In our street we have an apple expert – plant scientist Dr Barrie Juniper. Every year, as the fruit starts to ripen, neighbours find welcome bags of produce dropped at their doors.

Open up the bag and it’s a surprise every time. Inside are exotic varieties rarely found in shops – misshapen, spotted – yet frequently more appetising and flavoursome than those bland, evenly sized specimens bagged up by supermarkets.

Unusual inclusions are often labelled with a neat, handwritten card: Claygate Pearman, Leathercoat, Reinette Ananas.

It’s the poetry of a lost era which describes a lost art. After the carnage of the First World War, few knowledgeable apple cultivators were left to restore Britain’s orchards. Skilled sweet apple cultivation died with the men who volunteered to defend King and Country.

Elsewhere in Europe, ancient established orchards and apple collections, such as Simon Louis-Freres near Metz, France became the WWI front line between the opposing Allied and German forces, and were destroyed.

In WWII, the last great tank battle of the conflict was fought between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht through the apple-growing and fruit nursery area of the Kursk region of European Russia.

Juniper’s expeditions to the remote Tian Shan region in Central Asia have confirmed that specimens collected from the fruit forests on the mountains’ north-facing slopes are the ancestors of apples eaten today.

Enjoying a European-type climate of cold winters and hot summers, the apple flourished, eaten by birds, bears and wild boar foraging among the trees.

Horses, both wild and domesticated ate the fruit as they travelled through the mountain passes, taking goods from settlements on the Yangtse River in China in the east, to Sumeria in the west.

“Traders probably picked their way through the forests for over 7000 years,” Juniper said.

Lapis lazuli mined in north east Afghanistan travelled to Egypt, China, Babylon and Persia along the same route, and the Silk Road too ran through the forests full of succulent fruit – as delicious to the weary traveller, as the hibernating bear, enjoying an apple feast.

After such a journey over many centuries, to lose both apple nurseries and knowledge in the brief period between the World Wars put horticulture back decades.

Now, with the trees full of dropping blossom, it’s apt to remember the sacrifice of those lost, and the skill of those left who have restored apple cultivation in Britain.

Come October, when apples are at their sweetest and fullest, a series of Apple-Pressing Days are organised. We flock to our kind neighbour’s house. Taking it in turns to wash the windfalls, chop them into pieces, and operate the presser, it’s become a neighbourhood event.

We then feast on delicious, freshly made apple juice during the days ahead, a sweetner to the onset of winter.