Country Life
Trending: The Dunmore Pineapple. Photo: Angus Bremner/Landmark Trust Credit: Angus Bremner/Landmark Trust
From the Americas to the roof of country-house follies, Matthew Dennison traces the journey of the pineapple, one of Georgian Britain’s most coveted fruits.
In the summer of 1767, it was a source of some surprise to the writer of the Manchester Mercury that Edward Higgins, committed to Carmarthen Castle for burglary, hadn’t included among booty stolen from the home of Mrs Biven of Laugherne any pineapples.
Having made himself comfortable in Mrs Biven’s kitchen to the extent of spreading a cloth on the table and lighting two candles in silver candlesticks before eating a chicken Higgins ‘got over a Wall into the Garden, and went into the Hot-house, where were many Pine-Apples fit to take’. Higgins, however, ‘took only four Cucumbers’.