At 89 Frank Naish, of Piltown Farm in West Pennard, was reportedly Britain’s oldest working cider-maker. He was born at the farm in 1924 and died on November 29 in 2013.

  He was educated at the Wesleyan Chapel school in West Pennard and later went to Oakmead School in Wells, taking the train from Pennard station.

  He began helping his father make cider at a very young age and continued for many years with his late brother Harold. They became something of an institution: customers came from far and near to purchase cider.

  The farmhouse was lit by oil lamps and candles, until the brothers finally decided only in 2003 to have electricity installed.

  In 2010 Frank was recorded by Ann Heeley for the Rural Life Museum oral archive. He talked about his grafting methods, cider-apple varieties and equipment. The Naishes produced prodigious quantities of cider, regularly 8,000 gallons a year from their own apples.

  In recent years Frank joined the Conservation Society and had two orchards planted with old varieties, including a very big orchard with 100 trees.