1564 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



garden has several stems, which spread a long way ; and the fallen stems seem sound. 

 Perhaps the most striking part of this tree, which has probably been separately 

 planted, is now in a meadow 200 yards off on the banks of the Wye. This has eight 

 different stems whose various branches measured, in July 1908, 126 paces in circum- 

 ference. The older trunks have very rugged- bark, and twist from left to right. 

 The late Rev. A. Ley informed me that the fruit was small ; and the local black- 

 smith, who makes perry from it which I found to be very fair, said that it most 

 resembled a variety locally called " Taunton Squash." 



The cultivated pear seems to attain its greatest size on rather heavy Red Sand- 

 stone soils in the neighbourhood of Worcester. One of the largest I have seen is 

 in an orchard at Eardiston, 15J miles from Worcester, on the road to Ludlow, and 

 3^^ miles from Newnham Bridge Station. This pear tree is mentioned by Rider 

 Haggard in Rural England, i. 340 (1902), as being 17 ft. in girth, but when I visited 

 it in March 1907, I made it 62 ft. by 13^ ft. It grows on a steep bank sheltered 

 from the north, on which side it is hollow at the butt. (Plate 357.) 



There is an orchard of very fine old pears, many of which are now decaying 

 and others gone, since they were described in Herefordshire Pomona (vol. i. p. 20) 

 as " an orchard of Barland pears, perhaps unequalled in the world." They grow on 

 Monkland farm between Worcester and Malvern, and, according to tradition, were 

 planted by the Monks of Malvern, in which case they must be 300 years 

 old. Mr. E. Lees, in Botany of the Malvern Hills, 62 (1843), writes of them: — 

 " There are more than seventy lofty trees, and in a ' hit,' as it is called, the 

 produce has amounted to 200 hogsheads. The orchard in question occupies five or 

 six acres, and the price of perry varies from 6d. to is. 6d. per gallon. Supposing the 

 average price to be £2) P^i" hogshead, the perry produced would be worth ;^6oo, but 

 a ' hit ' must not be expected every year, and the trees are now becoming very old." 



There is another orchard not far off on Lower Woodfield Farm which Mr. 

 Slater, forester to Earl Beauchamp, showed me in 1908, and which are also called 

 Barland pears.^ The best of these are about 60 ft. high, and two which I measured 

 were 1 1 ft. and 8|- ft. in girth. 



At Forthampton Vicarage near Tewkesbury there is another magnificent 

 orchard of so-called " Hufcap " pears,^ which strongly resemble the Barland in bark 

 and habit, and like them are all grafted at about 6 ft. from the ground. These are said 

 to have been planted in the reign of Charles IL, and are growing on a strong red 

 marl. They are in three lines, and though several of them are partially decayed, 



1 The Barland pear is figured by Hogg and Bull, Herefordshire Pomona, vol. i. plate xviii. (1876-1885), and is said to 

 have originally grown in a field called Bare Lands, near Ledbury. Evel)m says of it in his Pomona : — " The horse pear and 

 Bareland pear are reputed of the best as bearing almost their weight of spritefiil and vinous liquor. They will grow in common 

 fields of gravelly and stony ground to that largeness, as only one tree has been usually known to make three or four hogsheads." 

 The fruit he describes as " of such insuflFerable taste that hungry swine will not smell to it, or if hunger tempt them to taste at 

 first crush they shake it out of their mouth." The authors of Pomona, however, say that Barland perry does not bottle welL It 

 curdles in the bottles, and in Herefordshire is usually drunk as soon as made, when it is considered very wholesome, and 

 singularly beneficial in nephritic complaints. 



2 The Black Hufcap pear is figured by Knight, Pomona Herefordiemis, plate xxiv. (181 1), and is said to have been 

 known from the seventeenth century and to be best of all the varieties. The fruit is very harsh and austere, but becomes very 

 sweet during the process of grinding. Its perry possesses much strength and richness, and has the credit of intoxicating more 

 rapidly than that made from any other pear. The Yellow Hufcap is a very favourite pear near Ledbury, earlier than the Black 

 Hufcap, and bears freely, though usually in great abundance every second year. Its perry is excellent. 



