Description
Raised in about 1750 either by Paton the gardener at Cambusnethan House or at the Cambusnethan Monastery. One of a number of notable fruit from the Clyde Valley (The Garden Valley), the fruits have fine textured flesh with little juice and a sweet, faintly perfumed flavour. One of Scotland's finest eating apples (Hancox), and a good keeper.
"We were given this Cambusnethan Pippin from the collection in the National Trust for Scotland's Priorwood Garden in Melrose, in the Scottish Borders of Roxburghshire. Its provenance is usually given either as the raising of Mr Paton, Head Gardener at Cambusnethan House, or as a more ancient apple that was grown at the Cambusnethan monastery in Stirlingshire. Today, it can also be seen in the orchard at the Tower of Hallbar, a sixteenth-century tower house in South Lanarkshire, an award-winning restoration project in the hands of the Vivat Trust. Cambusnethan Pippin has also been found throughout the Clyde Valley, during a survey of local orchards there (Ironside Farrar, 2004, A Clyde Valley Orchards Survey, Scottish Natural Heritage). In many ways, the findings of this survey reinforce our experiences of Yorkshire orchards; the 53 varieties so far identified are also commonly seen in northern England.
For centuries, the Clyde Valley — ‘The Garden Valley' — was a centre of local fruit production, serving Lanark and Glasgow, and there is evidence that systematic fruit culture was practised here as early as the 5th century, perhaps with monastic connections. I have noted, but found little or nothing about them, that several old apple names bear the prefix Clyde: Clydeside, Clydesdale, Clyde Transparent, of which only the first appears to be in the National Collection at Brogdale." © Lin Hawthorne - 'The Northern Pomona'.
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