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Brogdale

A small part of the Brogdale collection displayed at an East Malling Research Station open day.

Taste and smell are powerful triggers for memory. Crumbs of madeleine cake soaked in tea are the way into memories for Proust in his book Remembrance of Things Past. For Proust it was personal memories that were recovered, but even in a more general sense it is sometimes possible to visit the past via taste and smell. For example Roman grape varieties are growing at the Roman Palace of Fishbourne in West Sussex, and the Californian wine producer Richard Grant has made a rose wine from them. Closer to home the National Fruit Collections at Brogdale in Kent, has a collection of apples and pears that offer a very direct route into the past. John Jackson in The Biology of Apples and Pears says: "Apples and pears are amongst the oldest of the world's fruit crops, figuring in both the Bible and the tales of Homer." Apples and pears for many centuries have been reproduced through the method of grafting a bud onto a seedling, or rootstock. This was done to maintain popular varieties,since growing from seeds would produce a completely unpredictable result. Varieties have then remained fairly constant for very long periods of time. At Brogdale Decio apples are still grown, a variety the Romans would have eaten.

Apples continued to be grown in south east England after the Romans left, and the modern fruit industry in this area dates back to the efforts of Richard Harrys, fruiterer to Henry the Eighth. The descendents of some of the varieties he introduced, such as Pippin apples can still be bought today. Incidentally Harrys established his first large scale orchards at Teynham, just a few miles from Brogdale. The fruit industry actually demonstrates how things stay the same even as they change. The "Garden of England" as the south east was once termed, and still is in certain tourist guides, was known for sheep, oast houses, and apple orchards. The old apple orchards have virtually disappeared, replaced with new varieties of much smaller trees. These allow the fruit to be picked more easily. But the apples on these smaller trees are exactly the same as those that once grew in those old orchards of large trees. East Malling Research Station in Kent was set up to support south east England's fruit industry. It developed ways of classifying rootstocks onto which a bud was grafted. The rootstocks were classified according to the size of the tree they would produce. In this way the size of the tree was controlled, and the result is the very different modern orchard, producing the same fruit. People are very conservative in their tastes. An average supermarket will only stock a tiny fraction of the varieties of apple, or other fruit, that are available. Brogdale has 2,300 varieties of apple in total, as well as 550 pear, 350 plum, 220 cherry, and smaller collections of vine and nut varieties. I've been on a tour in the 150 acre orchard at Brogdale, and seeing thousands of trees all growing different apples really brings home how habitual we are in our diets and our buying habits. We like things to stay the same, and in many ways technological development in the area of fruit growing is dedicated to keeping things the same. We want the same apples all the time, so ways are found to produce those apples more quickly, dependably and cheaply. And even though the Garden of England seems very different these days, the apples are the same. In this sense apples, neglected by most historians I have read, are one of the most lasting aspects of the past. An apple really is a link back to the earliest human civilisation.

 

 

Opening Times: Summer, 10am - 4.30pm and winter 10am - 4pm.

Directions: Brogdale is in Brogdale Road, just off the A2, in Faversham, Kent. Click here for an interactive map centred on Brogdale.

Access: The area is flat, but the orchard tour is quite rough underfoot, and would be difficult for wheelchair users.

Contact: http://www.brogdale.org/index.php