Their flavour is not particularly noted.
Flower of Kent Apples are used for cooking.
History Notes
Urban myth has it that this is the apple that hit Sir Isaac Newton on the head and caused him to think about gravity.
It’s pretty certain that Newton was in fact not struck on the head by an apple, at least that day. What is certain is that he was sitting by some apple trees, and meditating on why apples fell downwards, as opposed to floating upwards or jetting off sideways.
It was Isaac d’Israeli who embellished the story by having the apple bean Newton on the noggin, when he recounted “struck him a smart blow on the head.” Newton seems to have told a few people, when he was in his 80s, that he saw an apple fall, but that could have been old age embellishing the story as well.
In 1806, a man named Edward Turnor, at the time the owner of Woolsthorpe Manor, showed people a tree that he said was “the tree” that dropped the apple that hit Newton on the head. By 1814, the tree was decayed and in 1820 fell down after a storm. Grafts had been taken from the tree previously, and grafted onto trees at Belton House, Grantham, Lincolnshire. In the early 1900s, grafts from there were sent to the East Malling Fruit Research Station.
Woolsthorpe Manor is at 23 Newton Way, Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Lincolnshire (near Grantham.)