David Ramsay

Born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) to parents who lived far from any schools, David attended boarding school from the age of five, first in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and then in Scotland. His passions were history and theatre-making, and in 1971 he went to the Edinburgh Drama School. He next attended the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and it was here during auditions that he met his future wife, Nicky.

His first job was to start a drama department at one of inner London’s largest comprehensives, Kingsdale. At this time he also worked free-lance touring a series of community productions created from the real-life experiences and memories of the actors in his company. This work culminated in a BBC documentary examining his approach and technique, a technique he was to use again in drawing out and shaping some of the source material for this current series on Exmoor, although presented here in book form, rather than as performance.

After Kingsdale, David was for ten years head of the Drama Department at Queen Mary’s College. Then in 2004 he and Nicky moved from west London to the northern coast of Exmoor.  They have one daughter, who recently finished a fellowship at Great Ormand Street and is now a Consultant Paediatric Radiologist.

Currently David’s main interest is in orchards and tracking down and grafting heritage apple varieties.  This began as an attempt to extend the orchard’s flowering period for his bees by finding and grafting trees at the extreme ends of the season, those varieties in pollination groups 1 and 2, and 5 and 6.  This then led to the fascinating area of local heritage, the so-called heirloom, or historical apple varieties and their unique ability to adapt and thrive in this particular part of Exmoor and the South West.

This search for heritage varietes led to a conversation in 2019 in which the only known Porlock Pippin was brought to his attention, an ancient tree still growing in what was an old farmyard, now a garden.  Realising that the variety was not on any national list of local cultivors, he had it confirmed through DNA sequencing, resulting in the Porlock Pippin receiving a permanent place on the UK FruitID Register.  The variety was also preserved for the future with David taking grafts from the mother tree to be planted in a series of orchards both locally and up on high-Exmoor.  He has also grafted trees for the Porlock Community Orchard and various National Trust properties including the Coleridge Cottage orchard, Dunster Castle’s Dream Garden and the Trust’s Mother Orchard at Cotehele, further helping to ensure that the variety is widely curated and kept safe.

He also runs regular grafting workshops using local heritage varieties for new orchards on Exmoor, in an attempt to keep these safe and make their forgotten flavours more widely accessible.

All this then led, totally unexpectedly, to a song being written about him – a ballard called ‘The Apple Keeper.’  With words and music by Jackie Macbeth it celebrates the saving of heritage varieties and had its first public performance at Halsway Manor, the National Centre for Folk Art, during the 2022 May-Day weekend.

Scions from the Porlock Pippin and other local varieties can usually be available from his own trees – along with advice on grafting and growing apples and setting up an orchard.  Anyone interested in this can contact David via email on unforgottenexmoor@gmail.com or a DM on Instagram @theporlockpippin where he posts on Apples, Bees and Exmoor history.