The Orchard

The New Ash Green Community Orchard

We think our beautiful orchard is about 100 years old. New Ash Green celebrated it’s 50th birthday in 2017. It is utterly amazing to think that for most of its life our old orchard has been part of our modern village.

We know that only the school orchard was shown on a map from 1914 and that the community orchard first appears on maps produced between 1920 and 1940. In 1975 local historians Ted and Pam Connell recorded an interview with William Ewbank who had been the tenant farmer at North Ash Farm from 1906. Mr Ewbank talks about taking fruit down to the trains at Longfield and that he planted the orchard soon after the First World War ended in 1918. Imagine the hope and excitement as well as the graft that must have gone into that! All of the apple trees in our orchard are Bramley’s Seedling, the UK’s favourite cooking apple.

We think it’s safe to assume that management of the apple trees must have ended before North Ash and Newhouse farms were put up for sale in 1961. After then there may have been some sheep grazing to keep the grass down, and SPAN, the developers of New Ash Green probably started mowing sometime around 1967 when the first residents started moving in.

We know that the orchard was very popular with villagers from the start with folk concerts and other events being regularly held. And the beautiful Old Man wooden statue appearing overnight in the early 1980s. Very sadly he succumbed to vandalism soon after but still resides, albeit horizontally, at the bottom of the orchard. Our assumption is that the grass was probably cut regularly but it is unlikely any pruning of the apples took place. Our other, big, assumption is that virtually ALL management of the orchard, including grass cutting, ended around October 1987 with the arrival of the Great Storm. After that the orchard gradually retreated from view – first under a blanket of nettles, then bramble and dense ivy, then massive wild plum trees that thrived and dominated under the regime of neglect. Rewilding on a micro scale! Except orchards only exists and thrive because of human management.

Fast forward to 2003 and some of us began to realise that there was potentially a lovely old orchard lurking under the dense canopy of bramble, old man’s beard, ivy and plum.  With approval from the VA, the support and encouragement of the North West Kent Countryside Partnership and a shiny new grant of £20,000 from the Living Spaces programme, the orchard began to be rescued and the Woodlands Group emerged to take on its long-term management once again.

For the past 20 years, on the 3rd Saturday of most months, the Woodlands Group has been managing the orchard, juggling amenity, wildlife and apple production objectives while trying to maintain the health and longevity of our veteran trees. As each tree inevitably fails due to it’s age we are gradually replacing them with local varieties of eating apples.

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