‘Chilly Finger’d Spring’
Spring - such an obvious name! So delightful that the English language settled on a word so simultaneously descriptive, self-evident and cheering. But there are other names, of course. Here are a few: vernal equinox, emergence, daylight saving, the start of British Summer Time, clocks spring forward, seed time, spring fever, primaveral, vernalagnia, frondescentia, repullulate, Chelidonian winds. No, Terroir’s vocabulary is not that extensive and we owe a debt of gratitude to a wonderful page on the BBC website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/rMcWv9V1wWWNXxmbLkQW5P/12-spring-words-to-celebrate-the-new-season
Spring is also a time of religious celebration: Easter, Pacque, Ostern, Πάσχα, Pasg, A 'Chàisg, Cásca, Easter Tide, paschal festival, Pesach, Nowruz (Iran), Holi (Hindu), Vaisakhi (Hindu/Sikh).
Some aspects of spring are best avoided, however: gowk-storm (snow fall or gale which coincides with arrival of gowk or cuckoo - Scottish dialect), lamb-storm (spring thunderstorm at lambing time), blackberry winter (American spring cold snap). Again, thank you BBC.
More secular celebrations tend to get less exciting names: Easter holidays, spring break.
Terroir has spent many late winters watching for the signs of spring. We are not very good at phenology - the study of biological cycles and how they are influenced by seasonal variations - because we never keep proper notes. The only key information we can remember from year to year is whether the garden daffodils are out for St David’s day. 2021 qualified for an ‘only just’; one miniature bloom was sacrificially plucked for the Welsh lapel.
For some time now the old-fashioned enjoyment of a warm spell bringing an early clump of snow drops, or the traditional agony of a cold snap delaying the first pussy willow buds, has been tainted by the spectre of climate change. Phenology has become witness to a sad confusion of seasons and global influences. Watching the quickening of the local landscape from dormancy to a riot of activity is no longer the simple pleasure of our childhoods.
Lockdown, however, has changed our attitudes to spring even more thoroughly than climate change. And, so, this year we kept a pictorial record of our journey from winter to spring, from Christmas to Easter, from winter solstice to vernal equinox.
Our pictorial voyage is exhibited below, in fairly strict chronological order. We have broken it into three sections in accordance with our crazy, traditional calendar which does it’s best to ignore the lunar cycle, although the relationship between the moon and the earth is perhaps the most steadying influence in our currently topsy world.
January: a revealing month, showing details and patterns which are either hidden or overshadowed by the riots of spring growth, the ripening of summer or autumnal reveries. We found natural sculptures, spots of colour, fungus and seed heads, the loss of an old hedgerow tree veteran, extremes of weather and, yes, new life.
February: a month which started well but rapidly became the victim of strong meterological contrasts. The days continued to lengthen, but none of us in Terrior-land really noticed as the snow fell to a mixed reception. We - adult humans and nascent nature - bided our time until, finally, the sun came out again.
March: sunshine, cold and long. The gardens did their best to cheer us up, but the countryside held its breath, drab khaki beneath the yew, juniper and pine. Farmers and schools started work again, and finally, finally the rest of us were rewarded with green shoots, early blossom, thoughts of eggs and spring flowers aplenty. At the end of the month the sun came out and so did we.
“… for the choir
Of Cynthia he heard not, though rough briar
Nor muffling thicket interpos’d to dull
The vesper hymn, far swollen, soft and full,
Through the dark pillars of those sylvan aisles.
He saw not the two maidens, nor their smiles,
Wan as primroses gather’d at midnight
By chilly finger’d spring.”
John Keats Endymion Book IV
I think Keats would have hated climate change…
Happy Easter/Spring Break to you all. May the English and Northern Irish ‘Rule of Six’, the Welsh freedom to roam, and staying local in Scotland bring health and happiness.
Life and Death on the Fringe
The concept of the favourite aunt or uncle has always seemed a tad too sentimental for the likes of Terroir. We had no shortage of appropriate relatives. Between us we can muster seven uncles (of which four share our DNA) and twelve aunts (of which a mere five are genetically connected). The arithmetic is interesting, I agree, but multiple marriages (in sequence, we are not aware of any bigamy), plus an extra family lurking in the shadows, make for the usual complicated familial links. Some we never met, or even knew about as children. The known uncles and aunts were loved and appreciated but never promoted to ‘favourite’ status.
One set of relatives, however, has always generated an irresistible magic (one of Scary Great Granny’s daughters married into the clan – see Booth map blogs) and some years ago, I promoted a first-cousin-once-removed clan member to Favourite Cousin. No one could accuse Meg of being saccharine or a cliché. I first consciously met her when I was maybe six or seven years old, she in her early 30s, a tall figure in a beautiful summer dress. She knew how to engage with children - and also how to buy them presents. I still have that wooden jigsaw puzzle of the United States of America. I rated her as special from then on and was never disappointed. I hope she will forgive me for promoting her to ‘favoured’ status.
Last month, Meg died at the age of 92. I was uncharacteristically upset. The funeral was a Covid 19 limited edition, but with space for Terroir amongst the congregation of 30 max. The location was the Cotswold village of Ilmington, where Meg had previously lived for many years.
Why had Meg chosen Ilmington as her favoured terroir? It turned out that Ilmington had chosen her. A cousin (obviously not on the Terroir side, to whom such things do not happen) had left Meg a house in the village (a joint inheritance with someone else). Possibly scenting internecine warfare, the house was put up for sale, but the transaction later fell through. Realising the house was rather special, Meg and husband upped sticks, left the south east and moved in. They were right about the house and, fortunately, right about the village too.
Ilmington depicted on an Ordnance Survey map of 1897
The contours to the south west of the village rise inexorable up Campden Hill to the top of Ebrington Hill (731 feet above sea level). The gardens of Hidcote and Kiftsgate lie on the lower, western slopes of the hill.
Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland' https://maps.nls.uk/index.html
Ilmington is described as a Cotswold Fringe Village. This seems to be an established typology, relating partly to geography (Ilmington is on the very northern fringes of the Cotswolds) rather than a derogatory comment on village character. It is also noted as the highest village in the Cotswolds and lies at the base of Ebrington Hill, the highest point in Warwickshire. I can bear witness to a certain draughtiness which becomes apparent when the sun goes in on an otherwise fine March morning.
Apart from its immediate attraction as a honey-coloured Cotswold village (however fringe), two specific things strike me about Ilmington. One is related to food and drink, and the other to architecture and buildings, both an integral part of any discourse on terroir.
Farmers have probably been cultivating the Cotswolds since the Neolithic period (from about 6,000 years ago) but Terroir’s sources of information stem from a slightly more recent era. Go to http://www.fabulous-50s.com/memories/oral-histories.html and you will find a rich seam of oral history called ‘Ilmington Remembers the 1950s’, inspired by celebrations for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 1977. The stories are captivating, and revealing about post-war Ilmington life, which very much revolved around agriculture and its supporting trades and activities.
Two things stand out. During a time of continued food rationing, when other communities were still struggling to find a sufficiency and variety of nourishment, it appears that the village had plenty to eat. Gardens and allotments were the norm, obviously well tended and productive, even to the level of providing a suplus for sale (there is a mention of one family producing over a ton of potatoes in a year). Blackberries were foraged for eating or selling on. Meat was avalable - often in the form of rabbit, but a more traditonal Sunday roast did not seem uncommon and there was a butcher in the village as well as a grocer. Local farmers had dairy herds and there is mention of milk available as well as fruit for making puddings. No one seems to mention hunger, and many comment on having enough to eat.
The other recurring theme relates to orchards. Lots of orchards. There is mention of plums grown locally, but the product of the apple orchards seems to have made the biggest impact, with many farm workers reported as receiving considerable quantities of cider as part remuneration for their daily labours!
The maps below show that orchards were significant thoughout the late 19C and though to the interwar years of the 20C. Both oral history and mapping confirm the importance of the orchards in the early 1950s, but by the end of that decade, surveys show the bginning of reduction in area. The orchards today are sad remnants of their former glory, more so perhaps than even in Kent or Herefordhire. Some of Ilmington’s orchards are extant but derelict, others converted to alternative uses including housing.
Terroir has, however, just ordered some refreshment from a renewed interest in the apple harvest resulting from remaining trees, and we will report back on the apple brandy and dry gin in due course.
All map images reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland' https://maps.nls.uk/index.html
Satelite image of Ilmington today.
A new tree-scape now characterises Ilmington but it is still possible to pick out where the orchards used to be.
© Google Maps 2021
Railway gricer alert: check out the route of the Morton-in-Marsh to Stratford Tramway, a horse drawn system authorised in 1821 to supplement the canal system, and visible on both maps of eastern Ilmington and on the satellite image.
Terroir is in possession of another document relating to food, this time a substantial cookery book, produced in 1982 to raise funds for the Ilmington Church Roof Fund. I can still remember Meg flogging us a copy in a determined effort to do her bit.
We can’t find a single recipe with her name on it, but it is obvious that diets have changed a lot since the Cider with Rosie era of the 1950s. Bacon Jack, Back-bone Pie and Soldiers Cake are now heavily outnumbered by Tonille aux Pêches, Bermudian Banana Fritters and Sole à L’Indienne. I leave you to draw your own conclusions on the changes in lifestyle and demographic.
But I also mentioned architecture and housing, and those honey-coloured, marlstone Cotswold buildings. Unsurprisingly, Ilmington is a very attractive village (excepting the draughts). Unsurprisingly it is also heavily regulated. The Cotswolds were designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) (aka be innovative and outstanding before you even think about trying to build a house) in 1966. It was the 14th AONB to be designated and I’ve not begun to work out why it took them so long.
In 1969, nearly the entire village was designated a Conservation Area (apply for permission before you do nearly anything). When this designation was reviewed in 1995, there were 41 listed buildings or structures in the village (check your bank balance before contemplating modifications). Today, there are no less than 61 such listings!
An analysis of these buildings offers a fascinating insight into the agricultural heritage of ilmington and also to the extraordinary level of change which has occurred in the village since the 1950s. Out of the 61 listings, 58 are Grade II. Of these, I would suggest that over a third relate to the village’s agricultural heritage. No less than ten are described as ‘Farmhouse’ and the remainder are barns, outbuildings or cart sheds. Structures related to the religious life of the parish mop up another 10 listings, leaving less than 50% for other forms of residential buildings (which seem to range from cottage to Dower House) and the Chalybeate well head (see below). What a heritage. And, in case you are wondering, Wikipedia tells me that ‘Chalybeate means mineral spring waters containing salts of iron’.
As an aside, it is no surprise that this area comes very low in the England deprivation indices, with the main exception of ‘physical and financial accessibility of housing and local services’ (http://dclgapps.communities.gov.uk). Even in the 1950s, the oral history accounts often mention the wait for council housing, although it also records that such did exist in village. Today, private house prices in Ilmington are only slightly below typical prices in the south east commuter belt.
Only two buildings manage grade II*: the grandiose early 18C Manor House (think Doric Columns and a pediment on top to attic height) and the earlier 16C ‘Ilmington Manor with attached Barn’. The latter is much more to my taste, particularly because of the down-to-earth and very functional attachment.
Which leaves us with a single grade I listing, the Norman parish church of St Mary. This deserves a blog in its own right, but a mention of the embroidered apple map is essential. Created by resident June Hobson, the map is a copy of a 1922 plan which identified the locations of all the orchards in the village (https://www.cotswolds.info/places/ilmington.shtml). The church is also famous for its wood carvings by Robert Thompson (no known relation to Rob Thompson, the artist/architect, featured in the Cynefin blog, last month). Not only did he create the pulpit and pews, but carved his signature mice in eleven places throughout the church (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilmington)
I sat in one of Robert Thompson’s pews last week, saying goodby to favourite-cousin Meg. Although she had temporarily left Ilmington (a decade in a life of 92 years counts as temporary in my book) to live closer to essential amenities in Stratford upon Avon, she had chosen to return to Ilmington for her final farewells and for her ashes to be interred next to her husband, in the church yard. It has been a great privilege, not only to have known Meg, but to have actually been related to her. A Grade I human being resting beside a Grade I Norman Church.
Privet Land
Although privet was an integral part of a Terroir childhood, it was many years before I realised the stuff had pyramidal spikes of white blossom, or experienced that heady, heavy, almost sickly perfume which emanates from the flowers. I suspect I caught up with the follow-on black berries even later. How come I was so ignorant of such basic aspects of this native shrub (Ligustrum vulgare)?
Flower image: © David Birch Privet flowers DSCF5484 https://www.flickr.com/photos/hedgerowmobile/328836044
Berries image: © versageek European Privet (Ligustrum vulgare) https://www.flickr.com/photos/versageek/1563369131
Like so many of us, I was a suburban child. The only privet I knew was the privet hedge which formed the boundary to so many semi-detached front gardens. In our area, Ligustrum ovalifoilum vied with Golden Privet (Ligustrum ovalifolium ‘Aureum’) for most-favoured hedge status. A 1950s and 60s summer did not hum with the sound of an electric lawn mower, but rattled with the sound of a push mower, and a pair of shears chopping the privet hedges into perfect vegetable rhomboids. No flower was ever allowed to appear on these hedges, so no whiff of potent perfume or tell-tale berries.
As a nearly-teenager I spent more time at the overgrown, more distant, end of the back garden. Here a neighbouring privet had been forgotten and run wild. Here I discovered the privet secrets of flower and scent. Such was the universality and uniformity of the sterile front garden privet hedge, that the shock of the fecund floral discovery was akin to finding out how babies were made!
My childhood privet landscape was one of inter-war, speculative, private housing development.
The urgent need for housing following WW1 created vast acreages of suburbia. The ‘Addison Act’ of 1919 and subsequent Housing Acts in the 1920s and 30s, ensured the construction of over a million local authority houses.
In 1923, the speculative builders of private houses joined in, adding a further 2.8 million ‘middle class’ homes. This was my domestic inheritance landscape: a ‘Tudoresque’, three bedroomed semi-detached, of brick cavity wall construction, with pebble dash and tiled roof, small front garden and bigger back garden. The house was fitted with electricity, gas, tiny kitchen, bay windows at the front, topped with a gable, French doors at the back, an inside bathroom and separate toilet. Two designs were often offered: ours had a curved bay and arched storm porch while Granny and Aunt J (Scary Great Granny’s daughter and grand-daughter - see the Booth Blogs) had a rectangular bay and matching storm porch. Subtle. Garages were an optional extra and ours had been built of asbestos but with the classic wooden double doors. Looking back, and looking at pictures of ‘typical’ spec-built estates, I realise that chez Terroir was at the smaller end of the size range; indeed my bedroom was not much more than 6 foot by 6 foot square.
From memory, the classic front garden featured a low brick wall, topped off with either looped chains or backed by the aforementioned privet hedge. By the 1950s, the uniformity was already being eroded. The low brick walls lasted well, but I have only faint memories of the looped chains and the privet hedges were definitely on the decline.
The images below are a classic selection of inter-war speculative private housing, in this instance as found in Terroir’s current home town. These all have the classic gable, over the two stories of bay windows, something which was missing form Terroir’s childhood estate. On the other hand, these tend to have a single, shared access to garages behind the houses. The density was often lower in the childhood estate, offering space for a garage beside the house, sometimes with a side passageway through to the backgarden, as well. Obviously, there have been significant changes to the front gardens, although low walls and hedges are not completely absent.
Since achieving some sort of adult status, Terroir had not given the suburban privet hedge much thought. Interest was revived recently, however, by the discovery that some of Sheffield’s allotments are surrounded by privet. We don’t mean neat, waist high hedges around the external site boundary. We mean that every two allotment plots are corralled within massive privet ramparts, at least 4 metres high and a couple of metres wide. Thankfully the plot sizes are generous, as nothing grows within the shade of these evergreen barbarians.
Now on constant hedge alert, we soon saw that the remains of privet hedges are alive and well. Not just in Sheffield but throughout the towns and cities of England and Wales.
Finding information on the history of the privet hedge has been tricky, however. Histories of modest 20th century domestic architecture are not difficult to find. But details of standard garden finishes, are much harder to track down. Were the looped chains a figment of my imagination? What sort of fencing was used to divide the residential plots? Was that front garden privet hedge a hangover from the 19th century or was it a purely inter-war feature? Why did Sheffield plant them around their allotments?
Some references we have found. Ian Waites, in his evocative book ‘Middlefield – A post war cou ncil estate in time’, talks of cut-throughs – ‘narrow channels of privet, wall and fence’ - where children would disappear and reappear as they crossed this Lincolnshire estate. The Municipal Dreams website (https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com) remarks that ‘The privet hedges remain a characteristic feature of Nottingham’s interwar council housing’ (Nottingham’s Council Housing by Bus and Tram Tuesday 19 June 2018) and ‘Some original privet hedges survive to mark the plot boundaries’ (Lincoln’s Early Council Housing 16 June 2015).
We will continue to research the history of the privet hedge but we would be grateful for any further information, whether circumstantial, anecdotal, or academic, which readers can contribute. If the comment box below is not visible, please click on ‘read more’, scroll down to the bottom again (sigh), and share your knowledge. We look forward to hearing from you.
Heavenly Bodies
What makes you choose one block of flats over another?
Location, obviously. And as an aside, the famous phrase ‘Location, Location, Location’ was not invented by Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer, presenters of the eponymous TV programme, but by one Harold Samuel, property developer, in 1944. But then I expect you knew that.
Before lockdown, a good urban location might have been defined as a town centre, close to railway station/transport hub, shops, cinema, cafes and restaurants, for that authentic city experience; no car needed.
After lockdown, a flat may be the last place you want to live, the train station may no longer be relevant, parking may suddenly be more important and access to green space top of the agenda.
So how does a pre-Covid development of ‘luxury apartments’ sell itself? The one Terroir has in mind must have seemed a sure fire thing when it was planned in the 20 teens. It is literally opposite a good commuter railway station, right at the edge of the town centre, and with a cinema/restaurant complex, aimed at boosting the evening/night time economy, going up just across the road. Oh, and an international airport 20 minutes away (flight path not an issue). What more does the pre-pandemic, go-getting singleton or couple desire? The outdated sales blurb talks of good transport connections (well you will certainly get a seat on the train these days), retail therapy (currently closed), pubs and restaurants (if they ever re-open), and wonderful local countryside (true but car - and thus parking space – essential).
Terroir visited a two-bedroom show flat last summer. Considering this seems to be the most expensive apartment block in town, we were surprised to find: no separate kitchen (washing up in full view from living space); en-suite to master bedroom seriously reducing wardrobe space, no cat-swinging room in either bedroom, and a tiny balcony overlooking either a main road or the railway line (great for railway gricers, I suppose - see last week’s blog). Oh and we forgot to mention, and I quote, the
· Porcelanosa wall tiles in bathroom and en-suite
· Integrated Bosch appliances in the kitchen
· TV/FM Sky Q points to living room and master bedroom
· Stylish bathrooms with Roca bath and chrome Hansgrohe taps and fittings
Call us old-fashioned but we don’t understand a word of that.
So, lets go outside and take a look at the greenspace. On three sides the block is bordered by a main road, a sizeable but inaccessible railway embankment, and a second block of flats, still under construction. Out front? The building is separated from another main road (on the other side of which lies the under-construction-cinema site and the town centre) by an irregular space which has just been ‘landscaped’. We have to say, it did make us smile. And brought out the worst in us, too.
Let’s try to be positive, to begin with, at any rate. Topiary seems to be the order of the day, creating a green passage between the building and the main road. I love the way the cypress seem to flicker and dance like flames in the sunshine while the bay laurel ‘guard of honour’ keeps pedestrains on the straight and narrow.
But is it really going to work? I give it one summer to impress potential purchasers of the remaining flats (let’s stop calling them ‘apartments’) and by next year the maintenance regime will have started to ‘level down’ the whole thing.
Let’s take it apart.
The Cypress snake: these things grow fast and furiously. Keeping them in shape (literally) will take consistent and sympathetic trimming. Neither adjective is in common usage with the average commercial residential grounds maintenance team or, perhaps more accurately, the budget of the contract manager. The image to the right of the snake depicts a hedge of Cypress ‘Green Hedger’ which is cut back twice a year just to keep it in this simple form.
The conical bay trees (laurus nobilis): their natural shape is neither conical nor noble and they will need ongoing care and attention to keep them to this shape and size. The bay illustrated to the right of the newly-planted specimen grows in a garden about 500 m from our conical friends.
The yew bomb, cannon ball or heavenly body: so heavily clipped that we could not even begin to identify its species, so let’s assume Taxus baccata. Again, they don’t grow naturally like this. The Taxus baccata specimen on the right of the newly planted yew ball is neighbour to the non-conical and expansive bay tree, shown above.
The Euonymus (Euonymus japonica ‘Bravo’): no we are not expert Euonymus growers, that is what it says on the label. Already reaching for the sky, this shrub can, according to the Royal Horticultural Society, grow to 4 m high (yes, really) and spread to 2 m wide. And there are smaller varieties, so why use this one? The right hand image is a different variety but shows the same enthusiasm for vigorous growth.
The Mexican Orange Blossom (Choisya ternata) is no slouch and can quickly grow to well over a metre. It’ll be fun watching it fight for space with the canonball yew. And, oh horror, ‘they’ have included a Photinia fraseri (Little Red Robin). See Blog 3 (12th November) for why I dislike this plant so much.
I actually like the inclusion of Nandina domestica aka Heavenly Bamboo (it isn’t a bamboo, it’s in the Barbary family, most of which are types of Berberis). I’d like it even better if the contract supervisor had spotted the condition of some of the plants. Maybe they just haven’t done the snagging meeting yet… .
There are even a few trees, their trunks making a pleasant contrast to the other vertical elements which include flag poles and ‘for sale’ signs. At least these uprights will probably be removed in the fullness of time.
The choice of location did make us laugh, however. Some branches are already wrapped lovingly around a couple of lamp fittings and one tree is so close to the building that its juvenile boughs are making a concerted effort to climb through an adjacent window.
But there are good bits. A few cheerful daffodils (more would have been nice, of course), a herd of Bergenia (Elephants’ Ears), tough critters with cheerful flowers; they can also spread with alarming rapidity but only require brute force to get them back under control again.
I imagine, by now, that you are getting my drift: if left under-maintained, this formal and sculptual luxury apartment-selling landscape will quickly become a spectacular, if unsophisticated, jungle. Terroir has no problem with landscapes and gardens developing, and this particular landscape may well need changing, thinning, and/or restructuring to create a long term setting for the building. It needs to be both appropiate to the site (narrow, linear space, close to two main roads, plus heavy footfall between station and town centre etc) and to the management company’s budget. The problem will be if no-one manages the residents’ expectations, for when their cypress snakes and soldier bay trees, develop into common or garden trees and shrubs.
Walking the Line
As Chris Baines (environmentalist author and campaigner) once said, “Whoever heard of the Society for the Protection of Slugs”?
We are suckers for the eye catching and the beautiful. Take birds: in the UK, the largest nature conservation membership organisation is the RSPB, with over a million members, all prepared to stump up an annual membership fee to protect and enjoy just one small segment of the biosphere. On a global level, we also have the example of the WWF, which started life in 1961 as the World Wildlife Fund, campaigning with huge success under its delightful image of a panda. Although WWF was always committed to ‘protect places and species that were threatened by human development’ (https://www.worldwildlife.org/about/history), it was the panda that caught my attention and imagination, and I am sure I was not alone in that.
Why is this? Why do these appealing species create so much enthusiasm, loyalty and support? Why is there so much less attention given to the world of say amphibians or even wildflowers and so little attention to say, spiders or worms. What follows is purely anecdotal, based on observation, and has no scientific backing, but it seems to me that there are a number of factors.
The first is the teddy bear factor: pandas are cuddly and cute. We fall for them every time. The second is the human perception of wild beauty: I doubt the female blackbird will ever top a bird beauty contest, but there are many other British avian species which take our breath away, an obvious example being the kingfisher. [Stop press: regular followers will be pleased to hear that there is at least one on The Moors, flashing its feathers in fine style].
Thirdly, there is the human perception of wildlife repulsiveness, into which category fall the aforementioned slugs, spiders and worms and may also include close encounters with snakes or ants.
Fourth, and thanks to lockdown, we all know that being outside makes us feel good, and watching something alive and cuddly or beautiful makes us feel even better.
Picture credits, left to right: Kingfisher - Vine House Farm; Wasp spider - © Nigel Jackman 2021; Ant - Maciej; Blackbird - Wildlife Terry
And fifthly, there is the human love of the chase. Call it hunting or list ticking, human beings have been doing this for a very long time: train spotters (gricers), bird watchers (twitchers), butterfly or egg collectors (dodgy), trophy hunters (controversial), sporting hunters (commercial?), wildlife managers (cullers). Much of this love of the hunt has now been channelled into benign pursuits and scientific study but, whether peaceable or more destructive, it has been around a long time - and is a key factor in the growth of the conservation movement. I hesitate to say that it may also be a largely male pursuit, but observation suggests that, in the past, this might be so.
Ironically, the RSPB started, in 1889, as an organisation to stop the trade in feathers and plumes which late Victorians used in lavish quantities to adorn ladies’ hats. The Society consisted entirely of women, and cost tuppence to join. The rules were:
“That members shall discourage the wanton destruction of birds and interest themselves generally in their protection [good to see this first in the list]
That lady-members shall refrain from wearing the feathers of any bird not killed for purposes of food, the ostrich only excepted.” https://www.rspb.org.uk/about-the-rspb/about-us/our-history/
I’m not sure what happened to the ostriches, but some influential ornithologists (men) joined in, the Society grew rapidly, got its Royal Charter and, in 1921, the Importation of Plumage (Prohibition) Act was passed, forbidding the import of plumage to Britain. Result!
But conservation focused on a single species, no matter how attractive or repulsive, was never going to be really effective. The importance of the ecosystem approach, which aims to manage the whole habitat for the good of an appropriate range of species, became increasingly recognised as the way forward. The more habitat-based ‘Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves’ was set up by Charles Rothschild in 1912, but it wasn’t until after WWII that this style of conservation really got going, with the expansion of county Wildlife Trusts, in the 1940s and 50s. This was reinforced by significant legislation, starting with the ground breaking National Parks & Access to the Countryside Act in 1949.
It took until the 1970s, however, before the WWF began to look seriously at holistic habitat protection as well as species specific work, (it kept the Panda logo though) and it was 2010 before the RSPB started its ‘landscape scale’ conservation programme, and 2013 before ‘Birds’ magazine became ‘Nature’s Home’. Oh, and another black and white cuddly image (of a badger) became the Wildlife Trusts poster animal from 2002.
Conservation organisations which concentrate on single species or species groups still thrive however, including The Bat Conservation Trust, Buglife, The Mammal Society, and Plantlife (wild flowers, plants and fungi) to name a few. Typically memberships are in the thousands or tens of thousand, however, and the RSPB still leads the way in terms of sheer size.
How do these organisations cope with habitat wide issues? Let’s take a look at Butterfly Conservation, a classic in terms of life-affirming study of beautiful creatures, with the added bonus that those creatures tend to grace our landscapes in the warmer months and during daylight hours. In addition, there are only 59 butterfly species in the UK (depending on how you count) compared to 3,000 or so moth species, which makes the annual challenge of seeing them all much more achievable. Happy hunting.
Adons Blue Butterfly
© Richard Stephens 2021
Butterfly Conservation (BC) has four very laudable aspirations and I hope they will forgive me for my ‘holistic habitat approach’ comments:
Conservation - including the recent Brilliant Butterflies Project, a partnership between BC, London Wildlife Trust, Natural History Museum and funded by a Dream Fund Award (Post Code Recovery Fund/Lottery). Sounds good: specialist knowledge teamed with area based knowledge.
Reserves – BC owns over 30 reserves around the UK ranging from Devon to Norfolk and the Scottish Highlands, all managed for the benefit of the butterfly/moth home team. Terroir needs to know more on the management issues before commenting.
Recording – including some seriously useful Citizen Science (see below).
Education – many, many field visits for BC’s local membership groups (this is serious butterflying with, in Terroir’s experience, only a smattering of wider habitat input!) (and yes, a few women attend!). Also initiatives such as a ‘Munching Caterpillars’ programme for Primary schools; I assume this is more along the lines of Eric Carle’s ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ than an Australian bush craft diet for the stranded human.
Why would you not want to come out and look at these beauties? Their names are as picturesque as their wing formations. But their context is important too: why are they there, what do they feed on, what do their caterpillars feed on, do they cohabit with equally important but less beautiful plants and animals which are also deserving of conservation?
Terroir’s favourite Butterfly Conservation activity centres on the citizen science end of things - knowing what is going on is key to understanding just about anything. BC has set up a series of transects – fixed lines through all types of habitat - which are walked weekly by enthusiastic members, between April and September. Whoever is walking the line, records butterfly sightings (species and numbers) according to a standard set of rules. The data is then uploaded onto The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS) website (https://www.ukbms.org/ ). It is then available to those who, one hopes, can interpret the trends and offer appropriate conservation management advice. There are over 3,000 monitored sites and transects across the UK with over 100 butterfly transects in the Surrey and South West London branch area, alone.
The Box Hill/Dukes transect in Surrey crosses chalk downland, and up to 33 butterfly species have been recorded there by the line walker. Thankfully, this site is owned and managed by the National Trust, who have the tricky job of trying to balance the needs of butterflies with the needs of the species rich chalk grasslands, of reptiles, of birds, of arachnids, of archaeology, of history and, not least, of the many human beings who exercise (pun alert) their ‘right to roam’ across these open access areas, to walk their dogs, improve their health and lift their spirits.
The images below show just a small selection of the butterflies recorded on the Box Hill/Dukes transect.
So, is there a role for all these different types of wildlife and conservation organisations? Of course there is, specialist knowledge is always valuable, but there is also a constant need to adapt to changing circumstances and to listen to the views of others, whether scientific or social. Just as the WWF and RSPB adapted their approach to conservation, so species experts like BC are having to adapt their approach to banging their particular butterfly, bug or bat drum.
At the moment partnership is vital, as exemplified by BC’s collaboration with holders of a different sort of specialist knowledge such as the London Wildlife Trust, the British Museum or the National Trust. No organisation is, or should try to be, an island.
Don’t forget to log your own wildlife sightings on iRecord (https://www.brc.ac.uk/irecord/ ), and yes, I know, yet another recording website.
And if you join Butterfly Conservation, and start transect walking, remember Johnny Cash’s immortal lines:
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you're mine, I walk the line
He was referring to his wife, not to his passion for butterflies. The butterfly widow is not yet extinct.
Cynefyn
‘Terroir’ is very much a francophone concept of landscape and culture but other languages and nations have similar words to express this complex concept. The Welsh cynefin is as hard to define as terroir, but has strong links to ideas of place, of habitat, of belonging, of welcoming familiarity, of a location which feels like home. And it is an aspect of cynefin which occupies Terroir today.
As part of the research for a blog post on art in lockdown, we have been following a young Welsh artist and architectural designer who specialises in vernacular structures, particularly traditional Welsh buildings. Rob Thompson says,
“As an artist, my subject is the everyday. Although humble, [these buildings] seem to sit proudly in the landscape, and appear very comfortable in their habitat. The cottages, farmhouses and barns which are scattered across Wales’ western seaboard, offer a direct connection to those who shaped this land before us [and] are indelibly linked to the werin bobl (the rural people). Using locally sourced materials such as stone, slate, mud, timber and heather, they were relatively quick and cheap to build. By sketching and painting these buildings, I hope to record them before they disappear. Over the last few decades they have been vanishing at an alarming rate and when they do survive have often been so changed that they are barely recognisable.”
The paintings which have emerged from this understanding and appreciation of the west Wales cynefin have really caught Terroir’s attention.
One of Rob Thompson’s Instagram accounts (how many does a young man need?) started today’s journey across west Wales by introducing us to the ‘Crog Loft cottage’.
Rob writes:
“[the Crog Loft cottage is] essentially a single storey dwelling with a lofted space above for sleeping. Similarities exist in Ireland, Scotland and Brittany but the Crog Loft cottage version is uniquely Welsh. Its origins are linked to 19th century poverty and encroachment onto common land.” Those who were fortunate, would own a cottage with a tiny land holding [called Tyddynau] and could maybe keep a cow or other livestock, but the Ty Moel, or dwellings of the poorest members of society had no land and thus no additional resources to fall back on when times were hard. If, however, ‘you could successfully build your home overnight, and have smoke rising from the chimney by the morning, you could claim the land your house sat on.” These cottages were known as Ty Unnos, or overnight houses.
Single-room cottages such as these were divided by a dresser “placed half way across the space, thus separating the main cooking/living area from the bedroom. At some stage, planks of wood were placed over the box beds to create a sleeping platform and the Crog Loft cottage was born! Later, formal timber partitions, and in some cases stone walls, were built, creating a three-roomed space. The Crog Loft only sat above the bedroom, so the living and kitchen space was double height. There are many words for the Crog Loft. In Welsh it is called the taflod or in English, the cockloft. It is hard to know where it came from originally.”
Rob has been able to continue drawing and painting throughout lockdown, thanks to a library of photographs taken when travel across North Wales was still possible. But lockdown is also responsible for a new artistic venture, an exploration of lino cuts which has added a new dimension to his cynefin portfolio. Rob Thompson again:
“I have never done lino prints before. The notion of forming a negative on the lino was tricky to get my head around at first, and once you remove a piece with a cut you can't go back!
“I have a file of drawings of … vernacular cottages, farmhouses and barns around the coast of Wales which I would like to prepare [as lino prints], and which I think would bring the collection together, the aim being to produce a book one day. I like the way the process calls for a simplification of an image, yet the simplification is the difficult bit!”
Here is a Crog Loft cottage ‘simplified’ as a lino print.
Once again, Terroir discovered Thompson’s skill with lino and chisel through another Instagram post displaying a Welsh stick chair (below). I found it utterly compelling and symbolic; the very kernel, the quintessence of rural Wales, not in slate but in a piece of lino!
Lino print of three legged Welsh Stick Chair
The origins of this particular chair are equally compelling. Here is Rob’ story:
“I built the actual chair a few years ago while working on the construction of an oak framed visitor centre at the Felin Uchaf cultural and ecology centre in north west Wales. As well as building we were making welsh stick chairs, signposts, and all manner of rural craft objects. Before I left I was given some wood to make my own chair. The timber for the seat was elm from a fallen tree in Criccieth. The oak is from a forest behind Bodnant near Conwy, the peg joints for the arm are Yew from Llangernyw, and the joints for the seat are made from one thousand year old bog oak from mid Wales. The saddle of the seat is carved with an adze and chisel, the legs shaved with a draw knife on a shaving horse and the spindles for the back turned on a lathe, although not your traditional pole lathe but one powered by the engine and gear box from a Reliant Robin car! It took months to make all the parts and many a late night was spent in the workshop carving away. The assembling of the chair is similar to constructing a building. You have to understand the compression and tensions of the structure and how the different wood will react. It is like north west Wales in a chair! The chair now sits in my cottage. It has changed within it's now ten-year life: the arms and seat are worn, and some of the joints have risen a little from being in a heated room. It is in its own cynefin, and like the Welsh cottage of the past it is very fitting, as exactly like the home built furniture that would have existed then.
“The print came from a pen sketch done at the time when I first drew what I wanted to build. The three legs is a Welsh thing, three legs being more forgiving on wonky Welsh flagged stone floors. I translated it into a pencil sketch directly onto the lino rectangle. The tones are tricky to get right as you work as a negative. So whatever you scrape away becomes white and what is left is black or whatever colour ink you choose to use. If you remove too much then you can't go back so it is a bit nerve racking! You just have to go for it and a glass of a good ale (Welsh of course) helps along the way! The ink is rolled over the lino block and is then ready to print onto anything you like.
“The print is a very primitive design yet it took time to consider how best to put it together – a very similar process to the construction of the actual chair!”
Most of Robert’s paintings have stories attached. Terroir is now conversant with the grouted roof, another feature of the west Wales vernacular. Roof slates (often of poor quality) were bedded into lime mortar to prevent the wind driving through the gaps. Over the years, more lime mortar was applied to fill new gaps and to weather-proof the tiles, “so in some areas the roofs are white and appear like tents or cakes dotted across the landscape.”
“As for the farmhouse, a very different journey must be made to the uplands of Wales to find the most ancient Snowdonian houses, which is a building typology in its own right. These were homes of gentry hill farmers from when there was alot of wealth in the Welsh uplands - many go back five hundred years.”
Wales is famous for its terraces of quarry workers cottages, but a different quarry-related landscape developed on the slopes around Caernarfon. As a result of rural poverty on Anglesey and the Llŷn Peninsula, many moved to the Caernarfon area and built detached Tyddyn or Ty Moel houses, basing their livelihoods on a mix of quarry work and farming, creating a scatter of cottages and small farms across the local scrub land.
Rob’s work is important as a record of a vanishing landscape and architecture. He paints with the emotional understanding of a Welshman and the eye of the trained architect and craftsman. In Terroir’s view, it doesn’t seek to romanticise his environment, but to record his cynefin in the full meaning of the word.
Rob can be contacted via his infamous Instagram accounts @rob_thompson_artist @robthompson_architect @ty_bach_ and his website https://www.robthompsonart.co.uk/ (there is currently only one website but rumour has it that he is working on that too).
All images © Rob Thompson
Coal Porter
“Times have changed, And we've often rewound the clock …. Anything goes”
[Cole Porter, extract from lyrics of ‘Anything Goes’]
In 1934, when Cole Porter wrote ‘Anything Goes’ for his musical of the same name, Terroir doubts he realised just how prophetic his lines might be in 2020, when Cumbria County Council granted permission, for the third time, for the UK’s first new deep coal mine in 30 years. The development of yet another carbon based fuel supply has started a complex debate, revolving around steel production, world transport issues, economics, job creation, and carbon reduction. The government’s refusal to call in the plans, for an inquiry, has further inflamed the debate.
Coal (pun intended) has played a long and complex part in British history, a role which, due to the industrial revolution, has had repercussions around the world. Today, however, Terroir is focussing in on a very small coal-related area, but one which probably punched well above its weight in terms of economic and environmental impact. This is where the ‘porter’ bit comes in, as we will also be looking at the influence of the railways. Welcome to London’s Coal Drops Yard, welcome to Kings Cross.
A Kings Cross gas holder ‘from the back, By Robin Hall, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9210813 Coal Drops Yard Central St Martin College of Art and Design, also ‘from the back’
In the early 18th century, Kings Cross wasn’t much of a destination. In Terroir’s mind the area only became famous for construction of the ‘New Road’ in 1756. This was a sort of early London North Circular by pass, and clearly delineated the edge of London, beyond which one threw one’s rubbush. To the north of the rubbish lay brick works, market gardens, open countryside and small hamlets such as Highgate and Hampstead. To the south, there was a rapid expansion of new housing, later joined by a Small Pox Hospital and later still, a Fever Hospital (classic infilling of the ‘city envelope’, to use modern planning parlance).
But the 19th century swept all this away: engineering, industry, transport, coal, a cycle which was to change Kings Cross - and the whole of Britain - forever. Canals started the revolution in the 1750s. With the completion of the Regent’s Canal in 1820, the canal system could deliver freight from the Midlands directly to north London, via Paddington, Regents Park, to Kings Cross, and then on around east London to Lime House and the Thames. By 1824, the Imperial Gas Light and Coke Company had opened the Pancras Gas Works immediately to the south of the Regent’s Canal at Kings Cross and the local landscape was well on the way to full industrialisation.
By the 1840s the Great Northern Railway Company was in town, looking for a depot and passenger station. Land was purchased to the south of the canal for the station (opened in its final position in 1852). The Great Northern Hotel followed in 1854 (at the posh, passenger-orientated southern end of the development) and extensive areas of housing (most on a very different scale of opulence and grandeur) were constructed for the now expanding workforce, in the north. Just to complete the picture, areas to the west of Kings Cross Station were redeveloped in the 1860s for the construction of the Midland Railway’s St Pancras station and goods yards.
This division between the north and the south extremeties of these two railway empires is significant. To use the modern parlance, the outward facing, passenger related elements of the Great Nothern and the Midland Railways were, literally, grand facades aimed at making the travelling public feel good. Unless you worked for the railways, I suspect that the great majority of the public, whether travelling or not, never guessed at the huge, grimy, commercial, ‘back of house’ yards through which passed thousands of wagons carrying thousands of tons of Yorkshire and Midland coal, as well as agricultural supplies such as grain and potatoes. Enclosed by high walls, these extensive land holdings were probably hidden from all except those, perhaps, on top of a double decker bus. The grime was due not just to the cargo but also to the exhaust of the steam locomotives which burnt some of that cargo in the course of their daily shunting duties. Kings Cross must have been a heavily polluted environment.
The maps below show the enormity of the industrial transport undertaking.
All map images 'Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland' https://maps.nls.uk/index.html
Top left: 1868-1873 survey: red circle - Kings Cross station and St Pancras station; black circle - Pancras Gas Works; green circle - Great Northern Railway yards; maroon circle - Great Midland Railway yards.
Top right: 1893 - 1894 survey Bottom left: 1913 - 1914 survey Bottom right: 1938 revision
Coal was King and where the profit lay. The ‘Coal Drops’ were built in the 1850s, to transfer coal from railway wagons to road carts. The Drops consisted of long linear structures, built of brick and iron, and roofed in slate, and carried high level railway tracks. Coal dropped from bottom doors in the wagon into hoppers beneath or down a shoot for filling bags. Kings Cross boasted two such Drops. There was also a Granary, a Train Assembly Shed, and Eastern and Western Transit Sheds.
Post WWII brought nationalisation of the railways and road transport started to make serious inroads into the railway freight operation. By the 1980s much of the goods yard rail insfraturure had been removed. Amazingly, the gas works continued, on a small scale, to the turn of the century but it was not until 1986 that four of the holders (No 8, and the three conjoined holders, Nos 10, 11, and 12) were listed Grade II ‘as a tangible reminder and physical manifestation of the St Pancras gasworks, which was at one time the largest gasworks in the country, and probably the world.’ https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1464325
By the 1970s Terroir had first-hand knowledge of the Kings Cross area and can attest to its need for regeneration. Using the trains was never an issue but ambling down the side of the station of an evening, waiting to board the sleeper to Aberdeen was always a bit of an adventure; worth it, though, to peer in the window of the model shop (as in railways and cars, I hasten to add) at No. 14 York Way. The shop always seemed such an anachronism in an area so obviously used for prostitution. There was never any evidence of the rave scene which made use of the deserted industrial buildings, but the overnight trains may well have left before that activity really got going. The nature park in Camley Street on the west side of the station, was a welcome addition, however, and painting the listed gas holder frames in black and red provided a cheering focal point, particularly when seen from the train. By the end of the century, however, the railway yards were derelict.
Regeneration of the area began in 2001 with the Channel Tunnel RailLlink and the restoration and expansion of St Pancras station, although the building works seemed never ending. Since then there has been significant investment in the area and the two hotels and Kings Cross Station have all been upgraded.
Which brings us to the regeneration of Coal Drops Yard. Pictures of the Yard at its most derelict are hard to find, but the two wikimedia photos below give a hint of the trnsformation.
Today, Coal Drops Yard is a very different place. It has, apparently, been turned into an ‘Experience’ offering plenty of retail, a culture hub and food outlets. An article in The Architectural Review started with these words: ‘The crowning jewel at King’s Cross Central, Heatherwick Studio’s Coal Drops Yard is yet another in a litany of cultural hubs cum shopping arenas that are carefully choreographed confections of disingenuous ‘authentic’ experiences.’ https://www.architectural-review.com/buildings/the-experience-is-everything-coal-drops-yard-london-by-heatherwick-studio For an awful moment I thought they liked it, but phrases such as, ‘The project is a kind of industrial-themed strip mall, poorly disguised as a bustling local marketplace’ made me feel better.
Here is Terroir’s critique. We visited Coal Drops Yard on a damp October afternoon before lockdown 2 started. It was a gloomy day and the site, although not crowded, was uncomfortably busy by lockdown standards, and the food and retail offer was limited. To us, it felt (indeed it was) wind swept, but also rather desolate. The boundary walls have gone, of course, making it accessible to all, but reduces its identity and sense of place. The granary and east and west transit sheds now house Central St Martin’s School of Art and Design as well as shops and offices. The buildings, however, seem stranded in a sea of paving, lacking any reference points or navigational aids to the rest of the site. We came across the entrance to Central St Martin’s almost by chance and were relieved to find something on a human scale to which we could relate. The two coal drops buildings, with their new, raised, flying roofs, like an enormous black moustache, are certainly eye-catching but we found the space below and between them uninviting. The cluster of gas holder frames are splendid and add height and structure. Their location, however, is very confusing until you understand that they were dismantled from their original positions, repaired, restored and re-erected on the opposite side of the canal, as part of the Coal Drops scene.
These photos were taken on a much better day (you can see how much we liked the gas holders) but not all members of Team Terroir were present.
Finding it difficult to find a focus or haven within Coal Drops Yard itself, we attempted to find the canal. Again, the lack of reference points made it a longer search than it should have been, but oh, the relief when we finally located the tow path. Here was a landscape which we could read, understand, and navigate; from which we could appreciate the modernity of the new canalside buildings, and relish the juxtaposition of the old and the new.
When times are easier, the sun is out and the cafes are open, we will try another sortie to Coal Drops Yard. But I suspect that, along with the Architectural Review, we will not wowed by the ‘Experience’ and will once more seek sanctuary on the buzzing, linear highway of the Regent’s Canal.
‘And we shall have snow’
The north wind doth blow, And we shall have snow, And what will poor Robin do then? Poor thing
He’ll sit in a barn, And keep himself warm, And hide his head under his wing, Poor thing
Trad, Nursery Rhyme
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, edited by those experts in children’s culture, Iona and Peter Opie, is silent on any possible ‘meaning’ of The Robin rhyme, although numerous websites suggest that it was used to ensure children associated home with security, as well as understanding how tough it was to be a robin. It is believed to be a British rhyme and may have dated back to the 16th century. The Opie’s earliest documentary reference is from Songs of the Nursery, 1805.
To be honest, Terroir is with the silence of the Opie’s on this one. Why would children need to be taught to associate home with security, or to pity the plight of the robin (or the blue tit or the thrush or any other fairly common and easily recognisable song bird)? Robins are, of course, especially obvious, and very sociable birds, particularly if anyone is turning over soil or dead leaves, which might reveal a few worms. Isn’t that reason enough to write a ditty about them? It’s a great song, very rythmic, majors on things we all understand such as cold winds, snow and keeping warm, and anthropomorphising a robin is a wonderful way to amuse children. Interestingly, the robin came eighth in the RSPB’s 2021 Big Garden Bird Watch’s top ten, but numbers are down by 32% since the Bird Watch began in 1979. So, please, pity the plight of the robin. And it’s habitat.
The point of quoting the rhyme was to introduce a blog entirely about snow, a topic which is current if not very original. We must replace the north wind with the Beast from the East, but there is plenty of other literature with which to celebrate a snow fall. Those who have recourse to shelter and warmth also have the resources to respond in verse to the extraordinary delight with which human beings respond to a white out. This exploration of literary snow will be based on a trip to The Moors, which regulars know is our local lockdown space. Terroir has reported on The Moors in summer and winter, but snow always reveals a new aspect to a familar landscape.
Brown skeletons of leaves that lag
My forest brook along;
When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow
And the owlet whoops to the wolf below …
From The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834
No wolves on The Moors of course but plenty of ivy tods and leaf skeletons lagging the brook. ‘Tod’ is also an addition to the Terroir landscape lexicon. For those of us with a passing knowledge of Rhyming Slang, ‘tod’ means ‘alone’ or ‘on your own’ derived from Tod Sloan, the American jockey. To be ‘on your tod’ was (maybe still is?) a common phrase in any south London childhood. But in landscape terms, a tod refers to a mass or bush, or a measure for wool. Dictionary.com describes it as an ‘English unit of weight, chiefly for wool, commonly equal to 28 pounds (12.7 kilograms) but varying locally', and ‘a load’’, or ‘a bushy mass, especially of ivy’. Thank you Coleridge.
Hail, old patrician trees, so great and good!
Hail, ye plebeian underwood
Opening lines of Of Solitude [not a great advertisement for the ecologically essential scrub]
Abraham Cowley 1618 - 1687
From troubles of the world
I turn to ducks,
Beautiful comical things….
… or paddling
-Left! right!-with fanlike feet
Which are for steady oars
When they (white galleys) float
Extracts from Ducks (written for F.M. who drew them in Holzminden Prison) [Ducks, both real and poetic, still provide tremendous therapy and enjoyment]
F W Harvey 1888 - 1957
Let Hercules himself do what he may
The cat will mew and dog will have his day
Hamlet, Act 5 scene 1 [or day-ly walk]
W Shakespeare 1564 - 1616
‘Oh look at the trees!’ they cried, ‘O look at the trees!’
London Snow [but still very appropriate to the Moors]
Robert Bridges 1844 - 1930
Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:’
Snow in the Suburbs [spot on for the walk home from the Moors]
Thomas Hardy 1840 - 1928
Vin de Terroir
At the risk of making this look like a computer screen saver, in which country do you think this vineyard is?
When researching this week’s blog I came across this definition of Vins de Terroir:
“These are the wines where the winemaker strives to somehow capture and reflect in the wine the inherent qualities of the site from which it derives, as well as the characteristics of the vintage, and by extension the great complexity and intelligence of Nature itself.” https://www.bonnydoonvineyard.com/wine-quality-talking-the-elusive-vin-de-terroir-blues/
Replace ‘wine’ with ‘blog’ and add ‘Society’ to ‘Nature’ and you will understand what this blog is trying to achieve.
Terroir moved into its current habitat in the autumn of 1985. Not long after, on a summer walk in our new landscape, we climbed the scarp slope of the North Downs above Dorking. On the way up, the once extensive views to the south were hidden by frequent clumps of woodland and scrub – hawthorn, spindle, holly, dogwood, old man’s beard, hazel, field maple, oak, ash – which had grown up on former, species rich, chalk downland turf, following the cessation of traditional stock grazing in the 1940s and, later, a severe reduction in rabbit numbers caused by myxomatosis. On reaching a crest, with a potential view a few tantalising metres away, we were surprised to find a substantial deer fence crossing our path and a rather formidable, self-closing, deer proof gate permitting access to whatever lay beyond. This was not a traditional part of the 1980s downland experience.
We pushed through the gate, rounded a corner and looked down the slope below us. Sure, there was a view and for certain there was no woodland, but something totally unexpected was growing immediately below us in neat rows. Puzzled, we examined the numerous, identical small plants. Looking at each other, we mouthed the astonishing words, ‘grape vines!’. Someone had climbed this hill and planted – a vineyard! Today, of course, the Denbies vineyard above Dorking is one of the largest in the UK and also one of the largest in Europe. It is now a local ‘destination’ with gift shop, restaurant, guided tours and tastings. But back then, Surrey and vineyards were still relative strangers.
The history of wine in Britain is not a consistent one. Many people associate the modern explosion of English and Welsh wines (Scottish grape vineyards are still a rarity) with climate change and warmer temperatures, but I would suggest that other issues are also relevant. If I am wrong, I hope the specialist sommeliers, vintners and viticulturists amongst you will put me right.
A website called ‘The History of English Wines’ (sorry Wales) (http://www.english-wine.com/history.html) is helpful. This site, and other internet searches, suggest the following:
Iron Age – wines probably imported; maybe this indicates developing taste buds but perhaps a lack skill and/or technology
Roman invasions – everyone seems to agree that the Romans brought wine to the British Isles, but not all agree that they also introduced vineyards.
The Norman Conquest – documentary evidence suggests that vineyard technology didn’t necessarily come over with William the Conqueror, but was already here to meet him. On the other hand, many agree that the number of vineyards (and presumably consumption of wine) increased significantly post conquest. No surprises there, then. The Hull Domesday Project (http://www.domesdaybook.net/domesday-book/data-terminology/manors/vineyard) reports ‘vineyards recorded at 45 places in Domesday Book, 32 of these in Great Domesday, all in south-eastern England’. Interestingly, ‘The History of English Wines’ suggests that, ‘At the time of the compilation of the Domesday Survey in the late eleventh century, vineyards were recorded in 46 places in southern England, from East Anglia through to modern-day Somerset’. But whatever the geographical spread, the crown, the nobility and the monastic orders are felt to have had the monopoly.
Late Medieval to 17C – a period of significant decline. Theories include the acquisition (mid 12C) of wine producing Aquitaine by the English crown, worsening weather in England, and the dissolution of the monasteries.
17C to 19C – during this period of exploration (in Europe and across the globe) and of scientific development and enterprise, many of the nobility started to experiment with vines and, presumably, wine making. Famous names include Lord Salisbury at Hatfield House (17C), the Hon. Charles Hamilton at Painshill, in Surrey (18C), and the Marquess of Bute at Castell Coch near Cardiff (19C). I wonder which was more important, the kudos of a vineyard, the quality of the wine or, in the case of Castell Coch, the revenue potential?
1920 to 1950 – this seems to have been a bit of a dry patch.
1950s to present day – a quiet revolution. Huge steps forward in the science of viticulture seem to have enabled the harnessing of English soils, topography and climate to great effect. Success isn’t guaranteed, of course, and poor scientific decision making, bad weather, disease and lack of a sustainable approach still create real risks. On the other hand, cultural tastes have changed, with huge increases in wine consumption. In our childhoods, Terroir only ever saw wine at Christmas; now we would drink it every day, if it wasn’t for a ‘healthy’ respect for our livers. Agricultural/horticultural economics and the need for diversification have also, I suspect, promoted the spread of vineyards. Improved business acumen and financial management may well have played a part, too, although I think the delightful quote from ‘The History of English Wines’ is probably also very appropriate: ‘the best way to get a small fortune is to have a large fortune and buy an English vineyard’.
So what impact has the wine industry had on our landscapes, in terms of vineyards? How many are there? Estimates for England and Wales have proved hard to pin down but well over 700 in 2019 seems a safe bet, with over 60% of the area located in south east England. Wales, with around 30 vineyards, has 1.5% of total area but the highest predicted level of expansion. How interesting. https://www.winegb.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Survey-Report-2020-FULL-FINAL.pdf So far, I’ve found no reliable figures for value of production (but probably well over a £100 million) nor for the impact of leaving the EU.
So my next question (thanks to lockdown restrictions), is what did the Romans and Normans ever do for the Surrey wine landscape? I will leave it up to you to decide what the Surrey terroir did for the taste of Surrey wine.
As I’m sure many of you have guessed, the picture at the top of this blog is of the Denbies Estate. Thomas Cubitt, the builder/architect who changed the face of significant areas of London, bought the estate in 1850, demolished the Georgian house (too cramped), built his own Victorian mansion and planted a great many trees. Sadly he had little time to enjoy it and the estate passed to his sons when Cubitt died in 1856. Following use of the house as a troop billet in WWII, there were insufficient funds to repair and restore, and the mansion was demolished in the early 1950s. The White family purchased the estate in 1984 and planted a great many vines.
Seen from certain angles, and without the obviously ‘Southern’ train, one might be forgiven for assuming the landscape below was part of a wine region in Germany or France. The serried ranks of summer foliage, autumn grape clusters and bare stems in winter is a familiar site at vineyards the world over. By European standards, Denbies is large, particularly as it is contained within a single estate. And for Surrey, a large vineyard offers a completely new landscape.
Personally, Terroir feels that retention of an, albeit geometric, field pattern, reinforced by the rhythm of the parallel support structures (winter) and vines (summer), which flow down the slope of the Downs, provides a large scale, seasonal drama which complements the topography and surrounding landscape. The details are fascinating, however. Viewed across the rows, rather than down the vine ‘allées’, the large leaves provide a very different but not unpleasant, ruffled, texture, totally unlike the pasture, woodland or even arable landscapes elsewhere in the county. Tell us if you disagree, but at least this is a living, viable (one hopes) and rural landscape, which provides access and enjoyment to a great many people, not to mention a modicum of employment.
Terroir also visited two other east Surrey Vineyards. What a contrast! Here is a much more traditional pattern of small vine growing units, which appear to be more craft based and hand worked. Again the geometry provides an interesting contrast to the local Surrey Hills topography (Godstone Vineyard) and local industry, commerce and proximity to London (the Iron Railway Vineyard). The Iron Railway Vineyard is sandwiched between the route of the early 19C Surrey Iron Railway, and the A23 London to Brighton Road. The ‘Railway’ was a horse-drawn ‘plateway’ (so technically not a ‘rail’way at all) which carried goods such as coal, building materials, and agricultural supplies. The original section linked Wandsworth and Croydon and was then extended to Merstham in 1805. It lasted until 1838, but ironically it became unviable after the opening of a canal, in 1809, between Croydon and London. Terroir felt that both vineyards were a quirky but positive addition to the local landscape, although both were blighted by the noise of the A23 or the M23. Sadly, another northern Surrey phenomenon.
Godstone Vineyard
The Iron Railway Vineyard
But to end on an upbeat note: thanks to all who contributed to Terroir’s landscape lexicon, initiated in last week’s post. I particularly liked the Treorchy word for a gennel or lane: ‘gwli’ (sent via Instagram @terroirlandscape). Unfortunately, as most of Terroir’s Welsh roots are from the north, we are still a little unsure of the pronunciation! Anybody from Treorchy out there?
The Welsh for vineyard is ‘gwinllan’ ie wine yard or wine space, which makes perfect sense. Terroir is now interested in the use of ‘yard’ for both grapes (as in vineyard) and, in some areas, for hops (as in hop yard). As far as we know hop yard is used in Herefordshire and the southern Marches, while ‘hop garden’ is the appropriate word in Kent. Any contributions on that one too?
Katteken and Gennels
Local words for landscape features hold a deep fascination for many of us. The language used to represent a locality, a ‘somewhere’, a terroir, are deeply steeped in, and injected with humanity’s response to, and relationship with a place, and with the minutiae which are its perceived components. Take the example of a basic element of any landscape – the name for that piece of low key human geography by which we move around or make connections within a locality. I mean a track, lane, alley/alleyway, footpath, pathway, path, bridleway, by(e)way, trail, route, passage, entry, drang, twitten, ginnel, gennel, snicket, jitty, jigger, gulley … I’m sure there are many, many more deeply descriptive words.
In recent days, I have been looking for heralds, forerunners, outriders, precursors, omens, auguries, messengers – ah, I must mean harbingers – of spring. To be honest there is not a lot around at the moment, but one stands out – the humble hazel catkin, those funny little loofahs of spring hope.
They start out as tiny little, firm, textured (layered like pine cones), greenish brown, stiff, mini caterpillar shapes, sticking out from their twigs at awkward angles. In Terroir’s terroir, they have been making their presence felt since at least November, but they are easy to overlook and, as the caterpillar is to the butterfly, so the young catkin is to its fully ripe counterpart – perceived as lacking in inspirational wonder! The catkins are the male flowers – visually dominant – and the females are shy, retiring, home lovers (snuggled into a ‘bud’) with, (when they are ready) just their cream or red ‘rara skirts’ or styles sticking out to receive the windblown pollen from the boys.
By now, in Terroir land, the boys are maturing, opening out to let the wind take their pollen and start the process of producing the autumnal hazel nuts. Each catkin is actually a cluster of over 200 individual flowers, enough to supply sufficient pollen to accommodate the wasteful process of breeze based fertilisation.
But for winter-weary humans, they make a brave sight, cheering passers-by and telling us that spring is – now, what’s that cliché? – ah yes, just around the corner. A corner which is gradually moving to the dance of global warming. So far, our stalwart hazel bushes seem to have coped.
*© timku Hazel in the Winter Sun Female Hazel Catkin https://www.flickr.com/photos/34972638@N07/24609008162/in/photolist-DuBALb-kzRGmr-dTh6Aj-qupxVC-2kgZVxU-jPbHXL-21DjLry-konHWz-FtFxKC-kzRJXF-Pn6aB3-jneVYP-8UiHT-8UiHS-8UiHR-2cx9zzX-D1mkBb-4vqvq6-7V8zdG-S5eX59-7V8zdJ-j7tnAs-9FqYjL-FH6Qw3-24u3xtc-4v1LDB-23YMZW7-BJX4kz-Fu3BjP-6hRgfi-22pGuyD-isYZdY-qzGpck-9qDmoT-pUpQ8z-9idorg-qmLAF2-4ksmVX-kusxNF-D8VWxV-BRkodf-9QBXgP-7HNait-8YSJPB-r4VRs-rKgTNE-rwbRcy-mpcfAP-RBLCAT-D4yBk/
Getting back to the linguistic part of this blog, I wondered what local words were used to describe these mood-lifting ‘lambs tails’? Various sources suggest that the origin of the mainstream English word is the Middle Dutch Katteken or little cat; so is the name ‘Catkin’ harking back to tails again?
As a starting point, I picked up Robert Macfarlane’s book Landmarks. When I first started reading this book, I was filled with anticipation for the treasures within - and sadness that someone else had penned the book Terroir would love to have written! Each chapter is succeeded by a glossary of terms gathered from a whole variety of sources, geographies, languages and dialects. Most are topographical rather than botanical (Uplands, Coastlands etc) but the penultimate glossary is entitled Woodlands, and I turned to it with enthusiasm. Sadly, it doesn’t get down to species level and even the section headed ‘Branches, Leaves, Roots and Trunks’ makes no mention of flowers or fruit. Even the ‘Gift Words’ (ie words donated by others), are seldom plant specific although I did enjoy ‘bog-gazels’ or ‘bogarves’ for hawthorn berries (Sussex) and ‘snotty-gobs’ for yew berries (Hertfordshire)!
Wandering the by(e)ways of the internet, however, I came across this fascinating page: ‘Synonyms for Catkin. (2016). Retrieved 2021, January 27, from https://thesaurus.plus/synonyms/catkin The back stories (origins, sources, etc) are lacking, but it makes good reading. Here is the list; the comments are Terroir’s:
Aglet or Aiglet [suggested miss spelling of aiguillette - the braids on military unforms; this seems very convincing; Collins dictionery also adds ‘or any ormamental pendant’]
Ament or Amentum [sources refer to it as another name for catkin, botanical, or meaning someone with Amentia which is, appaently severe congenital mental disability; oh dear…]
Flower [obvious]
Infloresence [botanical, obvious]
Shackle [tethered?]
Tassel [obvious]
So, now it’s your turn. Please tell us about any hazel related names, stories or folklore. I can feel a historical botany coming on.
More or Less Poverty?
Last week’s blog on poverty in London featured Scary Great Granny and her family at home in Beaufort Street Chelsea. Of somewhat greater importance, however, the blog also featured the Booth Poverty maps, that extraordinary and detailed archive of information on London’s poverty plight in the late 1890s. Housed at the London School of Economics, the archive can be accessed on line at https://booth.lse.ac.uk/. Here is a reminder of both the Booth Maps, and of Millie, before she became a Great Granny. She was probably always scary.
In 1891, Millie, Charles and their elder daughter lived in a comfortable street in an area of Chelsea which Booth’s surveys recorded as fairly mixed in terms of poverty. The map (above) shows evidence of wealthy inhabitants (yellow/gold) on the river front, with ‘poor’ and ‘very poor’ neighbours (blues and greys) in relatively close proximity to Millie’s comfortable red..
By 1901, Millie and family had moved from Beaufort Street, to the edge of Hammersmith (or to the edge of Fulham, depending on your perspective; Terroir suspects that Millie’s perspective favoured Hammersmith!), about 2 miles to the north west. We know that Beaufort Street was redeveloped in the early 20th century so this may have been the reason for their move. Their new abode, at No. 2 Perham Road, has not been redeveloped, so for once we can see what it looked like. I wonder if she would recognise it now? Were the windows above the front door false or bricked up?
As with Beaufort Street, the Booth Poverty map for Perham Road shows a diverse area. There is a core of mixed, fairly comfortable, and middle class areas, but the ‘poor’ are also close by. This time the wealthy are on the other side of the Earls Court railway tracks. But as we noted in Chelsea, this is London, where poverty and comfort often lie close together, sometimes interwoven. And again, there is a little more to Millie’s ‘comfort’ than meets the eye. Remember the artist/musician husband? Remember the probable need, in Beaufort Street, to have two income streams? Yes, you’ve guessed it, Millie is still taking lodgers. But things do seem to have changed. The Perham Street house may have to pull it’s weight, economically, but apparently they are getting by with just one boarder: 28 year old Lilian who, the census notes, is ‘living on own means’. By this time, the two daughters are aged eleven and nine and there is only one ‘general domestic servant’, 21 year old Amy, born in Battersea.
Extract from Booth’s Maps Descriptive of London Poverty, 1898-9 Perham Road, Hammersmith and local area
Looking at the same area in 2019, there is evidence, again, of diversity in the poverty stakes although the pattern of variation and the degree of deprivation is different. The modern indices of deprivation are of course based on different criteria from those used by Booth and I doubt those collecting and assessing the 2019 data walked the Streets with a local police officer as Booth’s surveyors were wont to do (hence the reference to the [Police] ‘Notebooks’ on the heading of the above ilustration).
It is also important to realise that the current indices do not concentrate soley on poverty or lack of it. The large image below shows the results for all deprivation indices for 2 Perham Road, and places Millie’s house on the edge of a small island of pale green, meaning it lies within the 50% of least deprived neighbourhoods, albeit surrounded on three sides by areas of gretaer deprivation. The smaller images below the main image, however, show the results for very specific types of deprivation. Four have been selected out of the available eight, and some very different patterns suddenly emerge. The Income deprivation map indicates a similar layout to the overall multiple indices map, but educational attainment shows a significant improvement. In contrast, concentrating on access to housing and services shoots the neighbourhood well down into the more deprived blues, as does quality of environment. Perham Road is obviously not close to accessible green space. Things have certainly not improved since Millie left the area.
Images above and Below: 2019 Index of Multiple or Specific Deprivation for Perham Road and Neighbourhood From: Indices of Deprivation: 2019 and 2015 http://dclgapps.communities.gov.uk/imd/iod_index.html#
So where did Millie and her family go next? The 1911 census places them at 10 West Kensington Gardens, close to West Kensington Mews. This address does not appear in any of the obvious places such as Google Maps, the post code finders or good old-fashioned, hard copy volumes of the London A to Z; this presented Terroir with quite a challenge. In fact, Millie had only moved a mile away, to the Kensington Hammersmith border. Thanks to a digitised Post Office Directory of 1902, we finally located West Kensington Gardens on the north side of the Hammersmith Road, hard up against the Olympia exhibition centre. No. 10 (by the look of it quite a des res) is clearly visible on the 1893/4 revision of the Ordnance Survey 6 inch edition and again on the 1912/14 revision (both shown below), but the area was obviously changing even then (look at the massive Post Office Savings Bank development on the back of the RC College). By the 1938 map revision, the Olympia halls had spread right to the edge of the Hammersmith Road, engulfing West Kensigton Gardens. so, somewhere between 1914 and 1938, saw poor old Millie on the move again.
Both map images 'Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland' https://maps.nls.uk/index.html
The 21st century images for the site of West Kensington Gardens (below) present an almost shocking contrast to the genteel, domestic layout depicted on the map images above.
Google Maps UK downloaded 20/1/21 Google Maps UK Street View downloaded 20/1/21.
If you have recovered from the shock of the demolition of yet another of Millie and Charles’ homes, let us take a look at what Charles Booth made of the area in 1898/9. Strangely, Booth’s base map bears no resemblence to the location as recorded by the relevant Ordnance Survey maps, but I think we must put this anomoly to one side for the moment. The area is solidly ‘red’ in Booth mapping terms, in other words it consists, in the main, of the well-to-do middle class, the fairly comfortable with ‘good ordinary’ earnings, and mixed - some comfortable, some poor. The wealthy are nearby if, yet again, on the other side of the railway tracks. Finally, Millie seems to have found some element of uniformity in which to bring up her daughters and ready them, unknowlingly and unfortunately, for the war work which will take over their lives in just three or four years. At the time of the census the girls are 21 and 19, single and living at home. Charles is still described as an artist (painter) and Millie as, of course, ‘wife’. They have no boarders, and two domestic servants, a cook, no less, and a house maid. Portait painting must be on the up.
Charles and Millie also have a social life and census night has brought visitors. Remember Hubert, the Jeweller’s assistant, who boarded with them in Beaufort Street? On cLose examination, he turned out to be one of Millie’s younger brothers. He is present tonight along with a sister-in-law, who is descibed as a book keeper to a taylor, working from home in Bury St Edmunds. All very proper. In addition to the ‘grown ups’ there are also a couple of twenty somethings, perhaps invited by Millie’s daughters. Elizabeth Hermes (22) is German and Robert Dale Deniston (British) is 21. One wonders who is courting who.
Extract from Booth’s Maps Descriptive of London Poverty, 1898-9 Hammersmith Road, West Kensington and local area
Interestingly, the uniformity shown in the Booth map (above) is also evident to some degree on the 2019 Indices of Deprivation Map (below). The core of the area in 2019 is clearly in the green, less deprived, part of the scale. The areas on the ‘other side of the railway tracks’ have, however, suffered greater deprivation than they appear to have warranted in 1898/9. There is, however, one area of blue (more deprived) to the south of where 10 West Kensington Gardens once stood. On the Booth map, the area is small, and backs onto the garden of Otto House (just to the right of the arrow head on the Booth map above). On the 2019 map, the area is much larger, and engulfs nearly the whole of the former Otto House and garden. In 1928, this area became the site of a substantial Samuel Lewis Housing Trust Estate, called Lisgar Terrace. Now part of the Southern Housing Group, Lisgar Terrace is being given a £50million revamp and extension. According to their website, the Trust has ‘completed 154 new affordable homes the majority of which have been offered to existing customers. Phase 5, currently underway, will provide 72 homes for private sale to help fund the project. (https://www.shgroup.org.uk/about-us/latest-news/latest-developments/lisgar-terrace/plans-for-lisgar-terrace/). It will be interesting to see what this does to the neighbourhood deprivation trends in the future.
2019 Index of Multiple Deprivation for Hammersmith Road, West Kensington and Neighbourhood From: Indices of Deprivation: 2019 and 2015 http://dclgapps.communities.gov.uk/imd/iod_index.html#
Terroir’s exploration of the Booth Poverty maps, courtesy of Millie, Charles and family is now complete. It is impossible to make meaningful comparisons between conditions in 1899 and 2019, but it is clear that poverty, however it is classified or described, still exists. Sadly, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Many more of Terroir’s ancestor’s have come to London since then; some stayed, many also left again, acording to job or retirement opportunities. As far as we know, most, like Millie, have found satisfaction and sufficient resources to enjoy their lives. But there are no guarantees.
The Poverty Maps
Great grandparents are, on the whole, remote creatures. To most of us they tend to be mythical, distant, or just plain forgotten. Good lord – did Granny have a mother? Who knew? Intellectually, if we ever bother to think about our forebears, we know that each one of us has a quota of eight, genetically connected great grandparents. This may seem like a ridiculous oversupply for a generation about which we may know very little.
By now you are wondering what this has to do with the concept of terroir and the mission of this blog. Have we turned Terroir into an homage for the BBC series ‘Who do you think you are?’ The essence of ‘somewhereness’, however, is as much about the people who influenced, guided and developed ‘somewhere’ in the past, as it is about those who currently inhabit it. So more nearly, we are talking about ‘Where do you think you are?’ or, in in today’s blog, ‘Where do you think you were?’
For Terroir does not spring from generations of Surrey farm labourers, millers, land owners or stockbrokers. We are the product of generations of economic migrants. Our multiplicity of great, great grandparents and great grandparents came from as far afield as rural Kent, Sussex, Cambridgeshire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Montgomeryshire and Caernarvonshire. And they were drawn through the industrial sweatshops of places like Wolverhampton, Liverpool, and Nottingham on their journey to a very much more diverse range of employments and locations in the 20th and 21st Centuries.
But all this talk of ancestor’s journeys is also a vehicle to explore something of national significance and interest - The Booth Poverty Maps of London - housed at the London School of Economics https://booth.lse.ac.uk/ and which must be one of the most extraordinary social mapping archives in the country.
Extract from Booth’s Maps Descriptive of London Poverty, 1898-9 Thames-side from Battersea Bridge to Vauxhall Bridge
The eponymous Charles Booth was born in Liverpool, the son of a corn merchant and, at the age of 16, was apprenticed to a shipping company. Up to this point he could perhaps have passed for one of Terroir’s ancestors, although I suspect that, in 1856, most of Terroir’s lot left school a whole lot earlier and were more likely to have been apprenticed to shop keepers.
Thereafter the story is very different from Terroir’s. Booth seems to have combined a sound business acumen with a desire for fair play, and developed ‘a profound sense of obligation and responsibility towards the poor and to the improvement of social conditions.’ https://booth.lse.ac.uk/learn-more/who-was-charles-booth After experiencing the shocking condition of the Liverpool slums it is hardly surprising that by 1886, he was proposing an inquiry into living conditions in London. Full details can be found on the LSE website noted above. If you don’t already know the archive, delve deeply. It is utterly fascinating.
So, let’s return to Great Granny and explain where she fits into Terroir’s exploration of the Booth maps. Terroir can just remember her – a terrifying, upright, fur clad, Victorian matriarch. There is a photograph of her and her extended family (she was one of thirteen children), at an event (party is too uninhibited a concept) to celebrate a significant parental wedding anniversary (golly - Great, Great Granny and Great, Great Grandad). It is summer and she is some 50 years younger than the fur clad memory, but there she is, a terrifying, upright, Victorian matriarch, having a bad hair day. All the other women present are having a bad hair day too, so it is obviously the fashion.
‘Scary Great Granny’ is important, not only because I can remember her, but also because she was the only Terroir ancestor living in London when Booth was surveying and mapping poverty. Actually, that’s not strictly true; another branch of the family had also made it to London by then, but they were living in Willesden, north of the railway station, and outside Booth’s area. So it was Scary GG (aka Millie) who became our focus for exploring the Booth maps and for comparing her late 1888/9 habitat with the same street in the early part of the 21st century.
According to the 1891 census, Millie and husband Charles, with their one year old daughter, were living at 29, Beaufort Street, Chelsea, London. It sounds promising. Millie was born in Cambridge, the daughter of an upwardly mobile shop keeper. Charles came from Sussex, probably St Leonards, or possibly Kent, maybe Maidstone (depending which census return you happen to be reading). Charles is described as a painter (he was never an ‘RA’ but he was more than proficient), organist and teacher of music. Laudable, but hardly a high earner, one would imagine. Millie is described, of course, as ‘wife’.
Beaufort Street runs from the northern side of Battersea Bridge, where the Chelsea Embankment meets Cheyne Walk (yes, really, the Cheyne Walk), and heads north westwards, crossing the Kings Road, to end at its junction with the Fulham Road (the A308). Feed that address into Google Maps and it takes you to flat 29, Beaufort Mansions, one of a spectacular line of purpose built apartments which just shouts Chelsea.
For various reasons (!) none of this feels right, so the next stop is the Ordnance Survey Six-inch England and Wales series, 1842-1952, which produces two contrasting images: the 1912/13 revision (left) shows the layout of Beaufort Road as we know it today, but the 1893/95 edition (right) shows a completely different layout. Welcome to the world of Millie and Charles in 1891.
'Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland' https://maps.nls.uk/index.html
So what did the Poverty Survey make of Beaufort Road in the late 1890s? The Poverty Map – which also confirms the layout shown on the Ordnance Survey 1893/95 edition - indicates that Millie and Charles were on a street labelled ‘Middle Class, Well to do’, no doubt to the relief of Millie’s father who had by now trained himself as an accountant and was a pillar of Cambridge society. But the area is not homogeneous. Yes, there is a lot of red shadings (from Millie’s ‘Well to do’ to ‘fairly comfortable/good ordinary earnings’ to ‘mixed, some comfortable, others poor’ but the blue/greys of the ‘poor’ are certainly in evidence and the local work house (now the Westminster and Chelsea Hospital) is only half a mile away. The ‘vicious, semi criminal class’ is not a significant element of the locality and there is only slight evidence of the ‘wealthy’, although an enclave of yellow, around Elm Park Gardens (just north of the words Park Chapel, on the map), is a similar distance from Millie and Charles as the work house. Perhaps the best conclusion one can draw is that the inhabitants of the area around Beaufort Street, in the middle 1890s, was a classic London socio economic mix.
Extract from Booth’s Maps Descriptive of London Poverty, 1898-9 Beaufort Street, Chelsea and local area
But there is somethig else you need to know about Millie’s life in Beaufort Sreet. Millie, Charles and the baby did not live alone. According to the 1891 census, no less than nine poeple lived at No. 29, and Millie (for it surely it would have been Millie’s role?) was responsible for four boarders and two domestic servants. Unsurprisingly, she probably needed to raise an income, to keep their little ship afloat. The boarders were all male and each poses intriuging questions about the locality. The first mentioned is described as ‘Professor [sic] d’Ecole Normal [sic]’ which would usually translate as a teacher or lecturer at a teacher training college. Was Emile working for, or linked to, the Institut Francais, just a mile away in South Kensington? Or did Chelsea boast a French training college of it’s own? If you know, please tell us in the comment box below. William (28) and Henry (18) are both listed as students of metallurgy. Again, where did they study? Was this the Royal School of Mines (later to become a component of Imperial College when it was founded in 1907), also in Kensington? Again, information please. Finally, 21 year old Hubert is listed as a ‘jeweller’s assistant’ and someone has pencilled in the word ‘gold’ on the census return, lest you should think he was just any old jeweller’s assistant. Perhaps Millie chose her tenants with care. Two teenagers, Elizabeth and Sarah Jane (described as servants), were no doubt Millie’s subordinates in what must have felt like a never ending campaign to keep the house clean, the boarders fed and the family clothed and out of debt. She may also have been pregnant with their second child at the time of the census. Poor Millie - it sounds as though she is working far harder than her artistic husband, while he is probably exacerbating things by taking a money earning room out of commission to use as studio. Millie is not unusual. however. Next door, at no. 31, there is a similar arrangement: a widow with two grown up daughters, four boarders (two men and two women) and a single domestic servant.
By 1901, Millie, Charles and the children have moved on to Fulham (and we will explore the implications of this relocation another time) but what has happened to Beaufort Street, in the meantime? We know that by the early part of the century, large sections of the road had been redeveloped with blocks of flats. Currently a one room studio flat with small kitchen and bathroom is valued at around £400,000 and a four bedroom flat for around £1.6 million pounds. But has the pattern of a comfortable Beaufort Street located within a mixed area continued, or do the 2019 Indices of Deprivation maps tell a different story?
2019 Index of Multiple Deprivation for Beaufort Street and Neighbourhood From: Indices of Deprivation: 2019 and 2015 http://dclgapps.communities.gov.uk/imd/iod_index.html#
Obviously any superficial comparison between the current Multiple Deprivation Indices (above) and the Booth Poverty Maps for the same area, is laughably crude, but Terroir could not resist the temptation of illustrating both representations of our society’s assessment of poverty and deprivation. We leave you to draw your own conclusions. There does, however, seem to be a prima facie case for saying that the area is still a complex mix and that a thougoughly modern Millie might still be taking in lodgers.
Water Works
Lockdown 3. Winter. Essentials: vaccine, open space, Wellington boots.
Terroir’s first ever blog focussed on the importance of open space. No matter how quirky, no matter the surroundings, no matter the back story, an accessible open space is the very best shot in the arm, barring the vaccine itself. In October I described the explosive summer benefits of our local lockdown open space -The Moors, in Surrey. There was colour, vibrancy, life, excitement, space, variety, views and well being, all based on a leg-stretching splinter of land wedged between a railway line, a landfill site and a housing estate. Here is that post’s parting shot:
“‘Seasonal wetlands’ means seasonal change. Different birds (snipe in winter), different berries, different colours, and always water – more water, less water and sometimes, when the footpath floods, just a little bit too much water.”
Winter landscapes don’t always get a good press unless covered in snow. But a wet winter landscape has jewels aplenty. You just have to look a little bit differently. There are no leaves to get in the way - the landscape is revealed in its wet and skeletal glory.
So let’s take a look. Wearing a hood, sou’wester, beanie hat (they were known as tea cosies when I was a kid), snood or balaclava can give you tunnel vision. So, if you want colour, shape and pattern, look out through that tunnel at the details.
Fruits: the Moors can do a veritable visual feast of winter fruits (better botanists - please correct any detailed mis-identifications).
Fruit just a bit too obvious for you? Then please try our menu of assorted vegetables. Strictly visual treats only. Mosses and fungi are too specilaised for Terroir’s identification skills, so any nomenclature suggestions gratefully received.
Abstract arts: the lack of distracting fresh leaves and flowers reveals many other treats. Push back the hood. Discard the balaclava. Look up and out. Enjoy the patterns, the colours, the reflections and the scuptural skeletons which summer hides from us.
But, for the Moors, the Unique Selling Point is water. On cessation of sand extraction and processing, and in parallel with construction of the housing estate, the existing damp areas were re-engineered as seasonal wetlands, a new lake established on the edge of the housing, and the whole caboodle designated as part of a larger wetland Nature Reserve (https://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/nature-reserves/nutfield-marshes-moors-spynes-mere). Depending on your age and interests one of the small pleasures, or great excitements, of walking the Moors is to see how high, or low, the water is. There are various indicators which allow intimate interaction with the wetland landscape, weather and climate, and ecological process. How much of the old fence posts are visible above the water in the upper lake? Is the revealing, muddy, high water mark visible along the fence at the bottom of the railway embankment in the lower lake? Can you cross the path between the two lakes dryshod? Has the surface of that path been removed by an energetic overflow (that’s a new one for this year)? Is the foot of the fence adjacent to that path above or below water level? Is the Brook flooding into the lower lake or is the lower lake flooding into the Brook? Does the ‘heritage’ green footpath sign indicate the walking, wading or sailing options along the alternative track to the Pooh Sticks bridge? As an aside, this track is seldom walkable unless you have waders or a machete - in winter the Brook takes over at one end and in summer the waist high nettles and burdock, loving the nutrient rich, damp soils, take over everywhere else.
But the ultimate marker, the great question upon everyone’s lips, the burden of the bush telegraph is: has the cycle path flooded? Upon this information depends the length and comfort of everybody’s walk, run or cycle. It is Surrey nature at its most untamed! Can we get through? The path floods sufficiently often for pedestrains to have created an alternative path on slightly higher ground, hard against the landfill fence. Surrey is not short of tenacious and inventive walkers - it is a response to an oudoor challenge, a little bit of wilderness in our manmade county. If you can tolerate a rough and muddy passage, then this is for you. The ill-shod, those with pushchairs, or those not fancying off piste travel will usually turn back. For cyclists, the decision is more technical. Depth of water, length of leg, size of wheel and frame, and confidence, have all to be considered. The taller and stronger cyclist, who doesn’t object to wet feet, will pedal though with an impressive bow wave. The smaller but daring cyclist will probably make it, with only a telling off from Mum ar Dad for getting wet trousers. Bur for the smallest or more timorous cyclist disaster awaits. We have watched Dad cycle though with a certain confidence and panache, eldest son take it at a run and make it to the other end, wet but triumphant, while small son panics in the deepest part, puts down a foot and topples over in spectacular slow motion. Dad, panache now resembling soggy papier mache, comes to the rescue, as only a good Dad can.
Too much water? Many attempts have been made to stop the cycle way from flooding. In my view, the present solution (let it flood) is without doubt the best. This is a nature reserve which is based on seasonal wetlands. Water rises, water falls. Nature thrives. Some find it frustrating that walkers and cyclists are kept to the edges - but what stunning edges they are. Many, many visitors come - the place was both flooded and thronged last Sunday. The crucial benefit is that all users actively interact with their changing environment. Can we get through? How deep is the water? Oh look! That’s how deep it was last week. What’s that bush? Can you see the swan/ducks/gold crests/long-tailed tits? All that rain last week has really made a difference.
And, no matter what the weather - there is always some delighted individual who makes it through! To misquote Dylan Thomas’s ‘Under Milk Wood’, one year I saw the Snipe when I wasn’t looking for them, but I’ve never seen them since, even though I’ve been looking all the time.
There is Aways Another Door
As this post is timed for the last day of the year (in many cultures, at any rate), I thought that this might provide a good excuse to explore Terroir’s ‘door collection’. Doors can be very symbolic (looking out or looking in, looking forward or looking back) and also enormously varied in cultural and architectural terms. What worlds lie behind any particular door? Once inside, what possibilities lie ahead, as you open a door to leave – or to run away?
Looking through a decade or so of door images, it became obvious that doors actually say a whole lot more than that, and also a whole lot less. In practical terms, for instance, a detailed photograph of a door isolates this symbolic piece of architectural furniture from its building. How unnatural. Strike one. It is also very difficult to photograph an open door: if open, the door tends to disappear and the eye is drawn through it – just as much as through an arch, a window, a gate or an arrow slit. So the symbolism of a door, as a solid architectural form, is lost. Strike two.
Here are some open doors. Will I go in (or out)? What would you do?
Some doors have lost their function, or have disappeared altogther, but are not always the worse for that.
On the other hand, a shut door can send a whole host of unexpected messages, over and above its individual design.
Some doors come as a series such as this street in Toulon
Others are less organised - just neighbours (Uzbekistan)
And here are my favourites with which to welcome in the New Year. We hope that a door labelled vaccine will replace the first image below, enable us all to enjoy going through a multitude of doors in safety, and allow us once more to fully enjoy our own and others’ terroir.
Season’s Greetings
Christmas is a very visual festival, and many countries incorporate a variety of vegetation into their local response to the mid winter season. The results can be a delightful - although occasionally over-vibrant - mix of traditions, with Christianity firmly secured to the foundations laid on a variety of winter solstice celebrations. Aspects of the Roman Saturnalia may be particularly relevant to 2020. Everyone at home, schools and Courts of Law closed, the donning of brightly coloured special clothes (who knew that the original Christmas jumpers and onesies were called ‘synthesis’?), gifts and, something we all may have to resort to, sacrifices to the gods to ensure a better year ahead. Something from the New Year’s Honours list perhps?
Let Terroir take you on a tour of some of our favourite Christmas scenes.
Happy ‘micro’ Christmas and best wishes for a much better 2021
The Garden Politic
James Wong created quite a stir with his recent Guardian article entitled ‘Other arts are political, why not gardening?’ https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/nov/29/james-wong-other-arts-are-often-political-who-says-gardening-shouldnt-be-too
Thomas J Price: Network Yorkshire Scuplture Park
To summarise, James Wong (ethnobotanist, write and broadcaster) argues that gardening is an art, and that arts are political, in the same way as, say, sculpture or music. Think of the ambiguous nature of Shostakovich’s symphonies or the lack of people of colour represented in British sculpture. If you think politics should be kept out of gardening, says Wong, then by implication, you don’t consider it an art form. In case you haven’t read the article, Wong’s piece was triggered by a ‘keep politics out of gardening response’ from some of the visitors to a Hampton Court flower show exhibit, shaped like the Empire Windrush and inspired by the issues facing displaced peoples from around the world.
I have no difficulty in coming down on the side of gardens as both art and politics. In my view, it is as impossible to create and manage a garden or a park without making decisions which declare your world view, as it is to keep a sense of the artistic (however poorly executed!) out of your creation. I would add, however, that – as with some art – the design and management may simply reflect the attitudes of the creator/manager; it does not necessarily make a conscious or specific political statement. Thus, even the smallest urban garden, which may not be overtly political, will represent our society, as well as its maker’s nature and nurture.
Ponder then, on the potential message that an intentional garden statement can send without denigrating the art - and science - of gardening. The wall which separates Petworth Park in Sussex from the surrounding village is, to me, as lowering and ominous as the Berlin Wall and, whether you interpret it as a symbol of class, or of politics, it clearly indicates the separation of the rich and powerful on the inside from the less fortunate on the outside.
Ponder also on the current ‘trend’ towards garden biodiversity, use of locally native species and sustainable management. This is not about fashion, but a clear statement of intent regarding climate change, resource management, reduction of carbon footprints and protection of the planet. Surely that is political?
But for me, the most worrying implication of Wong’s article is the inevitable Twitter storm which followed it, focusing on horticulture and race. On Wednesday 16th December, Wong (@Botanygeek) tweeted, ‘It’s certainly been a colourful few days. Been asked by the police to read all the 1000s of tweets to screen grab & report the hate crime & threats. What that also revealed is 1000s kind & supportive messages, inc the very highest levels in hort.’.
That is a very serious reflection on our society.
Talking of gardens and planetary threats, however, I will finish with the political topic about which I originally intended to blog this week, anyway. The tell-tale signs of climate change are everywhere. Here is Terroir’s gallery of a very floriferous winter.
November on the Isle of Wight
December in Surrey and Sussex
The odd one out is, of course, the gorse, which can flower throughout the year. Hence the comment, ‘when the gorse is out, ‘tis kissing time’!
Redhill and the Railways
Surrey, Terroir’s home county, has plenty to offer when obedience to Tier 2 rules and foul weather makes ‘further afield’ a difficult place to visit. As one of London’s Home Counties, Surrey’s history is worthy of a blog in its own right and I will return to that another day. This week, however, I wanted to write about a single Surrey town – somewhere I could reach easily in a pandemic. The transport hub of Redhill, in the east of Surrey, certainly falls into this category.
Redhill is a Victorian railway town. I would argue that it is the least typical of what many associate with a ‘Surrey style’, whether in terms of architecture, townscape or reputation. Redhill lives under the shadow of the older, prettier and much sought after town of Reigate, and to which it is now joined at the hip by urban expanson. Some residents of Redhill (postcode RH1) actually aspire to live in a house with an RH2 postcode (Reigate of course) and do make the move across the intangible boundary between the two. Redhill (or Red’ill as its detractors like to call it) is perceived as the poor relation with all sorts of unattractive characteristics. Why is this?
Historically the area was a marshy valley with a few scattered hamlets. When the South Eastern Railway Company scouted for a route from London to Dover (to access the continent, how ironic), they tunnelled through the North Downs and turned sharply left for Dover at ‘Warwick Town’, only later renamed Redhill. Some considerable and confusing railway shenanigans later, local stations were rationalised and the one which is now at the core of Redhill was built and roads adapted to provide a decent infrastructure.
Redhill was also lumbered with the re-routed main highway from London to Brighton, but the town still remains amazingly unrecognised. Conversation goes something like this: Q: ‘Where is Redhill?’ A: ‘On the route from London to Brighton’. Response: ‘Oh’. Not helped by the fact that the later (20C) alternative London to Brighton railway route goes under Redhill in a tunnel.
But:
Redhill has some honest and attractive Victorian and Edwardian architecture. It is amazingly well supplied with green space, based on extensive local commons. It has phenomenal transport infrastructure - railway lines in four directions, a not unreasonable bus service, lies between two M25 junctions and is 20 minutes from a major international airport, while not being under the flight path. Newer (and less attractive) office buildings provide some local employment, and commuting to employment hubs such as London, Croydon and Brighton is pretty good.
So what’s wrong? Why do people flee to Reigate which has a significantly poorer train service and where housing is significantly more expensive. I would suggest that there are a number of factors. Housing density is higher in Redhill than in Reigate and there are fewer larger houses in Redhill. Most houses were built without garages and on street parking has made it very difficult to appreciate the architectural details. Where houses have tiny front gardens, most have been converted into off street parking, removing any vestige of personalised, soft, varied, greenscape or characterful fencing, and making on street parking even more difficult.
Infill has been a huge curse, replacing many a charming run of Victorian/Edwardian terraces or semis with a hotchpotch of styles (including uninteresting and unadorned blocks of flats) shoehorned into tiny plots to maximise housing density, and with no garden space in front, let alone down the sides. Many of the local Victorian and Edwardian ‘big houses’ were also pulled down to make way for much smaller dwellings, or facilities such as the local sports centre, or converted into flats with no individual garden space except a sea of car park tarmac. Modern design, whether residential or more public is also poor or bog standard. The result is that much of Redhill is dominated by cars, is invisible, impersonal, uninspiring, unowned and somewhat unloved.
Oh and the brook, which once flowed through the marsh, has been placed in a culvert through much of the town.
But, if you look carefully, there are some amazing details still in existence. Tile hanging, decorative plaster work, a whole series of cupolas and towers, and remants of the former hamlets. The High Street has been pedestrianised (a saving grace in Covid times) and provided with some excellent (but also some not so excellent) tree planting.
Here is Terroir’s take on some of the quirky and often unnoticed Redhill gems. Please note - this is not an architectural tour of the town but a personal response to some of the more heart warming details.
But to end on a postive note in praise of modern additions.
We have only recently come across this little haven of modern housing, illustrated below tucked peacefully away from through routes. Despite the - albeit very sculptural - defences on the sub station wall, the enclave exudes pride, ownership and relaxation.
The pedestrianisation of the old town centre intersection between the High Street (on the line of the London to Brighton Road) and Station Road has been a godsend to Redhill and permits a lively market on three days a week, attractive sitting areas, shade and a restful escape from the hustle and bustle. The tree planting and seat design is of slightly variable quality but the benefit is enormous. And, someone, somewhere, understands plants, climate change, dry gardens and the local authority need for low maintenance, creating some delightful public realm planting. Winter photographs do not do it justice.
More on Offa
Blogging about Offa’s Dyke path has brought home an obvious truth: long distance foot paths are, well, long. Last week, we covered less than half of the Way from Chepstow to Prestatyn. In Terroir’s terms, this is about a year and a half’s worth of section walking. This week, we return - it’s now 2017 - to pick up the baton at the foot of the Black Mountains, moving from Monmouthshire to Powys with some forays in and out of Herefordshire and Shropshire.
I realise that these blog accounts bear no resemblence to a traditional guide book, and are distinctly lacking in wayside commentary or historic detail. But that is rather point. I have read detailed and wordy blogs on long distance footpaths and, as with the guide book, they have little to say that is memorable if you are not walking the Way as you read them. All Terroir is attempting is to sum up the essence of the trail in a few pictures and fewer words. Inspiring? Good. Boring? Go buy a Guide Book!
Hay on Wye to Knighton - sliding down into Hay from the Black Mountains, we promptly took a day off to explore the town and, of course the book shops. Hay doesn’t grip us. Maybe it needs a festival… But what happens next more than compensates. Next is forgotten Radnorshire, a tapestry of exceptional countryside, with extraordinary towns. Our ancient guide book (John Jones’s ‘Offa’s Dyke Path’, HMSO for the Countryside Commission [remember them?], 1976) speaks of ‘broken hill country’ and ‘the most strenous walking on the Offa’s Dyke Path’. Don’t believe it - the seamless weave of hills and valleys urges you on, begging you to walk to the crest, rewarding you with bizarre surprises, textured and tempting views, and a way down again which enticies with promises of further delights. The diary of the Rev Francis Kilvert, whose ‘country’ this is, also beckons, with lyrical and accessible prose and a historical perspective which makes one weep for lost diversity: ‘Went to Bronith [Bronydd]. People at work in the orchard gathering up the windfall apples for early cider. The smell of the apples very strong. Beyond the orchard the lone aspen was rustling loud and mournfully a lament for the departure of summer’ (Kilvert’s Diary 1870 - 1879, Penguin Books 1987).
We stray off piste, of course. Hergest Croft garden on the way down the long grassy slope from Hergest Ridge is a must (see below). Kington, the sort of a town which supports two butchers where others have none, is described in our guide as ‘not the pleasantest town on the long-distance path’. I hope it gets a better press in the more up to date editions; entering Kington is like walking back into the 1950s and an experience not to be missed. Knighton seemed much more up to date and very much aware of its responsibilities as the ‘capital’ of the Dyke, providing all sorts of useful services to walkers and interested visitors alike.
The Clun Hills - we are in England, perhaps due to aspirational Marcher Lords attempting to push the boundaries forever westwards. The river Clun is the theme, prompting the latter day Marches’ enthusiast, A E Housman, to pen the following: ”
“Clunton and Clunbury,
Clungunford and Clun,
Are the quietest places
Under the sun.
In valleys of springs of rivers,
By Ony and Teme and Clun,
The country for easy livers,
The quietest under the sun,
We still had sorrows to lighten,
One could not be always glad,
And lads knew trouble at Knighton
When I was a Knighton lad.”
It goes on for another four verses but the depression which reading Houseman always induces in me is beginning to become unbearable. Look it up if you want more! The Clun Hills are subtly different from the Radnorshire variety. Here, old Red Sandstone and Dolerite give a rougher, more irregular feel; there is more woodland, scrub and hedge, pasture rather than meadow. It is exhilirating, spooky, varied - and you get to Dyke’s half way point.
Back to the Severn and the Vale of Montgomery - we are coming down off the hills, through woodland and onto the Severn plain, another almost violent change in landscape. There will be hills and views later but the immediate contrast is, literally, a bit of a let down. The Wye is sluggish, recovering from a spate of flooding; silty hedgerows bear witness to recent high water levels. The ground is damp, stolid, riparian, but an unexpected garden bordering the dyke provides domesticity, diversity, delight - and cake. A section of road walking contibutes another downer but suddenly the contours begind to wriggle and twitch and we find ourselves creeping up the ‘foothills’ of the Long Mountain, past the heroic remnants of an an abandoned quarry. Here on the Long Mounain lies ‘Leighton’, originally part of the estate of the same name but donated to the Royal Forestry Soceity (RFS) in 1957. Leighton has many claims to fame, particularly an old grove of Coastal Redwoods, planted in 1857, very shortly after the first specimens were intrduced into Brtiain. They remain unthinned, as requested in the gift, but a 1934 planting is managed by the RFS for timber and for an element of biodivesrity, to support the ‘wide range of plant species and associated insect life [which] … flourish’ in the estate. https://www.rfs.org.uk/media/28903/leighton-info-for-visitors.pdf The Way curves around elaborate dams and ponds (old water management features) and through shade cast by the most ecletic mix of native and exotic species I have seen in some time.
And now the confession. Our pictures of Leighton vanished in a mysterious digital crash, no doubt engineered by the sprites of the Long Mountain, and the heavy shade cast in many areas. So yet another reason for a visit to Offas’s Dyke.
So, as the Long Mountain fairies wreck our sign off at Leighton and the neighburing hill, The Breidden, we will leave you to seek accommodation in Welshpool or Oswestry, or perhaps take a turn in the neighbouring shooting estate, before continuing this journey to Llanymynech, Llandegla and the Vale of Llangollen.
Breaking News
Remember the hedgerow which failed to thrill me in Blog 1? Three cheers for the Surrey Wildlife Trust ( https://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/ ) who have transformed part of the hedge into a heritage and wildlife beauty.
A Good Offa?
Political walls and fences have been in the news with surprising frequency over the last sixty years or so. Just as the Berlin wall comes down, so we see the erection of Trump’s USA/Mexico wall and the Israeli West Bank Barrier. One can only assume that the reactions created by these modern walls - anger, fear, rebellion, frustration and misery to suggest just a few - echo the feelings of those who lived on the ‘wrong side’ of the Great Wall of China or Offa’s Dyke.
In blog 2 (about the Klondike lead mill in North Wales) I asked, ‘How long does it take for an abandoned industrial site to become a piece of archaeology, a piece of heritage and a tourist asset, rather than a blemish or an intrusion?’ The same question applies here. When does a divisive, defensive and thoroughly unpleasant barrier become valuable heritage with a useful story to tell? For once we have recent evidence, thanks to the demolition of the Berlin Wall, initiated on the night of 9th of November 1989. The wall instantly became a very different and very positive symbol and siteseers flocked to its remnants. Destruction, rather than time is, obviously, the key here. With King Offa’s mighty dyke we have both time and, sadly for modern archaeologists, partial demolition on our side.
So what was Offa’s Dyke all about? The story seems to start when the Celts rocked up on British shores (around three thousand years ago), apparently intermixing with the British who were moving from a bronze to iron based technology. The identification of the Celts with the western extremities of the British Isles appears to have been initiated by the Roman invasions, with both sides building forts in the battle for supremacy. What did the Roman’s ever do for us? Well, the foundations for three National Trails, at the very least.
Post the Roman Empire, King Offa of Mercia (an ambitious sounding monarch whose definition of Mercia seems to have included most of southern England at one time or another) is thought to have ordered the construction of a dyke, sometime in the second half of the 8th century. A chap called Wat also constructed a border dyke, but Offa’s is thought to have been bigger and longer. That’s certainly how it looks on the ground today. Poor Wat!
At the time, it seems highly probable that Offa’s Dyke was a very good example of the nasty, political and power based type of construction, in this case built to protect the Angles from their British (aka Welsh) rivals. Of course, geology and geography took a hand in delineating the actual route; uplands and rivers, for example, were probably key factors in creating feasible and defensible boundaries. One can speculate that this worked both ways, and, ironically, may have helped in the attempt to create a defensible principality for Celtic peoples, who were looking at things from the ‘other’ side.
Whatever the original circumstances, Offa’s Dyke seems to have started a trend which was taken up enthusiastically by the Normans, who established a frontier zone under the ‘control’ of the newly created Marcher Lords. In the early 1400s, Owain Glyndŵr had a good go at Henry IV but was, eventually, defeated. At least Glyndŵr had a National Trail named after him. This frontier zone became known as the Welsh Marches. One never hears of the English Marches, of course; the Marcher lords were on the English side but, as fairly frequent border adjustments may illustrate, never quite seemed to pull off full control.
So is the modern National Trail based purely on a political construction project, bits of which are still visible in the landscape? No, of course not! The history, myth and romance of the trail which now bears Offa’s name (sorry Wat…) is down to the social concept of borderlands: power struggles, heroes, containment, independence, subjugation, freedom, Welsh identity and the fight for English supremacy. Thankfully, the dyke also passes through remarkable and extraordinarily varied landscape, thus reinforcing its claim as ideal National Trail material! Definitely a good offer.
Terroir has been walking the Offa’s Dyke National Trail for 6 years. No, ha ha, we aren’t excessively slow walkers. We belong to that group of ramblers known as section walkers. We’ll walk for a week, then come back the following year and do another section. But many would regard us as ‘not quite the thing’. We keep stopping to look at the view, butterflies, birds or plants. We have days off to explore local towns, or visit gardens. We aren’t booked into B & Bs so don’t have to anywhere at any particular time. Shocking behaviour!
So how does one describe a journey along the narrow corridor of a long distance footpath? Offa’s Dyke is particularly idiosyncratic, as it passes through some distinctive but very different landscapes. But to the trail walker, it is the essentially a linear ‘terroir’, specific to the path and its history, which is the essential Offa’s Dyke experience.
The photographs below can only describe our own high lights, assessed through the filters of our own experience and interests, the camera lens, the weather and the people who we meet. But here goes.
From the River Severn to the lower reaches of the River Wye We decided to walk from south to north. Technically, the Trail starts on the top of Sedbury Cliffs, above the Severn estuary, but if seemed churlish not to walk from the estuary itself before heading up the Wye. It is varyingly bleak (the Severn), charming (what a loaded word) (Chepstow), flat, wet, engineered and managed (the lower Wye).
The Wye Valley from Tintern to Monmouth and on towards the Black Mountains Part I We start with the intense delights of green rolls of hills, the steep sided Wye valley, Tintern Abbey, midsummer road verges, lush meadows, relaxation, satisfaction, extensive productivity, small woodlands, small farms, small scale, huge feeling of well being
On towards the Black Mountains Part II Down to the Monmouthshire lowlands, the calm before the uplands; still green, still lush, but no more fairy tales; flatter, occasional meadows already buzzing with the silage cutter, elsewhere things are more intensive, with agricultural monocultures, orchards in scorched earth, less colourful hedgerows and a foretelling of the hills to come
The Black Mountains What a contrast, what a surprise and how typical of the Offa’s Dyke Path - this is by no means the last such landscape volte face which we will discover; the red marls, brown sandstones and conglomerates of the Black Mountains rise with abrupt steepness from the plains below; the Way shows evidence of heavy use in a fragile environment (note the erosion and use of paving to keep us going); a bracing and inspring walk on a good day, an exercise in survival on a bad one
I think this is what novelists call a cliff hanger. As we slither down the northern slopes of the Black Mountains, we will leave you. In our next instalment we will visit Hay on Wye, the Radnorshire Hills and on to the Clun Hills to revisit the Severn.
*Tony Webster: https://www.flickr.com/photos/diversey/16025367585/in/photolist-qq7ct8-5yEX1i-7Tx3yN-kYh1oZ-5uNnm8-kYhUGh-kYgt7H-2dpgogX-5wpW8m-8oRDxV-ouC6x-nxmJUF-8pA9AS-2hYi2ts-2hYi2ro-3GrkV-QTH5Ue-5TKhRm-482uwf-kYgrG8-2bqXuFk-2bmzfXY-2bmzf67-2bmzfpd-z87sX-Ket8uH-kYhWwQ-kYguqK-ebDWxQ-ebyhA2-kYhWah-kYgshg-kYgCQR-kYih7w-kYh2wv-kYh18P-kYgvQi-kYh1ng-kYhWVA-kYh4FF-kYh36g-kYgvCV-kYgv3r-kYgrRr-kYi6kS-kYi6Y5-eLAUFX-8oUQWQ-kYhWjW-b7mecg
**Jonas Witt https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonaswitt/3830661294/in/photolist-6Qv99o-49thm1-7z332x-4SFSsc-49e5b6-4SL4wu-5WvQbo-4SFTx4-4SFRX6-5Wry2K-5WryVV-5WvQos-49patT-5WvQBj-4SFRt4-4SFQWH-nJEqLH-5YvJaJ-4SFK7P-4SFNRn-49p8Hv-4SL2YS-81JzLb-49p9Pk-81JzpW-49tgio-6kLrMu-21fVJoK-81JAH3-81EsMc-21cVaTX-49p9iT-5YvHXj-a84vB6-49tfAf-D1wQhR-CypMjb-7MP8je-7AgjGD-7MT7iU-7Ak6LL-7MT7Pj-K9wHxw-7BJKqo-7AgjEa-7MT7tj-81JCL1-8367w1-YkNMy4-81FtLe
National Treasures
I don’t remember long distance footpaths being a factor in my childhood. As a rather timid child, my holy grail of recreational walking was the public right of way, those comforting pecked red lines on an Ordnance Survey map which gave a right of access and protected you from being shouted at by irate land owners. Yes, this was a real threat in the sixties and early seventies. For us as a family, our ideal long hike lasted just a day and needed to link with a bus stop or train station. As a result, many a walk finished in an undignified run to ensure catching the last bus or the only train for the next two hours. Taxis didn’t feature in our recreational lexicon. The next day, we went for a walk somewhere else.
But others were more active and more adventurous. Pre-war, there was a growing demand for better countryside access, particularly to areas of stunning scenery (championed by amongst others the Ramblers and Youth Hostel Associations). The movement for National Parks and long distance footpaths was given a more formal voice through reports such as the Dower Report on National Parks in England and Wales (1945) and the Hobhouse (1947) Report of the National Parks Committee. This culminated in the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act. Significant changes were afoot. Pun intended.
In 1965 the first of what are now called National Trails was established in England. This was the Pennine Way and I was immediately captivated by the idea of a long distance route, particularly one which appeared to honour the feisty walking traditions of working class Yorkshire and Lancashire and the legendary Kinder Scout mass trespass. Is this how others saw it? The Pennine Way was certainly popular and my first outing, as an ill shod student, was marred by the seeming borderless river of mud created by mass walkers stepping further and further away from the trail to find dry footing. I gather it is a lot easier to negotiate now.
Most of the trails are based on either an existing or a former (if slightly mythical) route such as the North Downs Way (pilgrims) or Peddar’s Way (Romans), on geographical or geological features such as the South Downs Way or the Pennine Way, on water ie the coastal walks or the River Thames, or on historic features such as Hadrian’s Wall or Offa’s Dyke - or a combination of all four. All give stunning landscapes and fascinating cultural features but if you compare, say the Ridgeway with the Cleveland Way, or the Pennine Way with the North Downs Way, you realise just how extraordinarily diverse is our landscape and history.
Scotland has a different access system but has also fallen under the Trail spell. The 96 mile West Highland Way opened in 1980 and there are now 29 Great Trails, as they are known north of the border, varying in length from 24 to 214 miles.
But enough of countryside access history and statistics. I’m going to ask the unmentionable, the heretical question: considering the wealth of walking options available in the UK, do we actually need long distance trails? The long distance footpaths were set up with funding and a dedicated member of staff and were seen as the peak of the recreational walkers’ access options. But are they value for money? Are they worth the effort? Do enough of us use them? Basically, what’s the point? I can hear the yells of protest from here.
Let’s take the long view. Long distance trails are distinctive because walkers can, if they want, follow them consistently for several days, either travelling from end to end in one go, or ‘section walking’ for a number of days to return and pick up the route again at a later date. This type of usage is usually supported by some sort of written guide, distinctive way marking, and overnight facilities ranging from campsites to local hotels. These days, many UK trails also support rural businesses by offering luggage transfer options, often combined with B & B booking to allow walkers to reduce their rucksack weight to day packs only. I can also vouch for farms which run camp sites and first class ice cream parlours within easy reach of a particular NT. So, good for the health (well maybe not the ice cream), good for the local economy, good for the travel guide writers and publishers, good for outdoor equipment shops.
But users of Trails are heard to quantify and describe. There are some stats on the web but they are contradictory and often poorly defined. What does seem to be clear though, is that walkers anywhere tend to be white, professional and reasonably affluent https://www.ramblers.org.uk/advice/facts-and-stats-about-walking/participation-in-walking.aspx That’s not very inclusive. It also seems that use of longer trails is high but numbers actually completing a trail is very low. That’s not the trails’ fault, but it could be interpreted that most people use them as footpaths for the day, rather than for the adventure of walking long distance trail walking.
So why do we love them so much? Our trails tend not to be of the length or remoteness of say, the Appalachian Trail (see Bill Bryson’s book, A Walk in the Woods) or the Pacific Crest Trail (see Jean-Marc Vallée’s film Wild), but there is an allure which makes many people value them. What follows is purely anecdotal (I asked family and friends why they walked, or thought others walked, long distance footpaths) and has no rigorous research base on which to assess the pros and cons of the Trail network. Sure, some of the results are applicable to the typical day walk, but others were much more specific to trail walking. This is what I found:
I like walking
I like seeing something different
Access to stunning countryside
Magical moments – eg wildlife encounters
A challenge
Planned by somebody else
There is a handy guide book (which is also fun to read on my sofa)
Way marked (definitely a double edged sword in my view)
Out of the routine
Feels like a journey rather than just a walk
Romantic, following in the footsteps of history or cultural associations
Ticking off a challenge from a list, collecting something, competiveness, kudos (I’ve done four National Trails, how many have you done?)
Because it’s there
Personal exploration
Meeting other trail walkers, comradery, exchanging experiences
A walking tour – extensive experience of an area (although it can also be like a voyage on a canal or even a motorway journey: you just see a long
strip of countryside; at least the NT’s often give you views over other areas and off route experiences overnight)
A walking route on which one can also hang excursions into nearby places
Is this sufficient justification for all the work which goes into maintaining these trails? Have I missed out something/anything? And finally, how do we make walking more inclusive? Answers please – there is a comment box below.
Next week will be devoted to the beauty of just one National Trail. No rants, I promise.