The Blackden Trust - The Gooseberry project

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The Gooseberry Project

A modest sized show gooseberry

In the area around Blackden, the competition is ferocious to grow monster gooseberries, the size of hens' eggs.

History

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century gooseberry societies flourished in the north of England, mainly in Cheshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire and the Midlands. These societies were formed to organise annual shows where the heaviest berries won prizes such as copper kettles and brass pans.

From a peak of one hundred and seventy one shows registered in 1845, only eleven have survived into the twenty-first century. Ten of these societies are in Cheshire and have formed the Mid-Cheshire Gooseberry Shows Association.

The skill and patience required does not attract the young, so what once was almost a rite of passage amongst the gooseberry growing fraternity has largely become a pastime for older people, mostly men.

To record this culture before it disappears, The Blackden Trust has offered to house the archives of the Cheshire societies and provide facilities for their study in the library of The Old Medicine House. Some documents and artefacts have been deposited.

Frank Carter

Growers bred gooseberry trees that would produce heavier and heavier berries, but none with more success than Frank Carter. He is legendary among gooseberry growers for developing seventeen new gooseberry cultivars. All were grown from seed on Blackden soil, many of them in the garden of The Blackden Trust.

The 2008 Frank Carter Memorial Plate

Frank Carter was born in Toad Hall at the beginning of the twentieth century and lived all his life in Blackden. He worked at Jodrell Bank, in the experimental gardens of the Biology Department of The University of Manchester. When he retired he continued to work at the visitors' centre, and he continued to develop new cultivars. Frank's cultivars still grow the heaviest berries shown today.

To celebrate his achievements the Trust has inaugurated The Frank Carter Memorial Plate to be awarded each year for the Premier Berry at Goostrey Gooseberry Show. The plates will be made by the potter, John Hudson, and will record the year, the name of the grower and the name of the berry, so that every plate will be unique.

Winners of the Frank Carter Memorial Plate

2008 Terry Jones won the inaugural plate
2009 Dave Heath
2010 Emma Williams
2011 Dave Heath

The Frank Carter Memorial Archive will be a living archive of his seventeen cultivars. Cuttings will be taken from the trees and grown on. Once we have established our nursery of trees, visitors to the Trust will be able to have specimens of Frank’s trees to continue his legacy.

Fourteen gooseberry trees of the seventeen cultivars developed by Frank Carter have been donated to The Blackden Trust by members of the East-Cheshire Gooseberry Societies, and are now growing in the soil Frank cultivated. The remaining three are rarer, but the gooseberry growers are actively seeking them out.

Pruning to get the shape of the spokes of a wheel

A gooseberry grower’s diary

Late November or early December

The grower’s season starts with pruning, which is the first essential treatment of the trees to get decent sized berries. Gooseberry trees are pruned very severely to produce a fist of old wood with four or five branches of the current year’s growth, fanning out from the central old growth like the spokes of a cartwheel.

The pruned branches are selected and trimmed to make cuttings. These are stuck into the soil around the parent plant.

January

When no frost is expected, the trees are sprayed with a winter wash. The berries need light and air to grow well, so the branches are trained with specially made supports to get the optimum spacing both horizontally and laterally.

Then a sprinkling of fertilizer is applied. Each grower has his own magic formula.

Frank Carter's cultivars

The oral history about Frank's cultivars is incomplete. We would be most grateful if anybody could fill in the gaps in the chart below.

	Name	Colour	Story behind the name
1.	Montgomery	White
2.	Prince Charles	Yellow	This berry was named to commemorate the birth of Prince Charles.
3.	Firbob	Yellow
4.	Blackden Gem	Red	All Frank Carter's cultivars were grown in Blackden
5.	Just Betty	Red	Frank wanted to name this berry after his mother, Betty, but he told, Alan Garner's mother, Marjorie, that he was not happy about naming it Betty Carter. She suggested that just Betty would be fine, so Frank named the berry Just Betty.
6.	Christine	Red
7.	Montrose	Yellow	It is said that Montrose was the name of a house Frank Carter's mother-in-law admired and wanted to live in.
8.	Mr Chairman	White
9.	Bank View	Green	Frank Carter's son, Doug, lives at Bank View in Goostrey
10.	Blackden Firs	White	Frank Carter lived most of his married life at No. 4 Blackden Firs
11.	Roots	Green
12.	Woodside	Green
13.	Millennium	Yellow
14.	Newton Wonder	White
15.	Bellmarsh	White	Bellmarsh House, originally Bomish Farm, is on the edge of Blackden.
16.	Crystal	White
17.	Jodrell Bank		The Goostrey Growers say that Frank refused to count this berry, but they do not know why.