Honey Tree Orchard & ApiaryCedar Bluff, Virginia

From the Living Museum

Hagloe Crab

Origin
Hagloe, in the parish of Awre, Gloucestershire, England; credited to Mr. Bellamy of Hagloe, about 1720 or earlier
Era
About 1720 or earlier
Type / use
Cider (Crab)
Grafted, planting April 2027
Hagloe Crab: historic illustration, The Herefordshire Pomona, vol. 2, plate LXXII, fig. 3 (Woolhope Club, 1876–85)
Illustration: Edith E. Bull, The Herefordshire Pomona, vol. 2, plate LXXII, fig. 3 (Woolhope Club, 1876–85). Public domain; scan by Cornell University Library via Internet Archive (cropped). All image credits

From the ArchiveFilm

Watch its story

Sixty Guineas a Cask

A short narrated history of Hagloe Crab, told through the archive illustrations of our apple collection.

Illustrations: plate V, Thomas Andrew Knight, Pomona Herefordiensis (1811), and Edith E. Bull, The Herefordshire Pomona, plate LXXII (1876–85) (public domain). Narrated with a synthetic voice.

Watch on YouTube

History & Stories

Historic English cider apple from Hagloe in Gloucestershire, credited to the Bellamy family, whose cider was among the most prized in England 1,5,7. A different American summer apple was later sold under the same name; it is now called Summer Hagloe 3,11.

Folklore & Name

Named for Hagloe, in the parish of Awre, Gloucestershire 7. William Coxe of Burlington, New Jersey, brought the name to American readers in 1817, but the apple he described was the American Summer Hagloe 2,3.

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

Hagloe Crab is an old English cider apple. It takes its name from Hagloe, in Awre parish, Gloucestershire 7. The first writer to describe it was the farming author William Marshall, in 1789. He credits a Mr. Bellamy of Hagloe, grandfather of the Mr. Bellamy then farming near Ross in Herefordshire, with raising it from seed about seventy years before, so around 1720 5,7. Thomas Andrew Knight doubted that date in 1811. Friends of his had looked for the first tree at Hagloe long before and never found it, so he thought the family had more likely discovered a good apple than raised one 6,7.

Its fame came from the cider. Hogg, repeating Marshall, says one Bellamy was offered sixty guineas for a single hogshead 1. The English books agree on the fruit: small, lopsided and egg-shaped, pale yellow with red flecks and some russet, and grown for the press 8,1,7. By the early 1880s the Herefordshire Pomona could no longer find it at Herefordshire apple shows, though it still grew in four Gloucestershire parishes 7. The UK National Fruit Collection lists a "Hagloe Crab (Bulmers)" in its register of local apples but holds no tree of it 13.

In America the name traveled onto a different apple. William Coxe of Burlington, New Jersey, printed an entry for Hagloe Crab in 1817. He retold the English cider story, but the fruit he described was a middling to large summer apple, ripe in August, that he praised for cooking and market 2. Downing doubted in 1845 that it was the English crab 9. By 1848 he admitted the mix-up, after Mr. Prince raised it at a fruit growers' meeting 10, and in 1849 John J. Thomas called the summer apple "wholly distinct from the Hagloe Crab" 11. American nurseries then sold it as Summer Hagloe, or simply Hagloe. Warder (1867) found it widely planted by New Jersey market gardeners 12. Beach (1905) reports that it was by then held to be American-born 3, and the National Fruit Collection gives Summer Hagloe an American origin and dates its first description to 1817 4. No source we found names the state or town where it began.

The competing accounts

  • William Marshall, 1789 5, followed by the Herefordshire Pomona 7: raised from seed by Mr. Bellamy at Hagloe, Gloucestershire, about 1720.
  • Thomas Andrew Knight, 1811 6: probably older than that, and found rather than raised by the Bellamys. Lindley (1831), retelling Marshall, puts it near the end of the 1600s 8.
  • William Coxe, 1817 2: a famous Herefordshire cider apple, though his description fits the American summer apple.
  • The New Jersey account (the older text on this page): no source we found says either apple began in New Jersey. The tie is that Coxe wrote there and that the American Hagloe was much grown there 2,12.

Most likely: Hagloe Crab is the English cider apple from Hagloe in Gloucestershire, known from about 1720 and perhaps earlier 5,6,7. The American Hagloe, or Summer Hagloe, is a separate summer cooking apple of American origin that borrowed the name 3,4,11.

What we think: stories & traditions

Which Hagloe is in our apple collection? Our tree came to us as Hagloe Crab and is grown here as a cider crab, which is the role of the English apple, so that is what we take it to be. The plate shown on this page is the English apple from the Herefordshire Pomona. The tree has not fruited yet. When it does, the two are easy to tell apart. The English crab is small, egg-shaped and late, made for cider 1,7,11. The American Hagloe is a bigger, flatter, striped apple that ripens in late summer 3,11.

Sixty guineas a cask. The story of buyers offering wine "bottle for bottle" for this cider is Marshall's, passed on by Hogg 1,5. It may be a proud boast, but it shows how highly the apple was once prized.

Sources

  1. Robert Hogg, The Fruit Manual, 5th ed. (London, 1884), "Hagloe Crab," p. 101 (quoting Marshall). archive.org/details/fruitmanualguide00hoggrich/page/101
  2. William Coxe, A View of the Cultivation of Fruit Trees (Philadelphia: M. Carey and Son, 1817), "No. 13. Hagloe Crab," pp. 107–108. archive.org/details/viewofcultivatio00coxerich/page/107
  3. S.A. Beach, The Apples of New York, Vol. 2 (Albany: J.B. Lyon, 1905), "Hagloe," p. 92. archive.org/details/applesofnewyork02beacrich/page/92
  4. UK National Fruit Collection, "Summer Hagloe" (register entry). www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/full2.php?id=6116&fruit=apple
  5. William Marshall, The Rural Economy of Glocestershire, Vol. 2 (Gloucester, 1789), pp. 252–253. archive.org/details/ruraleconomyofgl02mars/page/252
  6. Thomas Andrew Knight, Pomona Herefordiensis (London: Agricultural Society of Herefordshire, 1811), "The Hagloe Crab," plate V. archive.org/details/pomonaherefordi00kniga
  7. Robert Hogg and H.G. Bull, eds., The Herefordshire Pomona, Vol. 2 (Hereford: Woolhope Club, 1876–85), text to plate LXXII, fig. 3, "Hagloe Crab." archive.org/details/herefordshirepo00bulla/page/n361/mode/1up
  8. George Lindley, A Guide to the Orchard and Fruit Garden (London, 1831), "Hagloe Crab," p. 107. archive.org/details/guidetoorchardfr00lindrich/page/107
  9. A.J. Downing, The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845), "Hagloe Crab," pp. 145–146. archive.org/details/fruitsfruittrees01down/page/145
  10. The Horticulturist, Vol. 3, no. 5 (November 1848), "The Summer Hagloe Apple," p. 248. archive.org/details/sim_horticulturist-and-journal-of-rural-art-and-rural-taste_1848-11_3_5
  11. John J. Thomas, The American Fruit Culturist (Auburn, N.Y., 1849), "Summer Hagloe," p. 141. archive.org/details/americanfruitcult00thomrich/page/141
  12. John A. Warder, American Pomology: Apples (New York, 1867), "Hagloe," p. 596. archive.org/details/americanpomology00ward/page/596
  13. UK National Fruit Collection, "Hagloe Crab (Bulmers)" (register entry; not held). www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/full2.php?id=25616&fruit=apple

Curious about Hagloe Crab?

Email us at drgoss@honeytreeorchard.com.