For more than two centuries, apples have flourished at Ampleforth Abbey. Catherine Scott meets orchard manager Steve Ward, who is preserving its fruitful traditions by producing both juice and cider.
Published 24th Oct 2026, 00:00 BST
Updated 24th Oct 2026, 11:39 BST
Ampleforth Abbey Orchard must be one of the most idyllic places to work.
For more than 200 years, apples have been grown at the Abbey, first as food for the monks, but now, with more than 1,500 trees and over five acres, the Ampleforth Abbey Orchard is one of the largest commercial orchards in the North of England.
For many years it was one of the monks who tended the orchard, but now it falls to Steve Ward, who has worked at the abbey for the last 13 years and recently took over as manager.
“The monastic community have always grown apples for themselves for food, and then in the 1960s the size of the community and the school peaked, and as part of that, they planted quite a large orchard to provide themselves with fresh apples,” explains Steve.
The planting was overseen by Father Edmund Hatton, son of Sir Ronald Hatton, who was knighted for his services to pomology.
“Under the guidance of his father, Fr Edmund planted this collection we have today; he devoted lots of time to establishing and tending to the trees. He introduced the East Malling row system in which trees are grafted onto dwarf rootstocks.”
As a result, the harvest can easily be picked without ladders by planting the trees close together and keeping them low through pruning.
“We have about 60 different varieties of apple. We don’t have anything particularly rare; we have quite a lot of unusual ones that people won’t have heard of because they won’t have seen them in the supermarkets,” says Steve, whose background is in environmental conservation.
“Fr Edmund selected the collection we have for productivity as much as anything. It was quite an ambitious scale of planting that meant in a good year the monks had 25-plus tonnes of fruit.”
As the size of the monastic community and the school started to decline and it became easier to buy in their fruit, the demand for the orchard fell a bit. The monks were therefore left with up to 30 tonnes of apples a year and not much to do with them.
In the early 2000s, one member of the community had the idea to utilise the excess apples by making apple cider (which became a hobby for some of the monks) to sell in the visitors’ shop and also to local farm shops and delis.
These days the monks have little involvement with the orchard; it is all managed solely by Steve.
“They have a lot of religious retreat groups staying on site, and they will often bring them up in season, and they will do a few hours’ work picking the apples, but it is mainly run by laypeople who manage it for them.
“The entirety of our harvest now goes to make cider or apple juice here on site.”
Steve makes two types of cider.
“Our main product is 6½ per cent traditional sparkling cider, which around three-quarters of the harvest goes to make.
"The apple juice from the early to mid-season fruit will naturally ferment to about 6½ per cent – the later-season fruit stays on the tree longer, tends to have a more complex flavour and has a bit more sugar, so it naturally ferments a little bit stronger to eight per cent, and that makes our premium cider.
“Ours is a whole juice cider, which means nothing is added in, and it’s not watered down at all – it is 100 per cent apple juice that is fermented into cider. For some reason the laws in this country say a cider only has to be 35 per cent apple juice to be classed as a cider. Craft cider makers like myself are trying to get that changed.”
Over the years the proportion of apple juice Steve makes compared to cider has changed.
“From a little bit of apple juice and mainly cider, it has shifted to 50:50 these days. There is definitely a greater demand for the juice than there used to be in the past. I think demand for alcoholic drinks in general is on the decline, and cider has had its moment.”
Around 50 per cent of what Steve makes is sold to visitors to the abbey; the rest goes through a local wholesaler who supplies smaller independent outlets like farm shops and delis and some English Heritage visitor centres.
Steve started work at Ampleforth on a temporary three-month contract picking apples, and 13 years later he’s ended up managing it.
And while he spends most of his days alone with nature, he is clearly passionate about what he does, and he is keen to share it with other people.
“The orchard here at Ampleforth Abbey is such a special and unique place. I absolutely love it. It’s incredibly peaceful, and I’m keen to invite more people into the space, as it’s not something we’ve really done before,” he says.
“This year, for the first time, we have opened it up to pick-your-own events, and we will be hosting a week-long Apple Week during October half term.
"We really just invite people to share in this space and learn more about what we do here. We get children coming and asking if it is safe to eat the apples straight off the tree. I want to show them where their food comes from.”
But it is far from a seasonal job.
“Because the orchard was planted for food, the monks wanted the longest possible season. So the season this year started in July, and I will be picking through to December.”
It’s a very labour-intensive process, as all the apples are handpicked by Steve and a few volunteers when he can get them.
He picks the apples into 20kg crates, and when he has picked about two and a half tonnes – which will take about ten days – they are washed and then go through the mill to be chopped up.
Pulp comes out of the mill, and the parcels of pulp known as cheeses are pressed. From 100kg of pulp, Steve will get 70l of juice.
“If I’m making cider, that juice is pumped directly into a fermentation vessel with a little bit of yeast, and then it will stay there for 12 to 18 months before it is ready to be bottled.”
When not picking or processing the fruit, Steve is busy preserving the trees for future generations while introducing new varieties, including some Yorkshire apples.
“Dwarf trees don’t suit the ground conditions here particularly well. They don’t have an extensive root system underground, and we are on heavy clay, so it’s a constant battle to keep the trees upright, because they just want to fall over.”
He is also in the process of replacing some of the cooking varieties with larger trees of interesting dessert or cider apples, which the orchard doesn’t have at the moment.
Although not certified organic, no chemicals are applied to the orchard, and instead they use careful husbandry and selective pruning and encourage beneficial flora and fauna to flourish.
So has 2026 been a good year for apples?
“Last year was a very good year nationally, and we had probably the biggest crop I’ve seen here,” says Steve.
“Our orchard is classed as an old orchard, and you tend to expect on and off years.
"I was expecting an off year this year, but the weather during blossom was amazing, but then we had the long, hot, dry summer, and that makes the apple trees panic, and for self-preservation, they shed fruit.
“So about a third of the harvest was shed early and unripe, so it’s not usable.
"But then we had a lot of late rain, so the fruit that was left has come on really well, so on balance it hasn’t been a terrible year. It’s been better than expected.”