KIRDFORD – The story of Kirdford Growers

Introduction

For much of the twentieth century, the western approach to Kirdford was marked by rows of apple trees, fruit lorries and the long buildings of Kirdford Growers at Pound Common. Autumn brought the busiest weeks. Heavy bins arrived from the member farms, doors stood open across the packing station and the crop moved through washing, grading, storage and packing before leaving for markets far beyond Sussex.

The business joined several kinds of work within one rural site. Orchardists decided what to plant and how to manage the trees. Pickers handled each apple carefully. Women graders judged colour, size and blemishes at speed. Packers built ordered layers inside boxes, maintenance staff kept conveyors and stores working, drivers carried consignments away and office staff matched prepared fruit with buyers. During the peak season the packhouse became one of the largest concentrations of work in the village.

Kirdford Growers survived for more than sixty years because it repeatedly changed its methods. The first association shared trees, equipment and marketing. The packhouse added grading machinery and gas storage. Wartime production brought the Home Guard, the National Fire Service and the Women’s Land Army into the same working landscape. Post-war expansion was followed by direct retailing, a garden centre, a nursery for employees’ children, a Country Shop and a tea room. The history can therefore be followed as one continuous sequence from the old farm orchard to Bramley Close.

Orchards before the co-operative

Apple growing belonged to Kirdford long before a commercial co-operative appeared. Orchards stood close to farmhouses, barns and yards, supplying fruit for eating, cooking, preserving and cider. They formed one part of mixed holdings that also supported cattle, pigs, grain, hay, woodland and garden crops.

H. Kenyon’s study of probate inventories between 1611 and 1776 found apples, orchards, cider presses and a cider mill within the parish economy. The references describe production at household and farm scale. A press or mill could serve several neighbours, while the fruit itself might be eaten, stored or turned into drink without entering a commercial account.

The 1845 tithe schedule gives a clearer measure. It recorded forty-six orchard references covering about fifty acres. Wephurst contained the largest concentration, with eighteen and a half acres divided among six enclosures. Most of the remaining orchards were small plots averaging about three-quarters of an acre. Apples were widespread, yet they remained one crop among many.

During the later nineteenth century, falling grain prices and changing markets encouraged farmers to reconsider the use of selected fields. Dairy farming expanded, and fruit offered another intensive use for lighter or better-drained ground. The older orchard tradition supplied local knowledge; commercial planting would bring a different scale, new varieties and specialised work.

From experiment to association

The modern industry began during the early 1920s when an experimental fruit plot was established on A. J. Carter’s farm at Wisborough Green with the involvement of the East Malling Research Station. Dr Hatton examined the results and regarded the district as suitable for commercial fruit growing. Cox’s Orange Pippin developed the colour and flavour required by the market, while sheltered fields and variations within the Wealden soils gave growers a choice of workable sites.

The first investors brought both training and friendship to the enterprise. Several had studied at Wye College and knew one another as young agricultural graduates. Baker, Fowle, Holdsworth, Napier and Spence acquired farms including Hills Green, Costrong, Bellchambers, Little Slifehurst and Laneland. Between them they controlled twelve farms and could test varieties and orchard methods across a substantial area.

Their practical partnership began in 1926. Trees and supplies could be bought together, knowledge could be shared and crops could eventually be offered in quantities large enough to interest major buyers. G. H. Kenyon joined the group in 1928, when the organisation took the name Kirdford Fruit Growers Association. The early co-operative grew from a circle of growers who trusted one another and understood that their separate farms would prosper through common standards and common marketing.

The first packhouse and the Kirdap name

The new orchards required several years before their first large crops. As the trees matured, the growers needed a central place where apples from different farms could be received, graded and packed to one standard. In 1931 land was purchased at Pound Common and the first packing shed was built.

The location placed the station close to the member farms and on roads leading towards Billingshurst, Petworth and Horsham. Farm carts and lorries could bring in fruit, while completed orders could move towards railway stations, wholesalers and urban markets. Pound Common became the point at which crops from scattered fields entered one organised commercial system.

The shared trade name was Kirdap. Boxes carrying that name turned fruit from several farms into one recognisable product. National Mark grading was also used, linking Kirdford apples with agreed standards of quality and presentation. A buyer opening a Kirdap box expected uniform size, careful packing and fruit selected for colour and condition.

Kirdford Growers Limited was incorporated in 1934. The sequence was now complete: an informal partnership from 1926, an organised association from 1928, a shared packhouse from 1931 and a limited company capable of financing further expansion.

Machinery, storage and a growing workforce

Expansion followed quickly. During 1934 about 30,000 bushels passed over the grading machinery. A four-bank sizing machine, cull attachment and return-flow sorting table divided the crop by size and quality while workers stood beside the moving fruit. The table extended for about twenty feet, turning an agricultural harvest into a continuous production line.

By 1935 the wider Kirdford fruit district contained more than 500 acres of scientifically managed orchards. About 300 acres were then being handled directly through the co-operating growers. The packhouse had controlled-atmosphere capacity for roughly 14,000 bushels and conventional storage on a similar scale. Apples could remain in saleable condition beyond the picking season, allowing the business to supply customers through the winter.

The member acreage continued to increase, reaching about 400 acres by 1937. In that season around 40,000 bushels were produced, with larger yields expected as younger trees came into full bearing. The business employed about fifty people throughout the year and around 150 men and women during picking and packing. For several autumn weeks, Kirdford Growers drew workers from a wide circle of villages.

Four stores contained twelve low-temperature chambers, each holding about forty tons. In the sealed gas stores, the apples’ own respiration altered the atmosphere and slowed the ripening process. The technique demanded careful control, yet it transformed the selling season and reduced the pressure to dispose of the entire crop immediately after harvest.

By January 1938 the grading plant could handle about 1,000 bushels in a working day. Women stood along the line judging fruit as it passed, while the packers arranged selected apples in ordered layers. Cox’s Orange Pippin became a leading variety, joined by Bramley’s Seedling, Worcester Pearmain, Laxton’s Superb and other dessert and cooking apples. Higher grades were wrapped in tissue and placed so that the opened box displayed colour and regularity from the first layer to the last.

The growers also looked for uses for fruit outside the premium grades. Pressing trials produced pure apple juice, and further experiments made apple vinegar. These products recovered value from sound fruit suited to processing and anticipated the bottled Kirdford Apple Juice sold many decades later.

Mains electricity and water

Mains electricity and water reached Kirdford during 1938–39, just as the packhouse was approaching its first mature scale. The change spread property by property rather than in a single moment. When the Sidebotham family arrived at the vicarage in 1939, the house still depended upon a well and hand pump, and the well ran dry during their first Christmas. The incident shows how recently the village had relied upon private wells, pumps and local power arrangements.

Pound Common was already mechanised before the public services arrived: grading machinery, low-temperature chambers and controlled-atmosphere stores were working by the middle of the decade. The new supplies strengthened an existing industrial operation. Electric light improved work in enclosed stores and during the dark autumn season; dependable power could support motors, pumps and refrigeration as the plant developed; and mains water served fruit washing, cleaning, staff facilities and fire protection. Their arrival was therefore well timed for the expansion that continued through the war and the first post-war harvests.

The war years

The outbreak of war gave Kirdford Growers a second importance. Imported fruit became scarce, home production entered the national food programme and the member farms had to maintain their orchards while many regular workers were serving elsewhere. Pruning, spraying, thinning, picking and packing continued under controls on labour, fuel and transport.

The packhouse became the headquarters of the Kirdford Home Guard and the local National Fire Service. Men who worked in farms, workshops and village businesses during the day returned for drill, guard duty and patrols. The buildings offered covered space, offices, stores and room for vehicles, so fruit production, civil defence and fire precautions occupied the same site at Pound Common.

Women’s labour became central to the harvest. Members of the Women’s Land Army worked on farms and in orchards across the district, while local women filled picking and packing roles. Beatie and Marge Cooper of Plaistow were photographed in Land Army uniform, preserving familiar village faces within the national agricultural service. Land Girls received a minimum of twenty-eight shillings a week, with fourteen shillings commonly deducted for board and lodging. Some were housed in the long brick hostel near the top of Plaistow Road, remembered for its damp conditions.

The everyday reality of the wartime orchard could be serious and unexpectedly comic. Jill Sidebotham, whose father became Kirdford’s vicar in 1938, remembered the family cows grazing beside Kirdford Growers. The animals pushed their heads through the wire and ate deeply from a pile of discarded apples. They staggered around the field afterwards and appeared to carry the effects for three days. The story travelled as far as the Eighth Army in North Africa, where a local serviceman encountered it and sent it home again.

The packhouse kept fruit moving into organised distribution throughout the war. Its stores made it possible to hold part of the crop, while shared grading and transport assembled consistent consignments from several farms. The business linked the work of Land Girls, orchard labourers, packers and drivers with the wider requirement to keep Britain supplied.

As the war ended, Kirdford Growers was already sharing its experience with other producers. In July 1945 W. Fowle explained co-operative grading, packing and marketing during an agricultural visit. On 13 December the packing station hosted a further demonstration covering grading, packing and spraying. The co-operative emerged from the war as both a working business and a recognised centre of practical fruit-growing knowledge.

Record harvests and post-war expansion

The first full post-war seasons brought extraordinary activity. A recruitment campaign in October 1946 called for large numbers of men and women to pick and pack apples between August and November. Free transport collected workers, bonuses rewarded output and a canteen served the site. Employees could buy fruit at the current market price. The arrangements show how far the seasonal workforce extended beyond Kirdford itself.

In 1947 the packhouse handled about 135,000 bushels. Ten growers then supplied approximately 520 acres. Across the period from 1939 to 1947, more than half a million bushels passed through Pound Common. The sheds and stores that had served the Home Guard were now filled by one of the largest crops in the co-operative’s history.

By 1948 the station included gas stores, cold storage, two grading rooms, management offices, workshops and concrete roads connecting the buildings. Mechanical handling moved boxes and bins between departments. Packing tables, conveyors and weighing equipment reduced repeated lifting while preserving the careful treatment required by dessert apples.

The Ministry of Agriculture used Kirdford for demonstrations of proposed national standards. Fruit was displayed as extra fancy, fancy and domestic, with three sizes within each grade. The growers argued for a system that recognised the investment already made in orchard renewal, spraying, grading and presentation. The packhouse had become a testing ground for the future organisation of the British fruit market.

A co-operative of national standing

By the early 1950s Kirdford Growers was recognised far beyond the village. In January 1953, the Horsham MP Frederick Gough cited the association in the House of Commons as a successful example of producer co-operation. He explained that the original growers had struggled individually and had gained greater security through collective grading, packing and marketing.

The business also stood alongside the brickworks and walking-stick factory as one of the principal workplaces of the old parish. The orchards remained spread across the countryside, yet Pound Common gave the industry a visible centre. A visitor could see the lorries, stores and grading rooms; the greater part of the year’s work remained in the pruning gangs, spraying rounds, blossom inspections and picking teams on the member farms.

Kenyon’s account of the parish recorded more than 400 acres of apples, largely dessert varieties. This represented a complete change from the fifty acres of small orchards listed in 1845. Kirdford had become a specialist fruit district, and generations of local households now had direct experience of orchard or packhouse work.

The mature packhouse

As the co-operative matured, nineteen farms were supplying fruit, with individual orchard acreages ranging from about twenty-five to 120 acres. The farms remained independent, while Kirdford Growers provided the shared commercial machinery. Marketing was handled through Home Grown Fruits Limited at Canterbury, a second co-operative in which Kirdford held an interest.

Each afternoon the packhouse reported how much fruit had been prepared. Instructions returned with the buyers and destinations for the following consignments. The system joined Kirdford’s lanes to a national market: a bin could leave a named farm, pass through grading and packing at Pound Common and be directed to a customer elsewhere in Britain by the following day.

Local haulage made that system work. F. C. Eldridge’s carrier business, operating from the old creamery, transported produce for Kirdford Growers alongside groceries, blocks of ice, medicines, laundry and furniture. Its lorries placed the packhouse within the same network of scheduled journeys that connected farms and village households with Billingshurst, Guildford and the markets beyond.

Fruit arrived in wooden bulk bins holding as much as 700 pounds. A number on each bin identified its farm of origin. Apples for immediate packing were tipped into a flotation tank, where water cushioned the fruit as it entered the line. They were washed, dried and polished before experienced graders divided them into quality classes. Further sizing directed each apple to a revolving packing table.

Kirdford Growers guaranteed a high level of consistency within each grade. Supervisors checked the graders’ work and used the farm coding to trace bruising, disease or handling problems back to the orchard. Boxes were weighed, sealed and labelled with both grade and farm number. The process gave each grower practical information as well as a route to market.

Employment arrangements developed with the machinery. Packers could work morning or afternoon shifts, free transport served the workforce and production bonuses recognised the pressure of the harvest. A fully staffed nursery allowed employees to bring young children to Pound Common, connecting the working day of the packing room with family life.

Diversification began alongside the wholesale business. By 1968 the site included Kirdford Garden Centre. Container-grown shrubs, roses, climbers, conifers, hedge plants, flowering trees, rock plants and house plants were displayed close to the packhouse. Garden ornaments, peat and fertilisers broadened the range, while easy parking and Sunday opening brought new customers to Pound Common.

The fruit shop and garden centre

A fruit shop opened during the 1970s. Customers who had previously known Kirdford Growers through boxes in shops and markets could now buy directly from the co-operative. Ten-pound boxes of apples were available from harvest through the winter, with controlled storage extending the season for Cox, Bramley and later varieties.

The shop widened its range in stages. Pears, potatoes and local soft fruit appeared beside the apples. Strawberries, raspberries, loganberries, blackberries and blackcurrants were offered fresh and ready packed for home freezing. Produce from member farms and neighbouring growers made the shop a direct outlet for the surrounding countryside.

By September 1980 the business described itself as standing in the heart of the Sussex apple and pear orchards. Discovery, Worcester and William pears opened the season, followed by Cox and storage varieties. Somerset cider, apple juice and country fruit wines added processed fruit to the fresh crop.

The garden centre retained its own character. Advertisements promoted maidenhair trees, dawn redwoods and honey locusts alongside rhododendrons, azaleas, deutzias, potentillas, and bedding plants. Families were invited to see the centre’s friendly fish. Pound Common had become a place for an afternoon visit as well as a working packing station.

The site also became a recognised point from which the village gathered. For the Silver Jubilee in 1977, a procession set out from the Growers packhouse and travelled to the sports field, where races, sideshows and performances followed. A building created to assemble fruit had become a civic landmark and the starting point for a village celebration.

Changing orchards and a wider supply area

By the opening years of the 1990s, commercial fruit growing around Kirdford was contracting. Older orchards were removed, farms changed direction and the co-operative began taking fruit from the West Country to keep the packhouse working at an economic scale. The organisation created to market a compact group of local farms now drew upon a much wider producing area.

Costrong Farm remained one of the strongest local connections. In 1991 it had fifty acres of apples divided among eleven orchards and grew twenty-six varieties. The farm retained the identifying letter A assigned in the early co-operative system, so fruit from Costrong could still be traced through the packhouse by the code established many decades earlier.

The Costrong farm shop gave the changing industry a personal face. Lily Sims was pictured holding a bunch of grapes grown on the farm and Michaelmas Red apples, an old variety that survived among the commercial plantings. The image joined the experimental spirit of the 1920s with a later generation still cultivating unusual fruit beside the main Cox and Bramley crop.

The Pound Common retail operation was now presented as Kirdford Growers Country Shop. Fresh fruit and vegetables were joined by home-baked bread, farmhouse cheese, jams, pickles, ice cream, wines and ciders. Kirdford Apple Juice was sold in three varieties, allowing customers to taste the character of individual apples. December tasting days brought juice and cider directly into the seasonal life of the shop.

The co-operative’s reputation still reached beyond Sussex. In 1992 the garden writer Anna Pavord recalled buying a box of Comice pears from Kirdford Growers as a Christmas present. The choice captured the continuing appeal of carefully packed fruit from Pound Common at a time when the surrounding orchard landscape was already changing.

From staff nursery to Russets Tea Room

In December 1993 permission was granted for a coffee shop with additional retail sales. The opening hours were tied to those of the Country Shop, generally between 9 a.m. and 5.30 p.m., and customer parking was provided beside the building.

Russets Tea Room added home cooking to the fruit, plants and country produce already available on the site. It opened from Wednesday to Sunday, while the Country Shop continued through the week. The adjoining patio garden centre supplied plants and gifts, and the site could now receive family visitors, coach parties and local groups.

Community events became part of this later identity. In June 1994 Kirdford Stoolball Club held a car-boot sale at Kirdford Growers with the shop and tea room open throughout the event. The packhouse that had once concentrated fruit from the member farms had become a social meeting place as well as a commercial one.

Adapting to a changing market

The Country Shop, garden centre and Russets Tea Room formed part of a determined programme of diversification. Direct retailing allowed Kirdford Growers to meet its customers face to face, while apples, pears, Kirdford Apple Juice, local foods, plants, gifts and home cooking broadened the business beyond its traditional work of grading, storing and marketing fruit.

During the later 1990s the British fruit market changed rapidly. Supermarkets expected large, uniform consignments at tightly controlled prices, and imported fruit provided customers with a wide choice throughout the year. At the same time, labour, transport, refrigeration, machinery, building maintenance and orchard renewal all carried rising costs. The acreage of commercial orchards around Kirdford continued to decline, so fruit was brought from farther afield to maintain the volume required by the packing and storage operation.

Every practical route had been explored. The co-operative had modernised its machinery, extended its stores, accepted fruit from a wider area and developed the fruit shop, garden centre, Country Shop and tea room. These ventures prolonged the life of the business, preserved employment and kept Pound Common at the centre of village life. In the end, the combined income from packing, storage and retailing could no longer carry the full cost of the site within the modern agricultural and retail economy.

The Final Years

The Country Shop closed at the beginning of 1999. Packing also came to an end, while storage continued for a short period. The public entrance, garden displays and tea-room trade that had welcomed customers for three decades gradually fell quiet.

With great sadness, Kirdford Growers finally ceased trading in April 2000. The closure brought to an end more than sixty years of co-operative fruit growing, packing and marketing. Pound Common had provided permanent employment, seasonal work and a familiar centre of village life, so its loss was felt as the ending of far more than a commercial enterprise.

By December 2000 proposals had been submitted for forty-seven houses on the 2.62-acre packing-station site, together with commercial or light-industrial space. The subsequent housing development became Bramley Close, carrying the name of one of the cooking apples handled in immense quantities by the co-operative.

One of the original wooden buildings survived and later became associated with the new Kirdford Stores, which opened in 2010. The working site acquired a new purpose, while Bramley Close, the surviving structure and the memories of those who picked, packed, drove, managed, shopped and gathered there continued to preserve Kirdford Growers within the village landscape.

Remembering Kirdford Growers

Kirdford Growers began with a small group of trained orchardists who believed that separate farms could prosper through shared standards, equipment and marketing. Their association transformed selected Wealden fields into commercial orchards and created a packhouse capable of serving markets throughout the country.

The business also shaped everyday life. Women graders worked beside the long sorting tables; seasonal employees travelled to Pound Common on free buses and gathered in the busy canteen; Land Girls worked among the surrounding orchards; and Home Guard volunteers assembled at the packhouse after working hours. Eldridge’s lorries entered the loading yard, children attended the staff nursery and, in later years, customers came to the garden centre, Country Shop and Russets Tea Room. The beginning of Kirdford’s 1977 Silver Jubilee procession at Pound Common confirmed that the site had become part of the village’s public life as well as its commercial landscape.

Its history survives through these connected experiences: the Wye College friends who began acquiring land, the Kirdap boxes made and packed by hand, Beatie and Marge Cooper in their Land Army uniforms, the Sidebotham cows after their feast of discarded apples, Lily Sims with the Michaelmas Reds at Costrong and the customers who carried Cox, Bramley, Comice pears and Kirdford Apple Juice away from Pound Common.

For more than sixty years, the co-operative made apples part of Kirdford’s identity. The orchards, stores and grading rooms have largely passed from the working landscape, while Bramley Close, the surviving shop building, old fruit trees and local memories continue to mark the place occupied by Kirdford Growers.

A personal memory of Derek Robertson

Writing this article has brought back particularly fond memories of Kirdford Growers for the author. During the 1980s, our family ran a retail plant-nursery business in Worcester Park, Surrey in partnership with Derek Robertson, who lived in Kirdford.

Derek opened an account with Kirdford Growers and established a small farm shop on our nursery site. Each week during the apple season, Derek drove from Kirdford with his orange Volvo estate stacked high with boxes of Cox’s Orange Pippin. The apples were fabulous, and our customers bought all that he could supply. Their arrival became one of the familiar pleasures of the season.

This article is written in dedication to the memory of Derek Robertson and to the remarkable co-operative whose apples created my enduring connection with Kirdford.