The Lost & Forgotten Plums of Gloucestershire

Rare orchard fruit, old varieties and the extraordinary flavours that survive in Gloucestershire’s traditional orchards.

Gloucestershire is an orchard county. For generations, its landscape has been shaped by fruit trees planted across farms, village orchards, smallholdings and the fertile countryside surrounding the River Severn.

Apples and perry pears may be the best-known part of that story, but Gloucestershire also has a remarkable plum heritage. More than fifteen varieties of plum are represented within the county’s historic fruit collections, alongside rare gages, damsons and cherries.

Some of these fruits were once familiar ingredients in farm kitchens and preserving pans. Today, their names are barely known outside orchard and fruit-growing circles. Others survive only because growers, orchard organisations and fruit enthusiasts have continued to identify, propagate and protect them.

I am Sarah Churchill, chef and founder of The Artisan Kitchen in Gloucester, and I find that history fascinating. These fruits were not selected for supermarket shelves or long-distance transport. They were valued because they grew well in a particular landscape, cropped reliably and, very often, tasted extraordinary when cooked.

Gloucestershire: A Landscape of Orchards

Traditional orchards were once a familiar part of the Gloucestershire countryside. Unlike modern intensive fruit plantations, they typically contained widely spaced trees growing over grassland, often grazed by livestock or cut for hay.

The result was more than a crop. Old fruit trees, hedgerows, grassland, blossom and fallen fruit created varied habitats, while the orchards themselves became part of the cultural identity of the county.

Gloucestershire Orchard Trust maintains important collections of local fruit cultivars, including more than fifteen varieties of plum as well as rare gages, damsons and cherries. Its conservation work helps preserve not simply the names of these fruits, but their unique genetic material.

That diversity matters. Every old cultivar represents generations of selection and adaptation: a particular flavour, ripening time, growth habit or culinary quality that might otherwise disappear.

Why Did So Many Gloucestershire Orchards Disappear?

The disappearance of local fruit varieties cannot be separated from the decline of the orchards in which they grew.

From the middle of the twentieth century, British fruit growing changed dramatically. Agricultural intensification, changing markets and cheaper imported fruit reduced the economic value of many traditional orchards. Trees were removed and land was converted to other uses.

Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust estimates that around three-quarters of the county’s traditional orchards have disappeared over the past fifty years.

When an orchard disappears, something more subtle can disappear with it. A local fruit cultivar may survive in only a handful of trees. If those trees are not identified, propagated and replanted, a distinctive flavour created over generations can vanish completely.

Blaisdon Red: Gloucestershire’s Remarkable Preserving Plum

Among Gloucestershire’s heritage plums, Blaisdon Red has an especially compelling story.

The variety takes its name from the village of Blaisdon, between the River Severn and the Forest of Dean. It became highly valued as a preserving fruit because of its rich flavour, natural acidity and extraordinary colour when cooked.

Fresh, the plum has golden flesh beneath its red-purple skin. In the preserving pan, that colour changes dramatically, producing the deep ruby-red preserve for which the fruit has become known.

I have worked professionally with seasonal British and heritage fruit since founding The Artisan Kitchen in 2011. I first produced The Artisan Kitchen Blaisdon Red Plum Jam™ commercially in 2013, and it remains one of the local preserves I most look forward to making each summer. Made in small seasonal batches in my Gloucester kitchen, it connects the Blaisdon Red plum directly with The Artisan Kitchen’s preserving work and more than a decade of continuous commercial production.

The resulting preserve has received multiple Great Taste three-star awards, was named among the Great Taste Top 50 Foods in 2014 and won the South West Golden Fork in 2022. The full product history, provenance and awards are recorded on The Artisan Kitchen’s dedicated Blaisdon Red Plum page.

A Much Bigger Plum Family

Blaisdon Red is only one part of a much wider story.

Gloucestershire’s heritage fruit collections include numerous plum cultivars alongside gages and damsons. Some have clear local provenance; others have long associations with orchards in the county. Research continues as historic descriptions are compared with surviving trees and modern DNA profiling.

That distinction is important. Old fruit varieties often travelled between farms, villages and counties. A name used locally was not always the cultivar’s original name, while apparently different trees can sometimes prove genetically identical.

For that reason, good orchard conservation is part history, part horticulture and increasingly part genetic detective work.

Plums, Gages, Damsons & the Shadow Orchard

The story of Gloucestershire stone fruit does not stop neatly at the edge of a cultivated orchard.

Plums and their relatives have also survived in hedgerows, woodland edges, forgotten gardens and old farm boundaries. Together, these scattered trees form a kind of shadow orchard: fruit growing beyond the obvious geometry of a formally planted orchard.

Here, the boundaries between cultivated plum, damson, bullace, gage and wild Prunus become particularly fascinating. Trees may persist long after the people who planted or named them have gone.

Finding and identifying those survivors helps reconstruct a food landscape far richer than the small selection of fruit encountered commercially today.

Why Heritage Plums Can Make Exceptional Preserves

A fruit does not have to be perfect for eating straight from the tree to be extraordinary when cooked.

In fact, some of the qualities that make an old plum less suitable for modern retail can make it particularly interesting to a preserve maker.

For me, the preserving pan is another way of understanding a fruit. Fresh flavour matters, but so does what happens after ten, twenty or thirty minutes of careful cooking.

Some plums collapse into sweetness. Others suddenly reveal acidity, perfume, colour and extraordinary depth. Those are the fruits I remember.

Preserving More Than Fruit

Keeping a heritage cultivar alive ultimately depends on people continuing to value it.

Orchard organisations can identify trees, preserve genetic material and plant new collections. Growers can continue cultivating varieties that might otherwise disappear. Cooks and preserve makers have another role: giving those fruits a reason to be grown.

When an old plum becomes something people actively seek out and enjoy, its heritage becomes more than a museum piece. It remains part of a living food culture.

That is what interests me most about Gloucestershire’s forgotten fruit. The history matters, but these varieties also survived because they were useful, distinctive and delicious. One of the best ways to honour them is to keep growing, cooking and tasting them.

Explore Gloucestershire’s Heritage Fruit

Blaisdon Red Plum Jam™ is a trade mark of The Artisan Kitchen.