REDSTREA1C CIDER.
[To TIM EDITOR Or run SPROTATOR:]
Sut,—In the interesting article in the Spectator of April 17th entitled "A Book of the Road," virtually a review of Owen's "Britannia Depicta, or Ogilby Improv'd," you cite among the descriptions of the chief commodities of the various counties that of Herefordshire as follows. Herefordshire "exceeds in four things, Wheat, Wood, Wool and Water, which last produces plenty of Salmon ; but more eminently famed for Cyder, especially Red Streak, which is much esteemed all over the Laud"; and you add : "Doubtless you may still buy Red Streak cyder in Herefordshire."
I fear you might seek all the county through and not find a tree of the true Redstrea,k from which the eider so much esteemed in the latter part of the seventeenth and the greater part of the eighteenth centuries was obtained still living. There are plenty of apples called Redstreaks from their colouring, 'but none of them produce cider of any special excellence. The original Redstreak, or, as our ancestors wrote it, Redstrake, was said to have been raised from seed in the early part of the seventeenth century by Lord Scudamore, of Hohne Lacy, near Hereford. Hence it was at first known by the name of Scudamore's Crab. The fruit is figured in colours in Knight's "Pomona Herefordiensis," published in 1811, and in the "Herefordshire Pomona," published about twenty-five years ago. The editors of this last-named work appear to have beard of one tree of the true old Red. streak at King's Caple, near Ross, which was blown down in 1878, and of another, from which the example of the fruit depicted seems to have been obtained, at Kcmpley, a parish in Gloucestershire adjoining that in Herefordshire wherein I am now writing,—Much Marcie. The whole of this district was in early times famed for its apple orchards. Indeed, Kempley is a modernised form or contraction of the Saxon " Cyne-ceppel-leah," or King's Apple Land, the name in Domesday Book, as transcribed by the Norman clerk, being " Chenepelei." Redstreak cider lost its popularity towards the close of the eighteenth century, when it was supplanted by the cider of the Foxwhelp, another apple raised in Herefordshire, presumably in the seventeenth century, as the first mention of it is in Evelyn'e "Pomona." The Foxwhelp gradually gained in favour until it was reckoned the finest eider apple in existence, a reputation which it still bears. To the four things in which this county exceeds—" wheat, wood, wool, and water "—a fifth should be added, to wit, "women," a commodity whose attractiveness is indicated in the well-known couplet :—
" Fine is the eye "rwixt Severn and Wyo."
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