History · 1657–1691
The cider literature of the 1650s to 1670s
What are the oldest books about cider making?
In short
The first substantial body of writing on cider in English appeared in a single generation: Beale’s Herefordshire Orchards, a Pattern for all England in 1657, the Pomona annexed to Evelyn’s Sylva in 1664, and Worlidge’s Vinetum Britannicum in 1676. Between them they cover orchard planting, cultivar choice, milling and pressing, fermentation, vessels and bottling. They are also less independent of one another than three names and three dates imply — Pomona is a Royal Society compilation with six recorded contributors, and Beale is one of them.
They are the foundation of almost everything later written about early English cider, and they need to be read as improvement literature: they were arguing a case about land, trade and national self-sufficiency, and their enthusiasm is part of that case.
Three books and what is in them
Beale’s book of 1657 is the shortest and the most rhetorical. It is a county advocacy: Herefordshire’s orchards are held up as a pattern, the Redstreak is presented as the fruit that proves the point, and the reader is urged to plant. Its value now is as testimony to what an informed observer in the cider counties thought worth saying about them.
Evelyn’s Pomona of 1664 was published as an appendix to Sylva, his treatise on forest trees, which appeared under the authority of the Royal Society. It gathers contributions rather than presenting one voice, and it carries the subject from the western counties to a national and institutional readership.
Worlidge’s Vinetum Britannicum of 1676 is the technical one. It is the fullest early English account of how cider was actually made: the mills and presses, including his own proposed mill; the handling of pomace; casks and cellars; and the use of glass bottles and cork. A later edition extended it further. For questions of method rather than of advocacy, this is the period source that repays reading.
| Work | Author and date | Chiefly concerned with | How to read it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Herefordshire Orchards, a Pattern for all England | John Beale, 1657 | Orchard planting as county policy; the Redstreak | Advocacy addressed to landowners; evidence of reputation rather than of method |
| Pomona | John Evelyn, 1664, appended to Sylva | Cultivars, orchard practice, the case for cider | A compilation under Royal Society authority; carries the subject to a national readership |
| Vinetum Britannicum | John Worlidge, 1676 | Mills, presses, vessels, fermentation, bottling | The fullest technical account of the century; describes practice in detail |
Why they were written
All three belong to the improvement literature that flourished in England from the 1650s: books that proposed to raise the yield and value of land by better practice, usually addressed to men with land to invest in. Cider was a natural subject for the genre because it converted a crop that grew on ground already in use into a product with a cash value.
The political economy sits close to the surface. Cider is repeatedly set against imported wine, and planting orchards is presented as keeping money in the country. In a period of intermittent hostility with France and of heavy duties on wine, that was an argument with force behind it.
The books are also part of a network. Beale corresponded with the circle around Samuel Hartlib and later with the Royal Society; Evelyn drew on contributions from several hands; Worlidge wrote within the same tradition of practical improvement. Treating them as three independent witnesses to the state of cider making would overstate their independence.
What they are good evidence for, and what they are not
They are strong evidence for vocabulary, for equipment, and for what informed practitioners believed. When Worlidge describes how a cheese was built or how a cask was managed, that is a description of practice by someone who knew it. When the same books name cultivars, they preserve a nomenclature that is otherwise largely lost.
They are weak evidence for quantities, for how widely any practice was followed, and for anything about the ordinary labourer’s cider. Improvement writers describe best practice as they wish it were, and their subject is the estate rather than the cottage. Nothing in them should be read as a survey.
They are also not evidence of origins. A technique described in 1676 was not invented in 1676, and the temptation to date a practice to its first appearance in print is one of the commonest errors in cider history.
Their long afterlife
Because so little else survives in print from before 1650, these three works have carried a great deal of weight in later writing. Nineteenth-century antiquarians quoted them, twentieth-century cider books quoted the antiquarians, and a good deal of what circulates today as general knowledge about early cider is a paraphrase at three or four removes.
That chain of transmission is worth knowing about, because it explains why certain claims — the pre-eminence of one apple, the antiquity of a particular practice — are repeated with a confidence the original texts do not support.
How this developed
Certainty is marked on each entry. Where the popular account runs ahead of the evidence, that is said rather than smoothed over.
1657
Beale
Herefordshire’s orchards proposed as a national model.
1664
Evelyn
Pomona published with Sylva under Royal Society authority.
1676
Worlidge
Vinetum Britannicum, the fullest technical treatment of the century.
Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries· probable
Quotation and paraphrase
The three works become the standard citation for early English cider, often quoted at second and third hand.
Also answered on this page
Questions this page covers, so you can tell at a glance whether it is the one you want.
- What did Evelyn write about cider?
- What is Vinetum Britannicum?
Related
Places
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- How old is the cider press — The screw press used for cider descends directly from the Mediterranean olive and wine presses of antiquity. Its application to apples in northern Europe is medieval, and the design changed remarkably little until hydraulics arrived.
- What is herefordshire cider
- What was the cider boom of the seventeenth century — In the middle of the seventeenth century English gentlemen began planting the Redstreak deliberately and bottling the result, and cider briefly became a fashionable drink discussed alongside wine. The improving literature of the period is the reason we know so much about it.
- When did cider first become sparkling — Deliberate sparkling cider depended on strong glass bottles and secure corks, which English glassmaking supplied in the seventeenth century. English writers describe bottled sparkling cider before sparkling champagne was established.
- Why was the royal society interested in cider — Cider making was one of the earliest subjects of organised experimental agriculture: it involved measurable variables, an economically important product, and a fermentation nobody understood. The Society collected and published reports on it from the 1660s.
- Where are perry pears grown
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.
Herefordshire Orchards, a Pattern for all England
John Beale · historical source · passage verified 2026-08-24 · covers 1657
Identified on 2026-08-24. John Beale’s account of Herefordshire orcharding was first printed in 1657; the copy located and confirmed is the 1724 reprinting held by the Internet Archive, and CiderHQ says which it has seen rather than implying it has read the first edition. The work is an epistolary address rather than a treatise, which is worth knowing before quoting it: it argues a case for Herefordshire practice to a correspondent, and reads as advocacy as much as description. Beale is also one of the contributors to *Pomona*.
Pomona, or an Appendix concerning Fruit-Trees in relation to Cider
John Evelyn, Royal Society · historical source · passage verified 2026-08-24 · covers 1664
Identified on 2026-08-24 from the 1670 edition held by the Internet Archive. The attribution needs correcting and CiderHQ has corrected it: *Pomona* is not a book by John Evelyn. It is an appendix annexed to Evelyn’s *Sylva*, published by express order of the Royal Society, and the contributors recorded for the volume are John Evelyn, John Beale, Daniel Colwall, Paul Neile, John Newburgh and Sylas Taylor. Beale has his own entry in this register, and the overlap is not a coincidence — the two texts come out of the same Royal Society enquiry into cider in the 1660s. Citing *Pomona* as Evelyn’s flattens a collaborative compilation into a single-author work.
Vinetum Britannicum, or a Treatise of Cider
John Worlidge · historical source · passage verified 2026-08-24 · covers 1676
Identified on 2026-08-24 from the 1678 edition held by the Internet Archive. John Worlidge, active 1669–1698; the work ran to further editions including 1691, so a citation to it should say which. The full title is broader than the short one CiderHQ uses and matters for what the book can be cited for: it covers other fruit wines and drinks alongside cider, so it is evidence about seventeenth-century English fruit fermentation generally rather than about cider alone.
Where to go next
- The history of cider — The rest of the history, by period and by tradition.
- Cider culture — What survived from this history and is still practised.
- Regions — The places this happened in, and what they make now.