A glance at old maps of East Devon reveals large tracts of land historically devoted to fruit growing, a use that was on the decline even during the 19th century. The Devon History Society is seeking volunteers to help explore this major - but hitherto under-studied - aspect of the county's social and economic history. >
Devon History Society Orchard Project – a chance for you to help uncover a strand of Devon’s history
Orchards and their fruit have always been important to the economy and social history of Devon’s communities. At the moment the breadth and depth of this has not been fully explored. Devon History Society has now determined to take up the challenge of developing a better understanding of the county’s orchards.
We plan to start with a look at how our orchards changed during the Victorian era, and we are looking for volunteers to help us do so. As a first step we want to use tithe apportionments across the county from c. 1840, most of which provide a description of land usage in the parishes they cover, in order to produce a comparison with the information about orchards on the 1890 OS map, already analysed by Dr Sam Turner in the Devon County Council Historic Landscape Characterisation of the entire county, using the first edition (c1890) OS map as the main data source. A comparison of the c1840 data with the c1890 data should provide a better understanding of the core apple producing areas, the extent of orchard loss, the average size of orchards and even an indication of orchard loss before 1840 (in the apportionments some plots of land with orchard names are no longer specified as orchards in the land use column).
This work and further phases of the Devon History Society Orchards Project will be grounded in work on detailed map analysis, oral histories, accounts of the orchard year and identification of surviving historic orchards undertaken in East Devon, under the aegis of the East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, over the last three years.
Could YOU contribute? We already have over 60 volunteers who were part of the team who transcribed the tithe apportionments and who have agreed to take on this additional work. But we need more people to help. You don’t have to be a DHS member – though you are of course encouraged to join. Guidance notes are provided to help sort the data from the standardised spreadsheets for each parish. If you think this would be an interesting task to fill the dark winter evenings, then get in touch (philippeplanel@gmail.com).
(Work on the project will involve the use of MS Excel or a compatible spreadsheet program. It requires little or no special knowledge of such software, and notes will be provided on interpeting the records and editing the spreadsheet for this project). - RG
