The Lost Trees Podcast

In this final part, we dig further into the history of the Gorse Hall estate with Alan Pickles a volunteer who has been involved with the site for fifty years and set up the Friends of Gorse Hall. We then follow the route out of the estate and visit a community orchard planted in 2009 in a Cheetham Park and we discuss planting, establishing and maintaining an open access orchard with Rob Muir (Abundance Tameside)  with some additional information about the location and planting of the orchard from Debs Kaufmann (Greenspace Team, Tameside Council) who manage the site.

In this episode, we enter into the estate of the now demolished Gorse Hall, and explore the remains of a Victorian kitchen garden containing an orchard with some trees that could be 180 years old, guided by Sam Bolton from Greater Manchester Ecology Unit who studied and planted trees here as part of an orchard restoration project some years ago. He shares lots of interesting information about heritage varieties and caring for old orchards.

Starting our Lost Trees walk on the edge of Stalybridge's centre, we follow a route into the town centre and work our way outwards and discover some fruit-bearing trees growing in built-up and sometimes unexpected places and learn about different uses for the fruit growing on them. We talk to Rob Muir from Abundance Tameside who shares some cider making tips, as well as introducing Sam Bolton from Greater Manchester Ecology Unit to discuss an interesting, possibly very old apple tree.