CONTEXT 180 : JUNE 2024 23 WHERE HERITAGE AND NATURE MEET ANTHEA JONES Saving traditional orchards The case of Gloucestershire shows the historical relationship between orchards and large houses, and how orchards can influence planning and development. When surveyors were preparing the wonderful series of 25-inch-to-the-mile maps (1:2,500) for the Ordnance Survey in the late 19th century, they were able to indicate orchards, though not whether plum, pear, cherry or apple, using a symbol of a small tree arranged neatly and systematically within a defined area. These maps are the first detailed and widespread evidence for the existence of orchards in any area. The maps support the statement from The Victoria History of the County of Gloucester (VCH) II that, before 1914, ‘on the whole Gloucestershire is an orchard county’. Modern comparisons between assessments of the acreage shown on those large-scale maps with those existing 100 years later shows a dramatic change: four fifths of the traditional orchards no longer exist and a meagre seven per cent have been replaced with modern orchards, grown to less environmentally valuable standards if greater economic value. The picture is only a little less dramatic nationally: 18 per cent of traditional orchards survive, but a quarter have been replaced with modernstyle orchards.1 The decline in orchard acreage started between the wars, but since 1950 it has been precipitous. Historical evidence Early evidence of orchards is patchy, relating to particular estates or to literary comment. In English Orchards, Barnes and Williamson have collected much literary evidence for the whole country, though they have a paucity of evidence for Gloucestershire.2 Orchards were not like fields of wheat or barley, which might cover many acres, but were small enclosures most commonly associated with pasture or grass land. The name ‘orchard’ itself shows that each area of fruit trees was relatively small; it derives from a combination of Latin hortus, ‘garden’, and ‘yard’. ‘Orchard’ has not been a source of placenames, unlike the word ‘apple’, which was identifying places before 1066; the few names which appear to refer to orchards have a different origin. Stoke Orchard in Gloucestershire derives from the manorial family of Archer, changed by popular etymology, though perhaps an indication of the presence of orchards in the area. An orchard was often among the immediate surroundings of large houses. The engravings by Johannes Kip, published in 1712 in The Ancient and Present State of Glostershire, Sir Robert Atkyns life’s work, illustrate how often the Gloucestershire gentry’s houses had 1 Natural England, Traditional Orchard Project in England, NECR077 ² Gerry Barnes and Tom Williamson (2022) English Orchards, Windgather Press/Oxbow Books Great Barrington: the orchard is recognisable from the neat, ordered arrangement of trees. Knole, an orchard in an iron-age hill fort
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