Sources, tools and technology

Orchards East (OE) at the University of East Anglia mapped a lot of the orchards across the East of England. The work was led by Professor Tom Williamson and many partners, including the People’s Trust for Endangered Species. They used historical maps and followed up with site visits by volunteers.

OE identified 51 historical orchards in Luton, but data for the town was not complete.  

QGIS was the tool of choice for the PTES Orchard Biodiversity Officer to create an inventory of orchards. It's free and very powerful.

The Luton Orchards project used QGIS to draw polygons onto maps and capture data points against a location. We layered 4 different versions of the OS County Series Map and manually searched for the orchard symbol. We could also use it to georeference the Luton Tithe Map of 1842. 

QGIS Cloud is the technology that enabled us to publish the map with all the historical orchards we found.

All of this allowed us to present how orchards in Luton have changed over the course of almost 200 years.

The British Newspaper Archive proved a rich source of orchard information through the ages. From adverts placed by Laxton's Nursery in Bedford, to reports about sugar fraud in Limbury. Some of the material we found has been published on this website. 

TheGenealogist was the only place where we could access the Luton Tithe Map and dig into this fantastic record of land history.  Thanks to the team, we could purchase a copy of the map and can now show it as part of this project. 

This website provided hours of fun searching for photographic evidence of orchards in Luton. 

We found a few lovely photographs in The Museum of English Rural Life collection, held at Reading University. They were taken at an agricultural exhibition in Luton in 1949, demonstrating methods used for large-scale fruit growing.