Glossary · Milling and pressing
Pounding
Also written pound, to pound. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.
Definition
The old West Country word for milling fruit, from the days when apples were beaten or ground to pulp rather than torn by a scratter. It survives in the name of the building where it happened, the pound house.
- Subject
- Milling and pressing
- Also written
- pound, to pound
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Milling and pressing
Milling
Breaking fruit down into pomace so that its cells rupture and its juice can be pressed out. It is the step that determines pressing yield more than any other.
History
Pound house
The farm building in which apples were pounded, pressed and fermented — the West Country name for the cider house, from the old verb to pound, meaning to mill.
Equipment
Stone mill
The pre-industrial cider mill: a circular stone trough, the chase, in which an upright stone wheel was drawn round by a horse to crush fruit against the trough.
Milling and pressing
Pomace
Milled fruit — flesh, skin, pips and stalk fragments — before pressing, and the spent solids left in the press afterwards. Both senses are in everyday use and context distinguishes them.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Somerset Rural Life Museum — cider collections
South West Heritage Trust · museum · retrieved 2026-08-24
Hereford Museum of Cider collections and interpretation
Hereford Cider Museum Trust · museum · retrieved 2026-08-24