Ray Williams was a cider pomologist who was unequalled for his knowledge of cider apples and perry pears and whose expertise was sought throughout the world.
Raymond Russell Williams was born in 1925. At 7, after the death of his mother, he moved to Longhope, Gloucestershire, to live with his grandmother. Orchards there were abundant, some with stately old pear trees which bore the small astringent pears used in making perry.
In later life Williams would recall that the old ladder makers of Longhope used to climb the hills to look out for Russian cargo ships winding their way up the River Severn. If they saw one they would hurry to meet it at Gloucester Docks for the timber that they brought was especially suited for their trade.
Young Williams had a ready smile and a mop of dark curls and captivated the heart of Jean Cameron, a farmer’s daughter. As teenagers they used to cycle for miles around the Forest of Dean, exploring the old mines. He was 18 when he left the Crypt School in Gloucester. It was 1943, and he joined the RAF and was sent to Canada to train as a navigator. As the war drew to a close he came back, but worked instead as a Bevin Boy in the coalmines of Cannock Chase. He would cycle from there to Longhope each weekend and cycle back early on Monday morning. After demobilisation he went to the University of Bristol to gain a degree in botany; then worked for a year in the university’s botanical gardens, studying for a diploma in horticulture. It was at this time, while on holiday near Balmoral, Aberdeenshire, that he found a grass which had never been recorded and which was named after him.
In 1952 he joined the National Fruit and Cider Institute at Long Ashton, near Bristol, where he was to become a cider pomologist. During blossom time the following year he and Jean were married in a hilltop Baptist chapel near Longhope and they left the village to set up home in Failand, close to where Williams worked.
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Williams’s special knowledge was of pollination and fruit setting. It was a vital subject for during the fragile ten to 14 days during which a tree blossoms, there must be, to ensure a fruit crop, blossom on a compatible tree close by, and pollinators, generally bees, to carry pollen between the two. This process is more difficult in the exposed commercial orchards on which he had to advise because they didn’t have the snugness, the mixture of fruit trees or the bee-enticing flower borders of a garden.
As part of this work Williams studied bees. He put pollen from a crabapple (Malus baskatong) on to their hives. This pollen, which the bees carried to the orchard trees, contained a strong red gene. The pips from subsequent apples from the trees were planted and those seedlings which came up with their first two leaves a deep red colour indicated the distance that the bees had travelled.
Williams believed bees to be the best pollinators, but their flight pattern had shown that they worked more effectively if cross-pollination trees were scattered throughout the main orchard crop and not, as was then the custom, concentrated in rows. An old apple variety called Miller’s Seedling was then the usual cross-pollinator planted in commercial Cox’s Pippin orchards. However, to interplant it would lessen the growing space of the more valuable Cox’s. As the fruit set from the pollen of Malus baccata ‘baskatong’ had proved as good as that from Miller’s seedling, it led Williams to look at ornamental Malus as pollinators. Much smaller than conventional fruit trees, and made pillar-like by pruning, they could be interplanted with little loss of space. By having several kinds of Malus whose blossom time overlapped, he also managed to extend the pollination period, a great help if during blossom time some days were cold and wet.
Williams’s expertise led to his being invited to lecture and give practical help in Israel, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, France and particularly in North America. He went alone or with a small team which sometimes included his wife Jean, who together with their three children often helped to pick petals off blossom before the pollen being shaken out and stored ready for taking abroad.
In 1981 the Royal Horticultural Society awarded Williams the Jones-Bateman Cup for his original research in fruit growing.
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In the ensuing years he combined his work with writing several books on the growing and processing of cider apples and perry pears.
In the early 1950s the National Fruit and Cider Institute had given special attention to perry fruit in tandem with the enormous commercial success of a new perry drink, Babycham, brewed by the Somerset firm of Showering. In order to get propagating wood from old perry pear trees to create new orchards for Showerings, the institute had to identify the old trees correctly. This was difficult as no proper study of the trees had been done for 70 years. Williams, always pleased to do field research, based himself and his wife back at Longhope for several summers and from there he rode his bicycle around the orchards of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire making a detailed survey of old perry pear orchards. This helped to clear up confusion over identities and he advised which varieties should be propagated and oversaw their management. The book in which his photographs and fruit descriptions appear brought its own unexpected harvest. In the early 1990s Charles Martell, a farmer and fruit enthusiast, used it and also Williams’s personal help to set up the first national collection of perry pears at the Three Counties Showground at Malvern. Since that time other collections have been put together and they, and instruction courses, are contributing towards a new interest in perry making.
Until the 1960s cider fruit was usually grown on mixed farms. The trees were standards. That is, they had tall trunks and stock grazed beneath them. Although picturesque, many of the trees gave a big crop one year and nothing the next and many were of varieties which didn’t give good quality cider but had been adequate for the old days of farm cider making.
By the late 1960s Bulmers, the large cider maker, realised that the supply of fruit which farmers brought to it from these orchards was not adequate for the surge of popularity in the drink. It sought Williams’s help in planting new commercial orchards. Research stations had invented small root stock for trees and he selected the best of these and suggested which old cider varieties to graft on to them.
The old standard trees had taken 25 years to come to full fruiting; the new bush trees took ten years. Their smallness enabled them to be planted in rows with 10-12ft between each bush. This was six times the density of the old orchards and gave six times the fruit yield. In 2000 Williams was given a gold award for a lifetime’s service to the cider industry.
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A new cider apple was named Willy, the affectionate nickname by which Williams was known to many of his friends.
In 1989 he retired from Long Ashton research station to run his own consultancy, advising large and small growers.In his spare time he enjoyed trekking and camping in mountainous regions including the Himalayas.
He is survived by his wife Jean and their two daughters. A son predeceased him.
Ray Williams, pomologist, was born on March 5, 1925. He died on January 19, 2011, aged 85