A LIQUER maker is launching a campaign to revive Britain’s shrinking damson crop, urging people to plant more of the forgotten fruit.

North Yorkshire producer Raisthorpe Manor, which earlier this year began marketing the UK’s first Damson Port, has started its Damsons Are Forever project by planting an orchard of 8ft Merriweather damson trees on its estate at Wharram, near Malton.

The trees were planted to coincide with National Tree Week.

Damsons were used in the dye and cloth manufacturing industries in the 18th and 19th centuries and orchards of the trees were widespread until the Second World War, after which changing tastes and the relatively high cost of British-grown fruit caused a decline.

The firm's owner Julia Medforth said only a handful of new plantings had taken place since the 1960s.

She said: “With each tree having an average lifespan of 50 years, once they die out we could be left with no British-grown damsons at all, and so they really are damsons in distress.

“We want to see this rare countryside gem continue to flourish."

She said the firm would highlight the plight of the fruit throughout next year and aimed to ensure damsons are considered a quintessentially British fruit.