ST LAURENCE ORCHARD MAP

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A must for anybody who has an interest in local distinctiveness or the food growing heritage of South East Essex, Spiralseed have recently published this beautiful map of the St Laurence traditional orchard in Eastwoodbury Lane. The map was created by local permaculture designer Graham Burnett in conjunction with orchard project manager Ron Bates and attendees of the Avro/Viking Resource Centre, who are regular users of the orchard site.

The orchard map was created following several months of work during which time the site was surveyed and mapped using traditional techniques such as pacing to measure its boundaries, triangulation to mark the position of the trees and documented with photographs, paintings and drawings. The mapping project was thorough; when checked against Southend Borough Council's 'official' map of the site as produced by the Parks and Leisure Dept, it was noticed that there was quite a variance between the shape and size of the southerly 'rectangle' of the orchard and our calculations. We remeasured it, but still the discrepancy remained. We then checked the shape and size of the orchard on Google Earth and discovered that in fact our measurements and drawings were correct whilst the council surveyors had been in error!

Taking a lead from the work of Common Ground, we decided to produce a map in order to celebrate this small jewel in the urban Essex landscape. It is intended as both a commemoration of this fragment from a time not so very long ago when the whole of the area was a patchwork of orchards and smallholdings providing food for the area, as well as an inspiration for the coming era of relocalisation. After some discussions we decided that rather than produce a literal map we would create a collage from the many photographs we had taken throughout the year, capturing the spirit of the various orchard seasons as well as the character of these venerable fruit trees that were planted early in the 20th century.

The map is available as a high quality, full colour A1 (59 X 84cm) sized print suitable for framing for only £20 (includes postage costs) from Spiralseed by clicking the Paypal button below

(NB. Part of the proceeds from any sales will go to the Growing Together project in order to help fund further restoration or tree planting at St Laurence orchard)