Debbie Hearn
A member of the Guild of Food Writers

My Writing

My Writing

The Lyth Valley Damson

This article first appeared in Snail Mail issue 16.

I’ve never tasted it, or even set eyes on it. True, I’ve drunk a beer flavoured with it, but the view from an empty beer glass was never known for its clarity. Yet I’m willing to assert for the illustrious readership of Snail Mail that the Lyth Valley damson matters.

As the founder of the Big Little Fruit Campaign, which I started in 2005, I have a special interest in neglected British culinary fruits: those, in other words, that lend themselves to being cooked or otherwise tinkered with, before they give of their best. The list of such fruits is lengthy and the gaps in our knowledge, huge.

For instance, few of us know a myrobalan from a mirabelle. The mirabelle plum’s reputation as a French speciality is secure, yet our own myrobalan (aka cherry plum), a widespread hedgerow fruit, is overshadowed. It is no coincidence that the Ark of Taste is light on dessert fruits (those which can be served just as they are), and yet harbours several culinary fruits. Our culinary fruit heritage needs champions – people who are prepared to get juice-stained fingers. We need perry-pear fermenters, myrobalan-jammers, medlar-jelly makers, Williams-pear canners and damson-beer brewers.

In Cumbria’s Lyth and Winster Valleys (formerly in Westmorland), there is a veritable community of such people at work, under the plum-coloured umbrella of the Westmorland Damson Association (WDA). Products include fresh fruit from forty-four farms, Strawberry Bank Liqueurs’ Damson Beer, preserves such as the Hawkshead Relish Company’s Pickled Damsons, Victoria and Oliver Barratt’s Cowmire Hall Traditional Damson Gin, and a new and well-received Plum Pudding from the same source.

In addition, Annette Gibbons highlights damsons via her Cumbria on a Plate trips for tourists and her book, Home Grown in Cumbria, and the WDA has a Damson Day at blossom time, which is often noted by the media. All working together achieve a sense of identity that the rest of the UK is hard-put to match, in terms of its local fruit, and their efforts offer a model for others. Which is, of course, an invitation to any reader with a local fruit story to share: Contact me via www.biglittlefruit.co.uk .

I am told that the increase in the region’s damson products has led to fruit being sourced from elsewhere and I wonder how distinctive the Lyth Valley damson actually is. I see that one major reference, the Catalogue of Plums at The National Fruit Trials (MAFF 1978), links both the ‘Blue Violet’ and the Prune Damson with Westmorland; ‘Blue Violet’ is certainly hard to source, whereas the Prune (aka Shropshire) damson, is readily available, in season. What is more, I am aware from past conversations with the curators of the National Fruit Collections, as well as from anecdotal evidence received through the Big Little Fruit Campaign website, that fruit tree populations in different areas can vary considerably.

Botanists can now conduct DNA tests to answer the questions that would previously have occasioned many a spirited discussion over a glass of damson gin. No-one, however, can yet fingerprint the community worth of a fruit such as this. Slow Food UK’s Ark of Taste team uses taste-buds, rather than test tubes, to document and safeguard such gastronomic phenomena. Sarah Freeman, the Ark’s co-ordinator, says Lyth Valley damsons “qualify exceptionally well for Ark of Taste status. They taste very good and they do depend on the microclimate of that particular place.”

So let’s raise a glass of some suitably fruity tipple to Sarah and the committee, and to the Lyth Valley damson. As they say in Westmorland, cheers!