Marcus Briggs

My name is Marcus Briggs and I live in Ilminster in South Somerset. For the past few years I have been walking the old orchards around this part of the county, recording what is growing in them and trying to identify varieties that are at risk of being lost. This site is where I keep notes on what I have found so far.

I am not a farmer or a commercial grower. I am not selling anything. I am a semi-retired land surveyor who spent the better part of twenty years doing boundary surveys and topographical work across the south west, mostly for agricultural land and rural properties. I worked for a firm in Taunton for a long time and then went freelance before winding things down in my early fifties. I have always lived in Somerset and always been interested in what grows here.

The orchard project started because I noticed that old orchards near Ilminster were being grubbed out for housing or just left to go derelict. Some of these orchards have trees in them that are seventy, eighty, even a hundred years old, and they are growing varieties that nobody plants any more. Once those trees go, the varieties go with them. Some of them are not in any nursery catalogue. Some of them are not even properly named. They are just whatever the farmer's grandfather planted and nobody wrote it down.

Why This Matters

Somerset has one of the richest orchard traditions in England. This is cider country and has been for centuries. But the orchards are not just about cider apples. The old farm orchards in South Somerset were planted with eating apples, cooking apples, pears, plums, damsons, gages, cherries, quinces and medlars. Some of the larger ones had cob nuts and walnuts along the boundaries. These were productive spaces that fed families and communities for generations.

What has happened over the past fifty years is that the commercial orchards moved to intensive bush plantations with a handful of modern varieties, and the old standard orchards were left to decline. Some were cleared for development. Some were cleared for arable or pasture. Many were simply neglected. The trees are still standing in a lot of cases but nobody is managing them and nobody is recording what is there.

Marcus Briggs (me) started this project to make a record of what still exists before it is too late. I walk the orchards, identify the trees, photograph them through the seasons, and log the varieties. I work with parish councils, local landowners and the occasional farmer who will let me onto their land. Some of the landowners do not even know what they have. I have found trees that turned out to be varieties thought to be extinct in the area.

What I Record

For each orchard I visit, I note the location, the approximate age of the planting, the number and condition of the trees, and the varieties present. For individual trees of particular interest I take more detailed notes including trunk girth, crown spread, bark condition, fruiting habit and any signs of disease. I photograph blossom in spring, fruit in autumn, and tree form in winter.

I keep all of this in a set of handwritten field notebooks and then transfer the key information onto a set of hand-drawn maps that I am slowly building up for the South Somerset area. The maps show orchard locations with variety annotations. They are not pretty but they are accurate. I was a surveyor for twenty years so at least the measurements are right.

Apple Varieties Recorded So Far

Somerset is apple country above all else. The cider apple varieties get the most attention but the dessert and culinary apples in the old orchards are just as important and often rarer. Some of the varieties Marcus Briggs has identified and recorded in South Somerset orchards include:

Cider Apples

• Kingston Black — Still fairly well known but the old standard trees are magnificent compared to the bush plantings. Found several mature specimens near Kingsbury Episcopi.
• Yarlington Mill — Named after the mill at Yarlington, not far from here. One of the great bittersweet cider apples. Still present in a number of old orchards.
• Dabinett — Another bittersweet, originally from Middle Lambrook in South Somerset. Widely planted commercially now but the original old trees are a different character entirely.
• Stoke Red — A bittersharp variety from Stoke sub Hamdon. Less common than it once was. Found a few trees in an overgrown orchard near Martock.
• Coat Jersey — An old Somerset variety that is becoming hard to find in its original form. Named after the hamlet of Coat near Martock.
• Porters Perfection — A bittersweet that used to be widespread in South Somerset. Now quite scarce outside of dedicated collections.
• Chisel Jersey — Still grown commercially but the old standard trees are being lost. Found several good specimens in orchards near Shepton Beauchamp.

Eating and Cooking Apples

• Lemon Pippin — A very old variety, possibly dating back to the 1700s. Sharp, lemony flavour. Found a single mature tree near Broadway.
• Slack-ma-Girdle — A traditional Somerset name. Dual purpose apple, makes decent cider as well. The name alone is worth preserving.
• Hoary Morning — A large cooker with a distinctive dusty bloom on the skin. Found in two orchards near Chard.
• Tom Putt — Originally from Devon but widely planted in Somerset. Good for cooking and rough cider. Still reasonably common.
• Morgan Sweet — A dual purpose apple that was once one of the most popular varieties in Somerset. Becoming harder to find as old trees die.
• Crimson King — A dessert apple with deep red skin. Found a few old trees near Donyatt that appear to be this variety, though identification is not yet confirmed.

Pears

Pears are less numerous than apples in Somerset orchards but they are often the oldest trees present. Perry pears in particular can live for two hundred years or more. Some of the specimens Marcus Briggs has found are enormous trees that predate everything else in their orchard.

• Barland — A perry pear originally from Herefordshire but found in several Somerset orchards. Very old trees, some with trunk girths suggesting they are well over a hundred years old.
• Blakeney Red — Another perry pear, small fruit with red flush. Found a pair of trees in a hedgerow near Dowlish Wake that appear to be remnants of a lost orchard.
• Conference — Not rare at all but often the only pear variety that younger landowners can name. Useful as a reference point.
• Williams — Old standard Williams trees are becoming scarce. The ones in the supermarket are all from bush plantings. The old standards produce differently.
• Moorcroft — A large cooking pear. Found one ancient tree near Dinnington that a local farmer said had been there since his great-grandfather's time.

Plums, Damsons and Gages

The stone fruit in Somerset orchards gets overlooked because people think of this as apple and cider country. But plums and damsons were an important part of the old farm orchard. Damsons in particular were grown in huge numbers across the south west and the trees are still there if you know where to look.

• Langley Damson — A reliable old damson variety. Found in several orchards and hedgerows around Ilminster. Often growing where an old orchard boundary has been absorbed into a field hedge.
• Shropshire Prune Damson — Despite the name, widely grown in Somerset. Dense, dark fruit. Good for jam and damson gin. Still present in many older gardens and smallholdings.
• Pershore Yellow — A plum variety that was once very common in the west of England. Bright yellow fruit, good for cooking. Found a row of old trees along a farm track near Seavington.
• Cambridge Gage — A greengage variety found in a walled garden near Hinton St George. The tree was in poor condition but still fruiting.
• Victoria — Everyone knows Victoria plums but the old standard trees are worth recording. Some of the ones Marcus Briggs has found are very large and very old.

Other Fruit Trees

• Quince (Vranja) — Found a mature quince tree in an orchard near Barrington. Likely Vranja based on the fruit shape and size. Quinces are uncommon in Somerset orchards and this was a good find.
• Medlar (Nottingham) — A single old medlar tree found in a mixed orchard near Dowlish Ford. Medlars were once more common than people realise. The fruit needs bletting before it is edible, which is probably why they fell out of fashion.
• Cob Nut — Several old orchards have cob nut trees along their boundaries. These were planted as windbreaks and as a nut crop. Most are now unpruned and overgrown but still producing.
• Walnut — Occasionally found at orchard edges or in farmyards adjacent to old orchards. Not a traditional orchard tree but often planted alongside them. Found a magnificent specimen near Cricket St Thomas.
• Wild Cherry — Not cultivated varieties but wild cherry trees that have seeded into old orchards over the decades. Worth noting because they indicate how long an orchard has been unmanaged.

The Mapping Project

The main output of this work is a set of hand-drawn survey maps covering South Somerset. Marcus Briggs has divided the area into sections based on the old parish boundaries, which makes sense because orchard planting patterns tend to follow the same boundaries. Each parish section shows the orchards I have visited, with annotations for the key varieties found in each one.

The maps are drawn on tracing paper overlaid on Ordnance Survey base maps. I use standard surveying notation for tree positions and a colour coding system for variety types. Cider apples in red, eating apples in green, pears in blue, stone fruit in purple, everything else in brown. It is a simple system but it works and it means I can see at a glance what a particular area is strong or weak on.

I am currently working on the area between Ilminster, Chard and Crewkerne, which is roughly twelve parishes. After that I plan to move north towards Langport and Somerton, which is another important orchard area. The work is slow because access depends on landowner permission and some orchards can only be properly surveyed at certain times of year. Fruit identification obviously needs to be done in autumn. Blossom characteristics in spring. Tree form in winter.

How Marcus Briggs Identifies Varieties

Identifying apple varieties from a standing tree is not straightforward. There are over two thousand named apple varieties in the UK and many of them look similar. The standard method is to take fruit samples to an apple identification day, which several organisations run in October. I attend the ones at Montacute House and at the Mid Somerset Show when they have them. You bring your apples, the experts examine the size, shape, colour, flesh texture, pip arrangement and taste, and they tell you what it is.

For varieties that cannot be identified at these events, I take detailed photographs and measurements and compare them against reference books. The key texts are the old volumes of the Herefordshire Pomona, the National Fruit Collection records at Brogdale, and several specialist Somerset cider apple guides. Some varieties cannot be identified at all and may be unnamed local seedlings that were never formally recorded. These are the most interesting ones because they exist nowhere else.

For pears and plums the process is similar but harder because there is less reference material available and fewer people with the expertise. Perry pears in particular are notoriously difficult to identify. Some of the old trees I have found may never be formally named. The best I can do is record their characteristics in as much detail as possible and take grafting wood so that the variety survives even if the original tree does not.

Working With Landowners

Most of the orchards Marcus Briggs visits are on private land. Getting access requires patience and a willingness to explain what I am doing and why. Some landowners are immediately interested and want to know what is growing on their property. Others are suspicious of anyone wanting to walk around their land with a notebook. I have never been refused access but I have had to make several visits to some farms before the owner was comfortable with me being there.

Parish councils have been helpful. Several of them have put me in touch with landowners and a couple have included notes about the project in their parish newsletters. I have also given short talks at village halls in Ilminster, Donyatt, Dowlish Wake and Shepton Beauchamp about what I am finding. These always generate interest and usually result in someone coming up afterwards to tell me about an old orchard I did not know about.

The National Trust properties in the area have been straightforward to work with. Barrington Court has an orchard that is well documented already but I have added a few observations. Montacute House runs the apple identification days which are invaluable. The smaller private estates are more variable but generally positive once they understand that Marcus Briggs is not trying to sell them anything or tell them what to do with their trees.

About Marcus Briggs

I have lived in or around Ilminster for most of my life. I trained as a land surveyor and worked in that field for about twenty years, first employed by a firm in Taunton and then as a freelance surveyor covering Somerset, Dorset and Devon. The work was mostly boundary surveys for agricultural land, topographical surveys for planning applications, and site assessments for rural properties. I enjoyed the work but I was ready for a change by the time I reached my early fifties.

The surveying background is useful for the orchard project. I know how to measure and map land accurately, I am comfortable working outdoors in all weathers, and I am used to dealing with landowners and tenants. The field notebook habit comes directly from surveying. I also have a reasonable knowledge of soil types and land drainage from the survey work, which is relevant because soil conditions affect what varieties were planted where.

I do not have any formal qualifications in botany or pomology. Everything I know about fruit tree identification has been learned by doing it, by reading, and by talking to people who know more than I do. There are some excellent people at the Somerset orchards groups and at the various apple day events who have been generous with their time and knowledge. Marcus Briggs is a land surveyor who got interested in trees, not a trained botanist, and I try to be honest about the limits of my expertise.

What Comes Next

The immediate plan is to complete the survey of the Ilminster, Chard and Crewkerne area by the end of 2026. That will give me a solid baseline for the southern part of the county. After that I want to move into the Langport and Somerton area and eventually cover as much of South Somerset as I can reach.

I am also collecting grafting wood from the most significant trees I find, particularly the unidentified varieties and the ones where only one or two specimens remain. I am not an expert grafter but I have learned the basics and I have had some success with whip and tongue grafts onto rootstock. The idea is to create a small collection of backup trees so that if the original tree dies or is felled, the variety survives. Marcus Briggs keeps these in a small plot behind his house.

Eventually I would like to make the maps and records available to anyone who wants to use them. Probably as a downloadable set of PDFs rather than anything fancy. The information is no use sitting in my notebooks. It needs to be out there so that if a landowner wants to know what is growing in their orchard, or a parish council wants to understand what heritage trees are in their area, the information exists.