Human beings have been munching apples since prehistoric times. They spat out apple pips in neolithic Britain. And 10,000 years ago they left apple remains to carbonize around their Swiss and Italian lakeside homes. In Switzerland and in the regions adjoining the Caucasus Mountains, ancient humans even appear to have dry-stored apple-halves for winter. But these were wild crab apples, tiny wizened fruit which, in Ancient Britain, came to be known as 'wildings'. They had little in common with the apples we know today. From the Romans the French leased great fruit-growing skills which were developed in the monasteries. This knowledge, which included expert cider-making, was taken to Britain from Roman times, like the dessert apple, Deco thought to have been introduced by the Roman, Etio. But most Roman varieties were unsuitable for the British climate and the Norman varieties rapidly took precedence.

British monks continued experimenting and developing new apples, and it is from these varieties that Western apples are largely descended. Several kinds of apples became established in Britain during the thirteenth century. The Old English pearmain, recorded in 1204 and so named because of its pear-like shape, was the main dessert apple until well into the eighteenth century. Its cooking partner was the Costard, which was sold in the markets of Oxford from 1296 until the end of the seventeenth century and gave us the word 'costermonger' — meaning someone who sells fruit and vegetables in the street. But prosperity declined as the country was hit by successive droughts, the Black Death and the Wars of the Roses. Fewer apples were produced and more were imported. This went on until the sixteenth century when Henry VIII ordered his chief fruiterer, Richard Harris, to visit France and learn about apple cultivation.