By Ines Keane
Pick up a pie recipe in November and there is a fair chance it says “Bramley”. The apple is big, green and sharp, and it is a cooking apple, not one to eat out of the hand. It also began, according to every source we read, with a single seedling in a Nottinghamshire garden.
We used four sources: Wikipedia, the Nottinghamshire county council’s historic environment record, a British food-history website and a garden-history blog about the original tree. We show where they differ, and they do differ, mostly on small things.
The pip
The county record says the story “begins around 1809 with Mary Ann Brailsford”, a young Southwell resident who planted apple pips in a flowerpot. One seedling did well and was moved to the family garden, where it began to thrive. The food-history site says she planted pips from an apple her mother was cooking. Wikipedia says she planted them in her garden “when she was a young girl”. The garden-history blog says she planted them in her parents’ garden at a small terraced cottage on Church Street, and gives her dates as 1791 to 1852. Our reading: if those dates are right she was about eighteen in 1809, so “young girl” is a loose phrase. We have no second source for her dates.
The county record adds that she later left the house and died “without knowing how influential her seedling would become.”
The butcher and the nurseryman
Wikipedia and the food-history site say that in 1846 a local butcher, Matthew Bramley, bought the cottage, and the tree came with it. In 1856, according to both, the nurseryman Henry Merryweather asked to take cuttings and sell the apples, and Bramley agreed on one condition: that the apples bear his name.
The county record tells it a little differently. It says young Henry Merryweather, born in 1839, learned from a gardener that the apples came from “Mr Bramley’s garden at No. 73, Easthorpe”. The garden-history blog says Merryweather, then 17, traced apples to nearby trees grafted from the Church Street tree. By our arithmetic, 1839 plus 17 gives 1856, so the two accounts fit. We mark that as our reading.
The first sale and the first honours
Wikipedia gives a first recorded sale on 31 October 1862, when Merryweather sold three apples to a Mr Geo Cooper of Upton Hall. The garden-history blog says the Merryweathers recorded the first sale in October 1862.
Then the recognition. Both Wikipedia and the county record say that on 6 December 1876 the variety was highly commended at a Royal Horticultural Society fruit committee. The county record adds a First-Class Certificate at the Royal Jubilee Exhibition of Apples in Manchester in 1877. Wikipedia says the first commercial orchard was established in 1910 at Maythorne Orchard, which the food-history site repeats.
Why cooks like it
The food-history site says the apples weigh two or three times as much as a typical dessert apple and that cooked, they turn “golden and fluffy”. Wikipedia lists uses: pies, crumbles, compotes, salads, other desserts, chutneys and apple sauce, plus whole baked apples, cored and filled with dried fruit and served with custard. It says the jelly is very pale. It calls the Bramley “the only British cooking apple produced all year round”.
The tree that fell
Three of the four mention a fall. Wikipedia and the food-history site say violent storms knocked the original tree over in 1900, and that it survived and still bears fruit. The garden-history blog does not give a storm date. It says lightning struck the tree in the early 1900s, and that it re-rooted and sent up a new trunk. We show both and choose neither.
Then the fungus. Wikipedia says that in 1990 University of Nottingham scientists cloned the tree by tissue culture because it was ageing and under attack by honey fungus. It also says a 2016 report described a fungal infection and a tree that could be dying. The garden-history blog says the infection was described as “untreatable” around 2016, and that more recent photographs reportedly show the tree in healthier condition. We cannot say which is the current state. None of our sources describes public access to the tree.
The numbers
Wikipedia says that in 2007 Bramleys made up 95 per cent of total UK culinary apple orchards, covering 13.5 square miles. The garden-history blog says about 95 per cent of UK cooking apples sold for home use are Bramleys, roughly 80,000 tonnes a year, that in 1924 80 per cent of Kent’s 2,469 acres of orchards were Bramley, and that a 1944 fruit census counted more than two million trees in commercial plantations in England and Wales. Wikipedia adds that Bramleys from County Armagh, Northern Ireland, have Protected Geographical Indication status in the EU, are tarter than English ones, and exceed 40,000 tonnes a year. It does not describe a protected name for Bramleys grown elsewhere.
Dates in order
- About 1809: pips planted in Southwell, according to the county record.
- 1846: Matthew Bramley buys the cottage, according to Wikipedia and the food-history site.
- 1856: Merryweather takes cuttings, according to Wikipedia and the food-history site.
- October 1862: first recorded sale, according to the garden-history blog.
- 6 December 1876: highly commended, according to Wikipedia and the county record.
- 1910: first commercial orchard, according to Wikipedia.
- 1990: the tree is cloned, according to Wikipedia.
What kind of sources these are
The county record is local authority heritage material. The food-history website and the garden-history blog are popular sources, and the blog gives more detail than the others but is a single voice. Wikipedia can be edited by anyone.
Questions a buyer would ask
When you see a “Bramley” label on a jar or a gift box, ask where the fruit was grown. The Armagh name is protected; the sources we read do not describe a protected name for Bramleys grown elsewhere. A pie dish decorated with apples is not a Bramley fact. We did not research any product.
What we left out
The later ownership of the cottages, the people who tend the tree now, juice and drink uses, prices, and recipes.
Quick answers
Where did the Bramley apple come from? According to the Nottinghamshire county council’s historic environment record, it grew from a pip planted around 1809 by Mary Ann Brailsford in Southwell.
Why is it called Bramley? Wikipedia says the nurseryman Henry Merryweather asked the butcher Matthew Bramley, who owned the tree, for cuttings in 1856, and Bramley agreed on condition the apples bear his name.
Is Bramley a protected name? Wikipedia says Bramleys from County Armagh have EU Protected Geographical Indication status. It does not describe such a name for Bramleys grown elsewhere.
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Roam first. Shop later.