“This is an area that is incredibly close to my heart and the orchards are an enormous part of that,” says Andrew Jamieson.
“I’m very lucky, I was actually born in the house that I live in now. I was born in the bedroom I sleep in now."
Home is Drove Orchards, established at Thornham on the north Norfolk coast by his father, Major David Jamieson in 1952.
Maj. Jamieson was awarded the army’s highest honour, the Victoria Cross, for heroism during the Normandy landings and returned home pledging to work with nature.
Today, with Andrew continuing the work his keen conservationist father began, Drove Orchards is now an abundant heritage orchard, growing 165 varieties of apples and pears, including 120 types native to East Anglia.
Andrew is also involved with a project to restore a stretch of coastal grazing marsh and boost its biodiversity and is an advocate of sustainable tourism – encouraging visitors to enjoy Norfolk’s natural beauty and wildlife, but in a mindful and responsible way.
“There was a lot of red ink growing up and I didn’t think that I would be able to support a living here, and so I went away to London and then to Asia and had a different career, as an investment banker. I ran this at weekends through the 80s, 90s and early 2000s,” explains Andrew.
When he returned to focus on growing the orchard full-time, it was important to Andrew to use the traditional cultivation methods which had been handed down through the generations.
“There was a certain way in which my father planted apples and we grew apples, which is now rather old fashioned,” he explains.
“I don’t want to get too technical, but the size of an apple tree is determined by the type of rootstock you grow the apple tree on and in the old days, they were lovely big apple trees, the sort of trees you might think about.
“Nowadays if you were to plant an orchard you’d plant a thing that would end up looking like a sort of walking stick with apples sticking on it and I have no love of that. So the apple trees that you have in the orchard are quite old fashioned really and we grow them in an old fashioned way.
“I do that because it’s what I understand an orchard to be, and it’s also, of course, what people understand an orchard to be and I am really keen that people should not just pick apples, but also walk around the orchards.
“There’s so much to see here, there’s so much biodiversity, there’s so much going on here and I would much prefer visitors to walk around an orchard that they would get pleasure from being in, as it were.”
When Andrew’s father established the orchard, he initially grew Cox’s Orange Pippin for wholesale markets.
However, when Andrew became more closely involved with Drove Orchards in the mid 1980s, he became increasingly dissatisfied at the sort of products they were having to produce for the supermarkets.
“Firstly you had to have a very low price and secondly you normally had to pick apples when they were unripe so that they then go into cold storage and then they come out throughout the next 12 months. That’s really no way to treat an apple,” says Andrew.
“An apple should be picked, some of them should certainly be stored for a little while because they mature that way, like a wine matures, but some should be eaten straight off the tree.
“So I switched the focus away from wholesale to pick your own and the farm shop started on the back of that. Initially we were selling on the back of a bomb trolley, but it grew from that.”
The other thing that grew was Andrew’s interest in historic and heritage apples.
Drove Orchards is now home to the East Anglian Orchard, which features 120 varieties and is set out county by county, so visitors from the region can locate the apple variety that’s from closest to where they live.
“Nowadays you can genetically engineer anything, but until about the 1930s an apple was always a fluke,” he explains.
“So, if you plant a Cox’s Orange Pippin seed, you won’t get a Cox’s Orange Pippin apple, you’ll just get something that is normally nothing.
"But occasionally up would come something that tasted delicious and normally you might name it after the place you were in, say Lynn Pippin. Or if you were a bit oily you’d name it after your boss, so there’s Lady Henniker. Or if you were an outstanding sort of chap you’d name it after yourself, and so that’s really how all these different varieties came about.”
It’s a project that has been a real labour of love for Andrew – and hasn’t always born fruit.
“I think I’ve learned to my cost quite why a lot of these apples died out, either because they don’t taste that good or because they are very difficult to grow, they’re prone to various diseases and things.
“But it’s a really wonderful experience, it’s allowed me to discover some things that I didn’t know about at all,” he says.
It’s a source of great pride to Andrew that in addition to the conservation work that they do at the orchards, as they have diversified into making their own apple juice and cider, retail, hospitality and tourism, it has created numerous employment opportunities too.
“My growing up in north west Norfolk has not only taught me a huge love of the orchards and how they are grown, but it’s also taught me things like how people are dependent on jobs here, how we should have a responsibility, in my opinion, to create well-paid full-time jobs for local people and not be hugely dependent on summer trade or the retirement trade.
“Therefore that was, if you like, some of the inspiration that made me develop Drove Orchards away from its farm shop towards having the 17 different businesses that it has now on the place. And 100 people employed.”
Andrew’s son is now very involved.
“Particularly in the site and in the shops and so forth, leaving me to toddle about looking at apples,” he says.
“It’s a very different economic picture now, which is wonderful, and I think that has to do with the fact that as well as the farm shop and its apple juice and cider business, which is obviously a core part, sitting on that site there are a number of extremely driven, entrepreneurial individuals running their own businesses, working with us under the Drove Orchards umbrella.”
It’s now home to vintage-inspired home store Joyful Living, Nelle-DK, which sells Danish womenswear, Barnetts hair salon, HortiCo nursery and garden emporium, East Coast Gelato, Gurney’s Fish Box, and two food outlets run by Eric Snaith – Eric's Fish and Chips and Eric’s Pizza.
The Cider Barn specialises in antiques and vintage (“There’s some super vintage stuff that I see famous people rooting about in,” says Andrew) and it’s also home to North Norfolk Dog Training.
Plus, there’s a glamping retreat run by Wild Luxury.
And there are plans for more businesses to join them.
“My son is developing another building and I think what we are going to try and do with that is focus more on local makers. I do know that we’re going to have a picture framer coming on board – there will be four new operations for the new season next year,” says Andrew.
There is also an upgrade underway to their apple juice and cider making facilities to increase their capacity.
Alongside the developments at Drove Orchards, in 2017, Andrew moved into politics.
He became a Conservative county councillor to champion the issues and concerns of his corner of north west Norfolk and in 2019 became cabinet member for finance.
“So I’m now totally immersed in Norfolk-y stuff,” he says. “In a way, Drove Orchards is, if you like, a bit of a campaign poster for me, because it represents what I would like to achieve in Norfolk overall.
“One of the things that I find very disappointing is that there is a wage gap between Norfolk and the east of England and then between Norfolk and the rest of the country. We earn on average about £70 per week less than the rest of the country.
“I think that it’s really important that the gap is diminished, and in order to do that you need to create businesses which have highly trained individuals and pay well. We don’t have a Jaguar Land Rover sitting in Norfolk, so it’s really important that the small and medium sized enterprises are given a huge amount of support.
“I rather airily thought well, I’ve done that here, I’ll see what I can do in Norfolk.”
He has also expanded his conservation work beyond the boundary of Drove Orchards and is chairman of the Norfolk Coastal Partnership, which recently launched its Dark Skies project, highlighting what a brilliant part of the country Norfolk is for stargazing.
“Norfolk Coastal Partnership is the organisation charged with managing the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty of the Norfolk coast and I feel that in a way it needed more resources and more direction so that as well as the coastline and the environment, the communities that live there can be more robustly defended, and perhaps hadn’t been up until now, and that’s another area of focus for me.
"We are very lucky here in Norfolk that we can lie on the ground, when it’s not wet, look up and see the Milky Way, see all these wonderful stars and planets. Two thirds of the country haven’t a hope, you just can’t see it, there’s too much light pollution.”
And very close to home is a project to restore a huge swathe of coastal grazing marshes which is hoped will have a variety of benefits, including encouraging birds.
“I have worked on the marshes previously with the late Lord Peter Melchett, who managed a neighbouring marsh. I always see conservation as a living, working entity, not an exercise in covering something in aspic,” says Andrew.
“Just outside the orchards we’ve just restored about 200 acres, the first stage of an ongoing process, looking at the ancient creek beds and reed beds.
"We put in new sluice gates to raise the water levels. It crosses Thornham and Holme parishes, just to the south of the Holme nature reserve.
"At the moment you’ll see lots of rather nasty muddy scrapes, but in six months’ time you’ll see lovely water-filled little grassy straits and hopefully thousands or really happy little curlew, lapwing, redshank and snipe all nesting away.”
And it shows in microcosm, nature’s resilience and ability to bounce back.
“It was amazing, the thing has only just been done and I was walking down there and suddenly there was a blue flash, I’ve never seen a kingfisher before and there he was. It was very satisfying. We’ve also seen eels. I really think that we’re going to have something very special,” he says.
It's a timely message to people who are perhaps feeling overwhelmed by the headlines about the climate emergency that if, as the phrase goes, you think global and act local, the projects that are happening right here on our doorsteps will add up and make a difference.
“You have Wild Ken Hill, which is wonderful, just down in Snettisham, then you have us here, then you get Burnham Overy, you’ve got a site there, then of course you’ve got Holkham. The coastline is such a unique area, and it’s becoming a significant conservation area, and that again gets back to why I went into politics, because I think it’s so important,” says Andrew.
One of the many things that the pandemic has brought into focus is the importance of getting out into nature and the positive impact that it has on people’s wellbeing, which has been reflected in an increasing number of visitors to Norfolk’s coast and countryside. And it’s an opportunity to educate people about the need to tread lightly and enjoy places responsibly.
“I love people coming to Norfolk and I had some really quite eye-opening conversations as we re-opened after the Covid lockdowns and the extent to which people had clearly, in their flat or wherever it was where they lived, thought about a trip to Drove Orchards as a way of coming out of this horrible tunnel,” says Andrew.
“So I am absolutely in favour of inviting people who are coming to this coast, but I think that it’s really important that we explain as we go along what we’re doing and which parts are very fragile. We’ve done a big project at Norfolk County Council called the Experience Project to show people how they can enjoy Norfolk sustainably.
“We can be influencers, across the world in the way that we behave and I think that it’s really important that we take people with us and I think the way to do that is to explain what we can all do to help.”
Ripe for the picking
“This is the best time of year to come to Drove Orchards from an apple point of view, because this is really when the largest amount of apples are ready,” says Andrew.
The passing of the year is marked by which apples are ripe.
“So at the end of August we’ve had Discovery, which are lovely fresh, crisp, straight off the tree sort of apples. And then early September you get Worcester and the early cookers like Peasgood Nonsuch.
“Now you’re getting right into the main part of the crop and you’ll be eating Egremont Russets or Cox’s Orange Pippin, Ida Red and Crown Gold, and D’Arcy Spice is coming on. If you’ve got a space in your garage, you can store them until Christmas time and then they taste yummy.
“Suffolk Pink has much more of that greeny-fresh taste that you associate with some of the earlier apples.”
When it comes to picking apples, remember, says Andrew, that it’s what’s on the inside that counts.
“The russets are sweet – if you saw them on a shelf and you had nice rosy red apples and shiny yellow and green ones, you might not pick this rather dour, grumpy little brown one, but actually if you bite into it, it’s got an incredibly layered taste, quite a sophisticated taste. Overall you’d say it’s a sweet apple, but it’s got a spicy feel to it, which is absolutely delicious.”
I am watching...
I can’t wait for the next series of Succession! At the theatre I’ve got tickets for The Mirror and the Light and can’t wait to see Nina Conti at Norwich Theatre Royal and Aladdin at the Princess Theatre, Hunstanton. I am also still getting over the first part of No Time to Die
I am reading...
I am currently reading the Quincunx by Charles Palliser and The Age of Unpeace: How Connectivity Causes Conflict by Mark Leonard
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