Speke Hall neighbours can pick fruit from its orchard this weekend to celebrate Apple Day

Neighbours of Liverpool’s historic Speke Hall have the chance to go along to its orchard this weekend and pick apples grown on the estate.

Apple Day, on Saturday September 29, has been organised in partnership with Alchemic Kitchen, which aims to improve access to food for everyone across the North West.

The end-of-summer harvest is a way of making sure that the fruit grown in Speke Hall’s orchard doesn’t go to waste and makes it into local homes instead.

Anyone living in the L24 or L19 postcodes around the Hall can make the most of a Neighbour Pass offered by the National Trust to visit on Saturday then get entry all year round for £5 per household. If you don’t live in those postcodes you can still take part, it’s a free event, you just pay the normal admission fee.

You can join the Alchemic Kitchen organisers to collect the apples and learn more about the heritage varieties grown at Speke Hall and how to grow and prune your own apple trees.

There’ll also be an opportunity to get a taste of some delicious fresh fruit straight off the trees because the team will be milling and pressing juice during the day, making apple crumbles and sharing recipes.

Apple Day will be on from 11am until around 4pm – or until the apples run out – at the orchard, next to the Home Farm Restaurant, there’s no need to book and children are welcome. Any surplus apples will be donated to a range of different organisations, including food banks in Liverpool, Manchester and Lancaster.

The 2024 event has been supported by the King’s Coronation Community Fund and the Heritage Fund.

As part of the national charity Feedback, Knowsley-based Alchemic Kitchen runs a variety of projects to help people eat a healthy, fresh and environmentally sustainable diet, as well as tackling the problem of food waste.

It started in 2018, making jams, chutneys and ketchups from surplus ingredients. Then in 2020, as Covid highlighted food inequality and made it harder for lots of people to get healthy fresh produce, Alchemic Kitchen began working more with local community partners to help improve access and education around what we eat. 

Its successful projects now include The Queen of Greens bus which delivers fresh local produce directly to communities across Liverpool City Region that have difficulty accessing healthy and affordable food. Working with Feeding Liverpool and two greengrocers, the Queen stops at more than 35 locations across the region, encouraging people to buy just the amount they need to cut down on waste.