Luton orchard map of historical locations

Did fruit trees once grow in your Luton neighbourhood? Is there an orchard near you today? We're setting out to uncover the town’s fruit-growing past and present, and we need your help.

The map - 34 Historical Locations within Luton that may still have trees today (+18 just outside Luton)

We found these locations on old maps logged as orchards, and from satellite images it looks like there could still be trees. 

Do you live near one of these locations? Can you help us check if there are still apples, pears or plums today? This process is is also called 'ground truthing' (Wikipedia). 

To survey a location: 

Remember to include the orchard code, eg BEDF_Hist1700. 

Alternative to the paper form

You can either download and print off the PDF form or use the online form to submit your result, but best is if you write it down on paper first. 

The shortlist 

This list contains 34 locations within Luton that could still have fruit trees. Click on the link to go straight to the location on the map. 

We're updating the list as results come in. 

So far our ground truthers are: David M, Gill O, Laura C, Konni D, David L, Darshini MP and Pam F. You can still get involved. 

UPDATE 20 August: locations  that still need checking are now highlighted in yellow on the map

Instructions & form downloads

How to groundtruth a location

Groundtruthing is a fancy word for going and checking a location in person. To help us find if there are still orchards on the locations that were historically mapped as orchards, start by checking the blue outlined orchard location using the links on this page or the Google map. 

Then visit the location in person (no trespassing, please). Can you see any fruit trees? Do you know the owner or occupier of the land? Do they remember anything about the location in terms of fruit trees? 

Now make your assessment, using the Luton Orchards survey form [PDF]. 

Positive match

Are there still fruit trees present? These may be visibly old trees (with trunks as large as a bucket), or newly planted. If you think it's a fruit tree, let us know. 

Negative match

Likewise, if you can see there is nothing left at the location, let us know that it is a negative result. 

How to submit your result

Submit your results by email to konni@lutonorchards.org . We've extended the deadline for this to 1 September 2024. 

Key to map

Orchard locations either have a green or yellow border, which means:

Orchard ID codes start with letters as follows:

18 locations just outside Luton

These locations are currently outside the scope of the search. But if you're interested, here they are!

How we arrived at the list of 32 possible locations

Fig. 1 - Example of the orchard symbol in OS Maps used in the maps we looked at. The image shows what today is Roman Road at the junction with Canterbury Close, Leagrave. 

Searching old maps

We've found more than 150 sites labelled with the orchard symbol (see Fig. 1) on old Ordnance Survey maps of Luton. 

We plotted the historic orchards onto a Google Map, so you can see where they used to be in the Luton of today. The map also includes a number of existing orchards in the town.

We know most or all of the fruit trees disappeared long ago, but we want to trace any that may remain. 

Natural England defines an orchard as 5 or more fruit and nut trees with crowns less than 20 metres apart, but even if there's only one veteran fruit tree left, it’ll be worth knowing, as it might be an interesting or even a lost variety. 

More about how we gathered the historic map locations

To search for orchards that Luton would have had in the past, we used several versions of the OS County Series at Six-Inch to the mile / 1:10,560, dating between 1878 and 1922. 

The OS County Series is the most detailed topographic mapping that covers all of Great Britain, although the later revisions were only carried out on some areas. Luton was last fully surveyed in 1922 and small parts of it around Dunstable Road were reviewed again in 1937. In detail, the survey dates for Luton were: 

You can read more about OS mapping at the National Library of Scotland. 

We're still working out how to make the historic maps in the context of Luton Orchards viewable online. You can see this test of the 1878 Luton OS map with Luton Orchards plotted (reused with permission from the National Library of Scotland).

We'll soon include more maps from the 1960s, who should become available in Summer 2024. 


How we graded the satellite images

LO209

1 - no trees. Houses and driveways cover the plot. The small lawned area does not look like it has any trees on it. 

LO154

2 - maybe trees remaining. They could be in the top-right corner. However, this is unlikely, because the buildings look quite recent and it'd be fair to assume the site was cleared completely before construction. 

LO148

3 - looks promising. Different deciduous trees grow along the entire plot. The relatively loose canopy structure hints at them being fruit trees.