Afton Park Orchard, Isle of Wight

At the Orchard there are 150 mature apple trees, mainly Cox's Orange and Bramley, but also James Grieve, Discovery, Spartan and Blenhiem Orange. Traditional apple varieties more in keeping with our Isle of Wight location are also being planted. These include Isle of Wight Pippin, Sir John Thornycroft, Howgate Wonder and the Isle of Wight Russet.

The apple is our most ancient and traditional fruit, it has been a part of our culture for hundreds of years, from Isaac Newton and William Tell to apple dunking and toffee apples. But over the past 30 years thousands of acres of apple trees have been destroyed as growers have succumbed to pressure from foreign imports.

Apples do well Isle of Wight with plenty of sunshine and few frosts, which is why we the Apple Day Festival on the Isle of Wight is probably the first in the UK. In 1999 Afton Park entered the National Fruit Show and won 3rd place in the Apple Juice section.

History

The Orchard at Afton Park was planted in the late 1970's by Les Smith. He bought and cleared the land, which was head high in places with brambles and weeds, and planted over a thousand apple trees. He also built the buildings now housing the shop and cafe kitchen. Where the Apple Tree Cafe is now was originally a tractor shed! Les also planted other trees such as poplars to act as wind breaks for the orchard which is only half a mile from the sea at Freshwater Bay.

The apple trees planted were Cox's Orange Pippin, Bramley's Seedling, Spartan, James Grieve, Discovery and Blenheim Orange. All were dwarf root stock which is why they only reach about 9 feet in height. When the trees fruited it was picked using local labour from Freshwater village and many local children, now well into adulthood played in the orchard while their mothers or fathers picked the crop.

Les also introduced apple juice production to the orchard, installing a 42 tonne apple press and bottling equipment.

In it's prime the orchard would produce around 250,000 lbs of apples a year and much of this crop was sold locally with people calling into the orchard from all over the Isle of Wight to buy apples.

However with the arrival of large supermarkets on the Island and imported apples from France and South Africa, many English orchards suffered and when Les reached retirement age he was unable to sell or lease the orchard. He made the difficult decision of removing all but 200 of the trees and managing these rather than letting the whole orchard fall into decline.

Barney and Chris Barnes bought Afton Park in 1997 planting local Isle of Wight and traditional apple trees like Howgate Wonder, as well as designing and building the award winning gardens featured in magazines such as Gardens Illustrated and Country Living. Chris still gives talks on the gardens at Afton Park during the Apple Days Festival.

Afton Park was purchased by Paul and Michaela Heathcote in 2006 and they continue the Apple Day traditions as well as including apples in many of the products in the new Farm Shop which specialises in local Isle of Wight and Fairtrade produce.

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