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Our story

Nine hundred years on Moor Park Lane.

Monks, a retired diplomat, a satirist and a heart in a silver box. The fields at Kilnside have seen a lot. We’re just the latest people lucky enough to farm them.

Before us

The land remembers.

Walk down Moor Park Lane towards the river and you’re following a path people have used for the best part of a millennium. The farm sits between the North Downs Way and the River Wey, a short walk from the ruins of Waverley Abbey.

  1. 1128

    The monks arrive

    Cistercian monks found Waverley Abbey beside the Wey, the first house of their order in England. Kilnside was part of the abbey’s estate, and the monks farmed, fished and kept orchards across this valley for four hundred years.

  2. 1536

    The abbey falls

    Henry VIII dissolves the monasteries and Waverley is one of the first to go. The stone is carted off to build houses nearby; the ruins that are left still stand across the river.

  3. 1680s

    Sir William Temple’s Moor Park

    The diplomat Sir William Temple retires here, renames the estate Moor Park after the Hertfordshire house he loved, and lays out a famous garden. His young secretary, Jonathan Swift, writes A Tale of a Tub at Moor Park and meets Esther Johnson, the “Stella” of his letters.

  4. 1699

    A heart in the garden

    Temple dies at Moor Park. At his request, his heart is buried in a silver casket beneath the sundial in his garden. As far as anyone knows, it’s still there.

Pen and ink drawing of the stone bridge over the River Wey
The Wey, drawn by hand for our All Wey’s label.

We didn’t invent cider at Kilnside. We just picked it back up where the monks left off.

Kilnside today

A family farm, small on purpose.

We keep a flock of sheep and a small herd of Dexters, a small, hardy breed that does well on grass alone. We keep bees. And every autumn the whole family disappears into the orchard.

Everything we sell, we’ve raised, grown, kept or pressed ourselves. We don’t sell online: the meat changes day to day, the cider runs out, and we’d rather you came and said hello.

Tasting a glass of fresh juice beside the old cast-iron basket press
Autumn 2022: the old cast-iron basket press, and the first glass of juice.
How the cider started

One press, a lot of apples, and a very long weekend.

Our first pressings were on a cast-iron basket press that must be older than any of us. Apples went in the top, the ratchet came down, and the juice ran into a bucket. It did two autumns before we outgrew it.

Now there’s a proper cidery, a hydraulic press and room for up to 7,500 litres. The method hasn’t really changed. It’s still slow, still cold, and still bottled by hand. How we make it

Then & now

From a trestle table to a cider bar.

In 2023 we took a table, two check cloths and whatever we had bottled that week to local markets. We’ve grown a bit since.

An early Kilnside market table in 2023 with jars of honey, honeycomb frames and a few bottles of cider
2023. Honey, a frame of comb, and a crate of cider on a church-hall table.
The 2026 Kilnside Orchards cider stall with its blue CIDER banner
2026. Four ciders on draught and in bottle, apple juice, and eleven medals behind us.
Bottles of Abbot's Secret showing the hand-drawn label of Waverley Abbey
The names on the bottles

Every label is drawn by hand.

Our ciders are named for the places around us, and the pictures on the labels are drawn by people we love.

Abbot’s Secret carries a drawing of Waverley Abbey by Christopher’s godfather. It’s a nod to the monks who were pressing apples in this valley centuries before us, and who, we like to think, kept one or two things to themselves.

All Wey’s and Deacon’s Desire were drawn by Christopher’s father. All Wey’s is the river, which is always there at the bottom of the farm. Deacon’s Desire, the mellow one, we like to imagine the churchmen kept for Sundays.

Meet the ciders