Seasonal Change
Social media is already awash with harbingers of autumn and it can only increase as the trees start to change colour. Terroir was going to write something hard hitting and original about seasonal change but that seems to be getting harder every year. The internet has everything you could ever want to know on climate change and how to define a season.
Climate and weather seem a pretty obvious way to define seasonal change. We in the UK still think of summer as warmer and drier and winter as colder and wetter. We book our foreign holidays to avoid monsoon seasons or to exploit snow for ‘winter’ sports. Or at least we try to forecast when these conditions will apply. With climate change, this is becoming increasingly tricky.
But surely seasons are still a valid concept? In Britain, we have devised a number of ways to define ‘seasons’.
Astronomical seasons in Britain are based on the earth’s orbit around the sun and the timing of our equinoxes and solstices. Thus the Met Office defines the astronomical seasons for the next 12 months as
Autumn: 22nd September 2024 to 21st December 2024
Winter: 21st December 2024 to 20th March 2025
Spring: 20th to March to 21st June
Summer: 21st June 2025 to 22nd September 2025
On that basis, therefore, and at the time of writing, it is still summer in the UK.
Meteorological seasons, however, are strictly defined by specific and unchanging dates to ‘coincide with our Gregorian calendar, making it easier for meteorological observing and forecasting to compare seasonal and monthly statistics’ (https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/seasons/winter/when-does-winter-start). The Met Office defines these periods as:
Spring - March, April, May
Summer - June, July, August
Autumn - September, October, November and
Winter - December, January, February. By this definition, we are currently in autumn!
The church, the legal profession and bureaucracy have also had a crack at defining the seasons. Quarter Days in Britain seem to have been around since at least Medieval times. Based on religious festivals which roughly coincided with the equinoxes and the solstices, they were the dates when rents were paid, staff hired and educational terms started. Dates changed a bit in the early 1750s due to the move from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, and to harmonise with Scotland, but the basic principle has survived.
Today, the English and Welsh Quarter Days are:
Lady Day: the Feast of the Annunciation, 25th March
Midsummer Day: the Nativity of St John the Baptist, 24th June
Michaelmas: the Feast of St Michael and All Angels, 29th September
Christmas: 25th December
According to this, we are still in summer having not yet reached the start of the Michaelmas term, due on the 29th September.
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_days) quotes The Times (G. C. M Young 15/04/26) with the following useful memory aid:
‘Assuming you can remember when Christmas occurs, a useful mnemonic to place quarter days is to count the letters of the relevant months. Thus, in March, there being five letters, you can know that the quarter day is the 25th. June has four letters and the quarter day is the 24th, and September, having nine letters, has its quarter day on the 29th.’
Phenology is the study of seasonal changes in plants and animals, and is how we – as human animals – tend to judge the changing of the seasons by observing when specific plants start to flower or hedgehogs to hibernate. Both Terroirs North and South agree that this is an early autumn.
Here is our evidence:
Terroir south:
dropping temperatures since before the end of August and torrential rain storms
last of the beans and tomatoes, and full on apple harvesting
garden visits which now depend on seed heads much more than late blooms
Terroir north:
feels like October - 9◦C and wintry showers
Teasel dieback and blackberries early (although bilberries pretty much ‘on time’)
Ling (Calluna vulgaris) flowering significantly early and now over in many places where it would normally be in full flower (image right)
Both Teams are experiencing late second flowerings (in the garden, not figuratively).
South - chives, rosemary, lavender and roses
North – apple, honeysuckle, teasle and also roses.
Instagram evidence: bringing tender plants in early, rowan berries early, fungus early, trees turning early, onions lifted already.
One sign of seasonally change is certain, however: Christmas cards in the shops.
Open Air Theatre
We’re on a stately-home-and-garden visit with friends. We get separated over the entry formalities, but on completion, the friends rush over with news which one of us hears as, ‘they have a garden in ruins’. We’re hooked.
In 1868, Ludwig Ernest Wilhelm Leonard Messel emigrated to Britain. He was probably 21 or 22 at the time. By 1890, by then a man in his forties, he had bought a Regency country house in Sussex and founded a dynasty which was to play many significant roles in the theatre of British society. You may know his home – Nymans – a National Trust Property with a fabulous garden and, yes, some ruins.
Ludwig was born to a German Jewish banking family in Darmstadt. He was well educated and, one assumes, comfortably off, yet he and his siblings emigrated to Britain. Terroir was curious to know why, and a quick internet search started to provide details of some issues that are still familiar today.
John Hilary, one of Ludwig’s great-great-grand-children writes that, despite being able to integrate into German society and retain their faith, and despite the fact that ‘Britain was not always a welcoming environment to foreigners, it clearly offered greater freedom and opportunity to German-Jewish migrants than the restricted society they left behind’. https://jch.history.ox.ac.uk/article/writing-messel-family-history-labour-love For a banking family, London’s role in global money matters must also have been a lure.
So Ludwig establishes the stockbroking firm of L. Messel and Co, marries an English woman (Annie Cussons), becomes a naturalised British citizen, has six children – four girls and two boys - and eventually uses his wealth to buy the Nymans estate. John Hilary sees the purchase as the epitome of ‘putting down roots and integrating into their new home environment’ but the website ‘Shalom Sussex’ suggests that integrating into the British gentry was ‘a goal he [Ludwig] would never achieve’. https://shalomsussex.co.uk/the-messel-family-living-in-britain-with-german-heritage/
So what happened? It seems that WWI happened. The war was never going to be easy for a German immigrant. For example, renovations at Nymans, carried out by his youngest brother, architect Alfred Messel, in a rather Germanic style, included a high tower. Ludwig was accused of using this tower to communicate with Germans or Germany. The tower was later demolished, but Ludwig died in 1915, depressed and possibly heartbroken, over the conflict between the two nations he loved.
Ludwig’s eldest son Leonard inherited Nymans after his father’s death. Leonard’s upbringing was quintessentially English (Eton, Oxford, the Territorial Reserve and marriage to Maud, daughter of Punch cartoonist, Edward Linley Sambourne). Despite this cv, however, a German father was seen as sufficient to prevent Ludwig’s sons from serving abroad in WWI, although both they and Maud served their country in various ways while remaining based in England.
Nymans is famous for its gardens. The love of horticulture had started with Ludwig, aided and abetted by his head gardener James Comber, and famous names such as William Robinson who advised on a wild garden.
In their turn, Leonard and Maud both became avid plants-people, the German influenced Regency was house converted into a mock medieval Manor House and some ambitious planting work was undertaken (including Maud’s Rose Garden and an impressive collection of rare plants). The garden was often opened to the public in the interwar years. Finally the shadow of German immigration seemed to have been laid to rest.
Sadly disaster struck in the cold winter of 1947, when the house burned down destroying not only the mock medieval great hall but also Leonard’s extensive and irreplaceable collection of horticultural books. The house was partially rebuilt but extensive ruins still stand.
The final generation to be raised and nurtured at Nymans, were Leonard and Maud’s three children Linley, Anne and Oliver, born around the turn of the 20th century. Linley seems to have been a rather elusive figure, marrying in 1933, divorcing and remarrying in 1945 after playing an active role in WWII. Anne was a gardener, artist and socialite - one of the ‘Bright Young Things’ of the 1920s. She also married twice, firstly to Ronald Armstrong-Jones (her son was Antony Armstrong Jones, later Princess Margret’s husband) and, in 1935 to the ‘Adonis of the Peerage’ (according to Wikipedia), aka Vicount Rosse. Nowadays, divorce is a norm, but in the interwar years was probably the prerogative of the wealthy. Did changing marital partners produce mere society gossip or was there an element of scandal as well?
Oliver Messel was an artist and an extraordinarily talented theatre designer. He too may have had to ‘manage’ his lifestyle. His long lasting same-sex relationship with Vagn Riis-Hansen, at a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence, must have had to be handled with discretion. All the Messel lives seem to have had an element of the theatre about them.
So, you are shouting, where is this ruined garden? Stop droning on about 20th century social mores.
Allow us, therefore, to indulge you. I had, of course, misheard the message relayed to us on arrival at Nymans: it is not a ruined garden but a garden in the ruins - of the mock medieval great hall. It is a magnificent piece of design and horticulture, worthy of Anne and Oliver (and possibly the elusive Linley too). A knowledgeable ‘ruined room’ steward added depth to our visit and there is sufficient space to move around and admire the architecture and sculpture as well as the planting. A worthy addition to the already stupendous Nymans’ gardens.
The great hall in its heyday (note minstrels’ gallery at the far end - above left), and the ruined hall as it stands today (above right).
Below: the new ‘Garden in the ruins’ (below left and centre) and the blank supporting wall where once was the minstrels’ gallery.
The planting (below) is bold and architectual, using large plants to great effect in a confined space.
The corten steel ‘room dividers’ (below) are stunnng; artworks in their own right but reflecting key images of the Messels and their garden. The Cedar of Lebanon was the Messel family emblem.
The interplay between the modern garden and the ruins create a magnificent atmopshere, and makes the whole appear much larger than it is. A piece of theatre in the ‘rectangle’ which creates a very fitting tribute to Oliver Messel and honours the architectural detail (below) which has been, literally, honed by fire.
Remarkably the gable window (above left) still has tiny shards of the original glass caught in the corners of the decorative stone work (above centre and right).
Perhaps the most poignant memorial to the fire, however, is a huge reproduction of Leonard Messel’s beloved study and book collection, placed where his library would have been. This is a salutary reminder of the tragic loss to horticultural knowledge and scholarship, which went up in flames on a freezing winter night in 1947.
English Rural Life
In October 1908, Aubrey gave Doreen a book entitled Highways & Byways in Berkshire. Was this a romantic gesture or had they been married for forty years? Were they siblings, cousins or just good friends? We shall probably never know as Terroir purchased the book, from a British Heart Foundation charity shop, well over a hundred years later. The fly leaf dedication reveals only that Aubrey considered himself a man of Southsea at the time.
We do know that the book was written by James Edmund Vincent, with illustrations by Frederick L Griggs and was published by the London house of Macmillan & Co Ltd in 1906.
J E Vincent was a Welsh barrister, called to the Bar in 1884, went the North Wales circuit, but began to ‘devote more attention to journalism than law’ (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1912_supplement/Vincent,_James_Edmund) and was soon authoring books on a variety of subjects. In the early 1900s, he moved to the Vale of the White Horse, near Abingdon (at that time in Berkshire, now Oxfordshire) where he penned this volume and contributed to other publications devoted to the same area.
Frederick Gibbs RA was ‘one of the finest and most respected etchers of his time’ as well as an architectural draughtsman, illustrator, and early conservationist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._L._Griggs). He illustrated a number of Macmillan’s Highways & Byways series but one suspects that this was just an early step on his path to becoming, in 1931, one of the first etchers to be elected to full membership to the Royal Academy.
In June this year, Terroir walked a section of the Ridgeway National Trail through the ‘Berkshire Downs’ (Blog 136 ‘Ridgeways’). One of us was curious to see what James E Vincent made of the area, particularly as our party included another North Walian who had, like James Vincent, emigrated to the Home Counties.
James Vincent discusses the Berkshire Downs in his second chapter of ‘Highways & Byways in Berkshire’. The account is discursive, often self-indulgent and sometimes confusing, but does consider a number of topics of interest to Terroir.
The chapter starts with a discussion on what we would now call landscape character: ‘The fascination of Downs’, remarks Vincent, is ‘more comparable, perhaps, to that of the Canadian prairie than to any other scenery in the world’.
Above: American Mid West prairie lands in the 1880s, from the Puffin edition of Little House on the Prairie, drawn Garth Williams
He suggests that the new-comer to Canada is ‘appalled by the savage solitude’ and ‘wearied by gentle and monotonous undulations of poor grass which seem to go on for ever’. [I’m so not picking up Berkshire here]. Laura Ingalls Wilder hinted at this experience in her ‘Little House’ books (Blog 129), but Vincent’s point, when we finally get to it, appears to be that ‘The Berkshire Downs … attract the newcomer at once’ while the call of the Canadian Prairies only becomes irresistible after a considerable absence!
Above: Canadian prairies, Alberta 2023
Vincent follows his transatlantic distraction with a more traditional eulogy on English downland: the springy turf, the soft, elastic grass, the gentian or orchid, the faint fragrance of hundreds of tiny flowers, the hum of bees. Agricultural changes mean that much of that springy turf is now gone although some of the track margins do still support a diversity of wild flowers (including orchids) within the, now longer, grassy habitat.
As with ourselves, so Vincent was enthralled by evidence of the Downs’ antiquity (‘a tumulus, or a group of great grey stones’) (right - a view of Wayland’s Smithy) but unfortunately our author cannot get those Canadian prairies out of his head.
He dismisses the prairies’ early history (defined by JEV as anything prior to the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway) by suggesting it could be ‘condensed into a few sentences’. Please don’t pass that on to the Canadian First Nationers.
As a Welshman abroad, Vincent indulges himself with a diversion into linguistics and the origin of place names: ‘having been born in Wales and being well aware that the Britons were before Roman and Saxon, I have a tendency to suspect a British origin for old-place names when the derivation is not obvious’. The debate centres on the villages of East and West Hendred. JEV argues that ‘Hendred’ is surely a corruption of the Welsh Hêndre or Hêndref meaning ‘old town’ or ‘old house’. Terroir will spare you Vincent’s defence of his theory but the author is firm in his conclusion that a Celtic influence still abounds in the culture and DNA of these Berkshire villages.
Whatever your views, it is an excellent excuse to feature one of Griggs’ illustrations (left).
Vincent has other surprises for us. After 14 closely typeset pages, he introduces the concept of ‘Berkshire sheep’. We think he means sheep that graze in Berkshire as we can find no reference to such a sheep breed. Hampshire sheep appear to be downland grazers so perhaps the bureaucratic nightmare of moving county boundaries applied to the naming of sheep as well. Our man then goes on to state that the Berkshire Downs were not, in fact, grazed by sheep at all, despite much of what he has written and/or implied in earlier sections. Indeed, by page 30, he has all these sheep penned on the lowlands, eating turnips and clover.
But one cannot deny that agricultural changes must have wrought many, many alterations to the landscape known to James Vincent at the start of the 20th century. Sheep of any sort are now a rarity and, although some verges might still be spangled with wild flowers familiar to our author, one suspects that the wider landscape now sports crops of different shades of green, planted on a different scale and creating very different landscape patterns. The weed-free, densely packed plantings of short stemmed wheat, barley and even peas would have been, we suspect, entirely alien to Vincent’s Berkshire landscape.
After around 6,500 words, Vincent ends his Berkshire Downs chapter with specific reference to horses and hares: ‘the only animals one sees’. Although we spotted a number of bird species and some butterflies on our 2024 walk, we would agree with Vincent that wild mammals were not much in evidence. The sight of race horses training on the Berkshire Downs, however, is probably the only landscape detail which Terroir and James Vincent would have in common. Vincent cites the 18th century Prince William, Duke of Cumberland as starting the trend with the construction of substantial stables near the village of East Ilsley and suggests that these Berkshire gallops rivaled Newmarket with their ‘better galloping ground and purer air’. The Downs remain an important locale for race horse training today (see images below).
And the hares? The final pages of Chapter 2 are not for the faint hearted nor for the Hunt Saboteur. Vincent revels in the delights of hare coursing - and of class consciousness! Bemoaning that coursing has fallen into disrepute ‘because it has come to be practised by persons of low repute’, (by which he means ‘publicans’ and ‘betting men’), he continues, ‘For the sport itself, privately pursued by small groups of gentlemen with two or three couples of greyhounds … I know nothing prettier’. He speaks with equal enthusiasm of fox hunting, and of shooting pheasant and partridge. He is clearly an avid enthusiast and his love of hunting shines through: his prose becomes lyrical, imaginative and fast moving in a way that not even the Welsh language, wild flowers or prehistoric antiquities had inspired him in earlier pages. Perhaps hunting is why James Edmund Vincent moved to Berkshire?
Postscript:
While researching this blog I was reminded of the excellent Museum of English Rural Life (The MERL), at Reading University. The Museum houses a magical, and nostalgic, collection of all things agricultural, including the finest line up of farm carts I’ve ever seen. Yes, I know - I never imagined that I would hear myself say that, but looking at the design quirks of hay wagons can be just as absorbing for Terroir as discussing car marques and specs can be for petrol heads.
But the Museum is not just about the English or Rural Life. Studying the Museum’s archive catalogue is like walking through your favourite sweet shop. Enjoyed Ladybird Books? A fan of Samuel Beckett? Want to study the history of Woolworths? Got a thing about clay land drainage pipes? Then this is the place for you.
I was reminded of all this when I started looking at the publisher of the Highways & Byways series. So good to know that the archive of Macmillan and Co Ltd (all 762 boxes) is safely tucked up in the Museum of English Rural Life.
University of Reading, Redlands Road, Reading, RG1 5EX
Vox and Socks
Last weekend we went around the world.
One of the greatest ways to experience a landscape, a culture, a history or a people is through their music. But how do you illustrate music in words? Surely a blog about music is a contradiction in terms, a waste of time and an unsatisfactory story, without a sound track? You are probably right but we’re going to give it a go anyway. As we said, last weekend we went around the world – in music.
Our journey started with a brief stop-over in central Tanzania with The Zawose Queens, a mother and daughter combo carrying on the tradition of father/grandfather Hukwe Zawose: large and lustrous rhythms and harmonies, radiating warmth and welcome. https://www.thezawosequeens.com/
But we were actually on our way to the Iberian peninsula in Europe, so hurried on to sit at the feet of LINA_, a shepherd’s daughter from north eastern Portugal. Classically trained, she now combines traditional Fado music with the 16th century poetry of Luís de Camões and 21st century electronic music.
Her wandering, soaring vocals create patterns in the air but also present us with the weekend’s greatest conundrum: we had no idea what she was singing about. https://www.lina.pt/lina/
And yes, you’ve guessed it, we were at a world music festival. WOMAD (World of music, arts and dance) was founded by Peter Gabriel and others in 1980 and is now an international staple. Currently based, in the UK, at Charlton Park in Wiltshire, WOMAD is a rich, deep, funny, relaxed, satisfying fruit cake of everybody’s folk music, literally electrified, but as subtle, outlandish, political, personal, historical, futuristic and satisfying as only music can be.
Food is also very much part of the experience and we counted around 40 food outlets in the main arena area alone. The English staple of coffee and cake is available everywhere and the queues at breakfast and mid-morning are witness to the hugely appreciated English pastry and toastie menu.
But there is just nothing like being taken to Pakistan and Spain (Qawwali Flamenco) while eating an apple and cinnamon French crěpe.
A potential problem with WOMAD, however, is the number of stages and the resultant planning required to nip from one stage to another to be sure of hearing all you want. On the plus side, if you’ve missed your favourite on, say, the Charlie Gillett stage, you may well be able to catch them doing a workshop in a tent somewhere else.
Thus we caught up with an Italian group (Ars Nova Napoli) at the ‘Taste the World’ stage where certain groups are invited to cook something from their home cuisine, submit to being interviewed and play music, often simultaneously. Ars Nova not only cook pasta but use traditional instruments, reinterpret long established tunes and create some new ones of their own as well. Their music is fast and furious, swirling at breakneck speed, but occasionally creating a pause for a melodic soloist - perfect for that hot Mediterranean or Wiltshire evening. Their tarantella certainly uplifted the audience but goodness knows what it’s speed does to the players. https://www.arsnovanapoli.com/
The big one for Friday evening was the duo that is Amadou and Mariam (https://www.amadou-mariam.com/), a couple who met in Mali’s Institute for the Blind in the 1970s, are still married and still making music. What a contrast to the Israel based rappers ‘DAM’, performing in Arabic, English and Hebrew. Under a silent dance of Palestinian flags carried by members of the audience (below right), the atmosphere was electric (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAM_(band)). We finished the evening in Edinburgh (as you do) with Young Fathers (https://www.young-fathers.com/), described by trio member Graham G Hastings as “hip hop without the rules” and “just like it’s rock without the guitars”. New to us (surprised?), but it works.
In contrast, on Saturday, the London Bulgarian choir is very colourful, very formal and now, apparently, with many non-Bulgarian speakers. Bulgarian folk music first passed though the Iron Curtain thanks to the 1980s record ‘Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares’. The recording was a huge success – you can still find copies in boxes of second hand CDs – but the choir was, one suspects, very much a Soviet invention; today the London Bulgarian choir carries on the folk tradition in a very different atmosphere. Apparently we were listening to songs about shepherds and nightingales, about freedom fighters and about love. Yep, that’ll do nicely.
Genticorum, in contrast is a three-piece Québecois group who prefer larks to nightingales. Their music clearly reflects the influences of Francophone immigrants and the equally toe tapping Celtic traditions which arrived from the west of Britain and Ireland.
We followed that with a very different take on the French abroad, this time via kora player Seckou Keita and the Homeland Band, keeping the African sounds of Sénégal very much alive. The vibe couldn’t be more different.
Where next? Wales of course for Cerys Hafana, her elphin face just visible over the heads of the audience, while her seemingly enchanted fingers fashion compelling melodies from a triple harp (is that three times more difficult than a ‘standard’ harp?) and an extraordinary array of other instruments. We slip quietly away at the end for a Goan fish curry.
The night finishes (for us) on New York’s Lower East Side with Gogol Bordello, described as ‘riotous gypsy punks’ with a big dash of ‘Eastern European sounds’. I’m still not sure what that combination should sound like but Gogol Bordello is (are?) loud, chaotic, eccentric, arresting, surprising and utterly mesmeric! Unsurprisingly, they are very hot on supporting Ukraine, and have collaborated with others on the song "Man with the Iron Balls", dedicated to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
It’s Sunday and maybe we have saved the best ‘til last. You will probably not agree with us but something advertised as ‘stirring vocal harmonies from the Caucasus’ will always make Terroir sit up and take notice. Indeed it made us stand up and lean on the rail at the very foot of the stage for the entire set.
We were not disappointed. Three young women in Chechen dress lined up in front of us with the more mature figure of Bella, armed with an accordion, keeping a motherly eye on things. They were magic!
The Ensemble lives in the Pankisi valley in eastern Georgia and sing of their former homeland in Chechnya, now a Russian republic. They sing Georgian songs too but are passionate about protecting and conserving their Chechen cultural heritage. The sound is four-part, close harmony, with the Chechen flute and accordion in support.
Sometime later that afternoon, they appeared again at the Taste the World stage, creating dumplings cooked in stock and a traditional salad (sadly it all ran out before we got to the front of the queue), plus singing and telling us about how Bella created the ensemble.
Someone asked about their recordings – CDs? You Tube? No, they replied, we are active on social media but no recordings. ‘Quick’, someone called out, ‘get them a contract’. You can follow the Pankisi Ensemble on Instagram and Facebook. Terroir already does. What a find.
Our farewell to WOMAD was Baaba Maal, headlining on the Sunday night main stage. What a show! Pure theatre, with splendid vocals and band, and a vibrant message about the need to tackle climate change. We couldn’t stay to the end, however, as we had reality waiting for us in the form of a 9am dentist’s appointment the following day.
So that’s how we travelled the word in a weekend and accounts for the ‘Vox’ part of the title. But what about those socks?
Music festivals mean you spend a lot of time sitting on the ground. Audiences tend to differentiate into three distinct horizontal bands: the upper level is formed by the people who stand, the middle is made up of those who sit on folding chairs and the lowest level are those who sit on the ground either on rugs or portable folding festival seats (favoured by Terroir). At Terroir level you see a lot of socks. Friday’s audience favoured brightly coloured stripy socks, probably made out of bamboo fabric. Saturday’s socks tended to be vivid patterns and bright colours. But Sunday socks were overwhelmingly plain black or plain white socks. What was that all about?
Jog on, Jog on, the Footpath Way
and merrily hent the stile-a
Shakespeare, from The Winter’s Tale
Terroir has written a lot about how humans get from A to B. We’ve looked at the 800,000 year old footprints of five people walking down the Ancestral Thames, which were briefly revealed by the tide at Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast; we’ve walked and reported on National Trails (most recently the Ridgeway); we’ve trialled a new Green Link walk across London, and we’ve travelled on numerous trains on rails, buses on roads and boats on waterways.
Even the most sedentary of us need to travel, if only from field to barn, or from semi-detached villa to local shop. To do this we create ‘ways’, which can vary from grassy pathways to giant freeways. At the time of writing, Terroir South is housebound with Covid so our thoughts have turned to how we design these ways, routes, paths, tracks and trails which we currently don’t have the energy to use.
These days, there are design and engineering standards for most of the things which we formally construct in the UK. I suppose the earliest forms of design decisions were largely intuitive. How much vegetation do I need to cut down to create a track wide enough for me and my pack pony to get through? If I veer left here to avoid that massive oak, the track will be longer but, in the short tem, it’ll save time and energy on beating a path to market.
The size of the ‘average’ cart horse probably dictated the width between the shafts which in turn was significant in deciding the width between the cart’s wheels and, as night follows day, the width of a cart track. Railway pioneer George Stephenson worked with a track gauge of 4ft 8in, based on the width of existing colliery wagon ways, (although he increased it to 4ft 8 ¼ in to ease the curves). Brunel built at 7ft gauge (later 7ft ¼ in – what is it with these railway types?) but, as Brunel had laid fewer track miles, he lost the battle for the standardised width to the Stephenson lobby.
Today, there is a mass of guidance on widths and surface types for most of the ‘ways’ which we currently create. For example, new footpaths should, under normal circumstances, be at least 2m wide to allow two wheelchairs or motorised buggies to pass. On sloping ground, regular ‘landings’ with accessible seating should be provided to allow the opportunity to rest. Cycle ways should be – oh never mind, you get the idea.
Navigable, legible, accessible streetscapes and areas of public realm are essential. You may not need it today, but tomorrow you may be very grateful for it (a new baby, a newly broken hip, newly deteriorating eyesight).
Many of our existing ‘ways’, however, do not conform to these accessibility recommendations. Should we expect them to?
An accessible route from car park to famous beauty spot can complement a choice of routes for a country ramble. Most, however, would think that a standard wheelchair route to the top of your favourite mountain would not be realistic or feasible (especially if you were doing the pushing).
The United Kingdom’s four national peaks are Slieve Donard at 850 m (2,790 ft), Scafell Pike at 978 m (3,209 ft), Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) at 1,085 m (3,560 ft) and Ben Nevis coming in at 1,345 m (4,413 ft). In terms of climbing, these figures are pretty useless however, because the amount of effort you expend depends on how high you are when you start and what it’s like underfoot. Many people start the Ben Nevis climb at just 20 m above sea level.
It is interesting to note that all the UK’s peaks offer alternative climbing routes. But only one has a route which can be defined as accessible; this route even has its own Access Statement. The mountain is, of course Snowdon, and the accessible route is via the Snowdon Mountain Railway (https://snowdonrailway.co.uk).
Unlike many of Wales’ narrow gauge railways, the SMR was built purely as a tourist attraction. It runs from Llanberis to the summit and opened in time for Easter in 1896.
By Porius1 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11614480
Today’s blog, however, concentrates specifically on a jog up the English high point of Scafell Pike, located in the northern Lakes.
You can climb Scafell Pike from Borrowdale, Langdale and Wasdale but the driving time to reach the relevant car parks is as significant a factor in selecting a route as the hiking time. We settled on the longest drive, to Wasdale Head, for the shortest distance to the peak.
The website (https://www.scafellpike.org.uk/route/wasdale-head/) describes this route as
Terrain: Rough and rocky ground, grassy hillsides, bog and occasional exposure
Time: 4.5 hours
Distance: 9km/6 miles [that’s from the car park, not the bottom of the trail!
]
No sweat!
But before we start, we need to discuss why upland paths are never a walk in the park. To start with, the National Trust (which owns the Scafell Pike area) reckons that 250,000 people climb the Pike every year. That’s an average of 685 people every day or 21,000 every month. So imagine a sunny Saturday in the school holidays?
The pressure is enormous, not just on the car parks, not just on the Mountain Rescue Teams, not just on your legs, but on the surface of the routes up which we are all stumbling. That number of people can erode a mountainside, wreck vegetation and frighten a lot of sheep in a very short time. Ensuring people stay on the path and ensuring the path stays in existence is a tall order in all senses of the word – high elevations, high work load, high costs.
So let’s review the conditions which we experienced on our expedition to the summit of Scafell Pike.
The day starts with a long, slow drive on an extremely picturesque but stomach churning, wriggling, single track road (right). At 08.30 on a school day in July it’s quite exciting, especially when you realise that traffic isn’t going to be an issue. We can’t begin to magine what it’s like on a bank holiday Monday!
People have arrived ahead of us but there is still plenty of room in the car park. We are National Trust Members, so parking is free. The members’ card digital scanner works fine and spits out a neat little parking ticket. We even remember to put it in the car windscreen.
The track to open moorland is a very attractive prospect and the views are opening up nicely. There is even one of those accessible kissing gates in case you don’t fancy merrily, or indeed fractiously, henting one of those antiquated stile contraptions. Granny and the toddlers would love these.
Things continue well until we round a corner, and the sun goes in. Where did all those rocks/boulders/rubble come from?! Granny and the kids will have beaten a hasty retreat.
But then, my goodness, they’ve built us steps! Not quite sure if this is over urbanisation or a glorious relief from the boulders. Good place to stop for a breather though.
What’s this? A notice board? Up here? Fix the Fells? Beware of Rangers? Is that anti European graffiti or just an updating of out-of-date information? It’s a bit like being held up by a digital highwayman/woman. Yer money or yer dodgy footpath …
Where did these builders’ bags of stone come from? Ah, delivered by helicopter; don’t blame them but no wonder they need money. We’re run out of steps here but there’s a nice steady grade to climb. But what’s happened now? We’ve moved into boulder hell. Surely this can’t be real?
Sadly it was real, and the final section of the walk to the top of Scafell Pike is (t)rubble all the way, particularly if your lungs are starting a battle with Covid 19.
There was one compensation however, which was the discovery of a healthy population of parsley fern (Cryptogramma crispa), an arctic-alpine species and a pioneer plant on acidic screes.
As we tramped back through those ghastly boulders and suffered the knee-jarring experience of all those steps, we did spare a thought for the National Trust staff and volunteers who have to heft that stone and build those steps. We even wondered if there was an alternative footpath material which might lighten everybody’s load. Any suggestions? But it was also cheering to think that, on the journey down, the path from hell is also paved with good intentions.
Ridgeways
Southern England loves its chalky ridges. In very simplistic terms (we’re not geologists) the chalk was formed by layers of marine creatures who lived and died in shallow seas. Unsurprisingly, this geological period became known as the Cretaceous period (creta is Latin for chalk), although the dinosaurs, who were knocking around in the shallows and on dry land at the time, probably just thought of it as home. As it happened, they became extinct ‘shortly’ afterwards; theories about why this happened are numerous.
After a lot of post Cretaceous upheavals and erosion, chalk ridges and plateaus appeared all over southern England. The locals loved them and put them to lots of good uses, not all of which we fully understand. It seems that the Romans then brought reading and writing to the British Isles and kick started British history (as oppose to prehistory). Now we began to have records of some of our activities. Literacy, however, also laid the foundations for one of our greatest achievements: bureaucracy. And with bureaucracy came the absorbing occupation of trying to work out what the records actually mean. Progress?
This year, Terroir South spent a happy few days walking sections of the Ridgeway National Trail. The Ridgeway “rides the back of one of the six great ridges that radiate from the central hub of Salisbury Plain. It sails the undulating waves of chalk downland through Wiltshire and Oxfordshire (until recently they were in Berkshire) [see how bureaucracy can ruin a lyrical phrase] to the Thames Valley at Goring”. This extract comes from the 1981 publication entitled ‘The Ridgeway Path’ by Alan Charles and perfectly illustrates our love of chalky uplands. After Goring, and assuming you are walking west to east, with the wind at your back, the path turns north east to clamber through the Chilterns, culminating at Ivinghoe Beacon five miles north east of Tring.
Today’s blog, however, will concentrate on the 23 mile section of the Ridgeway which runs from south of the village of Ashbury (a victim of the Berkshire to Oxfordshire hiatus) to the small town of Goring, picturesquely situated on the left bank of the Thames. This distance will be quite long enough to illustrate some of the quirks relating to our love affair with chalk ridges.
The Ridgeway as communication and trade route:
“In pre-historic times the chalk up-lands, free-draining and relatively open, with scrubland, grazing animals and primitive cultivation, offered easier and safer passage than the heavy clay and dense woodland of the vales and river valleys, particularly in winter.” (https://ridgewayfriends.org.uk/the-trail/the-ancient-ridgeway/)
Above - which would you take - the ridge or the vale?
But what did our Neolithic forebears actually experience when they travelled along this elevated pathway. Could they see the view? Was the route easy to navigate? Terroir buys into the theory of chalk ridges being easier to navigate than clay-and-woodland lowlands, but I sometimes wonder how much work was really required to keep these passage ways open to travellers. In southern England, we have a romantic attachment to species-rich, springy downland turf, kept open by grazing sheep, so surely, we hear you cry, these were obvious places through which to create long distance routes for trade or pilgrimage? But modern agricultural changes caused by the removal of sheep has shown just how quickly these light, free draining soils scrub over and mature into woodland. A few ‘grazing animals’ and some ‘primitive cultivation’ may not have been enough to keep the tracks open in the way that 21st century walking boots, bicycles, horses and off road vehicles do.
Maybe all this business about prehistoric people enjoying wide views and easy walking (have you tried chalk when it’s wet?) is just a cultural myth. Maybe they chose the chalk routes (complete with encroaching hawthorn) as merely the lesser of two evils.
The Ridgeway and Wildflowers:
Where is the Ridgeway’s species rich chalk grassland today? Surprisingly, it is fairly limited. The verges on either side of the track from the Ridgeway’s Ashbury staging post (aka a car park) is a delight. We found wild thyme, Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon, hogweed bursting out all over, orchids (pyramidal and spotted), broomrape, horse shoe vetch, red campion, wild mignonette, sainfoin, meadow cranesbill and many more.
We also looked up and saw buzzards and red kites, skylarks, whitethroats and yellow hammers. We looked around and saw butterflies including meadow brown, small heath, and speckled woods, a few common and small blues and a couple of passing red admirals.
But after a while, it suddenly dawned on us that we had stopped stopping, so to speak, to look at the flowers, as the verges were now solidly dominated by a range of grasses and peppered with stinging nettles. On either side of the track were acres of wheat and barley - dense, silent and menacing ranks of cereal soldiers, surfing the chalk waves in monotonous shades of dark green. Coincidence?
It was a relief to see that we weren’t the only ones to notice the lack of wayside flowers. This sign (below left) informed us of an Oxford University outdoor laboratory project to encourage more native plants, insects and other wildlife to the area. At the moment oxeye daisies and buttercups seem to be hogging the limelight but we hope there will be further work to diversify the flora.
Construction on the Ridgeway:
Perhaps one of the greatest testimonies to our ancestors’ enthusiasm for the chalk lands is the serious, heavy weight ceremonial and community construction work which makes such dramatic use of the ridge crest. On this short stretch alone, there are numerous examples of prehistoric building work.
Our first stop is Wayland’s Smithy. As a child I found this name wildly romantic (although I had no idea who Wayland was and why he had a smithy). Thankfully, our visit did not disappoint.
From the slightly hippie notice board (do what you like but do it carefully) to the magic of the stones and earthen long barrow, the site was as eerie, and as evocative of old ghosts, as I could possibly have hoped. I now also know that Wayland was a smith god whose name was attached to the site in perhaps Saxon times. It did seem that the shape of the barrow was vaguely reminiscent of an anvil.
You will also note that, today, the site is rather cathedral like within it’s curtain wall of trees. Did our prehistic ancestors have to clear the site before they built here? Did they have to manage regenerating woody vegetation to retain clear visibility of the monument from the (?wooded) vale below? Or did those grazing animals do all the work?
Beyond Wayland’s great smithy lies the Uffington Castle and White Horse combination (below).
The huge, hilltop, ditches and ramparts of Uffington Castle are clearly visible from both the Ridgeway and from the Vale below, so it’s not surprising that the Castle was co-opted by 20th century surveyors and cartographers (trig point above right). In both cases (ie fort and map making) technology has rapidly moved on such that both structures are now classed as ‘heritage’. English Heritage retain this monument in an entirely tree-free condition.
The neighbouring Uffington White Horse (probably just BCE) is extremely difficult to see from the Ridgeway or from the Castle. In fact it is quite difficult to see from lower down the hill as it is tucked into an angle in the contours. One assumes that its surrounds were always maintained as grassland and that there was enough tree clearance in the Vale to make it easily visible from a distance.
By this time we were getting rather blasé about monuments and so we trudged straight past a little fort (with no public access) and made only a nodding acquaintance with the Iron Age Letcombe Castle, with its single ditch and rampart (Uffington’s is a double). We did visit the wonderfully named Scutchamer Knob but this heavily vandalised iron age round barrow was largely hidden under scrub and undergrowth.
But prehistoric monument builders were not the only ones to see the advantages of a ridge way location. Moving into the current era, our next discovery was a striking 19th century monument, perched on a bronze age barrow and commemorating local man, Brigadier General Robert James Loyd-Lindsay, 1st Baron Wantage.
One other form of landuse accompanied us throughout this 23 mile hike. It has nothing to do with the chalk ridge as such, but everything to do with the chalk downs behind it and with our nation’s love of horses and racing. We refer, of course, to the gallops which are carefully laid out and managed as an integral part of training race horses. The gallops are wide, sweeping, undulating and homogeneous grassy avenues which currently provide only a subtle contrast to the green of the downland arable crops but which will soon stand out more strongly as the grain ripens, and the harvester and then the plough get to work.
Thus the Vale of the White Horse is also the Vale of the Race Horse and no trees will be allowed to encroach on either of their habitats. We reckon that’s a dead cert.
Weedy Tendencies
Many years ago, three young geography undergraduates were reduced to (badly controlled) giggles when introduced to the concept of Weedy Tendencies. I had never heard the phrase before and, to be honest, have never heard this exact phrase since. A quick trawl of the internet, however, reveals that others have researched the characteristics of the ‘ideal weed’. For instance:
“By studying ruderal and agricultural weeds invading empty niches, Herbert Baker began to identify characteristics associated with invasiveness, which resulted in a list of traits describing the ‘ideal weed’ (Baker 1965, 1974)” (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-023-05397-8). Of course the key word here is ‘invasiveness’.
Memories of the definition of ‘Weedy Tendencies’ are clouded by the urgent need to appear focussed and stay silent in the lecture theatre, but I do remember that weedy characteristics included the ability to produce massive quantities of easily transportable seed (thistledown seems so romantic until it grows into a socking great thistle, and the heavier Sycamore seeds even come supplied with wings) or come with roots which can regenerate the plant after the hoe or hand has removed all evidence of leaves and flowers. How many times have I dug up the top end of a dandelion’s massively entrenched tap root, only to give up and move on, knowing that new leaves will be back before I am.
Above from left to right: the dreaded dandelion root, some catsear and a sycamore seedling. You know you didn’t plant them.
Of course invasiveness is not all bad: it’s sometimes a pleasure to get ‘free’ plants, to dig up spare plants to pass on to others or to feed the compost bin with the ones that you pull out. But - warning klaxon - many compost bins don’t get hot enough to kill off the roots of couch grass or bindweed.
So what is a weed? Yes, yes, we know it’s a plant in the wrong place. But we suspect that the definition of ‘wrong place’ is changing as awareness of climate change, the importance of biodiversity and the delights of No Mow May, June and July (right) alter the definition of the ‘garden’.
Terroir South’s garden is definitely not a nature reserve. It is a garden which functions as a controlled space, a place of peace, visual delight, variety, relaxation and shelter. It is a transition zone between ‘indoors’ and the world beyond (be that urban, agricultural, woodland or wilderness) over which we have no control.
But we now realise that gardens can make a serious contribution to urban biodiversity and habitats. Even one small garden can make a difference, but a row of gardens can provide sufficient habitat to support a huge range of wildlife from hedgehogs to holly blue butterflies.
So, as with many gardeners, we have added biodiversity (above) to Terroir’s list of what we expect from our garden.
But it’s all so subjective. How do we choose what plants to keep and what to weed out? There was a time when invasive herb Robert and cleavers were signs of neglect, a blemish on the garden environment. Terroir now welcomes herb Robert as a garden invader; he adds colour, form, diversity and a hint of the countryside beyond.
Above: herb Robert and wood sorrel decorate the front door step.
But cleavers/sticky Willie/goosegrass? Visually and culturally, it still seems incredibly ‘weedy’, something signalling neglect. The tiny white flowers are delightful but you need a magnifying glass to appreciate them; the burs are annoying or fun, depending on how old you are. We feel guilty pulling it up (and, oh boy, is it easy and immensely satisfying to grab great handfuls of the stuff). On the other hand it is impossible to eradicate completely so we always tolerate a small amount. Would we be more tolerant if cleavers was more colourful? Dandelions are frowned upon but a few of their bright yellow, nectary flowers can always be tolerated.
A farmer, or a lover of the perfect English lawn, knows exactly what a weed is – something which interferes with the ‘crop’ (and no, we won’t digress into a discussion on monocultures). It’s far harder to be a gardener where choice and variety is everything. Unwittingly we make value judgements all the time.
Below are some of Terroir’s decisions on invasive plants.
And finally - red campion, taken just past its best. It has just re-introduced itself and we are so glad to see it back.
So, what’s your favourite weedy invader?
Et in Arcadia Ego
‘‘Even in Arcadia, there am I”. Heavy stuff with which to start a blog on the essence of landscape and place, but Arcadia is a spatial concept, of course, as well as an intellectual and spiritual one. Getting our heads around the origins of Arcadia has been quite a tussle, however, so classicists and historians – please correct us as and where you need to.
Until our recent visit to Greece, if Terroir thought about Arcadia at all, we would have said something along the lines of Classical mythology, 17th century romantic shepherds posing in an Italian landscape, a French colony in eastern Canada and “Brideshead Revisited”.
A search through various references confirms that Arcadia certainly was a concept in Greek and Roman mythology. It was a mysterious, mountainous place, a lush, green, heaven-on-earth, full of mythical creatures including the gods Pan and Hermes, plus a load of shepherds. Presumably there were also sheep but apparently not enough to destroy that lush green, utopian, biodiverse, pastoral and bucolic landscape. Perhaps lamb was seen as the local Ambrosia.
The Arcadia concept seems to have a gone a little quiet for some centuries until, following on from the Scientific Revolution, the 18/19th century Age of Enlightenment burst on the scene, with a host of great thinkers, writers, scientists, philosophers and artists, including Poussin, whose posing shepherds (Et in Arcadia Ego) - right - is dated at approx. 1640 …
Nicolas Poussin, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=157589
… and Schiller whose poem entitled Resignation was published 1786, here in translation:
“Yes! even I was in Arcadia born,
And, in mine infant ears,
A vow of rapture was by Nature sworn;”
By the first half of the 19th century, people like Francois Pouqueville and William Wordsworth were also on the case.
The Classical Arcadia was located in the Peloponnese in the middle of the Greek mainland. It’s still there – and so are the sheep.
Inevitably, modern Arcadia isn’t quite as lush as we imagined the original version to have been but it is certainly hilly, green and, if you can find a suitable road verge, very floriferous (below left). The sheep were actually very hard to find but most of the countryside is covered with woodland, olive groves, walnuts, pasture and the occasional hay meadow (below right).
I suspect that most visitors enter the kingdom of Arcadia via the village of Lagadia, a striking hill top settlement with magnificent views. But wait – turn around – the buildings are as stunning (perhaps even more so) as the views. The houses are sturdy, rectangular, stone structures with overhanging clay tile roofs, built with skill, grace and assurance, and with wonderful attention to details. In other parts of the Mediterranean, say the Castagniccia in northern Corsica, such buildings might well be neglected, empty or falling apart. Here, the majority appear to be in robust health, although tourism is probably the main form of income now.
And some of those details:
Arcadia’s adaptation to tourism, including the sale of local crafts:
There is a fascinating architectural, historical, cultural and geographical back story behind this beautiful ‘village-scape’. Lagadia was the centre for skilled stonemasons who built houses, churches, schools, public buildings and bridges not just throughout Arcadia but pretty much the whole of Greece.
“… it was the builders hailing from Lagadia and its surrounding villages, who belonged to the organised groups of craftsmen, that penned the narrative of traditional architecture in Greece” (https://www.travel.gr/en/experiences-ee/unknown-greece/the-revival-of-lagadias-master-crafts/). Here (above and below) are a trio of Lagadia’s church-scapes.
But why here, why up a mountain in central Greece? Security must have been a major factor - Greek history was hardly a bundle of laughs and lowland areas must have been very vulnerable to whoever the enemy happened to be at the time.
So those skilled stonemasons took advantage of the Arcadian hill tops to build around the contours, creating dramatic village ‘amphitheatres’ with excellent views of potential enemies on the ‘stage’ below.
Without water, however, the security factor could not have been exploited, but the area is well supplied with mountain springs. With such a reliable water source the area must have seemed very attractive. Add in a basic agricultural economy (remember those sheep plus useful trees like walnuts and olives), plus a ready supply of building stone, and the area must have seemed like heaven on earth – Arcadia indeed.
Wittingly or unwittingly they also created a landscape and architectural composition which delights the eye and, now, the modern tourist.
Not all was peaceful, however, in this hill top Arcadia. Many villages bear the scars of two world wars and also of more local struggles.
The agonies of the global conflicts were extended by the Greco Turkish War from 1919 to 1922 and the Greek Civil War which lasted, on and off, from 1943 to 1949.
The most heart-rending war memorial, however, was the village of Kalavrita, located in the mountains to the north of Lagadia. Following the execution of 78 German soldiers in 1943, by mountain based Greek resistance fighters, a German ‘response’ force, in the form of the 117th Jäger Division, was sent to nearby Kalavrita.
In brief, the village population was rounded up and imprisoned in the school while the village was looted and burnt. All men and boys over the age of 13 were then taken to a nearby field (above right) and shot and the school building set on fire. Incredibly, the women and children escaped - to discover the horror which had overcome their community.
A more cheerful and pituresque side to Kalavrita is its train service. A delightful, narrow gauge ‘rack assisted’ railway connects the village to the coastal town of Diakopto, some 30 km to the north east. The route descends via a twisting, precipitous and incredibly scenic sandstone gorge.
The first surprise is that this is 21st century public transport, ie a regional railway, not a purely a tourist heritage attraction. But considering how crowded our train was, one wonders how far in advance the locals may have to book their seats. The journey is regularly punctuated by stops to allow the train to be connected to the rack (for the steeper sections) and for the crew to change the points on the passing loop. Perhaps it is more ‘heritage’ style than one might expect from a modern two-car diesel unit!
Stops may also be necessary to avoid the hikers which make use of the rail track as a walking route (the train crew are not the only human figures in the view, above right). There are two types of hazard associated with using this type of ‘footpath’: one is the danger of actually being hit by a train, although the drivers are probably very used to having to slam on the anchors on rounding a corner only to discover a hiker wandering down the middle of the ‘road’. The second danger is the width of the track bed. We saw hikers flattened to the side of the canyon or teetering on the edge of a precipitous drop, as the train gently eased its way past. Is this the latest extreme sport?
The Ecology of Archaeology
Did we really say that? How pretentious. I suppose we are really talking about the study of plants which love growing on walls but, as archaeological work often provides such walls (both vertical and horizontal), there is a strong connection between rock loving flora and excavations. Tourists who love plants and history/prehistory get a double dose of excitement.
Last year, we sent you postcards from mainland Italy and Sicily, featuring the flora growing on the ruins of Pompeii and the Parco Archaeologico della Neapolis, in Siracusa. This year we ventured to Greece, also rich in archaeology of course, but which offers a different collection of wild flowers, lichens and ferns. As we only got back a few days before blog posting day, we thought you might like a kind of appetiser, a Greek salad perhaps, before offering you the main course moussaka in a couple of weeks.
Northern Greece was showery and cloudy, an atmosphere which did not deter either the flowers or the botanists. The swards and rocky nooks and crannies provided a plethora (a word partly borrowed from the Greek, apparently) of plant delights – and identity challenges.
Right: Nafpaktos Castle with botanists at work
Image below: surely not a gentian? No - sufficient knee work and app use suggests an Alkanet (Anchusa undulata?) Both images © M Chilvers
Some of the wall plants with which we are so familiar in Britain are also stalwarts (stalworts?) in Greece. Ivy leaved toad flax (below left), navelwort (the flower spike, not the leaves behind it, below centre) and pellitory of the wall can all be found embedded in all sorts of cracks and crevices.
Garden escapes are also familar and frequent components of the habitat. Even a fig can squeeze into tight space, when absolutely necessary.
Other flowers were less familair but well worth the effort of trying to identify them. And by the way, if we have mis-identified (or mis-spelled) any of these plants, please let us know.
Below left to right: salsify (Tragapogon porrifolius), giant fennel (Ferula communis) and Campanula ramosisissima. And not fogetting, at the top of this post, the tiny, delicate flowers of Micromeria graeca, clinging grimly to a wall.
Ferns, mosses, lichens and liverworts inhabit damper and or shadier areas.
Less cramped spaces were populated with the sort of plant which can quickly get a toe-hold in rough but ready places. Here we have sow thistle, poppies, yellow hop trefoil and purple (winter?) vetch, with (lower row) the gloriously named basket of gold (Aurinia saxitilis), Arabian pea and bladder vetch, not quite ready to flower.
More fertile places with deeper and/or damper soil provided a cornucopia of colour and form. It is hard to justify including such beauties in a blog post supposedly devoted to walls and rocky places but we did find them in a museum devoted to industrial archaeology…
A welcome please to cut leaved self heal, a pyramidal orchid and - oh - a wreath of Laurus nobilis, the laurel with which the Romans crowned their Olympians and which we just put in our casseroles.
Time for Tea
We are spending a lot of time on the allotment these days. Regular readers of this blog will know that time spent on the allotment does not necessarily correlate with work done, as watching the neighbour’s hens is compulsive, therapeutic - and time consuming. So this will have to be a short blog! We do, however, want to tell you a little bit about one of our favourite ‘stately estates’. For reasons which will become evident, we cannot really call it a stately home anymore, but the grounds still deserve the ‘stately’ qualifier.
Gatton Park lies on the North Downs towards the eastern end of Surrey. The 1987 Surrey edition of Pevsner & Nairn’s ‘The Buildings of England’ refers to it as ‘under the downs N of Reigate’. This is geographically incorrect (it is on the downs and north of Redhill) but probably illustrates the terrible snobbery which can exist between an old (ie recorded in Domesday Book) town (Reigate) and a new upstart Victorian railway town (Redhill). So imagine Terroir’s delight on finding that Pevsner (or perhaps Nairn) refers to Reigate as a ‘characterless little town’! But we digress.
The Gatton estate seems to have been around since Saxon Times and was recorded as a manor in – yes - the Domesday Book! OK, it only consisted of 9 households (6 villagers and 3 smallholders, compared to Reigate’s 67 villagers and 11 smallholders) but it passes the antiquity test nicely (https://opendomesday.org/place/TQ2752/gatton/).
By 1450 Gatton became a parliamentary borough, probably as a political pawn in the hands of the third Duke of Norfolk. In 1765, Sir George Colebrooke added a ‘Town Hall’, created in the form of a little Doric temple with ‘voting urn’. The multi coloured decoration is definitely a later addition!
By GrindtXX - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35375105
At around the same time, Colebrook also upgraded his estate on a much larger scale by employing a design/build contractor called Lancelot (Capability) Brown. Gatton Park was ‘improved’ and became a fine example of the English Landscape style.
By the 19th century, Gatton had also achieved fame as a ‘rotten borough’. In 1830 William Cobbett described it as a ‘very rascally spot of earth’ and, following the 1832 Reform Act, Gatton finally lost its Borough status.
By this time the estate was owned by a Lord Monson, who made some significant changes, including reconstructing Gatton Hall on a scale suitable to house the treasures he had ‘acquired’ on his travels around Europe. The works included the construction of a grand Marble Hall which he filled with paintings and sculptures.
Thanks to the Gatton Trust for above Image
By 1888, the Estate had been acquired by mustard-magnate, Sir Jeremiah Colman. Tragedy struck in 1934 when the house burnt down and Monson’s Marble Hall was destroyed. On a more positive note, however, Colman was a plantsman and became a global authority on orchids. As with Sir George Colebrook before him, Colman also hired specialist help to create many new landscape features around the periphery of Capability Brown’s parkland.
The partnership of Milner White and Son established a parterre, pleasure gardens and an ‘old world’ garden (by landscape gardener Henry Ernest Milner) while son-in-law Edward White designed a fashionable Japanese Garden, and an equally fashionable rock garden (image left), built in association with James Pulham and using their artificial (‘Pulhamite’) stone.
As an aside, the Milner White practice remained in business for over a century, and only finally closed its doors in 1995 with the retirement of Frank Marshall, who had joined the company in 1960 (https://merl.reading.ac.uk/collections/milner-white/).
The rebuilt house is now home to a voluntary aided boarding school and the grounds have been - carefully -modified to include sports pitches and other educational structures.
Image right: modern view of the mid 1930s rebuild (designed by Sir Edwin Cooper). The scaffolding shrouds the tower of the beautiful, grade I listed, 13th century, St Andrews church. © Terroir
The park and garden is registered Grade II, however, and is managed and maintained to respect the basic structure provided by Capability Brown and Milner White. The wooded western part of the estate is also in good care, being now in the ownership of the National Trust.
The Japanese Garden is very special indeed. Constructed in 1909, Edward White incorporated lanterns, flowing water, bridges and a tea house, in a Europeanised style of what Edwardian Britain thought was Japanese. Sadly, but probably inevitably, the garden ‘rewilded’ when maintenance ceased after WWII.
Some 25 years ago, however, research and survey work began to piece together what this boggy corner of Gatton Park may once have looked like. ‘Help’ came from many sources including Monty Don’s ‘Lost Gardens’ series in 1999, support from the Japanese Embassy, the skills and knowledge of a Japanese Garden designer, and the planting of 100 young cherry trees as part of the Sakura Cherry Tree Project https://japanuksakura.org/. But the real power house for this restoration project was provided by the scores of Gatton Trust volunteers who donated thousands of hours of their time to back breaking hard labour, undertaken in all weathers. Who knew that Japanese gardening could involve so much mud?
Last month (April 2024) the project was declared ‘open’. A very English tea was laid on with a very Japanese musical recital from Keiko Kitamura playing the koto, before a tour of the garden in very British spring weather.
You weren’t invited? Don’t fret. Just watch this superb video filmed and edited by Sean Bate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTTavjVJv6w&t=1s
Unless otherwise stated, all photos © Chris Hoskins/Gatton Trust
Four Go Mad in Berlin
Well not quite, but there was plenty of ginger-free beer available.
All of us had been to Berlin before, some on multiple occasions, so there was no imperative to go to Checkpoint Charlie, the Stasimuseum, or the Berlin Wall Memorial. We even forgot to check whether we were wandering through the former East or West Berlin. It was very liberating (I use the word intentionally) and we were able to celebrate Berlin as a modern, forward looking, European Capital. So where does the (in our case more mature), 21st century tourist choose to go?
For one of us, it all started in the allotment. Our uphill neighbour had recently fortified his plot against foxes and introduced a fine troupe of hens, which are, as their owner pointed out, terrible time wasters, just begging you to stand and watch as they burble around, scratching and preening. So these days, allotment chats tend to be longer and allotment activity abbreviated. Thus I learnt, on a recent dose of hen relaxation therapy, that our neighbour’s other area of expertise was in Egyptian archaeology and that no visit to Berlin was complete without a visit to see the statue of Nefertiti.
Thankfully, on consultation, all four of us agreed that the Pergamon Museum’s archaeological treasures were a must. But Berlin’s Museum Island no longer appears to house such an establishment. A UNESCO World Heritage site since 1999, the geography of Museum Island seems to have been in flux for many decades. Nefertiti, however, is safe, well and very much on view in the Neues Museum.
Entering the Museum is a modern and minimalist experience and, as the corridors are uncluttered with signage, deciding where to start feels like a sort of pastel potluck. We were headed, of course, for the Egyptian stuff and once into the appropriate labyrinth, we found it utterly absorbing, clean, fresh and beautifully presented, with no feeling of indigestible overload. Some items seem fabulously exotic and feed our preconceptions of pyramids and mummies. My particular ‘take home’ from this section was the wall art (below).
Other items are startling modern or, more accurately, suggest that nothing modern is actually new.
Below: left - the original flip flop? Centre - a very familiar cane chair and folding chair (minus its fabric/leather seat) Right - such seats in use (probably best not to ask what the sitters are up to)
Cute cartoon figures are not a 20th century invention.
“There is a strong emphasis on the diverse fauna of Egypt, with the hippopotamus, ape, dog, shrew and hedgehog often depicted in cute poses. Nile plants are painted on the body of the hippopotamus, as an indication of its habitat.”
“Despite the attention to detail, the anatomy of the animals is not reproduced to scale but the accentuation of their features still gives the observer a sense of the perfect accuracy and realism which characterise animal drawings in Egyptian art.”
Quotes taken from the Museum interpretation boards accompanying this section of the exhbition.
Finally we get to Nefertiti herself. She reigns supreme in a circular room giving 360 vision and space for viewers to move and linger. She is sublime: one of us immediately thought of Eltham Palace, the art deco mansion in south east London, where she would be so at home. Is she a fake? Of course rumours abound. Why did the German archaeologist credited with finding her in 1912, keep her out of view for so long? "A beautiful woman and a putative scandal …That always sells." Dietrich Wildung rebuffing the allegations of forgery (quoted in the Guardian in 2009 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/may/07/nefertiti-bust-berlin-egypt-authenticity)
I so hope she is genuine. Mona Lisa? Nah – give me Nerfertiti every time.
How do you follow that? You go to Potsdam of course, the residence of Prussian Kings and a German emperor, a place of palaces and lakes, of fine art and architecture and, more recently, a significant role in 20th century history and politics as host to the 1945 Potsdam Conference and the location of the Cold War focal point, the Glienicke Bridge.
We took as our specialist subject the Palace of Sans Souci, the summer residence of Prussian King Frederick II (so maybe April wasn’t the best time to go?). Admittedly, It was cold and chilly but we did manage a quick tour of the park and gardens. The park was full of that fresh green which only trees in spring time can produce and reprodue, year after year. The leaves were bright, cheerful, full of hope and spring promise (even when dodging rain showers) and never overpowering.
What a contrast in the garden! Formality, fabrication, humanity, structure, control, colour, power - and potaoes!
Below - migraine inducing spring border with formal lawns, sculpted conifers and the most magnificent, formal, south facing vineyard terraces which were completed in 1746. Despite its slight similarity to a (horticultural) prison, it makes a tremendous visual impact and completely overshadows the palace itself.
And those potatoes? Frederick II (looking anxious below left) was known as the Potato King. The story goes that, after successfully introducing potatoes into the diet of his army, Frederik tried to do something similar when famine hit his civilian population. The peasants were not keen. The threat of ear and nose amputation for those who refused to grow spuds did little to encourage potato production so he tried more seductive methods. A royal potato plot was established. The King advertised his admiration for both potato flowers and tubers, had the field ostentatiously guarded, and sat back. Of course, the peasants were soon sneaking in by night to steal the crop so that they might grow their own fashionable tubers. Job done. To this day, potatoes are regularly left on Old Fritz’s grave, which lies under the terrace of Sans Souci Palace (below right).
But it seems that Frederick was ahead of his game in hospitality as well as basic nutrition.
Within the Palace, Team Terroir was particularly impressed by a line of guest bedrooms, all sumptuously decorated and furnished, each with a garden view, a bed in an alcove and a discrete door for the below stairs staff to service the room. These apartments reminded one of us of a string of up market AirBandBs.
The décor of these apartments was, and is, magnificent. There was a distinctive, ornate floral theme in many of the rooms, with artists and crafts people using a variety of styles and materials to decorate floors, walls and ceilings in pursuit of royal grandeur. This is the garden within, but without the migraine tulip.
Voltaire was a particularly regular visitor who is said to have stayed for extended periods of time. Apparently Old Fritz spoke French better than German. The poet’s regular appartment stands out from the rest with with a particularly bold and fruity theme (images below).
By now we were suffering from traumatic visual overload to which there can be only one solution: lashings of tea.
A change of enviornment was also required and the obvious answer was a visit to the German Museum of Technology (Deutsches Technikmuseum), for a dose of trains, planes and automobiles. Natch.
The railway exhibition is housed in the original locomotive sheds of what was once Berlin’s main rail-head, Anhalter Station. Opening in 1841, Anhalter became a mecca for this new transport technology and traffic expanded significantly. In 1880, a vast new station was opened, replacing the fairly modest original complex, and for a while became the largest station in continental Europe.
Original round houses and turntables still stand (image right) and the old yards now form the open air section of the Technical Museum, areas of which are supposed to house various exhibits (such as a Dutch windmill) most of which seemed to be shut or inaccessible during our visit.
So here comes the exciting part for people like Team Terroir. The raillway yards have been allowed to return to nature (a sort of railway re-wilding scheme). The extent and mix of regenerating vegetation – grasses and herbs, shrubs and trees, occasionally ‘enhanced’ by new tree planting - creates an amazing, and exciting young jungle, laced by a network of gentle, unsurfaced paths. But it gets better: remnants of the railway era can still be found, littered around the site, creating an intriguing and surprising visual adventure playground of transport industrial archaeology. It’s magic.
So what is the ultimate ‘take home’ image which symbolises 21st century Berlin. Nefertiti? The deorated floral ceilings in Frederick II’s 18th century AirBandBs? The magic of a Narnian style buffer-stop-and-lamppost combo in the old Anhalter stationyards? No, none of those. For Terroir it’s still the East German traffic light ‘Ampelmann’ who marches across the top of this blog. He started ‘walking’ in 1961, survived the fall of the wall and re-unification, and is still loved around the world.
Does Colour Matter?
Actually, timing is everything. In February, the Mayor of London announced new names and colours for the six London Overground lines which are currently identified by a drab and dull orange. The new names provide something for everybody – women, football, healthcare, LGBTQ+ community, the Caribbean community, textiles, Huguenots, democracy, freedom and independence. More details on https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2024/february/london-s-overground-lines-to-be-given-new-names-and-colours-in-historic-change-to-capital-s-transport-network
And the colours ? The Lioness line – yellow! Mildmay – blue! Windrush – red! The Weaver line comes in with – Maroon! The suffragettes get – green! And Liberty – grey. GREY? How did that sneak in? Apparently the Liberty line references ‘the historical independence of the people of Havering’. What did Havering do to deserve grey?
We are also disappointed to note that the drab orange is still in evidence. Please note: opinions on orange may differ.
In March, Transport for London (TfL) went green - again - with the launch of the Green Link Walk. This is the eighth route in the Walk London Network (a group of trails which includes the Green Chain and The Capital Ring). Terroir has yet to find out if Walk London green is a significantly different Pantone colour to Suffragette green…
More of the Green Link in a minute, but the timing of these colourful initiatives must surely have some significance? Ah yes: ‘good’ news is always helpful in the run up to an election. Sadiq Khan will be battling for a second term as Mayor of London on 2nd May. Choose your political pantone with care.
Back to the Green Link. It wobbles for 15 miles between Epping Forest and Peckham, somewhat like a banana lying on a roughly north/south axis. It aims to improve Londoner’s health and well-being, be accessible, cycle and wheelchair friendly, sustainable (with the ultimate inclusion of two new rain gardens) and link with a variety of green spaces.
We are also told that it ‘fulfil[s] a mayoral manifesto commitment’. Yes, I think we have already mentioned that election!
To date, the main criticism which Terroir has heard is that the route entails a lot of pavement pounding, suggesting that the Link is more grey than green. Having trialled just one section, we agree that tarmac terrain is hard on the joints but that ‘green’ ocurs fairly frequently and that ‘grey’ can be beautiful.
Follow us on a walk from the Angel to Clerkenwell, probably less than 2 miles but packed with interest. We’ve annotated a section of the Footways map to show our start (the red arrow) and finish, at the yellow arrow. https://footways.london/the-green-link
Our start at Angel Tube is perhaps 200m from the Regent’s Canal and the Green Link. The Link doesn’t use the canal-side paths, however, but sticks to the local roads to ensure good access for wheelchairs. In the image below right, the Link runs behind the trees on the left hand side of the photograph.
The Link crosses the canal (left) over the top of the 960 yard long Islington Tunnel, which was opened in 1816. In March 2024 you can still see something of the canal through the springtime foliage.
The first stop is Colebrook Row Gardens and Duncan Terrace Gardens. These linear spaces were laid out on the route of the New River, an early 17th century water way constructed to bring drinking water from Hertfordshire into London. You can walk the route and admire the green spaces which adorn its route. https://londongardenstrust.org/features/NewRiver.htm
Colebrook Row Gardens (above) and Duncan Terrace Gardens (below) including a spectacular view of some of the nearby ‘grey’ elements.
Crossing City Road reveals the splendid spectacle of the 1903 Angel Hotel (now offices), before going ‘green’ again in Owens Fields. No moans about the lack of apostrophe, please (see below).
Crossing into Chadwell Street we find some more spectacular townscape (I’ll stop referring to it as ‘grey’as I think I think I’ve made the point that it’s anything but)...
… and pass on through into Myddleton Square (below). We presume this is named after the Sir John Myddleton who oversaw the construction of the New River. The square was laid out by William Chadwell Mylne, the second son of Robert Mylne (1733–1811), surveyor to the New River Company (you just can’t get away from it), as well as builder of the first Blackfriars Bridge. Son William constructed the square ‘in a Georgian style’ between 1822 and 1843 (remember that George IV had died in 1830, but I suppose the Victorians hadn’t really got going by then) and set his St Mark’s church (built 1825 - 27) right in the middle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Church,_Myddelton_Square
LLoyd Square comes next, a ‘Garden Square’ constructed between 1828 and 1832 by John Booth and family, surveyors; I can find no connection with the New River but Wikipedia tells me that these sharp suited, clean-shaven, Greek revival style, structures are all Grade II Listed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Square
The pavement pounding is probably taking its toll by now, so we will hurry on to Wilmington Square, for a bit of green and pink relief.
Meant to be the size of Myddleton Square, ambitions for Wilmington Square had to be curtailed for ‘financial reasons’. This one was built by ‘John Wilson (born c. 1780), a Gray's Inn Lane plumber and glazier who had become a builder and developer’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_Square
Rested? We’ll look in on Spa Field Park. History suggests that Spa Field has always been well frequented by the living and the dead, by those seeking a cure at the 18th century spa and those seeking a venue for political rallies. It was well used on the day of Terroir’s visit, but maybe a tad too much Photinia?
And now for the big finale: St James’ Church, Clerkenwell. The current church dates from 1792, built by local architect James Carr and ‘clearly influenced by Wren and Gibbs’ and subsequently altered by many as need arose.
So, does colour matter? Absolutely! We need a world full of colour, in landscapes, in people, in politics, in society, in life. Thankfully, the ‘Green’ link is as varied and rainbow coloured as TfL’s Overground ideas. Although I’m still not convinced by Liberty grey.
‘Pa was a fool’
Having your windows replaced can have some strange consequences. The impact on the bank balance was to be expected of course and our hopes for a warmer world indoors were immediately fulfilled. We also have a nice, warm, smug feeling about using less carbon based fuel, although we try not to think about the carbon footprint of the uPVC window frames installed upstairs.
We also knew that quite a lot of junk would have to be moved to allow access for the installation guys and we promised ourselves that much of this stuff would end in the charity shops. This process is – very - slow!
One of us, started on the piles of books (yes, yes, we know that was probably unwise). So this blog is a consequence of uncovering a book that we had forgotten we possessed.
The book which had caught my eye was Young Pioneers by Rose Wilder Lane. Rose Lane was the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, of Little House in the Big Woods fame. Although now far less well known than her mother, Mrs Lane was, in her time, a very successful journalist and author and it is thought that she encouraged her mother to write. Some suggest she may even have ghost written some of Wilder’s books, but as an old romantic, I like to think that Rose merely provided editorial support and access to the world of publishing.
Re-reading Young Pioneers reminded me of the debate which Laura Wilder’s books provoked in the 20-teens over her inclusion of what would now be regarded as inappropriate language regarding native Americans. Here are a couple of quotes from 2018 which illustrate the controversy.
‘Wilder’s depictions of African Americans and Native people are flawed and racist. Some will argue that at the time she wrote the books, things like blackface and stereotyping weren’t seen as wrong. But, of course, African Americans and Native peoples knew them to be wrong.’ American Library Association (https://www.thefussylibrarian.com/newswire/2018/06/26/ala-were-not-banning-or-censoring-laura-ingalls-wilder)
‘Laura Ingalls Wilder is my hero, but her books tell a painful American story’ Haley Stewart (https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2018/07/12/laura-ingalls-wilder-my-hero-her-books-tell-painful-american-story)
This debate has been pretty thoroughly aired on both sides of the Atlantic and I have no problem with reporting that Terroir is firmly on the side of Bristol’s response to the Colston statue’s swim in the harbour. Colston is no longer (dis)gracing Bristol’s streets but is tucked up in the M shed, on public view and close to a selection of protesters’ posters. Conservation includes a protective environment to conserve the 21st century graffiti with which the statue was daubed prior to its immersion in Bristol harbour (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/14/edward-colston-statue-placed-quiet-corner-bristol-museum).
For those who not have actually read the ‘Little House’ books, the stories are based on Laura Ingalls’ childhood and adolescence in the American mid-west. The second story, in terms of the chronology of her life, is Little House on the Prairie and relates the Ingalls family’s journey from Wisconsin to Kansas to settle in what was defined as Indian Territory in the 1870s. Pa is portrayed as having some sympathy with the original inhabitants, but Ma is frightened of Indians. Ma and her neighbours use phrases such as, ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’; hence the debate.
Of course, one of us has now further delayed book sorting by re-reading Little House on the Prairie as well. Even from an adult’s perspective it is wonderful travelogue, but it is of outstanding significance as a record of the American prairies before ‘the white man’ changed them so drastically.
‘Day after day they travelled in Kansas, and saw nothing but the rippling grass and the enormous sky. In a perfect circle the sky curved down to the level land, and the wagon was in the circle’s exact middle’. Hands up who has ever experienced a scene like that. No, I didn’t think so.
‘Then they sat on the clean grass and ate pancakes and bacon and molasses … All around them shadows were moving on the swaying grasses, while the sun rose. Meadow larks were springing straight up from the billows of grass into the high clear sky, singing as they went’.
Unfortunately Pa and Laura were probably unaware that technically there are two types of (nearly identical) meadow larks (the eastern and the western). Here is the western variety (Sturnella neglecta).
By Cephas - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=133943809
Other birds which impacted on Laura were the dick-sissels (a small seed-eating bird), whip-poor-wills (a night jar, the eastern variety aptly named Antrostomus vociferous, more easily heard than seen and symbolic of rural America), blue jays (an omnivore with plenty of attitude) and night hawks (scooping up insects on the wing).
Prairie hens (now endangered through hunting and loss of habitat) were a regular part of the Ingalls’ diet and wild turkeys supplied the Thanksgiving meal.
Laura also mentions ‘nightingales’. I understand that nightingales are not native to North America so any hints on what this bird might be would be very welcome. Furthermore, there are 18 or 19 species of owl in the USA and neither Laura nor I are attempting to identify which ones she listened to at night.
Blue jay - photo by and (c)2009 Derek Ramsey (Ram-Man) - Self-photographed, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7081461
Prairie chicken - by GregTheBusker - Prairie Chicken, Puffed UpUploaded by Snowmanradio, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10312117
Although the ocean of waving grasses made a huge impact on Laura there is no record of her identifying any of the individual species. Wild flowers, however, were a big hit and she notes wild larkspur, golden rod, and oxeye daisies, plus buck brush (presumably a Ceanothus?) and sumac.
Squirrels, gophers, bull frogs and snakes provided interest and movement in the landscape while white-tailed rabbits/buck rabbits, varieties of deer and many ducks and geese provided food and fur or feathers.
Two larger mammals take a more frightening role in the prairie story: the buffalo wolf and a lone black panther, finally shot, not by Laura’s adored father (Pa) but by an Osage Indian, if the account is correct. The buffalo wolf, a sub species of the grey wolf is now recorded as extinct due to hunting of both the buffalo and the wolf. Wolf pelts were among the furs which Laura’s father traded for a plough and seeds.
Illustrations from the Puffin edition of Little House on the Prairie drawn Garth Williams
Oh and I nearly forgot the malaria carrying mosquitoes which inhabited the creek valleys.
Here we see Dr Tan, an African American doctor who Laura reports as working with the Indians, supervising Ma and Pa taking their quinine.
But why was Pa ‘a fool’? This statement was made during a radio debate on how the 21st century should approach the 19th century racist language and attitudes displayed in the Little House Books. The speaker was commenting on Charles Ingalls’ journey into Indian Territory when the area had not yet been opened up for settlement.
As America expanded, the government was pushing indigenous inhabitants further and further west and Pa had heard that this area of Kansas might soon be open for settlement. He took a gamble and decided to travel to Kansas to get ahead of the rush. He wasn’t the only one and the Ingalls had two or three neighbours within a few miles of their own little farm. When the news came that the area was not to open for settlement at that time after all, the family left and headed back east before soldiers arrived to physically eject them. Pa had already started the cultivation of the wild prairie and Laura quotes him as saying, ‘I’ve been thinking what fun the rabbits will have, eating that garden we planted.’
I would suggest that Pa was disappointed, but not a fool. In the terms of society at that time, it was a risk worth taking. Government was not rooting for the Indians. Why should Pa? He wanted land where he could be self-sufficient and create a home for his family. It was central to the notion of American independence, freedom, self-determination and equality (well, for European immigrants at least) and for what was to become the great American Dream. On this particular occasion the gamble didn’y pay off, but Pa wasn’t deterred in his ambitions for his family’s future and finally settled in South Dakota.
I also guess that Pa would not have been perturbed by the attitudes of his granddaughter, Rose Wilder Lane, writing the following in her book, Young Pioneers. (Our heroine Molly is talking to her Swedish neighbour. A plague of grasshoppers has destroyed all crops and grazing for miles around. The Svensons are going back east).
‘Only once, without meaning to, her eyes confessed the truth, and quickly Molly looked away. Mrs Svenson knew that her husband was giving up, that he would be only a hired man in the East.’
Perhaps unsuprisingly, Rose Wilder Lane went on to become a passionate Libertarian, speaking out for individual freedom; she is described as very anti-interventionist and very anti initiatives such as Roosevelt’s New Deal.
But I wonder what Pa would vote today?
Window Dressing
In early January, Terroir exhorted us all to ‘Keep looking out of the window’. In February, we paid a visit to Bath and discovered that looking at the window was equally enjoyable and informative.
Our window safari started with a visit to an exhibition of Gwen John’s paintings at Bath’s Holburne Museum. This may seem like an unnecessary diversion from the subject of windows, but please stick with us. Up until our visit to Bath, our perception of Gwendolen Mary John (1876 – 1939) was of a woman overshadowed by her younger brother Augustus (1878 - 1961). Many exhibitions seemed to include a token work by Gwen to illustrate how wonderful she was but how neglected, implying that her sex and her sibling were largely responsible.
Sadly, however, we – a trio of Team Terroirs plus other visitors with whom we chatted – were in agreement that Gwen’s work, as exhibited on the Holburne’s walls, was underwhelming. We did try very hard to like or at least appreciate it, but on re-grouping, we were unanimous in our disappointment. Two of us, however, were agreed on which one, if push came to shove, we would take home with us. Here it is: a view of Gwen’s apartment in Paris, apparently focussed on her dormer window.
What is so interesting is that the painting isn’t about the view from the window; it’s intriguing for what she arranged around the window - the flowers, the table and chair, the parasol. It tells us a lot about Gwen herself and her use of a window to light her story. The view through the frame and from that window seems irrelevant.
Returning to the city, you could say that Bath is all about buildings. The tonnage of oolitic limestone which has been marshalled into bath-houses, temples, abbeys, pump houses, hospitals, streets and crescents gives Bath its character and …
… the stone its name. Bath stone is Bath stone whether it’s in Bristol, Claverton, Weston-super-Mare, Reading or London.
But how many of us, when viewing the Royal Crescent, the Circus or the Assembly Rooms have given serious thought to the windows? Just Georgian sash windows surely? Apologies to architects and window fanatics who are by now screaming at this blog, but how many of the rest of us really appreciate the importance of windows in the overall impact of any building, let alone a Georgian Bath terrace? Is the Crescent’s geometry and overall classical proportions (image above) the most important aspect? Or are we all Gwen Johns? Is the significance of the parasol - aka columns/balustrades/railings etc - greater than that of the windows?
Let’s look a little closer. This is how unsympathetic window replacements can ruin the symmetry and eye candy of a run of paned Georgian sashes!! The windows with ‘pelmets’ and single glass pane sashes stand out the worst. Of course that brown wood front door and a load of motor cars don’t help either.
Other modifications are available. Here are some of our favourites.:
Right - is this the asymetrical impact of the window tax?
Below left - add a balcony; below centre - add a fire escape; below right - add some colour
Thankfully, many of the fanlights still seem to be original.
While wandering along a footpath behind The Circus, we came upon a new window, a sort of Narnian style entrance to a parallel universe. We entered though a wooden door and climbed to a viewing platform before descending into the 18th century, as represented by the restored ‘Georgian Garden’. The original 1760s back garden to No. 4 The Circus was, of course designed to be viewed from the windows at the back of the house. The 20th century restoration is entered via the back gate (we leave you to draw your own conclusions on significance of this), but entry at all is thanks to the Bath Archaeological Society who excavated the plot and revealed three garden layouts, all pre the 1920s. Restoration was completed in 1990, based on a plan of c1770.
Of course, not all Bath’s windows are Georgian. Here we have the gothic windows of Bath Abbey.
But we leave you with some very serious window (or perhaps column) dressing back at the Holburne Museum.
Lubaina Himid’s exhibition, ‘The lost threads’, connects the visitor to a very different time and place via the activities of Dutch traders, whose mercantile endeavours with Javanese fabrics left a bold mark on the textile designs of West Africa (https://www.holburne.org/opening-soon-lubaina-himid-lost-threads/). Himid discusses issues of cultural identity, female labour, colonial trading and enslavement, topics which were also touched on in the novels and letters of Jane Austen, another of Bath’s more famous visitors.
Kerala Case Study
Of all the countries I have ever visited, I find India one of the hardest to understand.
You may say that this is obvious, considering the sheer size and variety of India’s ‘terroir’. With around nine climate zones, the range of landscapes is enormous: ‘polar’ Karakorum in the north to tropical Kerala in the south.
But, as you all know, ‘Terroir’ is about human, cultural and economic geography as well as latitude and longitude, and the one thing India excels in is economic inequality.
“As per the 'World Inequality Report 2022', India is among the most unequal countries in the world, with rising poverty and an 'affluent elite.'” [That last phrase could apply to the UK]
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/india-amongst-the-most-unequal-countries-in-the-world-report/articleshow/88141807.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
Or
“While India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, it is also one of the most unequal countries.
“What is particularly worrying in India’s case is that economic inequality is being added to a society that is already fractured along the lines of caste, religion, region and gender.” Professor Himanshu, Jawaharlal Nehru University
https://www.oxfam.org/en/india-extreme-inequality-numbers
[That looks familiar too.]
In January, we were invited to visit Kerala. Our host and driver was Muslim. Kerala, with a heritage influenced by Portugese and French, as well as Dutch and British, has a small but significant Christian (mainly Roman Catholic) population. The Kochin Jews settled in Kerala as traders, although the community is now tiny. Over half the state of Kerala is Hindu.
Compared with national statistics, Kerala has a lower than average birth rate, a higher than average literacy rate and, for India, an usual gender balance - more females than males. The state government is currently led by the Communist Party of India. Make of that what you will. Could we have divined any of this from our visit?
Politics is a big deal in India and elections are due in May. There is certainly a lively debate and we saw marches and flags and banners relating to the Communist Party, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Indian National Congress Party and the Indian Union Muslim League. DYFI by the way is not a Welsh county but the Democratic Youth Federation of India.
We understand that the DYFI’s somewhat negative references to ‘Sanghi’ (see photographs below, left and centre), relate to their distaste for the Sangh Parivar (Hindi for "Sangh family") which includes the BJP. Kerala, it seems, still remembers the poor handling of the 2018 flooding by Modi’s administration (see Blog 125).
While religion is obviously a factor for some in their selection of political affiliation, we neither saw nor heard any sign of intolerance during our visit, and our Muslim host was a keen supporter of the ruling Communist party. He rated education very highly and was proud of Kerala’s literacy levels.
The poster (illustrated left), was, however, the only reference we saw to any political/relgious situation beyond India’s boundaries.
Townscape reflects the variety in religious affiliation in the usual higgledy-piggledy fashion of Keralan urban development.
Above:
left: a mosque in a typical south Indian landscape of palm trees and advertising hoardings
centre: a temple in Guravayoor - a significant Krishna (Hindu) shrine and pilgrimage site
right: a church with its foundations in colonialism but still a living place of worship for Kerala’s Christian population.
Remembering the poverty implied by Delhi’s streetscape (ie a multitude of beggars) we were curious about the low level of both beggars and pestering in Kerala. Did the state forcibly remove them or was abject poverty just not a thing? A very partial internet trawl revealed two contrasting websites – The Government of Kerala’s ‘Economic Review Volume 1’ (https://spb.kerala.gov.in/sites/default/files/2024-02/ER_English_Vol_1_2023.pdf) and a Wikipedia post on ‘The Economy of Kerala’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Kerala). One was written in a dense bureaucratic style, the other was clear and to the point. They seemed to be saying roughly the same thing, so we’ll continue with the Wiki article. We think the information below relates to 2020 or 2021.
Kerala’s economy is the 9th largest in India (the Kerala Phenomenon)
It is the 2nd most urbanised state in India
2.8% of the Indian population living on 1.2% of its land area, contribute 4% of India’s GDP (don’t be fooled by thinking this is all down to Bangalore’s digital outsourcing successes; that city is in the neighbouring state of Karnataka).
Lots of other stats illustrate low poverty, low unemployment and a strong service sector. No wonder they keep voting in the same political master (the Communist Party of India). Incoming workers support the smaller industrial and agricultural sectors of the economy while many Keralans go elsewhere in search of higher wages.
No prizes for guessing or knowing where many of them go for this perk – the Middle East. Remittances from Keralans in the Arab world make up a very significant proportion of the economy. Our Keralan friend makes annual visits to Qatar to boost his family’s income. To quote the WIKI article: ‘Kerala's economy is based on a social democratic welfare state. Some, such as Financial Express, use the term "Money Order Economy” ’.
One fascinating heritage hangover and exemplar of Keralan aspiration is the Dhobi Khana laundry in Fort Kochi. Established here in colonial times to wash uniforms (accounts differ as to whether the first clients were Dutch or British) the technology is distinctly old-fashioned and physical. Unsurprisingly it is likely to close soon as the workers aspire to the better paid jobs in Kerala and elsewhere.
As probably many readers have already been to Kerala, you will know that tourism and hospitality is also a significant element of the state’s economy. Heritage forts, ports and museums, cultural performances and chic eateries make for an enjoyable experience.
Above - Fort Cochin sea and riverscapes. The anchor (left) is from a 20th century dredger which helped to transform Fort Cochin’s port.
Centre and right - 15th century technology in the form of Chinese fishing nets.
Above: ancient and modern - St Francis Church in Fort Kochin. Left - complete with colonial fabric punkha fan (the poor wallah had to operate it remotely in the heat outside) and right - a post-colonial hymn board.
Above left: historic Jew Town in Fort Cochin (they are trying to change the name) and, above right, the beautifully adorned synagogue which now operates simply as a tourist attraction
Above left: so that’s what a palenquin looks like (Fort Cohin Museum); centre - boats near Alappuzha (Alleppey), and right - Fort St Angelo in Kannur (weddings and school parties a speciality).
Left: preparing for and, centre, performing a significantly shortened Kathakali dance/drama. Right a demonstration of dance skill outside the Krishna Temple
Tourism contributes about 10% of Kerala’s GDP and is a significant employer. Agriculture makes a similar or perhaps slightly smaller contribution to GDP but employment statistics seem to vary wildly from say less than 8% to ‘most of the population’. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Kerala) cash crops are the most important and produce a significant proportion of India’s total output. Production of black pepper is, apparently, enormous, but if we did see pepper (or nutmeg, vanilla and cinnamon) we didn’t recognise it.
We did, however, see coffee, tea, coconut, rubber, cashew nuts, and cardamom, often growing as mixed plantations or multi-layered under light tree cover. The image, right, is the Keralan version of an allotment, a succulent mix of trees, shrubs and ground crops in a (literally) pick and mix tapestry of plant life.
In contrast, the whole rice thing seems very complex – issues such as conversion of paddy to other uses, soil health, productivity/double cropping, water management etc etc, abound. All we can say is that we were struck by the apparent lack of mechanisation (this applied to many of the other crops we saw too), the scary size of some enormous paddy fields – acres and acres all devoted to just one plant - and the fact that they were often below the level of the neighbouring water course. The words safety and sustainability instantly came to mind.
The two photographs (above) were both taken looking down from the banks of a substantial river. Gravity must make flooding the paddy fields much easier, but it must be disastrous during other types of floods.
But some things are universal. This poster calls for a mass sit-in by rail drivers. You can probably read their demands for yourself. We sense a rail replacement bus service coming on.
SAD
One of us has Seasonal Affective Disorder. Strongly linked to hours of daylight, we find it impacts the way your mind and body processes the world around you and has some strange implications for appreciation of your local Terroir.
www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/seasonal-affective-disorder-sad/symptoms/ describes the symptoms as starting in the autumn/winter and improving in spring and summer. Apparently some really perverse people do it the other way round and hit rock bottom in the autumn. Thankfully, one of us is not that awkward and loves autumn and all it has to offer.
Typical signs are:
a persistent low mood – well, in Terroir’s case it’s more a feeling of being permanently below par which we guess is the same thing
a loss of pleasure or interest in normal everyday activities – or just lacking the energy to get out of bed; the bar for getting going is much higher than normal
feeling irritable – oh yes!!
feelings of despair, guilt and worthlessness – thankfully not so much of this
low self-esteem – as for above
tearfulness – it’s tempting
feeling stressed or anxious – this is the big one for Terroir
a reduced sex drive – that would be too much information
becoming less sociable – yep, although enjoy being distracted once the effort has been made
be less active than normal, feel lethargic (lacking in energy) and sleepy during the day, sleep for longer than normal and find it hard to get up in the morning – yes, yes and YES
find it difficult to concentrate – oh yes!
have an increased appetite – some people have a particular craving for foods containing lots of carbohydrates and end up gaining weight as a result – it was such a relief to discover this symptom; yesterday the only thing which kept me going was a steady supply of cake
these symptoms may make everyday activities increasingly difficult. Understatement!
So what has this to do with Terroir’s blog?
The most crucial impact on the blog itself was the inability to prepare the intended content for Blog 126. Thinking that a warm and sunny environment might lessen the symptoms, we accepted an invitation to go to Kerala in southern India for a chunk of January. Tales of Indian terroir was to be this fortnight’s topic, but the deadline loomed and despite that extra tropical sun, I just couldn’t pull it together.
Here’s a taste of what you missed:
By lunch time on Wednesday, as anxiety levels rose, an alternative solution became obvious: write about the landscape of being SAD. Is there anyone else out there who can share experiences?
The spring landscape is actually a mixed bag. On the down side, constant Instagram images of the first primrose, or carpets of snowdrops, become very irritating. You’d think that smug Instagrammers (Instagrammars?) had invented them but they are symbolic of the worst time of year for SAD sufferers.
The absolute nadir of SAD landscapes centres around the daffodil. Just a vase or a clump of daffodils, all sounding their trumpets in a shrill chorus of over loud, over bright, over done ‘look at me’ egotistical happiness, reduces me to a surly, cynical, head-under-the duvet, SADette.
Wordsworth certainly didn’t have SAD although one suspects that Dorothy may have had knowledge of many of the symptoms simply from cohabiting with William. Thank goodness our violent pink, brutish, full-of-the-joys-of-spring Camellia was not a Lake District native.
By the time the bluebells are out, the worst symptoms are abating and bluebell-loving friends can usually be tolerated and even accompanied on woodland visits without Terroir suffering revulsion at either the colour or the sappy fragrance.
On the upside, working in the garden is an absolute tonic. Again, the bar is high but having overcome the reluctance to don coat, clogs and gloves, the satisfaction of working up a sweat with the pruning kit is enormous. But even here, climate change has a negative impact. Increased rainfall and warmer days mean that spring starts earlier despite the still wintry day length. SAD sufferers now have to complete their pruning tasks earlier and earlier, with less to do when symptoms get really bad. If it would only stop raining we could get on with sowing the vegetable seeds.
A friend once asked me why I was SADdest in the spring. Surely, she said, with lengthening days, this would be a cheerful time? But the darkest hour is just before dawn or, in SAD terms, just before summer. Currently we are just before spring, which is no help at all! Maybe I’ll be pleased to see the fritillaries.
Flood Alert
Please don’t groan but we’re banging on again about rivers and flooding.
Why two consecutive blogs on the same subject? The cynical amongst you will presume it’s just because we’ve got the relevant photographs. Not quite true – we’ve mislaid some of the best!
So we’re continuing with this subject but this week we’re looking at flooding on a much bigger scale. Flooding is a global problem with immense local impacts and is a real threat to the wellbeing of hundreds of national economies and of millions of individuals. So, yes, it makes last week’s rain gardens look pretty small beer. But, if you are lucky enough to live in a democracy, then you, yes YOU, have the choice to play an active role in promoting policies which can begin to mitigate the devastating impact of floods of all sizes.
In the late summer of 2013, we visited the city of Calgary – prairie cow-town turned city slicker oil-town, which lies in the valley of the Bow River to the east of the Canadian Rockies. Regular readers will realise we also visited in 2023. We are not proud of our resulting carbon footprints, but both visits were linked to the passing of people who had played an important role in our lives.
The Bow River rises in the Banff National Park and flows south eastwards through the towns of Lake Louise and Banff before reaching Calgary. These mountain waters finally join the Oldman River (to the west of Medicine Hat (wonderful name), to form the South Saskatchewan River. That’s a total distance of 365 miles.
The Bow’s influence continues, however, as the South Saskatchewan flows into the Saskatchewan River which finally flows into Manitoba’s Lake Winnipeg.
For Albertans, 2013 is memorable for the massive flooding which hit the Bow River catchment area.
Above left: Looking downtown from Riverfront Ave in Calgary, during the Alberta floods 2013 (Ryan L. C. Quan - Own work, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ryan_quan/9147845946/)
Abov right: The Centre Street Bridge (June 21, 2013) (by Michael Dorosh Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26872133)
What we saw later that year was a huge compliment to the clear up process. The limited evidence of the flood included details like damage to the river banks, cycle paths which suddenly disappeared only to reappear further along, and bridges which continued to teeter over the water with only one end attached to land. Sadly this latter image was one of the photographs which have disappeared.
The story seems to go something like this:
Weather: in mid-June, high pressure builds up in northern Alberta and blocks air flow. Humid easterly winds are forced up the foothills of the Rockies and drop colossal quantities of rain, exacerbated by snow melt from the mountain ‘front ranges’. In a ‘typical’ June, it seems that Calgary receives about 115mm (4.5”) over the whole month. Between 19th and 21st June 2013, the region received over 200mm (around 8”) of rain. One town – ironically called High River – recorded 325mm (that’s more than a foot) in less than 48 hours.
Impact: massive flooding. Calgary’s Bow and Elbow Rivers are reported to have been flowing at three times their previous flood peak in 2005. There are plenty of other scary stats across South Alberta, but I think you get the picture.
People affected: in Calgary alone, the floods impacted on 75,000 people and triggered a huge evacuation. City authorities, the army, the police and a huge crew of volunteers, aided by social media, were all involved.
Irony: Oil company headquarters in downtown Calgary were flooded.
Special mention: both Calgary’s famous Saddledome arena and the adjacent Calgary Stampede ground were flooded. Amazingly, staff and volunteers enabled the 2013 Stampede to go ahead, just two weeks later. Apparently it was a very near thing.
Downstream: Saskatchewan and Manitoba braced for flooding but despite very high river levels, the impact was minimal compared with Alberta.
Cost in human life: 5 people died directly from the impact of the flood. Impact on the lives of Albertans: impossible to estimate; huge increase reported in mental health issues.
Cost in monetary terms: estimates vary hugely. C$5 billion or C$500 billion? You reads your websites and you takes your choice. Funding sources - largely local, provincial and national.
Lessons learnt: there seems to be a range of post flood investments in flood mitigation, resilience, forecasting, response planning and so on, but the viability of Canada’s longer term planning in resilience and carbon reduction is beyond the scope of this blog to assess.
On a local level, however, one thing is obvious: Calgary has fallen in love (again?) with its riverside.
The investment in riverine improvements makes a stroll, a run, a commute, a coffee, a sit-and-watch-the-world-go-by a pleasing and varied experience. Assuming you like large areas of hard surface … Good for people but is it good for climate resilience?
For southern India the key year is 2018 when massive floods hit Kerala.
The story in this tropical area seems to go like this:
Weather: significantly increased rainfall over the whole monsoon season and a period of excessive rainfall which fell on a number of days in the middle of the month – often over double that normally expected in any one day. Cause assigned to climate change.
Impact: Kerala’s water storage lakes were already full and 35 out of the State’s 54 dams (figure disputed) were opened, creating a massive downstream deluge and landslides, exacerbated by already sodden ground, deforestation/clearance of vegetation, inappropriate land uses and sand mining in streams, plus Kerala’s (lack of) disaster planning.
People affected: hard to find numbers but maybe one sixth of Kerala’s population directly affected by flooding; regional, state and government rescue and relief operations included military, police, medical teams, volunteers, fishermen, plus use of social media. Whole villages, roads and water treatment plants destroyed, Kochi airport temporarily closed.
Cost in human life: around 500 people dead or missing.
Irony: flood damage exacerbated by subsequent severe drought.
Costs in Monetary Terms: at the time the FT estimated $2.7 billion
Lessons (learnt?): better dam design (dams created for Irrigation and hydro-electric power not flood alleviation), better dam management, better record keeping, better disaster planning and disaster management, better catchment management.
Special Mention: film released last year entitled ‘2018’ subtitled ‘everyone is a hero’; Malayalam-language survival drama film based on floods, directed by Jude Anthany Joseph.
After the flood, life is still vulnerable for the river bank villages. Those who could afford it, rebuilt their houses on stilts. Others have made do with reparing what they have. The protective walls along the river’s edge still appear insubstantial and the level of the paddy fields is well below that of the level of the river channel.
Boats are the mainstay, and often the only, mode of transport but the blue and white river buses are nippy and frequent. The much more substantial Keralan rice barges are converted into houseboats for tourists. On the wider stretches of rivers there is plenty of room for all.
Where does this leave us? With an awful lot still to do. Can we leave it to our political leaders? Probably not. Britain, at least, has an election coming up. Please vote and please vote thoughtfully.
But the last word goes to the Indian Pond Heron, pottering happily through the ubiquitous water hyacinth.
River Hacks
A blog on rivers is a bit like trying to eat an elephant – where do you start? Every day there is news of more sewage being pumped into our rivers, of pollution from agricultural residues, highway run off or illegal dumping (from old mattresses to plastic bottles and unwanted chemicals), of rivers flooding or drying up and of drastic reductions in river and wetland biodiversity.
Water has been crucial to life since life began. Rivers, in particular, have been of primary importance to humankind: water to drink, for food production, sewage removal, power generation and transport are just a few of their benefits. Rivers, as opposed to ponds and lakes, flow, so that whatever you chuck in ‘disappears’ downstream. Heaven help you if you are a downstream community.
So, as with eating the proverbial elephant, Terroir is going to tackle the topic of rivers just a little bit at a time. Today we’ll take a brief look at flooding. Please don’t ask which bit of the pachyderm this subject symbolises.
Flooding is usually defined as the inundation of land that is usually dry. This simple definition ignores, however, the cultural reaction to ‘flooding’ and to the definition of ‘usually’. In towns, flooding is regarded as alien, fearful and, until recently, a fairly unusual phenomenon. It also inspires anger, that ‘somebody’ allowed this to happen - again - to our town/village/road/footpath etc etc. Yet we still build and buy houses located in a flood plain.
In contrast, farmers have long used flood plains or marshland for grazing. Perhaps ‘usually’ in this case means land which is dry (or dry-ish) for longer than it’s wet (or very wet) which, combined with seasonal knowledge (wetter in winter than summer) and appropriate agriculture (stock rearing) means that temporary inundation is a very useful and positive phenomenon.
Going a step further, let’s look at the concept of ‘water meadows’. Constable loved painting them – all those pollarded willows and romantic cattle set in a lush, bucolic landscape. The Historic England publication, ‘Conserving Historic Water Meadows’ (July 2014) describes water meadows as ‘areas of land that used to be flooded deliberately, under carefully controlled conditions, the timing being at the discretion of the farmer or landowner. They had three main purposes: to force early growth of grass in the spring, to improve the quality of the grass sward and to increase the summer hay crop. Here is society actively encouraging flooding, with sufficient technology and knowhow to make a success of it. [Terroirs highlighting]
Above left: exciting, wild, primeval, a natural phenomenon? © Christine, ref below
Above right: scary, damaging, expensive, someone else’s fault?
So Terroir’s definition of flooding for the 21st century is something which happens when more water flows into a river than the river system and society can cope with. I imagine that prehistoric society adapted quite quickly to this sort of thing. It probably didn’t take too long for sedentary communities to work out that building too close to the water’s edge was distinctly risky. Something which we seem to have forgotten.
Which brings us to flood and risk management: Terroir sees this as creating a balance between greed and disaster. Greed can be as simple as building too close to water course, or straightening and canalising a river to create more ‘usable’ land, thus giving storm water nowhere to go except into your house. On the other hand, London recognised that the cost implications of the Thames overflowing its banks, not to mention potential loss of life, were so enormous that money was spent on creating flood barriers.
The Thames Flood Act of 1879 was introduced to build higher and better river walls along the Thames and these walls have been rising ever since. The Thames flood of 1928 overtopped the then current walls and 14 people died and thousands were made homeless. Anyone living in a basement flat would have been particularly vulnerable and these were often the abodes of the less well off.
Above left: Thames flood walls on duty at the Houses of Parliament
Above right: clearly illustrating the business of building higher, these walls form the riverside boundary of Victoria Tower Gardens, Westminster
Of course, the more you build, the more you have to maintain. One small breach in the wall can lead to catastrophic effects. Sir Thomas Frank was knighted, in 1942, for his organisation of rapid repair teams to retain the integrity of the Thames flood walls during the Blitz.
The 1953 flooding of eastern England impacted a far wider area, including the Thames estuary and parts of London itself. As a result, serious thought was given to alternative flood control.
The Thames Barrier and Flood Prevention Act was passed in 1972 and the Barrier was finally operational in the early 1980s. It was expected to operate in earnest about once or twice a year. This figure has since risen to 6 to 7 times a year, on average, but this statistic disguises some extraordinary peaks in three extraordinary seasons: 2000/01 (24 closures), 2002/03 (20 closures) and – wait for it – 50 closures in 2013/14. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-thames-barrier#thames-barrier-closures
So what’s going on? There are a whole host of factors involved – a selection is listed below - and when they combine the results can be catastrophic.
Sudden thaws creating high volumes of melt water (yes even in the UK!)
Increase in rainfall and increase in significant heavy rain storms which create runoff beyond the short term capacity of the drainage system
Increase in hard surfaces in urban areas and corresponding decrease in permeable areas such as gardens and verges, playing fields etc etc
In estuaries, high tides and storm surges such as created the 1953 floods in the UK
Canalising rivers and destroying the natural flood water holding capacity of a river valley
And, of course, climate change, not just changing rainfall patterns but raising sea levels.
In Terroir’s view, one of the cheapest and most attractive methods of improving flood resilience in urban areas, is the construction of rain gardens. These areas go some way to compensate for the loss of permeable areas in towns and cities, absorbing water and slowing down the run off to the river. They come with massive added benefits as well, creating a series of spaces for city dwellers and wild life alike. As linear gardens, they provide year round, urban oases with places to sit, to walk, to jog, to eat lunch, to meet a mate, to watch the butterflies or the dragon flies, all in the knowledge that they are not only reducing flood risk and water pollution, but also enriching the local environment in many other ways.
Here are two of Terroir’s favourites.
Sheffield ‘Grey to Green’
Sheffield is over familiar with urban flooding. With its two rivers – the Don and the Sheaff – and a large, hilly urban area which feeds water downhill fast, the city watches water levels carefully.
To be honest, the two flood levels shown on this Kelham Island pub are a tad misleading as the 1864 flood was caused by a reservoir dam collapsing some 8 miles upstream of Sheffield, but the lower line is 21st century - 2007 - and quite scary enough, thank you.
Many places flooded in 2007, but Sheffield was particularly badly hit. As it happened, the construction of Sheffield’s Inner Relief Road was completed the following year leaving a significant amount of redundant road surface.
Thanks to some blue sky thinking (sorry couldn’t resist that one), much of this impervious ‘grey’ was converted into ‘green’ water gardens. Planting was designed by members of Sheffield University’s innovative Department of Landscape. The plant palette is robust, low maintenance and undemanding, but never dull.
It is terrible jargon, but yes, we do need to ‘roll this out’ everywhere.
Through the Looking Glass
Happy New Year
When interviewing prospective landscape architecture students, there is much to be said for starting with the question, ‘How did you get here?’ If, as must often be the case, the answer is ‘I came by train’, the supplementary would be, ‘And what did you do while you were on the train?’. The interviewer is, of course, fishing for at least part of the answer to be, ‘I looked out of the window’. Who wants to train a landscape designer with no visual curiosity?
Some might say that looking at the world through glass is too conventional, too much of a cliché and makes it too easy to ‘edit’ the view to create a safe, blinkered or fictional perspective. Terroir disagrees of course. We have found that looking through a frame can stimulate a new way of seeing the view, create a window on history or a reflective mood, or a new frame of mind. All puns intended.
Below, Terroir presents a backward glance at some of our favourite window views from 2023. Looking forward, we wish all our followers a healthy and happy New Year. And please, keep looking out of the window.
Above: same window, different days, different messages, different emotions. Near Clitheroe, Lancashire.
Below: ruination (left) and new life (right). Morriston, Swansea.
Above: the straight lines of the city from the top (of the Calgary Tower) and
Below: curving lines of the city from the ground (left - reflecting in Monte Carlo, and right - relaxing in London)
Above: Mind the gap - views from the bridge. Left: the Chicago River Right: London Blackfriars
Above left: New Mexico through a shop window. Above right: Alberta through the rear window
Above - Texas through the plane window. Left - irrigation; right - oil.
Above: the view of the artist.
Below: a view of history.
Happy New Year
An Advent Calendar for 2023
Part 2
It’s time for the Big Door: Granada nativity with a nod to the use of sustainable transport and a relaxed donkey.
Very best wishes for the festive season to all out readers from Team Terroir. Thank you for following us. We’ll see you again at New Year.