The extent of the fruit industry may be gathered from the figures for
the acreage of land under cultivation in orchards and small fruit
plantations. The Board of Agriculture returns concerning the orchard
areas of Great Britain showed a continuous expansion year by year from
199,178 acres in 1888 to 234,660 acres in 1901, as will be learnt from
Table I. There was, it is true, an exception in 1892, but the decline in
that year is explained by the circumstance that since 1891 the
agricultural returns have been collected only from holdings of more than
one acre, whereas they were previously obtained from all holdings of a
quarter of an acre or more. As there are many holdings of less than an
acre in extent upon which fruit is grown, and as fruit is largely raised
also in suburban and other gardens which do not come into the returns,
it may be taken for granted that the actual extent of land devoted to
fruit culture exceeds that which is indicated by the official figures.
In the Board of Agriculture returns up to June 1908, 308,000 acres are
stated to be devoted to fruit cultivation of all kinds in Great Britain.
Table II. shows that the expansion of the orchard area of Great Britain
is mainly confined to England, for it has slightly decreased in Wales
and Scotland. The acreage officially returned as under orchards is that
of arable or grass land which is also used for fruit trees of any kind.
Conditions of soil and climate determine the irregular distribution of
orchards in Great Britain. The dozen counties which possess the largest
extent of orchard land all lie in the south or west of the island.
According to the returns for 1908 (excluding small fruit areas) they
were the following:--
+----------+--------++-----------+--------++----------+------+
| County. | Acres. || County. | Acres. || County. |Acres.|
+----------+--------++-----------+--------++----------+------+
| Kent | 32,751 || Worcester | 23,653 || Salop | 4685 |
| Devon | 27,200 || Gloucester| 20,424 || Dorset | 4464 |
| Hereford | 28,316 || Cornwall | 5,415 || Monmouth | 3914 |
| Somerset | 25,279 || Middlesex | 5,300 || Wilts | 3630 |
+----------+--------++-----------+--------++----------+------+
Leaving out of consideration the county of Kent, which grows a greater
variety of fruit than any of the others, the counties of Devon,
Hereford, Somerset, Worcester and Gloucester have an aggregate orchard
area of 124,872 acres. These five counties of the west and south-west of
England--constituting in one continuous area what is essentially the
cider country of Great Britain--embrace therefore rather less than half
of the entire orchard area of the island, while Salop, Monmouth and
Wilts have about 300 less than they had a few years ago. Five English
counties have less than 1000 acres each of orchards, namely, the county
of London, and the northern counties of Cumberland, Westmorland,
Northumberland and Durham. Rutland has just over 100 acres. The largest
orchard areas in Wales are in the two counties adjoining
Hereford--Brecon with 1136 acres and Radnor with 727 acres; at the other
extreme is Anglesey, with a decreasing orchard area of only 22 acres. Of
the Scottish counties, Lanark takes the lead with 1285 acres, Perth,
Stirling and Haddington following with 684 and 129 acres respectively.
Ayr and Midlothian are the only other counties possessing 100 acres or
more of orchards, whilst Kincardine, Orkney and Shetland return no
orchard area, and Banff, Bute, Kinross, Nairn, Peebles, Sutherland and
Wigtown return less than 10 acres each. It may be added that in 1908
Jersey returned 1090 acres of orchards, Guernsey, &c., 144 acres, and
the Isle of Man, 121 acres; the two last-named places showing a decline
as compared with eight years previously.
Outside the cider counties proper of England, the counties in which
orchards for commercial fruit-growing have increased considerably in
recent years include Berks, Buckingham, Cambridge, Essex, Lincoln,
Middlesex, Monmouth, Norfolk, Oxford, Salop, Sussex, Warwick and Wilts.
Apples are the principal fruit grown in the western and south-western
counties, pears also being fairly common. In parts of Gloucestershire,
however, and in the Evesham and Pershore districts of Worcestershire,
plum orchards exist. Plums are almost as largely grown as apples in
Cambridgeshire. Large quantities of apples, plums, damsons, cherries,
and a fair quantity of pears are grown for the market in Kent, whilst
apples, plums and pears predominate in Middlesex. In many counties
damsons are cultivated around fruit plantations to shelter the latter
from the wind.
Of small fruit (currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, &c.)
no return was made of the acreage previous to 1888, in which year it was
given as 36,724 acres for Great Britain. In 1889 it rose to 41,933
acres.
Later figures are shown in Table III. It will be observed that, owing to
corrections made in the enumeration in 1897, a considerable reduction in
the area is recorded for that year, and presumably the error then
discovered existed in all the preceding returns. The returns for 1907
gave the acreage of small fruit as 82,175 acres, and in 1908 at 84,880
acres--an area more than double that of 1889.