In article , Nick.Powell.1c18d58
@gardenbanter.co.uk says...

Thanks for all your comments ...

With regards to the question of fruit, the tree did have a lot of fruit
last year but unfortunately they were all quite small apples, probably
no bigger than a plum.

I'd been interested to know why people think the tree is so old?

I assummed it was not too old because it wasn't very tall, although it
could be me being naive

Cheers
Nick
If the apples are small and bitter then it may be that you have a crab apple.
if they were small sweet and a lot of them then maybe your variet does not have
an efficient June drop and you need to thin the apples. the fruitlets tend to
occur in bunches of 2-5 if you thin that doen to just 1 then you may get a
better result and more regular cropping. Dwarfing rootstock has been around for
at least 40 years that I know about. Your tree could be quite old but grafted
on to a root which would stop it growing tall.

Gill M

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addy gill[at]pcservicesreading[dot]co[dot]uk