The Core Values of Apple Day

Did you know that we have the Romans to thanks for many of the varieties of apple that the UK has enjoyed for centuries? Or that, while being great for eating and cooking, apples were one also used in an ointment called 'pomatum' to treat skin ailments? And the variety synonymous with Newton is the 'Flower of Kent'? It's perhaps not the best one to snack on compared to modern varieties, but is still available today, if you really want to grow your own Newton's Tree.

Apple Day at St Mary's this autumn was a marvellous and fun celebration of the apple, with its crisp taste of the great outdoors. We juiced them and compared the flavours of different varieties, we ate them in abundance, adorned our wrists with bracelets made from apple-shaped beads and competed to create the longest peel!

Ironically, the apple peels we were carefully curling in a bid to win House points are better eaten than thrown away. The skin contains the highest concentration of vitamins, fibre and antioxidants - all the good things your diet needs.

So, it was a good job that quite a few decided to give them a try. Delicious!

From the 'leather jacket' - not the daddy longlegs larvae we hasten to add, but the Egremont Russet with its rough, muddy green skin, to the Cox's Orange Pippin, it was a treat to compare some traditional English cultivars with a more modern and supermarket-standard apple, the Royal Gala.

What better way to spend a sunny autumn lunch break, than with a blast of everything fresh, before settling down to the serious business of afternoon classes.

October 2026