Landkey Village
Community information, events and history
In Brief
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Our next village event will be Parish Council Meeting on 4th August 2021 at 7:00 PM in The Old School Centre, Manor Road
Parish Council
Read the Parish Council Minutes of 30th June 2021
Our next Parish Council meeting will be on 4th August 2021 at 7:00 PM in The Old School Centre, Manor Road
View the agendaCommunity Information
Millennium Green
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More Images Landkey Millennium Green
Mazzards
A portion of the £35000 awarded to Landkey by the Millennium Commission in 1999 (see History page) was set aside for the planting of a mazzard orchard. The mazzard is a type of cherry which is indigenous to Landkey and which grew in profusion in orchards around the village in the 19th century.
At the time of the First World War, over 100 acres of orchards were recorded in Landkey, most of which were of mazzards. As the 20th century progressed, mazzards gradually fell out of fashion due to the substantial amount of labour required to protect the fruit from being stolen by birds and then to harvest the crop. The trend after 1918 was for populations to move away from rural areas to work in better-paid jobs in towns, making labour for orchards more expensive than it had been. By the 1990s, barely three acres of mazzards remain in Landkey.
To address this decline, a Landkey Orchards Committee had been set up in the early 1990s and had earmarked sites around the village where mazzard orchards might be reintroduced. When funding was later secured from the Millennium Commission, it was a logical step to propose the establishment of a mazzard orchard on the Millennium Green.
A batch of 65 mazzard saplings was sourced from Greenhayes Nursery at Cullompton and was planted in 1999 on a 2-acre section of the Green. Each of the five varieties which were planted, being Dun, Hannaford, Green Stem Black, Small Black and Bottler, are marked by plaques mounted on stones which border the path which passes through the orchard.
Images about mazzards (click to enlarge)
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