.
Very old orchards appear to have a mix of fruit trees in them - perhaps Apple (cookers
and eaters), Pear. Plum, Cherry and nut trees such as Hazel and Walnut with just a few
trees of each type. I suspect this is possibly due to the orchard only supplying a very
local market i.e. the local village that needed a bit of everything. I suspect also that these
orchards are quite old, possibly Victorian even. Later orchards established from the
1900s and particularly in the 1950s and 60s seem to be much more extensive affairs
often with very large areas of trees of a single type presumably planted to supply the
growing supermarket trade. I do know that veteran fruit trees can be very old but not
very large specimens - an ancient apple in my parents' garden has a tiny girth but seems
hardly to have grown in the last 50 years and was already a very gnarled old tree when
they bought the house in the 1950s.
Many orchards have been grubbed up, the Seabrook family of Boreham from the 1880s
cultivated around 170 acres of orchard, later much added to and eventually totalling
about 1150 acres in Boreham and Hatfield Peverel. Much, if not all, has now been
grabbed up and turned over to cereal production.
Old orchards can provide a habitat for some rare invertebrates, one that comes to mind
is the rare metallic green chafer Gnorimus nobilis for which there are a handful of old
records from Essex (including Lords Bushes, Epping Forest). This species is said to
favour the decaying wood of old fruit trees, but may also utilise other species.
I would appreciate any information on old orchards in Essex i.e. location, history,
particularly the specific varieties of fruit tree grown, associated plants (any lichens or
mosses associated with the fruit trees), mistletoe etc. A six-figure grid reference would
be appreciated for any extant orchards.
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Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 45, September 2004