From the Living Museum
Foxwhelp
- Origin
- Gloucestershire or Herefordshire, England; documented from the 17th–18th centuries
- Era
- 17th–18th c.
- Type / use
- Cider (Bittersharp)
From the ArchiveFilm
Watch its story
Better Than French Wine
A short narrated history of Foxwhelp, told through the archive illustrations of our apple collection.
Illustrations: Thomas Andrew Knight, Pomona Herefordiensis (1811), and W. G. Smith, The Herefordshire Pomona, vol. 1, plate I (1876–85) (public domain). Narrated with a synthetic voice.
Watch on YouTubeHistory & Stories
Classic English bittersharp cider apple. High acid and tannin that give traditional West Country cider its characteristic bite and structure. Unique historical depth — one of the older named English cider varieties still in use.
Folklore & Name
Very old English cider apple (17th–18th century documentation). Classic bittersharp that gives traditional West Country cider its bite and structure. Name of local origin.
Digging into the History
Below my own notes, here is what the old fruit books and today’s collections record about this apple, kept apart from the stories people tell.
What we know
Foxwhelp is one of the oldest named cider apples in England. Robert Hogg's Fruit Manual (1884) called it "one of the most valuable of the cider apples of Herefordshire." Hogg traced its history carefully. The earliest mention he knew was in John Evelyn's Pomona (1664), which notes briefly that "some commend" it; John Worlidge, in 1676, counted it among the choice cider fruits. In Evelyn's day, Hogg thought, people took it for a Gloucestershire apple, and one early writer he quotes tied it to the Forest of Dean 1. Today the UK National Fruit Collection holds several sports of it, including Red Foxwhelp and Broxwood Foxwhelp, the second of which the cider maker H.P. Bulmer planted in the 1920s 2.
The competing accounts
- Robert Hogg, 1884 1: first mentioned by Evelyn (1664); in Evelyn's day thought to be a Gloucestershire apple, and linked by an early writer to the Forest of Dean.
- Hugh Stafford, 1727, quoted by Hogg 1: "of Herefordshire extraction." Hogg himself counted it among Herefordshire's most valuable cider apples.
Most likely (our judgment, not a certainty): an apple of the Gloucestershire–Herefordshire border country around the Forest of Dean, in print since 1664. The oldest sources lean to Gloucestershire and Dean, and Herefordshire is where it became famous; the two are neighbours, so the accounts may describe the same district.
What we think: stories & traditions
Better than French wine (testimony). Hogg quotes a 1727 letter by Hugh Stafford of Pynes in Devon, who had heard that a hogshead of Foxwhelp cider could fetch £8 or eight guineas in London, and that people often swapped a hogshead of French wine for the same amount of it. Stafford also called the apple "of Herefordshire extraction" 1. Stafford was passing on hearsay, but it shows how highly the apple's cider was rated.
The name. Nobody knows why it is called Foxwhelp (a fox cub). It may have been named for a field, a farm, or a person, but no source we found explains it.
Sources
- Robert Hogg, The Fruit Manual, 5th ed. (London, 1884), "Fox-whelp," pp. 81–82. archive.org/details/fruitmanualguide00hoggrich/page/81
- UK National Fruit Collection, "Broxwood Foxwhelp." www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/full2.php?id=800&fruit=apple
Curious about Foxwhelp?
Email us at drgoss@honeytreeorchard.com.