Cider making

Cider mill (Surrey History Centre ref. 6521/2/2/233)

Gertrude Jekyll, the garden designer, took these photographs for her book 'Old West Surrey', published in 1904. Miss Jekyll described the process of extracting the apple juice:

‘Cider is still made with the old wooden press. The apples are first crushed by a roller in the cider-mill. Two men work it together by a handle on each side, while one of them presses the stream of apples down towards the roller. The crushed pulp falls into a tub, and is then put into coarse fibre bags. These are then packed one over the other in the press with boards between. The picture shows how the heavy presser is screwed down on to the bags of pulp till they are quite flattened, and all the juice that can be squeezed out of them has come away.’

Cider press