Devon Cider on the Move: mobile microbes, wayfaring folkways, and hogsheads for Newfoundland
By Professor Harry West and Simon Pope with a guest appearance by Jim Causley
Wednesday 14 January at Matthews Hall. Entrance £7 payable at the door. Doors open at 7:00pm. A bar will be available offering alcoholic and non-alcoholic refreshments.
A talk on the history and culture of cider-making and wassailing in Devon.
Harry West: Harry’s work on food and cultural heritage has taken him from living and working with Mozambican peasant farmers, to French artisan cheesemakers, to his recent project with cider-makers in Devon.
Simon Pope: Simon is an internationally-renowned Devonian artist, who collaborated with Harry on the ‘Here’s to Thee’ cider-making and wassailing project, commissioned by the RAMM and University of Exeter.
Cider has long been entwined with farming and rural life in Devon, with orchards dating back at least to Roman times, and cider being used in early modern times variously as payment in kind to seasonal labourers and as payment of rent by tenants. This celebrated component of local culture has, however, long been shaped by movement—whether of apple varieties and the microbes associated with fermentation, of wassailing songs and related calendrical rites, or of the product itself. Join in the conversation on Devon cider’s rich history, and in the songs bringing good health to the trees and those who tend them.