SOME of the richest land in England is, one may presume, in the Vale of Evesham. Orchard land there fetched, years ago (say, in 1900), up to £12.00 an acre. The Teme Valley does not claim such high rents as that. But the writer was once by one of the largest and most experienced farmers in theTenbury district that, although the land in the Teme Valley fetched twice the rent of land on the 'banks,' yet the double proportion nothing like covered the  extra value of the valley land. The big  floods not withstanding the serious damage the-time of their appearance, leave a rich legacy for the land they cover, in the shape of the alluvial sediment they deposit, washed down from the higher ground. Fruit and hops benefit accordingly.

From an early period Worcestershire has been noted for its fertility. Thus we find Robert of Gloucester, who lived in the reign of Henry III  (1216-72), celebrating it as follows:

At what period cider first took the place of the old national drink mead, in this part of England, does not seem clear. One authority says that when cider 'was first made in England it was called Wine, about 1284'. But an earlier date than this must be accepted if it be true that, according to one tradition, King John died in 1216 of a surfeit of 'peaches and new Cider'. There can be but little doubt that cider came originally from the orchards of France. It is known that many orchards were planted in Herefordshire by Lord Scudamore, who was Ambassador to France from Charles I.

As to the exact date of the introduction of hops into this district, history is no clearer. They are mentioned as early as 1428, and are then described as a 'wicked weed'. Some date them later. According to Dr. Watson, and as the law books say, they were first introduced into England about 1524. One old adage says:

'Hops, Reformation, Carp and Beer Came into England the same year.'

Another version, given by an old writer, Evi R. Baker, has it thus:

'Turkeys, Carp, Hop, Pickerell and Beer Came into England all in one year'.

G. M. Trevelyan (History of'England, p. 287) gives a third version: ..,

'Hops, Reformation, bays and beer Came into England all in one year.

This, he says,

'is as truthful as such traditional rhymes can be expected to be. Put "era" for "year", and it is correct. "Bays" were a new kind of cloth introduced by Flemings into Norwich. There are various versions of the rhyme, some of them mentioning "turkeys", which came from America.'

It should be noted that 'Hops' and 'Beer' alone appear in all the versions.

In the year 1556 hops are mentioned somewhere as costing 13 shillings and 4 pence per hundred.
Camden, in his Britannia, thus describes Worcestershire, as he must have known it about 1580:

'To say all in one word, the air and soil are so propitious that it is inferior to none of its neighbours either for health or plenty (and in one point for dainty cheese surpasseth them): it produceth pears in great abundance, which though not grateful to nice palates, nor do they keep well, yet they afford a vinous juice of which is made a sort of counterfeit wine, called "Pyrry", which is very much drunk.'

Farther on, referring to the Teme Valley, he says:

'. . . and the soil on both sides produceth excellent Syder and Hops in great abundance.'

The duty on hops appears to have been first laid on in 1711. The measure of the hop acre (1,000 stocks) is larger than that of the statute acre. No history of our 'Town in the Orchard' would be complete without some detailed account of the cider industry, and some of its effects on the inhabitants generally during the last century or so. Cider is popularly supposed to be a wholesome, and some would go so far as to say a 'temperance', drink. Whatever may be said of Devonshire 'cyder', our local 'cider' can certainly never claim the title of 'temperance'. It is a strongly alcoholic beverage, made of rough apples, as a rule in an advanced state of decomposition. The apples lie for a long while in large and rotting heaps. In this condition they gather into their fold a good deal of extraneous matter, including not a little of the insect world. From this amalgam the juice is in due time pressed out, sometimes by the old-fashioned circular, or semi-circular, stone mill, horse-driven or man-pushed; sometimes by the more modern system of a nut mill, now generally worked with an oil-engine. The fruit when crushed then goes through a hair-press, squeezed by a screw. The bulk is called the 'cheese'. The drink thus manufactured is of really strong alcoholic power. It is no doubt less 'doctored' than beer, and so far may be more wholesome. But when at its full strength-and thus it is locally most popular - it is really as strong as beer, and perhaps even more 'quarrelsome'.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century the hay and harvest allowance per man was eight or nine quarts a day, in the Tenbury neighbourhood. The men from the Glee Hill, who were supposed to bustle through more work than the others (or was it that they were accustomed to higher wages in the stone quarries?) claimed eleven quarts!   About the year 1880 Sam Coles employed at Lower Nash Farm, near Tenbury, was used in harvest time to pitch twenty loads of wheat in a day, and he claimed twenty quarts of cider, one quart for each load. One should add, however, that in hay or harvest time such a 'day' would often last from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. Under such conditions, it is quite possible of course that a man might wholesomely sweat out this amount of liquid. But when the consequent amount of alcohol goes to the brain of a man, day after day, under the tremendous physical strain involved in harvest work, the results are disastrous. The alcohol may whip the flagging energy again and again. But each time it leaves the will weaker and the brain more fuddled. Even apart from the special times of hay and harvest, the cider allowance on the farms has for generations exercised a sorry influence on the welfare of our local labourers. When wages were 12 shillings a week, or less, a man with a wife and family would have, as part of his wages, two quarts of cider a day. This would go down his own throat, leaving his wife and children with no share of that value. This was of course in direct opposition to the law, inasmuch as the 'Truck Acts' prohibit any part of wages being paid in kind. But where employers and employed are in agreement, as they used to be on the cider question, they can afford to ignore the law, and indeed to set it at defiance.

In or about 1885, some of the local clergy, backed by one or two squire employers, more courageous than the rest, tried to organize a Tenbury Conference on this question of cider and wages. The object was to get farmers and labourers to listen to reason, and give up the mischievous habit of 'part payment in cider'. The Conference Meeting, held in the Corn Exchange, ended in the nearest approach to a riot, as one may presume, witnessed in Tenbury for many generations, perhaps in its whole history. Some interested persons had organized 'free drinks' at the public houses throughout the town. A large number of those present, thus primed, were 'over the mark'. They refused the lecturer any audience. He had given them a fair challenge to a personal contest in the hay field with, and without, 'strong drink'. Their only answer was to threaten him with violence. The meeting ended in uproar, and for days thereafter the country side re-echoed with cries of 'Zider, Zider'.

Reason, however, is apt to assert itself in the long run. The more capable workmen nowadays prefer wages in cash, that they may spend their money as they please. And the wiser employers are learning by an expensive experience that less drink produces more work, and better work. But the consumption still remains very large in places. One case can be vouched for of a farm at Greet, not three miles from Tenbury, and not so long ago, where in ten months three men with an occasional caller consumed 1,300 gallons of cider.

Far-seeing apple growers also lay themselves out more and more for pot fruit in preference to the commoner cider sorts. Apples, like people, come and go. Like kingdoms, their names and families rise and fall. Where now is the once famous 'Cornish gilly flower'? It is said that you can plant 100 apple pips and 99 will come up crabs. The policy of the modern apple growers is, by natural selection, and by the survival of the fittest, to produce the best marketable commodity. Oddly enough, in view of the local cider cult of fifty years ago, now in these later years, e.g. in 1924, we find farmers and publicans of the Tenbury neighbourhood, and even brewing companies, buying French apples, to come by way of Bristol, for their own cider making purposes.

Some will have it that cider is the most wholesome of drinks. Certainly, in its lighter forms, such as the Herefordshire bottled cider, it may well claim to be one of the least unwholesome of popular drinks. Others contend that it is conducive to rheumatism. On that point the probable truth is that our local clay conduces alike to rheumatism and to the prolific growth of apples. Here is a list of some of the most famous local apples growing at the present time: Blenheims, Bramley Seedlings, Broadtails, Frognals, Keswicks, Newton Wonders, Normingtons, Princess Pippins, Red Devons, Ripstones (N. B. not Ribstones as often misnamed), Rushocks, Scotch Bridgets, Lord Suffields. Tom Putts, Warner Kings, Winter Quinings, Worcester Pearmains, and numerous cider apples, as Bittersweets, Roughthorns, &c. (See list below, p. 194.) On the question of drink in general, what was true, say fifty years ago, of the whole of England, was not least true of the Tenbury neighbourhood. The licensed houses were far too numerous, and the amount of strong liquor consumed was out of all proportion to the claims alike of health and economy. About that period it has been stated that, throughout the whole country one house in forty was a licensed house. In old-fashioned boroughs, in cathedral cities especially, and in places like Tenbury, it is said that actually one house in eight was a common proportion. This was of course a result of the period when a licence could be had for the asking. The following interesting note occurs in the Worcestershire Calendar of Sessions Papers, p. clxx:

(1642) 'There is one very curious presentment, made by the Inhabitants of Tenbury against Sir William Corn-wall. He was charged with taking 2s. 6d. a piece from certain Ale-sellers in Tenbury for Licences, and maintain-ing them to sell Ale for a year without Licences. If this is true it throws a new light on the question of the existence of unlicensed Ale Houses.'

Is it possible that, for our own generation, some light may also here be thrown on the custom, still persisting to quite recent times, of the secret and unlicensed selling of cider, especially on Sundays, at certain lawless farm houses? Local customs die very slowly in the Tenbury district. Throughout the 'Border' counties, 'market peart' and 'over the mark' have long been generalities of agricultural life. Certainly, within the last thirty or forty years Market Day at Tenbury held its own bravely. On Tuesday evening you met your churchwarden nodding in his dog-cart, or trap, on his way home; and you gave him an extra six inches of the road, or more, as the case might be. Had the mischief ended with cider and beer, the evil might not, perhaps, have had such serious results, at least from a physical point of view. But when spirits became the fashion as a 'top up' to the milder alcoholic liquors, the whole drinking customs, with the 'treating' habit and the blackmail of the 'social glass', then wrought havoc in many a happy and hardworking family. A 'cup o' cider' was the invariable offer of courtesy on every occasion when men met, from a pig-killing, or any other special job, to a casual call. The postman, as he went his beat, looked for his mug of cider at every substantial house he served. One curious phenomenon in connexion with this subject is that, even when 'over the mark', those who went to sale or market seemed seldom to be let down in the matter of a bargain. When money is at stake, even when other wits are dulled, the instinct of self-preservation would appear to assert itself strongly and securely. But how strange to our successors will seem the custom, still largely prevalent throughout our land, though gradually at last losing its force, that you cannot properly 'do a deal' without a glass to clinch it.

A still more serious aspect of this question, down to quite recent times, was the mischief done to the younger generation. A boy going out at the age I of 13 or 14, on a farm, was practically forced to * drink his 'cider'; or he was a 'milksop'. Teetotallers had universally to run the gauntlet of ridicule, and at times had to undergo treatment more violent. 'Bands of Hope' were given the cold shoulder in most parishes. Even the clergy, who in the earlier half of the nineteenth century had not been ashamed to vie with the squires as 'two-bottle' men, were still, many of them, very lukewarm in the temperance propaganda.

One dear old rector, at the close of a Temperance Address by one of his younger brethren, thus summed up the situation:

'I hope, my dear friends, that you will bear in mind all that has been said to you this evening, and will act on the advice given you. Especially do I hope that the younger generation, and as many of you as possible, will learn to abstain from intoxicating liquors. For myself, I have always taken, and enjoyed, my glass of port wine, and shall continue to do so.'

The following incident may serve perhaps to illustrate this short sketch of 'Drink' in the Tenbury neighbourhood.

The late Lord Northwick, owner of the Burford Estate, a kind and generous landlord, married somewhat late in life. On his wedding day (1872), speaking to the assembled multitudes from the top of the 'Castle Tump', he gave them the following piece of wholesome advice:

'Gentlemen, you will now be saying with the Latin poet, Horace, "Nunc est bibendum". But let me first give you one word of advice: Drink like the clay, Gentlemen, drink like the clay; drink till you've had enough, and not one drop more.'

The advice was not followed. Cider prevailed, and ruled for the rest of the day. The Clee Hill men who, scenting sport, had come down in their scores, and had invaded the Tenbury festivities, seized the best parts of the roasted ox; then seized the rectory gardener, who had taken more cider than enough, and with his jaunty pot hat and a new suit of broadcloth was making himself too conspicuous, and rolled him in the large dripping pan, which lay on the upper ridge of the Castle Meadow. Meanwhile the Festivities Committee, consisting of the leading farmers of the parish, considered discretion the better part of valour, and let the rioters have their way.

The fact is that cider in the Tenbury neighbourhood is not merely a popular beverage: it has been for generations a part of the life and culture of the people. It is a constituent element in their social code of friendship and hospitality. It may be said indeed to have even its reverential aspect. A certain widowed daughter of the soil, bewailing the loss of her late husband and other parish worthies, all of whom had had their full share of the cider barrel, thus described her view of them as she imagined them in the next world:

'There was poor A. B., he's dead: and then there 's C. D. and E. F., they soon followed: and now my 'arry 's gone. Ah! I can see 'm all now, a settin there, with their golden crowns on their 'eds, and each with a cup o' cider in front of 'im.'

Nevertheless who can doubt but that the life of Tenbury and its neighbourhood would have been happier and more prosperous in the past, had the cider been less in quantity, and less in alcoholic strength than it has been? Old customs die hard. But some of them were better dead. And the old drink customs round our 'Town in the Orchard'— some of them, at all events—have done untold mischief, morally and economically, to a kind-hearted and hard-working people.