What drink was whimple once famous for?

Answer 1

Whimple is a village and civil parish in East Devon in the English county of Devon, approximately 14.5 km due east of the city of Exeter, and 4.8 km from the nearest small town, Ottery St Mary.

Whimple is large enough to support two pubs and a Church of England primary school, and was mainly notable during the 20th century as being the home of Whiteway's cyder and pear products. Although the factory lands were sold off for housing in the 1990s, the village is still surrounded by orchards of cider apples and in its heyday boasted the largest cyder apple orchards in the world. It is now home to the unrelated O'Hanlon's brewery.

Whimple has a long tradition of wassailing which it celebrates every year on Old Twelvey Night - 17 January. The Whimple Wassail is an orchard-visiting wassail ceremony. The ceremony stopped during World War II but was revived by the Whimple History Society in 1980 and has grown into a very popular tradition attracting visitors from all over the country. The ceremony begins at the New Fountain Inn with the first rendition of the wassail song, then the procession first wassails one of the last remaining 'Whimple Wonder' trees before visiting three orchards and stopping for a salute at the village tethering-stone to remember and pay respects to the late "Mayor of Whimple" John Shepherd who was a much loved local character and the man responsible for reviving the tradition. He was also a great singer and recalled many old songs including the Whimple Wassail. After visiting the last orchard, the wassail party finish up at the cricket club on the other side of the village where the full song is sung followed by much music-making and consumption of cheese, apple cake and of course,

cider!