Gone Medieval Goes Wassailing

Matt Lewis, joined by Dr. Eleanor Janega, explores the Halstow Wassail—a modern iteration of an ancient tradition rooted deep in medieval folklore. They visit Grey's Cider Farm in Devon and dive into the unique ceremony of wassailing, where people sing to apple trees to bless them for a bountiful harvest. Featuring exclusive insights from Theo Grey, the 13th generation cider maker, they uncover the historic and communal aspects of this revived ritual, how the tradition has evolved while maintaining the communal spirit and connection with nature from centuries past. Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega. It was edited by Amy Haddow. The producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit to see Matt and Eleanor revel in Wassailing in their new documentary Medieval Midwinter, plus hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

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  I'm Jake Stauk, co-founder and CEO of Serval. Your IT team is full of builders who understand how your company works, but too much of their day goes to password resets, app access, and repetitive tickets. We built Serval to give them that time back. It's the AI-native enterprise service management platform that automates the work legacy tools only track. Tell Serval what you want automated in plain English and its AI agent builds it. No drag-and-drop workflow builders, consultants, or lengthy implementations. Then, our helpdesk agent resolves employee requests using the tools IT has approved. Your team stays in control, and your builders get to build. Companies including Fox, Live Nation, Notion, Ramp, and Lucid Motors run on Serval.

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• 3:03Matt Lewis?

  Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots, and murders, to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.

• 3:38Matt Lewis?

  Now, you might be thinking that all the Christmas and New Year festivities are done and dusted for another year, and you took your decorations down on Twelfth Night by the 5th of January, right? So they're all boxed up for the next 11 months or so until it all comes around again. Well, you'd be right, but there are some people and parts of Britain that still celebrate Old Twelfth Night on the 17th of January. It's the time when folks go out to sing to local apple trees. Yes, that's right, sing to the trees, and eat king cake or Twelfth Night cakes. In a new year act of generosity on the part of the High Lord of History Hit Towers, Dr Eleanor Jarniger and I have been let out of the Gone Medieval Dungeon

• 4:22Matt Lewis?

  and we're being transported to deepest, darkest Devon for a very special treat. We're off to Gray's Cider Farm in Halstow to witness the Halstow Wassail, which is a unique and fascinating, actually fairly new tradition, but one which is rooted deep in our medieval past. Wassailing is the tradition of singing to bless the trees for a good apple harvest. The Halstow Wassail tradition has been established over the last few years in conjunction with artists and academics as a celebration of the folklore and science behind cider making. Each year, Gray's invite local singers and friends to join them in their orchards

• 5:04Matt Lewis?

  to take part in the ceremony and hear songwriter Jim Coarsely sing their very own Halstow Wassailing song, before sharing a sip from the Wassail cup to promote a healthy crop.

• 5:26Matt Lewis?

  Oh, there we are. Well, it's a little bit blowy up here. But we're on day release. We've come to Halstow Farm near Exeter and I've managed to bring me best buddy Eleanor with me. Eleanor, why are we here?

• 5:39Eleanor Janega?

  Uh, we are here. It's the best reason to be let out of a dungeon of all time. We are here for a Wassail.

• 5:46Matt Lewis?

  Wassail.

• 5:47Eleanor Janega?

  Wassail. So, this is the most exciting possible thing because A, we're going to do something really medieval. B, we're going to hear some really cool songs based on old folk traditions. And C, we're gonna have cider.

• 6:01Matt Lewis?

  There will be cider.

• 6:02Eleanor Janega?

  I can't wait.

• 6:04Matt Lewis?

  Neither can I. But just before we find out more about what the evening has in store for us, I want you to imagine a winter's night, just like this one, but many centuries ago.

• 6:18Matt Lewis?

  Frost is clinging to bare branches and darkness has descended across the land. This is the moment when the centuries-old tradition of Wassailing comes alive. The air will soon be filled with the sound of laughter, song and the clanging of tankards. We're here to celebrate the ancient practice of Wassailing.

• 6:45Matt Lewis?

  The revelers emerge from the shadows. They carry with them a large, steaming bowl, its contents swirling with the heady aroma of spices and alcohol. The word "Wasail" echoes through the night, its origins rooted in the Old Norse phrase "vasheil", meaning "good health". This simple toast would evolve over centuries into a complex tradition that blended celebration, superstition and community spirit. As Christianity spread across England, Wassailing found its place in the Yuletide celebrations. On 12th Night, the fizz and pop of roasted crab apples bursting in the bowls of spiced

• 7:28Matt Lewis?

  ale marked the creation of Lamswal, a favourite Wasail drink. The warm, sweet aroma wafted through manor houses and humble cottages alike, bringing comfort against the winter chill. But Wassailing wasn't always a peaceful affair. In some regions, the tradition took on a more raucous tone. Imagine the thunderous knocking on the feudal lord's door, the boisterous demands of peasants for figgy pudding and ale. Their drunken songs and laughter pierced the night, a reminder of the social upheaval that Christmas temporarily allowed. As centuries passed, Wassailing evolved.

• 8:09Matt Lewis?

  The clinking of coins dropping into Wasail bowls replaced the earlier demands for food and drink. The tradition of going door to door transformed into what we now know as caroling, with songs of good cheer replacing rowdy demands.

• 8:32Matt Lewis?

  Back to the present day and we're going to catch up with songwriter Jim Coarsely, who leads the Halstow Wassail. Eleanor and I are finally out of the gone medieval dungeon and in the wild. Thank you so much for joining us, Jim.

• 8:43Speaker 05

  Thank you for having me.

• 8:44Matt Lewis?

  Can you tell us to start off with where we are?

• 8:47Speaker 05

  So we're on a farm called Halstow, which is near Tedburn St Mary in Devon. And it's a very ancient farm with a very old name that might possibly mean holy place. We're not sure. That's what local place name experts reckon. And we hold quite a new Wassail here, so this has only been going since 2020. It started as a project by a local artist called Simon Pope, who wanted to celebrate the more unseen elements in traditional cider making, like the mould and bacteria and fungi and the yeasts that are in the air. And Halstow's a very traditional cider maker. They've been making cider here several generations in the family.

• 9:31Speaker 05

  And there's no artificial ingredients at all in their cider making. It's all old oak barrels and natural fermentation.

• 9:40Matt Lewis?

  I'm glad we're doing this before we've got anywhere near the cider. Otherwise, this might be a very drunken chat.

• 9:44Eleanor Janega?

  Just completely a huge write-off, but I'll tell you what. When you're standing on the side of this hill in Devon, it's exactly what every romantic idea about Devon is. There's nothing but hills going on to the horizon. There's oak trees and we're standing in the middle of an orchard where all the trees are covered in moss. It's just the idealist romantic vision of what you'd want. And you kind of get a sense of this holiness attached to the place name. So I'm choosing to believe this, even if we have no record of it.

• 10:14Matt Lewis?

  What's the history behind Wassailing? I think it's one of those words, very medieval word. Lots of people might have heard of it, but what really is it?

• 10:21Speaker 05

  There's lots of different versions of Wassailing today. The main thing people all agree on is that it comes from the Anglo-Saxon word "wass hail", meaning be you healthy, be you of good health. And some people believe it was used as a form of cheers as well. So people say Wassail and the traditional response to that was Drink hail. It's a very handy response.

• 10:44Speaker 05

  Needs to make a comeback.

• 10:45Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, I guess it makes sense in a lot of European traditions now, like, I mean, in Czech, we say na travi, so, you know, to your health whenever we cheers, so, yeah.

• 10:53Speaker 05

  Exactly. And actually, it's good that it's revived, because often people say, you know, prost or slanživá, and then when it comes to English, people are not sure what's the proper English word apart from cheers. And so they should get wasail back on the scene again.

• 11:05Eleanor Janega?

  Bring it back, bring it back.

• 11:07Speaker 05

  So, it's evolved into several different interpretations over the years. So, in big country houses and wealthy people, you'd have a wasail feast or a wasail ball, and there'd be a big elaborate wasail bowl on the table as a centerpiece, and it was just a big old party, basically. But in the country, it's evolved into a couple of different versions. So, what we do here at Halstow is an orchard visiting wasail, where we go and sing to the trees, because that's considered normal around these parts. And we sort of wake up the trees in the middle of winter, and possibly scare away any evil spirits that might be hampering the harvest, and kind of just remind the trees what they're supposed to do.

• 11:48Speaker 05

  So, it also involves pouring some cider on the roots to show them what they've got to make in the autumn. And there's another type of wasailing, which is basically like caroling in any other name. And the famous one is at Bodmin in Cornwall. They go around the town and sing wasail songs and carols. And they dress very, very smart and get fed cider and other drinks as they go around house to house and get progressively merrier.

• 12:13Eleanor Janega?

  So. Well, I guess I've got a question. This is a relatively new wasail, as you said. How did it come about? Is there a particular place that you're drawing this new tradition from?

• 12:24Speaker 05

  Yes, there's lots of wasails, particularly in the West Country, Devon, Somerset and Cornwall. And a lot of wasail songs were collected by folk song collectors in the late 1800s, like Saban, Berengould here in Devon, and Cecil Sharp in Somerset. And they also collected or wrote down some of the ceremonies that they saw taking place as well. And a few of them have survived, so we have got a few that are completely unbroken traditions, as far as we know. And then quite a lot died out during, particularly during the Second World War, a lot of traditions where men went away and didn't come back. So, a lot died out. I come from a village in East Devon called Wimpel,

• 13:06Speaker 05

  which is famous for its cider making, not anything to do with the hats at Nunswell.

• 13:11Matt Lewis?

  Why are you wearing a wimple?

• 13:15Speaker 05

  But wimples had a famous cider factory called Whiteways Wimple that went back many years, but also they had a wasailing tradition that Berengold wrote about and then it was filmed by Pathé in the 1930s. And then it died during the war and then it was revived again by the local history society in the 80s. And that's how I got involved.

• 13:35Matt Lewis?

  It's so important to have those old records then. Somebody has gone to the trouble of writing this down or filming it in the 1930s just before the tradition was broken, but that allows you to get as close as possible to recreating what it was.

• 13:48Speaker 05

  Definitely, yes. One of my favourite records was written by Saban Berengold. And he wrote about how an old lady who was a widowed farmer, she was the only one left of her family and she lived near him. And she believed that the wasailing was so important that she would go out into the orchards every January and wasail the trees all by herself in the dark. Oh, I just, that really moves me, that story. Nowadays, we do it for a bit of fun and it's a bit of, just a good knees up and to get the community together. But obviously, back in the day, people did really believe in this.

• 14:23Matt Lewis?

  The genuine belief that you need to do this to have a good harvest next year and therefore to be able to survive.

• 14:29Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 14:30Eleanor Janega?

  Well, I think that this is such a really interesting thing as well because I think there is some kind of false modern idea that if a tradition is a tradition, it's been going the whole time. And if we think about our medieval ancestors, I mean, surely the wasailing might have got a little disrupted by the Black Death or say, the Hundred Years' War, if your village is drawn really heavily on and suddenly you've just not got a lot of people about. These are things that can kind of fall by the wayside and it doesn't make something non-traditional to bring it back. It just means there was a gap there and I think that's as legitimate as anything else.

• 15:03Matt Lewis?

  Exactly, absolutely. You mentioned that there's two kind of different main sorts of wasail, but do we need to think of wasailing as, there's loads of different ways to wasail. Even within those two categories, it's a local tradition, so it spiders out everywhere and everybody's doing different things, but they're all valid wasails.

• 15:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's a big wasailing umbrella, as it were, and this.

• 15:23Matt Lewis?

  Which we're standing under right now.

• 15:24Speaker 05

  Exactly. And a lot of people lump things under it. You know about the Mary Lloyd in Wales and that gets put under the Wassail umbrella. Some people don't always like that because they said this is our tradition, it's not to do with that. And also the traditions are evolving all the time, like this one here. So this is slightly new Wassail concept.

• 15:45Eleanor Janega?

  Well, I was wondering because, you know, there are some Wassail traditions which I'm into because they get a little rowdy. So where do we, on the rowdy scale, from we're going door to door, we're knocking on doors and we are demanding ale from the local lord, to we're just having a bit of a sing with the trees, isn't it?

• 16:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:04Eleanor Janega?

  Where does this Wassail fall?

• 16:06Speaker 05

  This is actually, I'm gonna be a bit disappointed, Eleanor, because this is actually

• 16:11Matt Lewis?

  What makes you think Eleanor wants to go door to door, Andy drinking and knocking

• 16:14Speaker 05

  The actually, I'll say the Wassail part of the ceremony is quite polite and reverent, but the after show where people go into the barn and sample the cider and usually bread and local cheese and apple cake, then that's when the party begins.

• 16:31Eleanor Janega?

  All right. Well, I mean, I'm here now. I'm about to make a rowdy. It's all right.

• 16:34Speaker 05

  Actually, you touched on an interesting point there, that going door to door and begging is like Wassailing is really just part of a bigger umbrella of lots of folk traditions in the British Isles, which are often just elaborate excuses for going begging. And we've got them throughout the year. So like souling, people go door to door, sing a souling song and then you might get a soul cake in return. And then there's maying traditions where you go to door and sing a may song and every occasion throughout the year.

• 17:02Matt Lewis?

  Just legitimizing reasons to get drink and food from wealthier people who otherwise wouldn't want to give it to you.

• 17:07Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 17:08Eleanor Janega?

  I love that.

• 17:10Matt Lewis?

  How did this Wassail come about and what's unique and new about this?

• 17:15Speaker 05

  Simon Pope, who started this, he's very interested in community art projects. And I worked on a previous one with Simon that was all about looking at the tin mining industry of Dartmoor, celebrating that and creating a new tradition around that as well. And so Simon knew of my wasail involvement. And so he grew up quite near to here in Tedbone. And he wanted to look at wasailing from a different angle and again, look at the unseen elements in cider making. And also looking at, this is slightly gross, but things like gut flora and the stuff that's in the community in an unseen way. As a kind of way of bringing the community together.

• 17:56Speaker 05

  And part of his envisagement for this tradition was to create a new wasail bowl that was made of the earth from this very farm. So they dug up some of the clay here and got a local potted to make a wasail bowl, communal bowl, which is also part of some wasailing traditions where you will have a sip of cider at the tree. And we were very lucky because the very first wasail was January 2020. And then two months later, drinking from communables was not so fashionable.

• 18:27Eleanor Janega?

  Well, I actually really love this because I like the focus on community and the fact that what you're kind of doing with this project is really expanding the way that we can define what our community is. So it includes microbes, it includes, you know, our own gut microbiome. It includes everything that's around us. It's not just about what people do. It's how people are also relating to the plants around them, the yeast in the air, all of these things.

• 18:51Speaker 05

  And a lot of modern cider producers these days use champagne yeast. And they're in big stainless steel vats and things like that. So Halstow is quite rare in being one of the very few completely traditional cider makers in that way. And they use natural fermentation. So the yeast that's all in the air and on the cob walls and in the cobwebs and so on. So Simon envisaged this tradition to celebrate all of the elements. So we've got three different stages, basically, of this wasail. So we go into the orchards and sing to the trees and the lichen and all the stuff that's around the trees. And then we go into the cider cellar where all the barrels are. And we sing to the barrels and all the bacteria in there.

• 19:34Speaker 05

  And then we go into the pound house, which is where all the apples are crushed and turned into juice.

• 19:40Matt Lewis?

  But it doesn't seem to me that this is that far away from what medieval people were doing. They were trying to drive a good harvest and get closer to nature and build that connection, which it sounds like exactly what you're doing with a bit of added understanding of germ theory and microbes that they wouldn't have been aware of. But probably talking about roughly the same thing.

• 19:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, bang on. Now we have this understanding about the science behind it. One of the phrases that we feature in the song is they either call it "God is good" or "the great good unseen", so they believed there was this magic that made the fermentation happen. They just didn't know how it happened. Now we think we know how it happens.

• 20:17Eleanor Janega?

  I love this, you see this all the time in medieval documents. So for example, herbariums, which are big collections of various kinds of plants, when they will talk you through the medicinal properties of these things. And oftentimes there will be things like a prayer to a nettle that you say before you collect it, or an incantation that you say over the willow as you collect the bark. And there's this idea here that there's a kind of magical property or there is a holy property that you are bringing out of the plant. And I don't see how this is any different, except for you get delicious cider at the end. So it's therefore better.

• 20:51Speaker 05

  Exactly. We've had some very interesting conversations with other wasails I've been involved in, where the community's been really up for having a new wasail in their village. And there was one recently where they got the local vicar involved and the vicar was really up for it too.

• 21:04Eleanor Janega?

  Yes.

• 21:05Speaker 05

  But then the parish council said, "No, we don't want this. We think it's ungodly and we don't want this", even though the vicar was really game. And so we tried to explain that, you know, a wasail is basically, it's just a blessing of the crops. And some wasails, they actually have the vicar come and bless the wasail before they do the wasail, which is very interesting. And I use the example of Rogation, which is Christian festival where they go and bless the crops and sing hymns and stuff. And that came from the Roman celebration, is it Rogari? So the Christians nicked a Roman thing that's said "Christianize" and then...

• 21:38Eleanor Janega?

  Surprise.

• 21:39Matt Lewis?

  The Christian church has always been big on, you know, adhering itself to all of those festivals that everybody likes and wants to keep doing. So you just need a Christian reason to keep doing them. They've always been good at that. And it's unusual they wouldn't want to do something that encourages community and engagement with nature and all of those kinds of things.

• 21:56Eleanor Janega?

  It sounds like the plot of an 80s movie. It's like, you know, the community just wants to have a wasail and the parish council has stepped in. So we're going to have to hold the greatest wasail ever to change their minds, lads.

• 22:07Matt Lewis?

  It's sure an episode of The Vicar of Dibley or something.

• 22:11Speaker 05

  And I think people have always hedged their bets religion wise for many hundreds of years. So just tick all the boxes and.

• 22:19Matt Lewis?

  This is particularly interesting, I think, because in the modern age, it can be easy to be cynical about the things that our ancestors did, you know, singing to trees and stuff like that. But it speaks to their belief in things that they didn't quite understand and the fragility of that relationship and you do whatever you can to encourage it and build it. And although we might understand a bit more of the science, or at least we think we understand a bit more of the science, I think it's nice that we can still do that on a scientific basis and celebrate all of those things. So we're doing the same thing maybe for slightly different reasons.

• 22:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:50Matt Lewis?

  Even though we have a closer understanding of precisely what's happening and our ancestors are maybe doing it in hope and we're doing it in a little bit more knowledge.

• 22:57Speaker 05

  And it feels at the moment that wasails are really taking off. There's loads of new ones springing up everywhere, even in central London and up north where they're not particularly orchard visiting wasails anyway. And there seems to be a need for this for some reason.

• 23:11Matt Lewis?

  It's such a good community thing, isn't it? I saw your face light up when you said central London.

• 23:15Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I was about to, be right back. I'm just Googling the central London wasail. It's fine. It's fine. But no, I think that this is such an incredible thing. And it's one of the things we can really learn from our medieval ancestors, right? Is that there is a lot to be celebrated in these various parts of the year. And I think we actually really identify with that still. It's very easy in the 21st century to see ourselves as always atomized off from each other, but there is some kind of deep human need to relate to nature, to our neighbors. And I think this is just such a beautiful example of that.

• 23:44Matt Lewis?

  And I wonder just people get more and more interested in things like mindfulness. This seems to me a great example of that kind of just being in the moment. Getting closer to nature, being with the community around you, engaging in a communal activity, it's quite a mindful thing to do, I guess.

• 24:00Speaker 05

  It definitely has that effect, especially when you're there on a dark January night in an orchard. If that doesn't wake you up, then when the guns go off, that really makes you very present.

• 24:09Eleanor Janega?

  So you've mentioned that there are different wassails that happen in different ways all across Devon. Is that also true of the songs? Do they have different ways of approaching it?

• 24:21Speaker 05

  Definitely. So the house visiting wassails very clearly usually start saying, hello, good master, good mistress, we've come to sing to you, blah, blah, blah. And then it usually goes on to say a bit about what they're coming to beg for as well.

• 24:36Matt Lewis?

  Give us some figgy pudding.

• 24:38Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 24:38Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 24:39Eleanor Janega?

  For about 15 verses, it's fine, it's normal.

• 24:41Speaker 05

  That sort of thing. Yeah, so they're pretty standard. And then, again, the orchard visiting wassails are also pretty standard across the board. And just like the house visiting ones sing about hello, good mistress, master, the orchard ones like hello, tree, we've come to sing to you on this lovely night. And you'll hear in the rhyme as well, it talks about you'll produce a huge crop of cider apples and all stacked underneath the stairs. And yes, interestingly, they don't mention so much about scaring away evil spirits in the songs. So I do wonder if that's something that's been added on in recent years a bit more, perhaps? Yeah, it's not something you hear so much about.

• 25:23Matt Lewis?

  Are there stages to the wassail song? So do you go through steps in the process, maybe at each different place you do the orchard, the barrel store, and where the apples are pressed? Is there important sections to what you need to do at each of those stops?

• 25:36Speaker 05

  There are, yes. So each verse has been tailored to sing about very specific aspects that we want to recognise. So the lichen on the tree and the bark and everything related to the trees in those verses. Then we go indoors and we sing about the barrels and the bacteria and the use and the carbon and so forth. Nothing is left out.

• 26:08Matt Lewis?

  This time of year can easily just feel a bit off. The days get shorter, the routines change, and honestly, you might just find yourself feeling irritable, perhaps a little less motivated or a bit more tired. Just getting through things feels like more of a slog than normal. It might feel easier to just push through it, or even try and ignore how you're feeling and just blame the season. But if it's starting to affect your day-to-day life, talking to a therapist can help you to better understand why you're feeling like this and can genuinely help. That's where Rula comes in. Rula makes it easier to find a licensed therapist who meets your needs and importantly, takes your insurance.

• 26:52Matt Lewis?

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• 27:34Matt Lewis?

  You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Hi folks, this is Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman, and I'm here to suggest that you host Thanksgiving with industry-leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are, as usual, no antibiotics ever in their meat department, so carve up turkey and spiral cut ham with peace of mind. Shop organic sides like stuffing mix and cranberry sauce from 365 brand. And guess what? All of their fabulous delectable pies are made with no high fructose corn syrup. Where else are you going to find that? Gourmet Thanksgiving flavors with the quality you want, only at Whole Foods Market.

• 28:23Speaker 03

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• 29:05Speaker 03

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• 29:25Speaker 06

  What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? And did the Vikings ever reach America?

• 29:36Speaker 06

  I'm Don Wildman, and on American History Hit, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership. Find American History Hit twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit.

• 30:30Matt Lewis?

  Here at Gray's Cider Farm in Halstow, we've got the chance to speak to Theo Gray, who represents the 13th generation of his family to be making cider here over more than 350 years. We're meeting him in the so-called Pound Chamber. Theo, it's great of you to join us now. Where have we come? We're indoors. So we have just walked into our Pound Chamber, above our Pound House, in the top of our main cider building. We're getting closer to the cider.

• 31:00Eleanor Janega?

  With every step. But I love this, it's got these great old beams, it's got a nice A-frame roof, it's everything that I would kind of expect from a medieval building, even if it isn't medieval itself. Come on, it doesn't change that much.

• 31:12Matt Lewis?

  And what is a Pound House? A Pound House is where you make cider. We're above it in the Pound Chamber, and we're a level above the Pound House, which is convenient because the apples come in above the press, and then interestingly, the cellar is even further down the hill. So the apples come in at the top level, they go down one level into the Pound House, where they're pressed, and then everything's gravity down the cellar into the storage. Until we get cider. And your family own and run this cider farm. How long has your family been here? We've been here since around 1660, showing the same name. So yeah, I'm Theo Gray, Gray Cider. We've been here for 13 generations, we think.

• 31:51Eleanor Janega?

  Wow.

• 31:53Matt Lewis?

  So you're the 13th generation making cider on this spot? I am, yeah. It must be incredible to feel attached to that much history and tradition. Yeah, definitely. I do. It's quite hard to explain that it's very special. You know, I love being from here and having that sort of connection to a place where my family's been such a long time.

• 32:12Eleanor Janega?

  So we know this for sure about your family. You've had this farm and this orchard for quite some time. But do we have any evidence, for example, like, I can't imagine that these were the first people who were like, "Oh, you know, I think this might be a good place to grow some apples."

• 32:26Matt Lewis?

  No, I mean, it's a very typical, traditional Devon longhouse with buildings and a Pound House and orchards. But this is cider country, and people would have been making cider here, possibly. Since the Romans, you know, we've got a good climate for growing apples. And there's lots of orchards and lots of evidence of lots of old cider makers. So yeah, a long time. That's even more impressive, isn't it? So your family have been here 350 years, 13 generations. But you're tapping into stuff that has been in this spot for maybe 2000 years? Yeah, it seems like we've been here for such a long time, but that's been going on since people have been here almost, I suppose. You almost feel quite small in the chain of cider makers.

• 33:05Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. Speaking of quite small things, one of the things I'm really excited about in terms of what we're going to see today is the fact that you are using really traditional, very old cider making processes, whereby you're not using any additives in the process, are you?

• 33:21Matt Lewis?

  No, so the dry cider that we make is just the juice from the apples sourced only on our farm. We've milled them, we've pressed the juice and then we've racked it. So we've pumped the cider from one container to another, leaving behind sediment at each turn. So eventually we're left with a nice, clear, not cloudy, dry cider, which we sell with no additives and the sweetener has just got a bit of sugary stuff added to it. So yeah. And what is the process? So when we think about the what sale today, we're going out blessing the trees, hoping for a good harvest next year. Assuming you get that good harvest, what is the process through the year of collecting apples and then turning them into eventually glorious cider? Not that I'm obsessed with cider.

• 34:04Eleanor Janega?

  No, you're being normal.

• 34:05Matt Lewis?

  We're actually in a pretty bad year at the moment in terms of apples. We've sort of slipped into an every other year cycle where we have a massive crop. And then this year, I mean, looking out into the orchard we've just been in, there is barely an apple on the tree. Eleanor and I are here to what sale hard for you.

• 34:20Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, we are going to take care of this. Don't worry.

• 34:22Matt Lewis?

  We need all the help we can get. Looking at in terms of harvest next year. I mean, we had a big harvest last year. We're quite high, about 600 feet. So we tend to be quite late picking. So we're picking apples at the end of October into November and then as soon as we pick. Them, you know, we start pressing as soon as we've got apples to press. And again, it's quite a simple process and it always has been. You get some apples. You squash them, you know, you mill them first, you scrap them and then you squash them and get the juice. It's a simple process, but just one we've been doing for quite a long time. But why mess with ancient perfection?

• 34:56Eleanor Janega?

  Well, I don't know. I think that it's a really cool thing because the closest that I have really seen to this in terms of other brewing processes is like Lambic in Belgium where they're using wild fermentation. They kind of just have very big open air vats where they put all of the fruit and the grains and such things. So you know, whereas many other modern ciderries might use, for example, yeast that they popped in, you're not doing that.

• 35:23Matt Lewis?

  No, we don't add any external yeast. All of the yeast that we end up using is naturally occurring in our cider apples. And again, in the very old orchards, we are not certain of all the varieties that we have, only the modern ones that were planted. My father planted and in my grandpa's time, but in some of our older orchards, we don't know what's in there, but we still use all the fruit.

• 35:46Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, that's an apple, I think, you know.

• 35:49Matt Lewis?

  But it's interesting that you're still tapping into that, that very medieval idea and the idea of the wasail, that you're using what is in the apple, what nature is giving you to finish your product. You're not adding loads and loads of stuff to it. You're not going through myriad processes. You're just following nature and that's surely what the wasail is all about. Yeah, like I was saying, it's, it's quite a simple process, you know, we see apples. We mill them, we squash them and we make cider. That should be like a family motto that that's.

• 36:16Eleanor Janega?

  See apples, we squash them, we make cider.

• 36:18Matt Lewis?

  It's probably quite agricultural in that respect. You know, some people are very technical. And, you know, they know a lot about individual yeast and things like that, whereas we don't, but we know we've got our own and that's what we use every other year. Yeah, but I think today where we're trying to get away from the use of chemicals and additives and additional processes and we're all conscious of how processed a lot of our food is, it feels really nice to be getting back to that really simple natural process that you've always done here. Yeah, and it's interesting. Interesting. It shows sometimes, you know, people want to know what's in the cider. Very now and then you'll be asked, you know, have you got kiwi cider, have you got strawberry cider? And then people ask what's in it? And I'll say, well, just

• 36:56Speaker 06

  Apples.

• 36:57Matt Lewis?

  Apple juice. We're getting the dry. That's all it is. And the sweet, there's a bit of sugar in there. It's apples and devon. That's all you need.

• 37:04Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 37:05Eleanor Janega?

  I love this. This is the return to bimbo cider. I think that that's very important, you know?

• 37:11Matt Lewis?

  Have you got a favorite cider that you make? All the cider we make is dry cider. We let it ferment all the way until it's about sort of six and a half, seven percent. So all the natural sugar is gone. And that's the dry. And then we back sweeten that to make sweet and mix for a medium. So we've got sweet, medium and dry. And I'd say my favorite is probably the dry. Yeah. So, you know,

• 37:29Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, good man.

• 37:30Matt Lewis?

  With nothing, nothing added or taken away.

• 37:33Eleanor Janega?

  I'm going to have to do a thorough investigation before I make any claims. Okay? You know, we'll just, let's just see what happens.

• 37:41Matt Lewis?

  We're available to test cider. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Theo. It's been great to chat to you. I'm looking forward to the wasail and to seeing the cider process.

• 37:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, thank you very much.

• 37:50Matt Lewis?

  Thank you very much.

• 37:50Eleanor Janega?

  Thank you.

• 38:02Speaker 03

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• 38:43Speaker 03

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• 39:28Speaker 03

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• 39:51Matt Lewis?

  Well, the sun's beginning to go down now and I spy quite a few people gathering by the farm buildings. These are our wasailers, I suspect. They're certainly dressed for muddy fields and the bracing night air. And there are a few handsome looking dogs in tow too. So let's find out a bit more about some of these distinguished fellows who've come to wasail to the apples.

• 40:16Matt Lewis?

  Hi, I'm Trev Monkenbeck and we've been supporting or coming along to Halstow for the last three years, I think. We are a shanty group, but we keep going with the local traditions because we're quite a long way from the sea. And wasailing is one which we always enjoy and come along and support and sing the old wasail songs. Shanty singing was very much about rhythms and work songs. And that's why we sing the call and response type of songs. Whereas wasailing goes back probably a little bit further than shanty singing. And is about driving away the evil spirits from the trees so that you get the good apple harvest. So it's one of the old folk traditions and shanty singing is one of the newer folk traditions in comparison, I guess, yeah.

• 41:02Matt Lewis?

  I'm Eric Partridge, I'm from North Torden in Devon. And I've been with Mariners for four years now. And I've come to all three of the wasails that we've done thoroughly enjoy it despite the cold. I was born and bred in Devon, unlike some of these poor blokes, but yeah, I think it's really important to keep all these traditions going. And we've been here now, this will be three years, four coming up, and important to keep it going, I think. We've sing to all the different parts of the process, so yeah, hopefully we'll get nice. I think it's the size of that helps our singing. I'm Ian McAvoy, I've been with Maris about eight years now. I'm a Scot, I'm from Devon, and I used to sing folk songs most of the time.

• 41:44Matt Lewis?

  See, shanties are just a different branch of folk singing, and it's great fun. Hi, I'm Steve, I was a young man when I started, 17 years ago, I was only 22. It feels like I'm a lot older than that, but it's all a myth, really. And we come here very often to sing to the cider. And we can't think of a reason why we shouldn't, it's very nice, good fun, old traditions. Hello, I'm David Ashby, and I am also a shanty singer, and I'm also a wasaila. In fact, I was a sailor.

• 42:21Matt Lewis?

  Oh dear, I think some of those jokes are maybe left over from the medieval period too. Although, as I always say, all the best things are. Now here's a very dapper gentleman in a bowler hat, brandishing a metal drum. His name is Bill. Bill, you're wearing a very dapper bowler hat, and I can see a drum hanging at your waist. What part does the drum play?

• 42:40Speaker 06

  Well, the drum just beats out the beat, but you've got to make a little noise in wasailing. It's really important. People bring along all sorts of tin items, old pans and things like that, just to bash. So I'm not really a drummer, but this is a drum I picked up in Plymouth in about 1970 for a fiver at a shop. It's just a decent old drum, really. Made by Hawks, who became Boozy and Hawks. That was a London firm, and so it has got a bit of an old pedigree to it, this old firm.

• 43:12Matt Lewis?

  Fantastic, how long have you been wasailing?

• 43:14Speaker 06

  Well, we've known about it for a long, long time, but it's becoming very popular now. So I remember going to wasails and organising wasails. About nineteen seventy, something like that, and reading about them, reading about the local wasails in old history books and things like that. It died out for a long time, and I suppose after the war perhaps, and after the Second World War. And now it's being revived quite well. At any orchard you can find, let's have a wasail. Most villages around here do have them now. They're not as big as this one, but they do get together and talk about the apples and praise the apples and what it produces, which is a lovely cider. A Devonshire cider is particularly good. I don't know what it is, it's the soil, probably the soil, by far the best, yeah.

• 43:59Matt Lewis?

  It's a nice cider pitch. Have you got a favourite part of the wasail process and why is it drinking cider?

• 44:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's a community gathering which is really important. They don't get enough of them now. Everybody getting together in the, well, it's often very cold and rainy, but they dress up, they put on coats. And then around the orchards, if it's quite a big wasail, they'll have a bowl of cider-based punch warmed up for you to have as you go around. And you've got to remember to take a mug with you because they don't lend them out.

• 44:33Matt Lewis?

  It sounds like though, all of the cosy things that we think of for autumn, like round bonfire night and all of that, but in January.

• 44:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:39Matt Lewis?

  It's that same kind of cosy community warming on a cold night kind of thing. But in January and people have forgotten it and we should bring it back.

• 44:47Speaker 06

  Certainly the fire, generally in the orchard where the wasail is taking place, they do have a decent fire. And that does warm you up, both visually and also, you know, on your skin as well. I think it's great to keep these traditions going and the youngsters enjoy it. You stick a little maid up in the tree and put toast in the tree, you get her down again afterwards, but it's

• 45:10Speaker 06

  there's all these little things that people do and they make up their own rules, some of them do, or their own traditions within the main tradition. I mean, the most important day of any tradition is the day when it's not a tradition, it's the day when it starts. And then you keep that going and it becomes a tradition.

• 45:27Matt Lewis?

  I'm looking forward to this, Bill. I can't wait to see you up there beating your drum.

• 45:30Speaker 06

  Well, I'm looking forward to it as well. There's nothing I like better than beating my drum.

• 45:36Matt Lewis?

  Right, seems like everyone's in line now. Bill is poised over his drum and Jim Coasley's got his accordion out. So let's head up to the field for the ceremony.

• 46:26Matt Lewis?

  So we're arriving in the orchard. There's a bonfire crackling that's welcome and we're going to start circling round and round the apple tree. The wassail song will begin with an incantation before breaking into a celebration of the yeasts, bacteria and moulds to be found in the orchards and barns, on the apples and the presses, in the barrels and significantly within each of the guests and in the cider they drink as they take part in the wassail. They've given me and Eleanor a song sheet but we'll spare your ears.

• 47:00Matt Lewis?

  Now it's time to thank the tree for its rich yield of apples and for Theo and his dad to fire off a couple of shotguns, as you do.

• 47:12Matt Lewis?

  Here's to thee, old apple tree, that blooms well and bears well. Hatsful, cupsful, three bushel bagsful, and all under one tree.

• 47:43Matt Lewis?

  Now, there's one more part of the outdoor ceremony to take part in, and that's drinking cider from the communal bowl. Now, I've got to drive home, so I don't get to partake this time. I'm having to restrain Eleanor on a bit of a leash here. The ceramic bowl itself is hanging from the tree and there's something very special about it. It's been made specifically for this ceremony by Abigail North, a ceramicist from Gidley in West Devon. So I have a lovely neighbour called Bill Murray, who has a fine voice and is very up to date with all the Devon traditions and knowledge. And he asked me if I would be involved in that project. And then I went to Helstow and saw everything there.

• 48:28Matt Lewis?

  Was particularly struck by how beautiful the old barrels were in the cider making process. And I think that sunk into my thinking somewhere. So when I started to make the bowl or make prototypes for it, it was the casks with the great big lovely bands of metal around them that kind of influenced the form, as it were. How then did you go about creating the bowl? What did you have to bear in mind when you were creating the bowl for them? I knew that traditional Wausau bowls are very ornate with lots of sprigging and little figures and trees and whatever. And I knew that wasn't the way that I wanted to work.

• 49:10Matt Lewis?

  And so it was just going with my instinct about something much simpler and plainer. And actually, what I realised was that wood-turned Wausau bowls, which is from the 17th century, I think, were also banded and also very simple and plain. And so I thought that was the direction that I wanted to go in. And so it was just a case of making some different shapes to see what would work best. And that's what happened, really. It's interesting that you made the decision to go for a plain a bowl, I think, because when you're standing there on Gray's Farm, it is just such a beautiful spot. Yeah. It doesn't need too much more adornment, does it? Because you're surrounded by all of the beauty of nature anyway. The bowl can be plain with that banding that just fits in with the cider,

• 49:55Matt Lewis?

  the elements of what it's doing. So I can see the logic of what you're talking about there. It was great. And I understand that the bowl is made with clay from the farm. Is that right? Yep, it is. How important was that to the project to have something that came from the soil of Gray's Farm? I think that's a really lovely thing. Subsequently, I've worked with clay from around my studio here. And there's something really lovely about not transporting materials hundreds of miles and staying as local as you can is a really nice ethic. So that was really the beginning of my involvement in using local clay. That's really interesting that it's affected your work in that way too. Because I guess from the Wassail's point of view, it really fits with what they're trying to do to have a bowl that is made from the earth of the farm beneath the tree.

• 50:39Matt Lewis?

  When they're talking about the joining together of the earth and the roots and the tree and the fruit and nature all around it, to have the bowl be part of that. It's not from outside the setting that it's being used in. It's a really nice touch. Yes, it was nice to be able to make a form that I was happy with and not be trying to do something that perhaps would have been the majority of Wassail bowls. I think are the heavily decorated, embellished with springing. That would not really be something that I could even hope to do, let alone it's not something I wanted to do. Do you go to the house though Wassail? Yes, I've been a couple of times. How do you find it being involved in a ceremony like that? And also seeing your bowl being at the centre of it? It's beautiful. I love it. I particularly love the music.

• 51:21Matt Lewis?

  In the distant past, I played music and was at university doing a music degree. So the music in particular, I just find really beautiful. But the whole setting is incredible there. It takes you to a different place, doesn't it? Listening to the music, I think, is just so special and timeless and. It is because you get out on that hillside with a bonfire going and the chill in the air and everybody around singing and you could be at any moment in time stood on that hill, couldn't you? Exactly, which is one of the things about Dartmoor where we are, because you're up on the moor and it could be from any time in history. Because not much really, I know there were obviously more trees up there, but not much has changed. And it is this connection through time.

• 52:04Matt Lewis?

  It feels like you're really connected. It's really lovely. Thanks to Abigail North, well, I think Eleanor has managed to empty the Wassailing Bowl by herself while you were gone. So Eleanor, what did you think? We've Wasailed?

• 52:18Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, this is genuinely one of the most special things I've ever got to do.

• 52:21Matt Lewis?

  And it's incredible, just that connection back to what people have been doing for centuries to celebrate, the connection to the earth and the fruits that it gives us and cider that we make from it.

• 52:30Eleanor Janega?

  I have to say, being able to drink out of a bowl from the clay in the ground here with the cider that it's been produced, that's just incredibly moving. It's a wonderful thing to be a part of and it's so nice to see a tradition this alive.

• 52:45Matt Lewis?

  Well, I think it's time we staggered back home.

• 52:47Eleanor Janega?

  All right, well, I gotta go get more cider first, but I'll meet you at the car.

• 52:52Matt Lewis?

  Well, I think it's heartening that today in sun corners of England, you can still hear the echoes of this ancient tradition. The pop of a cork from a bottle of spiced cider, the gentle sway of apple branches in the winter wind, and the harmonious voices of modern Wasailers, all harking back to a time when community, celebration, and a little bit of magic helped people survive the darkest days of winter. And if you want to actually see all of this, we filmed it. It's in a history hit documentary about medieval winter. The link is in the show notes. So, the next time you raise a glass in toast, remember the Wasailers of old. Their legacy lives on in our holiday traditions.

• 53:36Matt Lewis?

  It's a testament to the enduring human need for warmth, community, and good cheer in the depths of winter. And also of cider.

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