tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3679334427859816052024-03-12T22:45:09.976+00:00Mythic GeographyWords and images from the boundary between Places and Meaning Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-63898257211316312312024-02-13T12:47:00.002+00:002024-02-13T12:47:31.056+00:00Redgrave Park<p>What's left of Redgrave Park today appalls me because I am old enough to remember what it was once like, over fifty years ago. My family had owned it since 1702, had shaped it with a landscape designed by Capability Brown: the wonderful lake was their idea, as was the Neo-Classical mansion and the parkland buildings inspired by Palladian architecture. The ancient wood-pasture and woodlands were inherited from the past and conserved for purposes of lordly leisure - but conserved they were. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaKTr6Vi-Laac-bYDPTyjhJo4GW7eh7v-4Kp3RLR9AJE-G_V8ODfqIF3v8oq758MVzrX2ikz8IPGZ-Z2avrNytd3Qz-t3FKb8PiXQzP8WxlzDD71K4GGW5_VqCHcaI5kE0Z85xcUvguDMRoXGGJOHmJI9wX5D7B4iiw0Ch8YGAt9QnU4DyR1MSK976tdJx/s700/700%20deer%20in%20redgrave%20park.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="507" data-original-width="700" height="415" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaKTr6Vi-Laac-bYDPTyjhJo4GW7eh7v-4Kp3RLR9AJE-G_V8ODfqIF3v8oq758MVzrX2ikz8IPGZ-Z2avrNytd3Qz-t3FKb8PiXQzP8WxlzDD71K4GGW5_VqCHcaI5kE0Z85xcUvguDMRoXGGJOHmJI9wX5D7B4iiw0Ch8YGAt9QnU4DyR1MSK976tdJx/w573-h415/700%20deer%20in%20redgrave%20park.jpg" width="573" /></a></div><br /><p>Times change. World War Two began the rot by building sprawling hospital and prison camps there. The Hall was pulled down in 1947. My family sold the Park in 1971 to finance a divorce. Meanings are scrambled, unmade, reshaped. Land is ploughed and trees are felled. Families break up. </p><p>In the case of Redgrave Park I think too little has survived from the past; present meanings share very little of the historic richness. Maps, photographs and memories may create resonances in sympathetic souls, but the Park today is tragically detrital and ugly. It is a landscape which has lost most of its heritage, its soul. Not even the truly ancient oak trees were immune to transmogrification: they were cut down and not replanted. Belts of trees were felled. Buildings were allowed to rot. <br /><br />Twenty years ago I distilled what I know of the history of Redgrave Park into a website. Eventually it was taken down when the digital platform changed. Forged in HTML code communicated by dial-up modem, it now survives as a ghost ship berthed in the Wayback Machine, a repository where abandoned websites await the resurrection.</p><p>Here is the access code: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120312123121/http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/redgravehistory/redgravepark.htm" target="_blank">Redgrave Park - an historical tour</a>. I have tried to communicate something of the rich history of the place. I hope you will find something to stir your imagination. </p><p><br /></p><p> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p><p><br /></p>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0Botesdale, Diss IP22 1DE, UK52.3453926 1.011479124.035158763821151 -34.1447709 80.655626436178835 36.1677291tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-80348281027319624662022-03-17T09:37:00.009+00:002024-02-13T11:48:33.727+00:00Out on the Plateau10th January 2020<br />
<br />
<br />
The plateau areas of High Suffolk and South Norfolk are founded on the same sticky glacial clay. Their fields, lanes, farmsteads and settlements have a reassuring sameness which comes from a single geological heritage.<br />
<br />
Like my friend <a href="http://lassepress.com/matt.html" target="_blank">Matt</a> I think that geology determines so much more than we are aware of. '<i>Geology drives everything</i>', he claims.[1] He is a devotee of 'psychogeology', a branch of knowledge '<i>whereby we would study the specific effects of the subterranean city, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals and the development of culture</i>' (ibid, p.148). Can we do the same for countryside?<br />
<br />
This afternoon I needed to get out of the house. A month of illness has left me light-deprived and weak. I parked near Syleham Mill beside the River Waveney. I had an obscure intention of just walking along the damp meadows, then climbing the valley side and returning by a country lane on the plateau. This plan worked well until I realised that the sun was rapidly hiding itself in the trees and overgrown hedges of the valley bottom, though occasional shafts of light were still sneaking through. An old gate post was transfigured with a green-gold glow - the result of an alchemy between photons and algae. It reminded me how much I wanted the light. I had to escape the valley.<br />
<br />
A well-used stile opened onto a rising footpath and offered the right opening. Within two minutes I was out into the sun's domain; I was part of the plateau scene. Cool wind was streaming from the south, and chilling my face. Light streamed from a golden sunwheel close to setting, lighting up the hawthorn hedgerow on my left-hand side, making me blink. Then I noticed something unusual: if I closed my right eye the bushes took on a reddish tint; if I closed my left they took on a yellowish one. Walking on, I repeated the experiment: the results were the same. Then opening both eyes together, the hedge became a beautiful orange colour. My painter friend <a href="http://www.juliasorrell.com/" target="_blank">Julia </a>would have noticed this too; she would certainly have known which pigments to reach for on her palette.<br />
<br />
Out on the clay plateau, close to sunset, the land was shifting towards dusk. I had an hour at best <br />
to complete my walker's circle, but I had a deep desire to keep sharing the sun's remnants. I needed to keep walking across open ground - out in the uplands of Syleham.<br />
<br />
A public footpath was signposted across ploughland, but the waymark posts soon disappeared. Close to sunset, surrounded by an austere and unpeopled landscape, I wanted to range at will. I trudged past skimpy hedgelines and bare headlands; I circled a lonely pond. I harvested the last rays of sunlight. To the south, the darker mass of a large and ancient farmstead, Syleham Hall, about a half mile distant and surrounded by tall trees. Underfoot, the wintry, green turf and the ploughsoil itself, coloured something between brown and yellow and derived from a weathered matrix of blue-grey, glacial clay.<br />
<br />A mournful feeling began growing on me at sunset. Nothing to do with my state of general physical debilitation or sense of isolation in this lonely upland. It was that familiar sense of depression, common to anyone who understands the fate of the countryside in the last 60 years. Passing along a flail-mown hedgerow I looked into it for signs of old birds' nests but could see none. Modern intensive arable farming has left the plateau seedless, insectless and mostly treeless. A few grassy headlands and straggling hedges are remnants of a patchwork of fields that once gave character to the area and nourished a very diverse population of plants, birds and insects. We know this because we have old maps to go by, and accounts of the abundance of, for example, flocks of buntings and finches overwintering on partly gleaned stubble and the wealth of arable weed species that once infused the ground. Today, it's as though the claylands have fallen under a malign spell. Even though the elements of the earlier - in many places relict Mediaeval - pattern of fields, farms, woods, ponds and commons can still be discerned here and there on the claylands [2], the wider effect of 20th century agricultural change has been to erode and dissolve too much of this meaningful landscape and to coarsen its details. The monotonous, brown body of the boulder clay, deprived of its native biodiversity, has been turned into a sterile growing medium for high-yielding crop types. Nobody blames the farmers for doing that; I think that if <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraquat" target="_blank">Gramoxone </a>had been available to the farmers of the Neolithic they would probably have used it on their fields (if not on each other). But the future is not looking good. The surface of the boulder clay is no longer a properly structured soil with humus and earthworms but a heavy, lifeless paste. Natural wealth of one kind, beneficial for all living things, has given way to wealth of another kind, stacked up in the bank accounts of chemical companies and supermarkets.<br />
<br />
I reached the outskirts of Syleham Hall Farm, a cluster of large agricultural barns with bales of plastic-wrapped silage and a small, whirring wind turbine. The house itself was hidden, but the tall trees surrounding it were a reminder that not this landscape is treeless. Discretely skirting the site, I came across a waymarked stile and an old pasture containing a pond. Syleham Hall Farm evidently still practices mixed farming! This is rarer in the claylands than one might think, and has beneficial implications for landscape as well as wildlife conservation.<br />
<br />
I have always liked old clayland ponds in pasture. My favourite example would be the one at <a href="http://mythicgeography.blogspot.com/p/snape-hill.html" target="_blank">Snape Green, Rickinghall</a>. These sites have real character: they have beaches: a pot-holed and sticky terrain which is awkward to walk across in any season; they have cliffs: clayey steeps beneath grassy brows that strangely never seem to slump or crumble; their waters are almost always opaque with duckweed or suspended clay particles. Some may have begun life as sources of daub or clay lump for buildings, but all owe their formation to centuries-old interactions between water, clay and trampling feet. Like a cliffed coastline, their edges are fretted with promontories and embayments. They are a magnet for wildlife of all kinds.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hilSlE8ouKc/XhyNAMpE4_I/AAAAAAAACCQ/ezSJpWMRNMAhOytG8yX5agIEG15boVQpgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/600%2Bsyleham%2Bpond%2BTHW_0022%253D%2Bbdr.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="455" data-original-width="604" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hilSlE8ouKc/XhyNAMpE4_I/AAAAAAAACCQ/ezSJpWMRNMAhOytG8yX5agIEG15boVQpgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/600%2Bsyleham%2Bpond%2BTHW_0022%253D%2Bbdr.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pond at Hall Farm Meadow, Syleham.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div><br /><div>
Syleham Hall was only a few hundred yards away, and its surrounding thicket of trees was dark but noisy. Stark against the dying light, the tops of the oaks and ashes were scrambled with an auld alliance of rooks and jackdaws coming in to roost with their usual lively racket of caws, croaks, and creaks. They reminded me that it was time for me to head for home, down Hall Lane and back into valley.<br />
<br />
A windless dusk-fall can be a time for sharpened senses. Our pupils are open as an owl's to catch the last light. Facing the afterglow, everything is etched in black silhouette: trees, bushes, hillsides, blades of grass, all melting from three into two dimensions. Our hearing picks up distant detail: the sounds of a trickling field drain, a dog's bark or a human voice may carry a long way through still air.</div><div><br /></div><div>Legs feeling noticeably weak and tired, I descended the lane, but my attention was focused. </div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Rustling of water over bare flints in the floor of a ditch where the plateau was shrugging away recent rainfall. </li><li>A ribbon of pale mist filling the ditch where air had been chilled to dew point, though invisible when reached. </li><li>The gradual blueing and eventual removal of all colours by night-fall.</li><li>Granular optics of gloom: retinal cells pixilating vision.</li></ul>
Looking back from the shadows of the Waveney valley, I could see the sharp boundary between silhouetted field slope and south-western sky appearing in crystalline clarity, etched. A Manichaean nigredo. <br /><br />Here, at the boundary between day and night on the edge of the High Suffolk clayland, the categories of Time and Place are neither one thing nor another to the human mind. They dissolve. </div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div>------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div>
<br />
CITATIONS<br />
<br />
[1] - Williams, M. '<i>Subterranean Norwich. The grain of the city</i>'. Lasse Press, Norwich, 2017.<br />
[2] - Warner, P. '<i>Greens, Commons and Clayland Colonisation. The origins and development of green-side settlement in East Suffolk'</i>. Leicester University Press, 1987.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-13157525403403780262022-02-14T14:53:00.020+00:002022-03-21T12:49:31.618+00:00Broad Cottage<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We used to have a place in The Broads. A small estate, comprising house (Broad Cottage), lake (Buckenham Broad) and tracts of swampy woodland (Buckenham Carrs). </span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgdUVE8HCZZSlB_ZG8lF4IBWYLNxAqmEIxepLD-BI_EXFl9YjGQ8Ore_mD1N2GutUYhULpatt2LG15HXeSWoJ9mlSfs7dY1O9pwyh65z5CGTZtoFvrr1xIogBGcGhHU_VtLJCnOKzu_likR3n1tUCq56LMhRned8ir4T2tCnSCDETslzQxtdQKL2tVRUA=s600" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="419" data-original-width="600" height="403" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgdUVE8HCZZSlB_ZG8lF4IBWYLNxAqmEIxepLD-BI_EXFl9YjGQ8Ore_mD1N2GutUYhULpatt2LG15HXeSWoJ9mlSfs7dY1O9pwyh65z5CGTZtoFvrr1xIogBGcGhHU_VtLJCnOKzu_likR3n1tUCq56LMhRned8ir4T2tCnSCDETslzQxtdQKL2tVRUA=w579-h403" width="579" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Buckenham Broad, by J.C. Harrison</span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><br style="font-family: arial;" /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhPh3faqjFuAH3AK4rOBZ7oHIVeMwI0ZUGDOE5Ts0A7yypPe1eS2KmyvkuMuvt0oSTP0pow8VVZJXjByzIj57Q1pY7X9vGWtMwPpxGaAeEI5hf_2FRfu9aycLgGcsp8CoJNLuKm_2zl_E6TLUxfkAByLElmOcAiYolgD8vxjnbNyUZfAI6OaDg0lxZubA=s800" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="470" data-original-width="800" height="347" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhPh3faqjFuAH3AK4rOBZ7oHIVeMwI0ZUGDOE5Ts0A7yypPe1eS2KmyvkuMuvt0oSTP0pow8VVZJXjByzIj57Q1pY7X9vGWtMwPpxGaAeEI5hf_2FRfu9aycLgGcsp8CoJNLuKm_2zl_E6TLUxfkAByLElmOcAiYolgD8vxjnbNyUZfAI6OaDg0lxZubA=w590-h347" width="590" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Broad Cottage in 1957. </span><br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">As a boy, it was one one of my favourite places. There was a thatched boathouse connected to the Broad by a canal, equipped with two clinker-built rowing boats and a Canadian canoe hanging from the rafters; there were also fishing nets and wooden decoys hanging up. There was a thatched, wooden summerhouse on a sandy knoll. There was a marble statue of a naked lady holding a fish beside the jetty. It was a place for adventures. The old, wicker bath-chair could be pressed into service for fast slalom runs down the drive, with a ducking in a canal at the end if the non-existent brakes failed. Mosquitoes were very bad; </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">water mint was odorous; </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">dragonflies were magnificent; herons were flapping pterodactyls. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgk04sxx_HOHTizlUPtX0nPrtpTvsqUhgyxHpqJl1w7a7rRSOG9TgCeym-V4E5676Uvq_FpnsgMoCNfDTDQ3lSYOYqMJJnB3ymFjrzuqRubXjrhjPJBCk4ZLsVK1eXVCv0W_Jod2Cjl8c7gpw9F4-hFhAc3AACUnxLaDvCkBh1yJKeT7dYoJKrCf9F7CQ=s800" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="555" data-original-width="800" height="394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgk04sxx_HOHTizlUPtX0nPrtpTvsqUhgyxHpqJl1w7a7rRSOG9TgCeym-V4E5676Uvq_FpnsgMoCNfDTDQ3lSYOYqMJJnB3ymFjrzuqRubXjrhjPJBCk4ZLsVK1eXVCv0W_Jod2Cjl8c7gpw9F4-hFhAc3AACUnxLaDvCkBh1yJKeT7dYoJKrCf9F7CQ=w569-h394" width="569" /></a></div><br /><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">My father had a trout farm business based at Bibury in Gloucestershire, but used Broad Cottage as a source of coarse fish to stock river and lakes in East Anglia. He inherited the business off his uncle Oliver, who traded as The Weston Fishery, based at Weston Longville in the Wensum valley. It was the home of his grandmother and her youngest son Henry, known to me as Uncle Tony. When I knew him he was a smoky, beery, tweedy old gent with nicotine-stained fingers and a bad cough who was a regular at the Cantley Cock. </span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEinTX-DIrf70zMR2HKkD7Zw3wH9iFA7e45fE4SsdoZW1-IZyGuyO6SVW8xgT9msk8Lytguo0b9suMUdboeayE5KUg3y_SPOw1JXDK0I0axcMQJwa1-T8IMiG1oIOR4IYiK316nM3v1jZhTNQRyU4kcdtcU1FLI2i9SdDwGqgo3xcAt2tSnCAykvWO6C4Q=s600" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="600" height="415" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEinTX-DIrf70zMR2HKkD7Zw3wH9iFA7e45fE4SsdoZW1-IZyGuyO6SVW8xgT9msk8Lytguo0b9suMUdboeayE5KUg3y_SPOw1JXDK0I0axcMQJwa1-T8IMiG1oIOR4IYiK316nM3v1jZhTNQRyU4kcdtcU1FLI2i9SdDwGqgo3xcAt2tSnCAykvWO6C4Q=w555-h415" width="555" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Weston Fishery, c.1950</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEitV2HTK-nnbaGHIAs6zqwuq-c1aqrLHJuXp2vCj-h6-Ll4wTmND07V0tHWCkJVOlpatkiyysY7010ilU0CAxmQRfg6NvTxTKy7AzHZMNRRaz9oNs4U52RXI3zZO7erWoqFydnJ0Os_1pecoYmhMNN6gZB2rKV-Ww5hBlyGP3NCFRLAAeVNB1Y9R19GhA=s600" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="460" data-original-width="600" height="437" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEitV2HTK-nnbaGHIAs6zqwuq-c1aqrLHJuXp2vCj-h6-Ll4wTmND07V0tHWCkJVOlpatkiyysY7010ilU0CAxmQRfg6NvTxTKy7AzHZMNRRaz9oNs4U52RXI3zZO7erWoqFydnJ0Os_1pecoYmhMNN6gZB2rKV-Ww5hBlyGP3NCFRLAAeVNB1Y9R19GhA=w571-h437" width="571" /></a></div><br /><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We would set out in two boats piled with nets and followed by floating tanks. He cast his nets in a wide semi-circle across the Broad then we would slowly tighten them in towards the shore. Equipped with hand nets and wading boots he would sweep up the fish, checking species, sizing some and throwing them back, counting others before tossing them into the tanks; the pike he would throw over his shoulder into the bushes where they were left - callously in my opinion - to gasp and flap out their lives. We sometimes visited Hassingham Broad, where he had an agreement with the owner, It was reached via a connecting canal - more of a shady tunnel through thickets of carr. Another canal led to the River Yare. It emerged from the woods and tracked across grazing marshes, went under a railway bridge then joined the Yare. My father said that when he was a boy cinders from passing steam engines would plop into the water under the bridge with a shocking hiss. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The situation at Broad Cottage today is sad. The house is no longer inhabited. The boathouse and summerhouse have vanished. If people don't reside in a place and care for it it soon falls apart. However, the wetlands, carrs and canals remain. Indeed, Buckenham Carrs has recently found fame as a roosting rendezvous for big flocks of rooks and jackdaws, featured in 'Crow Country' by Mark Cocker. This phenomenon was not mentioned when I was young, so perhaps it's recent. Also, i</span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">t gladdens me to know that the site has become recognised as a rich hotspot for Broadland biodiversity - as recently published in '</span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The ecology and biodiversity of Buckenham Carrs</span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">', edited by Mark Collins of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Trust (#54,1 2021). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Nature is an Heraclitean fire. The only constant is change. What endures are those memories which we carry with us - particularly the foundational ones of childhood - and more solid structures such as bricks and mortar, hillsides, valleys and the geological strata which hold them in place. Old cottages collapse and thatched boathouses are destroyed. The woods and waters survive. I have Broad Cottage squirreled away in the storied fabric of my boyhood memory, just as it was in my father's. It represents a sort of wild Eden which neither of us ever forgot. </span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJps3FDdgs8UKM0od5gMUXULbbszvNxqrd2LSs091u91iKFK8shOV23OdwrtgKlZJDVbHXy-AUGSfNyJjU-tlDjiTJUIIFO1FcZtnSYlCTUW1WxuFT5y9NfyxySoiUV1XjPY8MuV5QQy-9VRd6Q5KtpHpksB9Q0JHYyrm-gYPrDZe4hndhjYFuCuu8uQ=s800" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="564" data-original-width="800" height="415" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJps3FDdgs8UKM0od5gMUXULbbszvNxqrd2LSs091u91iKFK8shOV23OdwrtgKlZJDVbHXy-AUGSfNyJjU-tlDjiTJUIIFO1FcZtnSYlCTUW1WxuFT5y9NfyxySoiUV1XjPY8MuV5QQy-9VRd6Q5KtpHpksB9Q0JHYyrm-gYPrDZe4hndhjYFuCuu8uQ=w588-h415" width="588" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A shooting party, c.1950. Note thatched roof.<br />Second from left is Alan Savory, <br />author of 'Norfolk Fowler' and other books.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">When </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Uncle Tony died in 1970 an era went with him, and Broad Cottage was sold. For some reason successive owners have not deepened their connection to the place; they have let it drift unoccupied, seemingly as some sort of unfulfilled, weekend project. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It would be good if Broad Cottage could become a family home - a place with real meaning, and not just a venue for occasional shooting parties or for watching dusky rook armadas. Children need to run free there, explore the woods and wetlands and discover wonders. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It would also make a wonderful nature study centre.</span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhvh8Dv6Wi89ZFFtSqU7EjajP1CAjhkmOy3OnFzECxjFqCZqHEYyJX0gJTA6T9yoLOJEKTxEo-nH8rE6B7ntIzset1dgRpNQsulfqMk7GvjUJiFY5CSHgXbEKXaeSHd2-QaiN5nBGtXB85ilSEuR2pCDIDRoIcIxKUoFWAPUf98Bz4_Ta2_N6Aau6WxgA=s844" style="font-family: helvetica; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="844" data-original-width="800" height="587" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhvh8Dv6Wi89ZFFtSqU7EjajP1CAjhkmOy3OnFzECxjFqCZqHEYyJX0gJTA6T9yoLOJEKTxEo-nH8rE6B7ntIzset1dgRpNQsulfqMk7GvjUJiFY5CSHgXbEKXaeSHd2-QaiN5nBGtXB85ilSEuR2pCDIDRoIcIxKUoFWAPUf98Bz4_Ta2_N6Aau6WxgA=w556-h587" width="556" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Uncle Tony's grave at Hassingham.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /><br /></span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p><p> </p>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-65959520645689950142016-02-09T09:57:00.003+00:002017-03-13T22:42:39.412+00:00In the South Downs4-1-2016<br />
<br />
I do not know the South Downs, but my visit to Petersfield last week was drawn into their power. They looked grey and brooding in the mizzling weather blowing up from the south. <br />
<br />
Locals must be familiar with these hills and the bulk that forms a backdrop to their lives: southwards towards Burriton, westwards to Ramsdean, northwards to Steep. They frame all views except eastward, into Sussex, where the Weald lies.<br />
<br />
The hills are chalk; their summits are mostly bare and their slopes are mostly wooded. In past centuries they would have been given over to sheep, with flocks crossing the downland turf. The Downs remain but sheep and downland are mostly a memory now, as arable or tree plantations have taken over. What would the poet Edward Thomas have made of this? He lived at Steep; he walked these hills, knew their paths and people; he digested what he saw and felt, he distilled it into his ungainly yet ecstatic, wild yet thoughtful writing, in which the character of nature is blended with his own troubled soul. He chronicled the pre-War world just before it crumbled. He wrote a book 'The South Country' and filled it with his response to the Downs.<br />
<br />
My friend Jonathan W. runs a sawmill near Butser Hill. He manages <a href="https://www.facebook.com/whitelandswood.co.uk/" target="_blank">Whitelands Wood</a>, with its modern stands of ash and western red cedar climbing the northern flanks of the hill. He nurtures a few ancient yew trees in clearings. He delights in the wood's biodiversity. Old man's beard scrambles along the fences and up the trees; Roman snails still live in the rough chalky soil. Otherwise there are few traces of the ancient downland visible on old maps and which developed here since the Bronze Age. Constant grazing is just not practical. Times have changed.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lk2U48Qzv9w/Vor3cNFeLFI/AAAAAAAABQk/tlUK957ngUM/s1600/600%2BTHW_0025%2Badj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lk2U48Qzv9w/Vor3cNFeLFI/AAAAAAAABQk/tlUK957ngUM/s1600/600%2BTHW_0025%2Badj.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buried path - a former downland trackway, with flints and mosses underfoot</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
On Tuesday Jonathan and I drove to the Shepherd's Church at Didling, with his son Bede and grey, shaggy lurcher Beaumont for company. The chalk escarpment runs east-west here, fronted by a dark ribbon of woodland; its summits are green and bare. The church stands alone, surrounded by fields and is reached by a farm track, which becomes a footpath that continues towards Didling Hill. We paid our respects to this ancient shrine before walking on, with Beaumont trotting along in a universe of smells. The day was patchy sunlight with passing clouds. I became absorbed by the hill's wooded presence as we climbed towards it. Edward Thomas's words were flickering through my thoughts: old man's beard, '<i>that hoar-green feathery herb' </i>and how the scent of its shrivelled seed heads evoked unplaceable memories; the shell of <i>'a little snail bleached in the grass, chips of flint and mite of chalk</i>'; the badger, '<i>that most ancient Briton of English beasts</i>', dug from his sett and given to the hounds in a dark combe with '<i>sliding chalk by beech and yew and perishing juniper</i>'.<br />
<br />
We passed a chalk pit; we entered the wood.<br />
<br />
The world changed - ash and yew crowding around us. Deprived of grassy cover, the topsoil showed bare flint and chalk in the gloom beneath the trees, which the deer had browsed into a canopy just below head height. Brown and white earth from a badger's sett was mounded up between the roots of a large ash. A pile of yew seeds in various stages of decomposition marked a vole's winter feasting place. Beaumont was in his element, alert, alive and questing. We diverged from the path a bit, exploring tree bark with a forester's eye, reading the past written into its hard, rumpled textures. Jonathan noticed a scatter of prehistoric flint knapping debris underfoot, white shards glowing in tree shade - they would have been hidden by an overgrowth of turf had this been open downland. In places I found my feet struggling to grip on the sloping soil, the sliding chalk.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vBNmN19L2Fo/Vrm9IOtJ2GI/AAAAAAAABRc/izLY0JxqrnM/s1600/600%2Bwood%2Bslopes%2B065.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vBNmN19L2Fo/Vrm9IOtJ2GI/AAAAAAAABRc/izLY0JxqrnM/s1600/600%2Bwood%2Bslopes%2B065.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sdB495KhNcg/VrnASFOdXVI/AAAAAAAABR8/PYgZ4Lvbids/s1600/600%2Bash%2B%2526%2Byew%2B048.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: inline; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sdB495KhNcg/VrnASFOdXVI/AAAAAAAABR8/PYgZ4Lvbids/s400/600%2Bash%2B%2526%2Byew%2B048.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #cccccc;">.</span><br />
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
</w:Compatibility>
<w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel>
</w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><br />
<!--[if !mso]><img src="//img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" />
<style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style>
<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
</style>
<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The old world of the </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Downs</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> finds
shelter beneath the trees. </span>Here, we move into a different, set-aside space on a north-facing scarp too steep for farming. Root and tree, teeth and fur, flint and bone; the smell of earth and vegetable decay; animal trails, invisible. The elder world seems closer here, with Thomas's sturdy footsteps close behind us and the whisper of corduroy as he walks past, struggling with his thoughts. He has a weekend's leave from the Army; he is walking to clear his head, clear the turbulence of a homecoming to his wife Helen and their three clamouring children ten miles way in the cottage at Steep. They only remember him as he was before he enlisted. He is walking to find the words he needs, to encounter places where his own nature can do its work of healing; he strides out to forget everything on earth '<i>except that it is lovelier than any mysteries</i>'. He sees a fallow deer as it watches him under the trees; it stamps then runs. He finds himself alone.<br />
<br />
We turned and left the wood.We hadn't even reached its upper margins, where open skies and downland begin - I don't know why: I would have relished a summit view. For some reason the wood had been enough, a saturation. Beaumont trotted on across the reseeded grass ley, indifferent to its green monoculture. <br />
<br />
Meaning flourishes in spots of diversity in the landscape, like a 13th century flint church, a pile of yew seeds between the roots of a tree, or the smell of a badger.<br />
<br />
Such things are worth walking to find.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nxXWY8xuRJQ/Vrm-oeHU2_I/AAAAAAAABRs/hkwzwXdczUQ/s1600/600%2Bdowns%2B06%2Bbdr25.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nxXWY8xuRJQ/Vrm-oeHU2_I/AAAAAAAABRs/hkwzwXdczUQ/s1600/600%2Bdowns%2B06%2Bbdr25.jpg" /> </a><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nxXWY8xuRJQ/Vrm-oeHU2_I/AAAAAAAABRs/hkwzwXdczUQ/s1600/600%2Bdowns%2B06%2Bbdr25.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </a><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nxXWY8xuRJQ/Vrm-oeHU2_I/AAAAAAAABRs/hkwzwXdczUQ/s1600/600%2Bdowns%2B06%2Bbdr25.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </a></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Cjq-VYUfepU/VrnyThDJjaI/AAAAAAAABSM/KegaxvpbQnE/s1600/Edward-Thomas-Photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Cjq-VYUfepU/VrnyThDJjaI/AAAAAAAABSM/KegaxvpbQnE/s320/Edward-Thomas-Photo.jpg" width="245" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://warpoets.org.uk/worldwar1/poets-and-poetry/edward-thomas/" target="_blank">Edward Thomas</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-85948565626217208432014-01-11T12:53:00.000+00:002014-10-28T10:49:24.832+00:00Shingle Street, Suffolk29th October 2013<br />
<br />
I seized the day. There was blue sky this morning, but glum-looking rain after lunch put me off a planned trip to Shingle Street, near Woodbridge, to photograph the landforms. I asked the Met Office website for its prognosis: patchy sunshine but a raincloud over Woodbridge. I settled down for a doomed afternoon at my desk, but was woken from my lethargy by sunshine knocking on the window. Quickly pulling together clothing, snacks, boots and bits I set off - a roll of the dice: I was trusting to luck.<br />
<br />
The car quietly navigating the winding early autumn roads, out through Eye, Debenham, Otley, Clopton - funny little places - passing chainsawed limbs and branches from St Jude's Storm lying beside the road. Heading south-eastwards, tracking a blue sky shot with grey.<br />
<br />
Shingle Street is a single street of cottages with a grandstand view of the North Sea. Today the movie was sunshine and rain clouds on a westerly breeze, with a rainbow for company. The River Alde meets the sea here, and the two currents tussle and create tide-washed islands of shingle and the southernmost tip of the long coastal spit of Orfordness, 16 miles long stretching south from Aldeburgh.<br />
<br />
Everything is pure becoming at Shingle Street; nothing stays put; all is flow - just cloud, beach, water and sky: the Heraclitean flux. For me, this is the meaning of the place.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UAZMHmvy2PI/UtE7qSi__yI/AAAAAAAAAz8/pXlvlS9iDlk/s1600/550+THW_0006+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UAZMHmvy2PI/UtE7qSi__yI/AAAAAAAAAz8/pXlvlS9iDlk/s1600/550+THW_0006+.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HN6GPN2E3qw/UtE8iFsiYpI/AAAAAAAAA0I/5lr1voRVu6M/s1600/550+THW_0049+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HN6GPN2E3qw/UtE8iFsiYpI/AAAAAAAAA0I/5lr1voRVu6M/s1600/550+THW_0049+.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PxnYYbgxEz8/UtE8lDr9o_I/AAAAAAAAA0Q/0W-gxWonTVQ/s1600/550+THW_0077+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PxnYYbgxEz8/UtE8lDr9o_I/AAAAAAAAA0Q/0W-gxWonTVQ/s1600/550+THW_0077+.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rEJipTMVulc/UtE8n-thpPI/AAAAAAAAA0Y/g7wECkd_gy0/s1600/550+THW_0127+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rEJipTMVulc/UtE8n-thpPI/AAAAAAAAA0Y/g7wECkd_gy0/s1600/550+THW_0127+.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j2vhzEOQ1_Y/UtE-DrJnMSI/AAAAAAAAA0s/MxvrpmxkG3M/s1600/550+THW_0113+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j2vhzEOQ1_Y/UtE-DrJnMSI/AAAAAAAAA0s/MxvrpmxkG3M/s1600/550+THW_0113+.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3r27FHM6QBU/UtE8s6vnwUI/AAAAAAAAA0g/5YuuqtzSaaU/s1600/550+THW_0153+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3r27FHM6QBU/UtE8s6vnwUI/AAAAAAAAA0g/5YuuqtzSaaU/s1600/550+THW_0153+.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wIXRgHk0kgM/UtE-QcVetnI/AAAAAAAAA00/tZNKB83YQ1Q/s1600/550+THW_0167+adj++.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wIXRgHk0kgM/UtE-QcVetnI/AAAAAAAAA00/tZNKB83YQ1Q/s1600/550+THW_0167+adj++.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-89875951940771198702013-12-04T21:45:00.002+00:002015-10-30T12:09:41.434+00:00The sources of the Little Ouse<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Little Ouse river has been a neighbour for most of my life. I was brought up in its catchment area, its villages are familiar, and I have often explored its marshy reaches on foot and via maps. Its sister river is the Waveney; both rise in the flat lands around Lopham Ford on the boundaries between the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk; they are like Siamese twins joined at the head, but each flows in different directions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_qIrVUwIe7o/Up-jo6SlZxI/AAAAAAAAAwY/a28Xid78h8E/s1600/400+Lopham+Ford+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_qIrVUwIe7o/Up-jo6SlZxI/AAAAAAAAAwY/a28Xid78h8E/s1600/400+Lopham+Ford+2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reproduced from Ordanance Survey map 1:25,000, 1891. </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Waveney is the more impressive river; it flows eastwards through the claylands and the Broads for 59 miles to meet the North Sea at Great Yarmouth. The Little Ouse is more modest and more obscure, and is just 37 miles long. It rises in the claylands then flows eastwards for four miles before entering the chalky and sandy confines of <a href="http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/publications/nca/the_brecks.aspx" target="_blank">Breckland</a>, through which it flows into the Fen basin. Its waters there dissolve into the Great Ouse, and hence go into The Wash. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9U5knJ9mW20/Up-fNEe9rLI/AAAAAAAAAwM/ZTSH3XknIO8/s1600/500+Blo+Norton+Fen+swamp+woodland+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9U5knJ9mW20/Up-fNEe9rLI/AAAAAAAAAwM/ZTSH3XknIO8/s1600/500+Blo+Norton+Fen+swamp+woodland+3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Swamp woodland at Blo' Norton Fen. A century ago this site was was open fen, but the progressive effects of <br />drainage and cessation of economic management for reed and sedge have allowed it to fall back to woodland.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In 2011, the <a href="http://lohp.org.uk/" target="_blank">Little Ouse Headwaters Project </a> (LOHP) commissioned the <a href="http://www.cultureofthecountryside.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Sainsbury Centre</a> to develop a creative group to explore artistic responses to this part of the valley. My contribution to this enterprise was a book. It weaves together text, photographs and images from many sources, and my fellow photographers are Gill Farlam, Mary Thompson, <a href="http://www.sheilatilmouth.co.uk/" target="_blank">Sheila Tilmouth</a> and David Whatley. We used the 19th century Albion hand press at <a href="http://www.franciscupiss.co.uk/" target="_blank">Francis Cupiss Ltd</a> to print the book's title.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />The name of the book is 'Sources'. It is a multi-faceted phenomenology of water, touching on its ageless life in the valley and its relationship to people, places, plants and animals. It is also a tribute to the rewilding work of the LOHP in the five parishes of Blo' Norton, Garboldisham, Hinderclay, South Lopham and Thelnetham. Their habitat restoration work is stemming past ecological degradation in the valley, and helping to promote the valley's natural wealth. Its source is water.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />'Sources' is published online, via print-on-demand (paperback or hardback formats), and is available at cost price.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Click <a href="http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/4882030-sources" target="_blank">here</a> to see a book preview.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-53734692238326335822013-09-29T23:32:00.002+01:002014-01-01T13:35:56.371+00:00Ducking Stool MeadowI discovered Ducking Stool Meadow when I was 15 years old. I found its name on an old Estate map of West Hall Farm; it was shown as two long fields, a small stream and a pond. The stream is unnamed, but we may call it the Rickinghall Brook. It runs through a broad, shallow valley gathering water from West Hall farm and the high Suffolk claylands beyond.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ii-LyNJZzp0/UkijWvn-SuI/AAAAAAAAAuc/La32gpqLLvM/s1600/300+meadow+map+1856.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ii-LyNJZzp0/UkijWvn-SuI/AAAAAAAAAuc/La32gpqLLvM/s400/300+meadow+map+1856.jpg" width="196" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Redgrave Estate map, 1856</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My bedroom window was high up, giving a distant view of Westhall Wood - a large, dark rampart on the horizon over a mile away. I knew Ducking Stool Meadow was somewhere out in the intervening farmland, but as far as I could see there was only arable in the valley: a land of barley and sugar beet.<br />
<br />
I have never been to look for the Meadow - that is, not until today. I am now 54 years old, so it has spent the last 39 years in my imagination, as a lurid site of manorial justice and misogynistic cruelty. Today I walked local footpaths and trespassed across arable land to discover the reality.<br />
<br />
The Meadow is gone - replaced by a sugar beet field - and the stream is just a grass-choked ditch. The pond remains, however, next to an ancient looking hedge, and show signs of recent re-excavation, with mounds of vegetated spoil either side of it. The edges and floor have a thick growth of Reed Canary-grass. A large Red Fox sprang up and ran away at my approach; a Great Spotted Woodpecker was calling <i>pic pic pic</i> from a nearby oak tree; a young Moorhen splattered across the pond then loitered on the other side watching for a while - perhaps I was the first human it had ever seen close to. The pond has evidently a life of its own, and has been managed fairly recently, probably for duck shooting.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hUXJloJc_ns/Ukic3dezBwI/AAAAAAAAAuM/8l3mwkMz32k/s1600/500+Ducking+Stool+Pond+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hUXJloJc_ns/Ukic3dezBwI/AAAAAAAAAuM/8l3mwkMz32k/s1600/500+Ducking+Stool+Pond+2.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
It is difficult to believe that this quiet spot may once have been witness to pitiful cries and jeering satisfactions. The roots of ducking as a punishment run back into the Middle Ages, as part of the justice administered by Lords of the Manor. There were three manors in Rickinghall: Westhall, Facon's Hall and Fitzjohn's. All three survive in title; the first two survive as the manorial farmsteads (West Hall and nearby Facon's Hall), but Fitzjohn's only survives as a field name. None of these sites are more than ¾ mile away from the Meadow, so perhaps the ducking stool was a joint manorial waterboarding resource.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jptSIqeVH1U/Ukib14Mdy8I/AAAAAAAAAt8/R_rq8jplGFE/s1600/500+800px-Ducking-Stool_1_(PSF).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jptSIqeVH1U/Ukib14Mdy8I/AAAAAAAAAt8/R_rq8jplGFE/s1600/500+800px-Ducking-Stool_1_(PSF).jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Image by Pearson Scott Foresman, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">courtesy Wikimedia Commons</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Although <a href="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/redgravehistory/holt/johnholt.htm" target="_blank">Sir John Holt</a> (1649-1710) had terminated official witchcraft persecution in England, the practice was still condoned in more vernacular contexts. 'Swimming' a suspected witch took place as lately as 1825 at Wickham Skeith, a mere six miles away away. An old, itinerant pedlar called <a href="http://goo.gl/hHFkec" target="_blank">Isaac Stebbings</a> was 'swum' in a pond, and subsequently died from his ordeal.<br />
<br />
As I walked back towards West Hall a pair of Common Buzzards were soaring over the wood. The hedgerows were thick with autumn fruits - sloes, damsons, blackberries, elderberries, rosehips - and I passed a towering apple tree on an old field bank. I am glad to see that scraps of biodiversity still manage to hold their own in this intensively-managed agricultural landscape. <a href="http://www.english-nature.org.uk/citation/citation_photo/1005773.pdf" target="_blank">Westhall Wood </a>is a Site of Special Scientific Interest designated for its ancient oak and hornbeam woodland dating back to Mediaeval times, so that would be a place to visit. It is 80 acres (33 ha) in size, so I'd enjoy getting lost in its historical depths. Hopefully, I'd be able to find my way out again.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3d7W12edkoI/UkikOMxd5zI/AAAAAAAAAuo/gU6rq6QRj8o/s1600/500+West+Hall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3d7W12edkoI/UkikOMxd5zI/AAAAAAAAAuo/gU6rq6QRj8o/s1600/500+West+Hall.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">West Hall</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y9I5_tPsTC0/Ukim1yfcB4I/AAAAAAAAAuw/_ORWoc3AMzQ/s1600/500+apple+tree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y9I5_tPsTC0/Ukim1yfcB4I/AAAAAAAAAuw/_ORWoc3AMzQ/s1600/500+apple+tree.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com2Rickinghall Inferior, Suffolk, UK52.327658661615857 0.9803830104980306752.322806661615857 0.97029801049803066 52.332510661615856 0.99046801049803068tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-64186019090546756862012-12-24T19:14:00.001+00:002014-02-26T21:33:39.774+00:00Saterland6-12-2012<br />
<br />
I doubt few people from England spend their holidays in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Frisia" target="_blank">East Frisia</a>. I had heard the area was noted for its melancholy expanses of peat moor and fen, interspersed with inhabited sandy ridges. As a visitor from East Anglia, I was keen to find out how this landscape related to the fens and heaths back home. There was also an historical dimension: parts of England had been settled by people from this area in the 5th and 6th centuries, so I hoped to encounter some East Frisians, whose language shares a common <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingvaeonic" target="_blank">Ingaevonic</a> root with Old English. I had pored over a few modern Frisian texts, glimpsing common ground with English; I had heard old stories that fishermen from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk and Harlingen in Frisia could understand one another. I had a few spare hours for a journey into this ancestral territory.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gsA581umX2Y/UV11Z3ZPCRI/AAAAAAAAAsU/CNARbcB4YQ8/s1600/580+Golden_horn_by_Richard_Joachim_Paulli.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gsA581umX2Y/UV11Z3ZPCRI/AAAAAAAAAsU/CNARbcB4YQ8/s1600/580+Golden_horn_by_Richard_Joachim_Paulli.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5th Century iconography from Gallehus in northern Frisia</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Horns_of_Gallehus">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Horns_of_Gallehus</a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I caught bus S90 from the Bahnhofplatz at Oldenburg, at 09.42 on a frosty morning. The sun seemed barely out of bed. My destination was the villages of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saterland" target="_blank">Saterland</a>, home to the last surviving speakers of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saterland_Frisian_language" target="_blank">East Frisian</a>. Its four villages are strung out along a low sandy ridge about 10 miles long bordered by low-lying, peaty land. The journey would take over an hour, and I was not sure what I would see at the end of it, although heaths and moors figured in my imagination. The bus headed westward through a prosperous and well-kept snowy landscape. There were no signs of wilderness; the landscape exuded an air of ordered employment. My map was rudimentary, but sufficient to track our progress from place to place: Friedrichsfehn, Hengstforde, Roggenmoor, Holtland - names which I could roughly translate into English. My destination was Ramsloh, the biggest village in Saterland.<br />
<br />
I missed my stop. The bus had gone a mile beyond the town before I realised and pressed the red button... <br />
<br />
The doors hissed open and I stepped down onto a frozen road. The bus drove away. I found myself suddenly alone in a bleached landscape of bare fields, woods and ditches, with a flock of black birds and a calvary for company. The moors lay somewhere to the east. Luckily, I was standing next to a signpost saying ‘<a href="http://youtu.be/Mtp7obdJFHs" target="_blank">Moors Experience Trail</a>’.<br />
<blockquote>
"<i>Wayfaring always overshoots its destinations, since wherever you may be at any particular moment, you are already on your way to somewhere else</i>" <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Tim Ingold: '<i>Being Alive</i>'; Routledge 2011)</span>.<br />
<br /></blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cUU-NGDd9DI/UNyiwDc1LdI/AAAAAAAAApE/NKjkdSBBaYs/s1600/500+calvary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cUU-NGDd9DI/UNyiwDc1LdI/AAAAAAAAApE/NKjkdSBBaYs/s1600/500+calvary.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
There is something numinous about alder trees: their bristly, purplish twigs, their watery habits and uncanny bleeding bark. They lined the road I walked along, and fringed the canal I crossed. Turbid water flowed under the bridge, stained a yallery-brown colour from ochre formed in oxidising peat. The peatlands and fens were evidently not far away, but they could not be seen through surrounding woodland. I came to a fork in the road, but frustratingly the trail sign was pointing back the way I'd come.<br />
<br />
Woods, fields, a farm… after half a mile I began to sense I had taken a moorless road, and the map offered no clues to the local geography. Cold was clamped on the land. An enormous field a mile wide lay before me, and in the distance was the foggy shape of a village with a church spire. I decided to ask directions at a lone cottage, where a blue car had just driven up. A fair-haired young woman was handing over a packet to a short, bearded man at the gate. “I am lost; can you tell me where I am on this map, please”, I asked her in my best German. She laughed and said she spoke a little English. The two of them inspected the map, but could make no sense of it. He gesticulated and said the distant village was Scharrel. He spoke with a thick accent of some kind; his face was squarish and framed by masses of bristling, rusty brown hair; his manner was guarded. I was just thanking them and turning to go, when the front door opened and an aged man appeared in the doorway. His face was a remarkable sight: long and pale, with wispy hair like cirrus cloud, and eyes of a clear, rain-washed blue. An elaborate ceremonial wreath was leaning against the wall of the house beside him. I wanted to ask many questions, but feared intruding on their world with my anthropologist’s gaze. I guessed they were not used to strangers – particularly tall English ones. I reckoned it was time I was on my way. Thanking them for their assistance – especially the young woman – I turned and began the return journey from this, the Ultima Thule of my Frisian expedition.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7Et-LUnfmV8/UNyi2AcpBzI/AAAAAAAAApM/5szwjC9XmcY/s1600/500+wreath.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7Et-LUnfmV8/UNyi2AcpBzI/AAAAAAAAApM/5szwjC9XmcY/s320/500+wreath.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
The cold was beginning to bite before I had walked far; a fine hail was beginning to fall. Clearly I would have to visit the moors on some future day. Dejection was also beginning to bite. But as luck would have it I saw the blue car approaching, and my translator wound down the window to ask whether I’d like a lift. I needed little prompting to accept her offer; perhaps she could also answer some questions. This was the Feast of St Niklaus, she said, and her job was to deliver presents to old people in the district. (In England, she'd have been wearing red and white fancy dress, I reflected.) The old man and his wife at Firtree Way were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary; they spoke East Frisian at home. Would I like to visit the tourist office and get more information? She would drop me off there if I liked. When we arrived at the Council offices at Ramsloh, she reached into the back of the car and presented me with a chocolate figurine of St Niklaus - I was delighted.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
The tourist office were having a quiet day at home. I was clearly pushing my German to the limits when I asked them about <i>Ostfriesisch</i> culture in Saterland. Luckily the man there spoke some English, and he said that his colleague, Frau Janssen, a striking, dark-haired woman, was a native East Frisian speaker. I asked why I had seen no bilingual street signs in Ramsloh. She explained that the language was dying out; there were perhaps only 1,300 speakers left, amounting to less than 10% of the local population. Indeed, Saterland had appeared in the Guinness Book of Records, 1990, as the smallest ‘language island’ in Europe. She explained that a Saterland Alliance (the <i>Seelter Bund</i>) was working hard to keep the language alive, and it was taught from Years 1-4 at school. She said the East Frisians had a separate religious identity too, as Saterland was a Roman Catholic enclave in a predominantly Protestant community. I asked her if I could hear some spoken, and she kindly read me a poem. It began: <i>Ljude rakt et fuul un Lounde / do ap Goddes Wareld stounde. / Man wät gungt deer wäil uur Seelter, / un uur't litje Seelterlound?</i>. Frau Janssen clearly felt passionate about her homeland. She gave me some leaflets and the contact details of a person who could tell me more about the <i>Ostfriesen</i> people.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qwulwMoDpaI/UNzi_T1RKZI/AAAAAAAAAps/CpAiTt4qWCw/s1600/500+dorflinden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qwulwMoDpaI/UNzi_T1RKZI/AAAAAAAAAps/CpAiTt4qWCw/s400/500+dorflinden.jpg" height="400" width="292" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The Village Lime Tree (Dorflinde) <br />outside Ramsloh Church.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
Walking to the bus-stop, I considered what I had found out about Saterland. Its wild landscape had eluded me, but its human landscape had come alive in a special way. I had met Saint Niklaus and had been initiated into the matter of East Frisian cultural survival. I had found a mundane world touched with small acts of consecration.<br />
<br />
Thankful for the kindnesses I had received, I wondered whether there was a future for linguistic tourism here. I somehow doubted it - but if anywhere deserved its benefits then the shrinking ‘language island’ of <i>Seelterlound</i> did. Perhaps <a href="http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_report.html" target="_blank">UNESCO</a> could help.<br />
<br />
My biggest regret? Not having photographs of the people I'd met. My trip to Saterland had become a human story.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--asuZUvnPOE/UOLJVIMJ-JI/AAAAAAAAAq0/dS9G0FELvU0/s1600/500+santa+klaus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--asuZUvnPOE/UOLJVIMJ-JI/AAAAAAAAAq0/dS9G0FELvU0/s1600/500+santa+klaus.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com3Ramsloh, 26683 Saterland, Germany53.101619 7.680064000000015853.0634845 7.5993830000000155 53.1397535 7.760745000000016tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-26863621676586039432012-12-14T18:12:00.001+00:002014-01-15T15:33:14.565+00:00Doggerland's ghost<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
7-12-2012<br />
<br />
A train is taking me northwards to the island of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylt">Sylt</a> in North Frisia. A spindrift of powdery snow flies past the windows as we speed through the level, desolate landscape of <a href="http://schleswig-holstein/" target="_blank">Schleswig-Holstein</a>. Scattered farmsteads with long buildings and knots of bare trees are set in a geometry of ditches and banks; numb-looking sheep pull at frozen mangolds and bales of hay; towering wind turbines revolve in an easterly wind.<br />
<br />
The North Sea is an invisible horizon ahead.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o827spLb1e0/UMyD1pubwvI/AAAAAAAAAic/vNYkPrxpREY/s1600/500+turbines.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o827spLb1e0/UMyD1pubwvI/AAAAAAAAAic/vNYkPrxpREY/s1600/500+turbines.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
8-12-2012<br />
<br />
It is the weekend of Christiane's birthday, and her friend Stefi's house at Tinnum is alive with pleasurable activity. There are cakes and presents, cards and decorations; there is wine, tea and warmth. The neighbourhood is one of low Frisian houses, some thatched, some with garden walls made of boulders. Beyond them, the countryside begins: an expanse of damp fields bounded by reedy ditches and clusters of sallow and fir; to the south-westwards lies a rumpled line of dunes, like distant hills seen through a haze. A profound chill grips land and sea.<br />
<br />
The biggest town on Sylt is the chic holiday resort of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westerland,_Germany" target="_blank">Westerland</a>. We walked through it last night on our way to watch the sunset. It would be alive with people in summer - certainly enough to fill the Strandhotel, a colossal, 12-storey block of flats overlooking the beach, and throng the holiday shops of the Friedrichstrasse. Two hardy surfers were catching a few waves in the twilight, otherwise we had the beach to ourselves. The sand underfoot was frozen.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-R9CrfNwVB4I/UNMgcwaiBbI/AAAAAAAAAnQ/eCf8NuIPOZg/s1600/500+dunes+view.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-R9CrfNwVB4I/UNMgcwaiBbI/AAAAAAAAAnQ/eCf8NuIPOZg/s1600/500+dunes+view.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Die glühend rote Sonne steige</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Hinab ins weitaufschauernde,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Silbergraue Weltenmeer;</i></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(Heine)</span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
9-12-2012</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Like all the Frisian islands, Sylt is one breath away from submergence. Its long, crescent shape is actively being moulded by wind and waves. Recurved 'ness' promontories are forming at its northern and southern ends, and its highest ground is a crest of frail, impermanent dunes. Sylt is a barrier island backed by the tidal mud flats and saltmarshes of the Wadden Sea, and only joined to the mainland since 1927 by the slender <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburgdamm" target="_blank">Hindenburgdamm</a> causeway. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Local stories say that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hengist_and_Horsa" target="_blank">Hengist and Horsa</a> set out from the now-vanished port of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenningstedt-Braderup" target="_blank">Wendingstedt</a> on their way to invade England in the 5th century. If so, they must have been desperate men, driven out by water levels rising across their territory. Historians say that Sylt only became an island since the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grote_Mandrenke" target="_blank">Grote Mandrenke</a> (literally 'The Great Drowning of Men'), a storm surge of the 14th century. Before that, it would have been part of the mainland. Going further back 10,000 years, it would have been many miles from the coast. With so much water locked up as ice during the last Ice Age, sea levels were over 100 m lower than today in the North Sea basin, and there was a plain connecting Britain and Europe, known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland" target="_blank">Doggerland</a>.</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ls3SjDrePCQ/UNMD85fM8zI/AAAAAAAAAk0/uB3sUbtiGTM/s1600/540+doggerland+map+with+name.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ls3SjDrePCQ/UNMD85fM8zI/AAAAAAAAAk0/uB3sUbtiGTM/s1600/540+doggerland+map+with+name.jpg" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Progressive sea-level rise in the North Sea basin: 9600 and 7200 years BP showing Doggerland <br />and the position of Sylt. From a display panel at the Landesmuseum Natur Und Mensch at Oldenburg.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
No Mesolithic folk tales have survived about the drowning of Doggerland. Many people are likely to have been killed by the tsunami from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide" target="_blank">Storegga slide</a> which swept over the land about 8,100 years ago. Over the generations, people would have watched their ancestral hunting grounds and sacred places being invaded by water; they would have become separated by widening tidal channels. Evidence for their camp sites, flint and bone tools now lies under the sea. Birds migrating to Britain would have found the task more challenging with each passing year. Driven by an enduring geographical instincts, we see them today <a href="http://www.naturalbornbirder.com/offshore/Denmark_Germany.html" target="_blank">clinging to the decks and masts</a> of seagoing ships and offshore rigs, rather than to the twigs and branches of old Doggerland. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Evidence from seabed investigations tells us something about this vanished landscape. Like the lands bordering the North Sea today, it had low rounded hills made of sandy glacial debris and wide river valleys with meres and fens. There were forests of willow, birch, alder and pine, and reedbeds. As the tide rose - maybe a few centimetres each year - the land areas would have become fragmented into low islands fringed by dunes and saltmarshes, to be followed by tidal sandbanks and mudflats. Finally it was the gannet's bath.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-af3l5-ZlPrk/UNMcL77f-5I/AAAAAAAAAmc/U4iSHc5-MI8/s1600/1000+pillar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-af3l5-ZlPrk/UNMcL77f-5I/AAAAAAAAAmc/U4iSHc5-MI8/s1600/1000+pillar.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Three-metre high pillar at Tinnum</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">showing the levels reached by sea floods</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rE2nypehOzw/UNMXTU-9LjI/AAAAAAAAAl8/dqVFfoLRSh0/s1600/500+P1010240+pillar+detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rE2nypehOzw/UNMXTU-9LjI/AAAAAAAAAl8/dqVFfoLRSh0/s1600/500+P1010240+pillar+detail.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: white;">.</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
Like all the Frisian islands, Sylt is Doggerland's ghost. Standing on top of a dune and looking out to sea, I feel its impermanence beneath me. To landward, there are houses and roads, and willow trees and reeds growing in the lee of the dune belt. Beyond them, saltmarshes and mudflats breathe in and out with every tide. A few centimetres of elevation makes the difference between land and sea, but with sea level projected to rise another metre before the end of this century, I wonder how much of Sylt will survive the next great <i>Mandrenke</i>.</div>
<div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2CN6Bois4J4/UNMloqE--TI/AAAAAAAAAoE/xhs-s5S75LM/s1600/500+P1010167.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2CN6Bois4J4/UNMloqE--TI/AAAAAAAAAoE/xhs-s5S75LM/s1600/500+P1010167.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Hörnum beach</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
</div>
Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com2Sylt, Germany54.908279099999987 8.317985399999997854.616102599999991 7.6725383999999979 55.200455599999984 8.9634323999999985tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-90289751214830064452012-10-23T13:54:00.000+01:002015-11-08T21:05:30.179+00:00The Green LineSkarpnäck station is a massive underground chamber
spanning two platforms, carved from the living rock and <a href="http://www.viralnova.com/subway-art/" target="_blank">painted red</a>.
Benched trilithons of polished stone serve as seating. The station was
completed in 1994 as a terminus of the Green Line.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xMFD7dbT_p8/UHiIB-2V-OI/AAAAAAAAAgk/BTjdWUFSlV4/s1600/500+skarpnack+with+Asa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xMFD7dbT_p8/UHiIB-2V-OI/AAAAAAAAAgk/BTjdWUFSlV4/s1600/500+skarpnack+with+Asa.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
I am staying at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skarpn%C3%A4ck_borough">Skarpn<span style="color: black;">ä</span>ck</a> for a few days, some five miles south-eastwards from the centre of <st1:city>Stockholm</st1:city>. It is a classic
ABC town in the suburbs: <i>Arbete</i>, <i>Bostad</i>, <i>Centrum</i>, a self-contained, social settlement offering 'Work', 'Housing' and a 'Centre' for some 40,000 inhabitants. Green-space is never far away: brick-built neighbourhoods are separated by stretches of birch woodland and ridges of ice-carved bedrock: remnants of a raw, forested, glaciated land, once risen from the sea. In <st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>Britain</st1:place></st1:country> we have to plan <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_infrastructure">Green Infrastructure</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>into our urban development; in <st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>Sweden</st1:place></st1:country> they have so much wild-space that this surely happens by default.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span lang="SV" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: white;">.</span><span lang="SV"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<i><span lang="SV">Hammarbyhöjden - Björkhagen -<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></i><i><span lang="SV" style="font-family: inherit;">Kä</span></i><i><span lang="SV">rrtorp -
Bagarmossen - Skarpnäck</span></i><span lang="SV">.... </span>the names of the stations on the Green Line are places
absorbed by the spreading suburbs - 'Hammarby Height', 'Birch Paddock', 'Marsh
Cottage', 'Baker's Moor', 'Sharp Neck' - each one a south-eastward stride from
the city, each a named facet of local landscape. But thus absorbed, these country places are not as disconnected from
their primal geography as Parsons Green or Shepherd's Bush in London. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tvEa2wOcxDA/UHiINNmEVkI/AAAAAAAAAgs/tQQjIKfHoY0/s1600/500+karrtorp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tvEa2wOcxDA/UHiINNmEVkI/AAAAAAAAAgs/tQQjIKfHoY0/s1600/500+karrtorp.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
.</div>
I am staying for a few days with my friend Åsa Lind.
The uncluttered calm of her flat, conducive to thoughtful writing, contrasts
with the chaos of my home in <st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>England</st1:place></st1:country>. We drank champagne last
night at <st1:place>Lena</st1:place>'s party and got back late; it is mid-day
already, and I need to get some air.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
I leave the low apartment block, and meet three
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooded_Crow" target="_blank">hooded crows</a> inspecting a stretch of mown grass; we have suburban hoodies of a different kind in
<st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place>England</st1:place></st1:country>. A three-minute walk brings me to edge of
a wooded area. I am soon on an uphill track among oak, pine, rowan and
bilberry. There is golden rod, juniper and meadowsweet; goldcrests twitter
overhead, invisible in the tree canopy, and outcrops of tough, ice-ground bedrock drowse
beneath moss and lichen. From time to time, I meet passers by, but they
are caught up in their headphones, in family life or walking the dog. I am exploring
the outback between Skarpnäck and Bagarmossen with fresh eyes. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NkdLjy4nXc0/UHiRuOa-QyI/AAAAAAAAAhQ/zf4bc0s6M8U/s1600/500+P1010101.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NkdLjy4nXc0/UHiRuOa-QyI/AAAAAAAAAhQ/zf4bc0s6M8U/s1600/500+P1010101.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
Little footpaths weave among the trees. I think
this land belongs to the Kommun, but there are no signs telling me so. There
are no charred remains of cars, though I do come across empty drink cans
and broken bottle glass round the remains of a small camp fire. Fallen
trees rot where they lie. I find an owl feather stuck into the rainbow-painted
bark of a pine tree.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x61uVrhLQ9g/UH_7yzbK8aI/AAAAAAAAAh4/zcnGShSICbo/s1600/500+tree+&+feather.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x61uVrhLQ9g/UH_7yzbK8aI/AAAAAAAAAh4/zcnGShSICbo/s1600/500+tree+&+feather.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
This wooded land at Skarpnäck is surely a
small outpost of the breathtaking, ancient forest preserved at<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.tyresta.se/?page_id=60" target="_blank">Tyresta</a>, some 8
miles (13 km) away to the south-east. I fancy I could get there by walking a green line
of my own, without once ever leaving the shadow of the trees; I should come
back one day and try it. </div>
<div class="separator" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-24g4BIfzAIU/UssjTsek2KI/AAAAAAAAAzU/4S13QZc01wI/s1600/500+green+Tyresta.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-24g4BIfzAIU/UssjTsek2KI/AAAAAAAAAzU/4S13QZc01wI/s1600/500+green+Tyresta.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Mossy forest at Tyresta. Photo courtesy Lena Ohre.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com3Skarpnäck, Sweden59.266667000000012 18.11666700000000733.744632500000009 -23.191926999999993 84.788701500000016 59.425261000000006tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-46473391083937591162012-10-05T22:33:00.003+01:002012-12-20T15:01:06.323+00:00The ‘Estonia’ Memorial<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 16px;">Galärvarvskyrkogården</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: inherit; line-height: 16px;">, Stockolm</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">24th September, 2012</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p> </o:p> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A granite alcove shelters an elm tree: three grey walls
enclosing a young trunk in a triangle of dressed stone. Open at one corner, it points south across a sloping lawn towards the water of <st1:city>Stockholm</st1:city>
harbour. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rIi3KGuLzfs/UG9SBZePrdI/AAAAAAAAAgI/Qf_gNrfJCGI/s1600/500+P1010028.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rIi3KGuLzfs/UG9SBZePrdI/AAAAAAAAAgI/Qf_gNrfJCGI/s1600/500+P1010028.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Memorial is a shard which gathers our thoughts into its
geometry. Strings of names are engraved on three inward-looking panels, all 852 of them. “Magnus Andersson was on the Estonia” says </span><st1:place style="font-family: inherit;">Lena</st1:place><span style="font-family: inherit;">, “he used to be in my class at
school”. I understand then that the names are codes for flesh and blood that
breathed water. The walls are holding the story for us to read.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We start scanning the rows, reading each variant name, looking for ‘Magnus’ followed by ‘Andersson’.
It takes three minutes to find the halves of his name and join them together.
<st1:place>Lena</st1:place> pauses in a moment of recall; he breathes again for
a moment in her thoughts. Then we move on, away from the crush of names, i</span>nto the warm sunshine on the lawn beyond.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">‘<i>Deras namn och deras öde vill vi aldrig glömme</i>’ says the Memorial. I cannot recognise all of the words, but the word 'glömme' is like a candle at the end of the sentence. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com1Djurgårdsvägen 36A, 115 21 Stockholm, Sweden59.327673014806912 18.09259414672851659.32666051480691 18.090126646728514 59.328685514806914 18.095061646728517tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-68028228447826193902012-09-29T19:32:00.000+01:002014-01-29T22:40:23.989+00:00Meeting VasaStockholm, Sweden<br />
22nd September, 2012<br />
<br />
I bought my ticket in the lobby and passed into the <a href="http://www.vasamuseet.se/en/" target="_blank">Vasa Museum</a>. One goes to see a preserved sailing ship expecting to see a ship. What I saw before me when I passed through the doors brought tears to my eyes.<br />
<br />
The Vasa story is a classic tragedy. Hubris then Nemesis. The warship set out on her maiden voyage from Stockholm harbour in August, 1628. Five minutes from shore, before a crowd of onlookers, a gust of wind struck her amidships and she heeled over, water poured into the open gun ports, and she sank with the loss of 50 lives. Simple design faults and royal ambition were to blame. Vasa lay on the seabed for 233 years in 60 m (120 ft) of water, preserved by the brackish waters of the Baltic, until she was lifted for conservation and reconstruction. The Museum has been built around these remains, using concrete and copper sheeting. There are five floors, and a visitor may choose what level he wishes to view the ship from: perhaps a grandstand from above, a side panorama, or a gaze from below. There are side displays of cannons and objects recovered from the wreck, including skulls from her skeleton crew; their faces have touchingly been restored to life in wax.<br />
<br />
The Vasa is a huge brown hulk towering up in spotlit gloom. Carved timbers shape a curve from stem to stern. Her body is lined with gun ports, each adorned with a lion mask; her stern rises high with sculpted figures; her prow juts forward like a beak. Overhead, masts rise to half their original height, ending in crows' nests and held in place by a complex of rigging.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AO4iDB8BE6Q/UGc5f3S1lXI/AAAAAAAAAe4/NwjIBkHpR8g/s1600/500+beak.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AO4iDB8BE6Q/UGc5f3S1lXI/AAAAAAAAAe4/NwjIBkHpR8g/s1600/500+beak.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Resting between the worlds of the living and the dead, Vasa somehow resembles the pitted, oaken carcase of a sunken pirate vessel. She has been brought to the surface and thoroughly dried out, but still has a whiff of darkness about her: Vasa is one of the Undead.<br />
<br />
Vasa is also beautiful. Humanity is evident in the sweep of her planking, the animation of her carving, the rhythms of her cordage and the scale of her doomed ambition. I have seen many admirable buildings in my time, but never a human construction so large and yet so fragile, so vastly venerable.<br />
<br />
Vasa is an awesome artefact that has become a place of pilgrimage, one of the wonders of the world. People whisper round her much as they might round the casket of an uncorrupted body in a cathedral. She is a message from another world, handed over to our own for some extraordinary reason.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AmbEENed6MU/UGYFh_x0B8I/AAAAAAAAAdw/bs2LxrXY8qo/s1600/500+vasa+museum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AmbEENed6MU/UGYFh_x0B8I/AAAAAAAAAdw/bs2LxrXY8qo/s1600/500+vasa+museum.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0Vasamuseet, Galärvarvsvägen 14, 115 21 Stockholm, Sweden59.328264 18.09169359.320164 18.071952 59.336363999999996 18.111434tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-7065266544273531512012-09-19T15:22:00.001+01:002015-11-19T21:46:47.293+00:00SobrecuevaNear Corain, Spain<br />
27th April, 2012<br />
<br />
I am sheltering while a persistent April rain falls on this corner of Asturias. The tiled roof above me covers a village <i>lavandería</i> basin, with <i>Año 1919</i> inscribed on its stone cistern. The sound of water is everywhere: the steady input from an iron pipe, the constant pitter-patter of drips from the eaves, the rustle from a small stream twenty yards away. Overhanging trees gather the rainfall into loud, plummeting drops.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l-gIdwQEvho/UFnTMNl01pI/AAAAAAAAAdM/G9D7JEfwQ2c/s1600/P4270009+adj+500+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l-gIdwQEvho/UFnTMNl01pI/AAAAAAAAAdM/G9D7JEfwQ2c/s1600/P4270009+adj+500+2.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
The laundry is set into a wooded limestone slope overlooking a small valley. I have climbed a lane beside hedges, apple trees and a sloping meadow with two grey horses and a foal. The sky is weeping over this hilly, wooded landscape that reminds me of Somerset or Powys; trees are lichenous, the ground is mossy and floral. Small farmsteads are dotted here and there, many showing signs of careful but unfussy management: trees are coppiced and pollarded, hedges trimmed, drystone walls maintained. The stream is neatly culverted where it flows under the lane. The natural wealth in this damp corner of Spain needs constant attention, and I'm glad to see that people still provide it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RdrLWJaBd74/UFnRPSNnffI/AAAAAAAAAc0/pZIwzAdf5rE/s1600/P4270014+adj+500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RdrLWJaBd74/UFnRPSNnffI/AAAAAAAAAc0/pZIwzAdf5rE/s1600/P4270014+adj+500.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
But what of the laundry - does anyone come here to wash their clothes? A white plastic bottle labelled <a href="http://www.henkel.es/cps/rde/xchg/henkel_ess/hs.xsl/2512_ESS_HTML.htm?iname=Mistol&countryCode=es&BU=detergents&parentredDotUID=00000001JC&redDotUID=00000001JC&brand=00000001J9" target="_blank">Mistol Original</a> stands next to a pillar, and a scrubbing brush and an orange plastic mug sit near the cistern. These are signs of laundry life. But the crystal-clear water flows over a sunken drift of dead, black leaves, and stirring it brings up clouds of silt. The lip of the basin is smoothed from years of use, but now patinated with moss and dirt. The paved floor has sprouting weeds. This laundry needs a thorough cleaning out.<br />
<br />
Use and disuse: this place is telling me of a vanishing culture pattern. I imagine women's stories were exchanged here for generations, but their voices have now faded to silence; a part of Franco's world of peasant Spain.<br />
<br />
I am telling a story of my own about this laundry, created from a bottle, a brush and a cup. An elderly woman still visits from time to time, and she vividly remembers the scenes and sounds of social life that that used to go on here. But now she only hears - like me - the voice of her own thoughts, and the stories told by fallen leaves and water flowing over stone.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-X17-QMkaEbA/UFnRY3jQQoI/AAAAAAAAAc8/ziBOLc_UL8A/s1600/P4270008+adj+500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-X17-QMkaEbA/UFnRY3jQQoI/AAAAAAAAAc8/ziBOLc_UL8A/s1600/P4270008+adj+500.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0AS-340, 33550 Cangas de Onís, Spain43.352301525348793 -5.0699329376220743.34941502534879 -5.0748684376220705 43.355188025348795 -5.06499743762207tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-31500598281079622832012-09-10T22:47:00.000+01:002015-11-19T21:45:30.574+00:00Lifting boulders13-8-2012<br />
<br />
The chestnut forests of the Cévennes are roasting in hot sunlight; the steep valleys and rocky outcrops are glowing green and tawny brown.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--K91t6Vy1C0/UD1FtXWANII/AAAAAAAAAVw/3kXad3UFAoA/s1600/500+valley+head,+view+of+Le+Castel+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--K91t6Vy1C0/UD1FtXWANII/AAAAAAAAAVw/3kXad3UFAoA/s640/500+valley+head,+view+of+Le+Castel+1.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">View of Le Castel, looking south-west</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I am staying with my friend Nicolas at Le Castel, a Provençal <i>mas or </i>farmstead. It lies on the Mediterranean side of the Cévennes, standing on a knoll overlooking the head of the Vallée Française, through which the waters of the youthful Mialet flow on their way to join the River Gard, and ultimately the Rhône.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-semBk2UHhcQ/UD1E_W7wwdI/AAAAAAAAAVo/qjBygD0mINM/s1600/500+disused+terraces+at+valley+head+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-semBk2UHhcQ/UD1E_W7wwdI/AAAAAAAAAVo/qjBygD0mINM/s1600/500+disused+terraces+at+valley+head+2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Abandoned terraces</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Jean-Baptiste C. has lived here for seven years, but he has just put the place on the market. Originally from Paris, he keeps a handful of sheep in a byre on the ground floor - whence a strong but not unpleasant smell drifts up - otherwise he lives alone with a dog. Le Castel is a dry place on a steep valley side, with a black alkathene pipe from the stream as its sole aqueduct. The soil is very stony; rocks are continually shifting downhill from the granite outcrops above, or breaking out of the scanty soil. The land near the house is arranged in terraces, mostly covered with scrub or trees; elsewhere the slopes are forested. Inside, the house has a dim, lofty feel, with big wooden beams and wicker baskets and sheep bells hanging from them. Pictures with religious associations, ranging through Christianity, Hindiusm and Buddhism, decorate the walls, for Jean-Baptiste is a kind of mystic.<br />
<br />
There are other buildings at Le Castel. A ruined farmhouse and barn are situated nearby, with a window lintel engraved <i>1730</i>. A ruined chapel lies in the valley below, with the remains of an apse and a stone-vaulted ceiling. If you take a goat path slanting up the valley side - through broom, bracken and bramble, along crumbling terraces, past unmanaged chestnut trees and over small ravines - you will come to a roofless stone barn known as a <i>clède.</i><br />
<i><span style="color: white;">.</span></i>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2NkyxJyK_f0/UE-pZKvSELI/AAAAAAAAAbI/TIdDrHUbRRM/s1600/500+valley+head,+ruined+clede.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2NkyxJyK_f0/UE-pZKvSELI/AAAAAAAAAbI/TIdDrHUbRRM/s1600/500+valley+head,+ruined+clede.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: white;">.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<i>Clèdes </i>are evocative places, like old engine houses in Cornwall. They were once central to rural industry in the Cévennes, being used for smoking, dehusking and drying chestnuts after harvest. In olden days, a fragrant fume would hang over <i>Cévenol </i>valleys every October, as people processed the <i>châtaignes</i> which were a staple of their subsistence. Beyond the <i>clède</i>, the pathway and terraces peter out, and chestnuts give way to rocky moorland with stunted oak trees. Population growth in the 16th century led to a major expansion of chestnut cultivation in the region, we are told: forest clearance accelerated and a major phase of terracing and planting took place; thus the Cévennes became clothed in chestnut forest, within the natural limits dictated by soil and climate <sup>(1)</sup>. Situated at a valley head, next to the high Atlantic / Mediterranean watershed, Le Castel may lie close to those limits - the high strandline of <i>châtaigneraie</i>.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--gTboj3Jn_k/UE-qHol5j_I/AAAAAAAAAbY/hztNLhsqPVU/s1600/500+Le+Castel+seen+from+high+road.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--gTboj3Jn_k/UE-qHol5j_I/AAAAAAAAAbY/hztNLhsqPVU/s1600/500+Le+Castel+seen+from+high+road.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">View of Le Castel, sited close to the gorge in the centre</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: white;">.</span><br />
There is a <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_de_l'homme_C%C3%A9venol_%C3%A0_Saint-Germain-de-Calberte.JPG" target="_blank">bronze statue of a naked man</a> in the village of St Germain de Calberte. He is lifting a boulder, and clearly symbolises the monumental effort of people to terrace and transform their mountains into productive land. Le Castel has evidence of much prolonged labour written into its landscape and ruins. I imagine the families that once made their homes here; they created the terraces and buildings over the centuries to make their subsistence. Jean-Baptiste grows a few vegetables and maintains his tiny flock, but he can hardly be described as a <i>Cévenol</i> farmer. By contrast, the <a href="http://www.cevennes-parcnational.fr/" target="_blank">National Park</a> is trying to maintain historic land-use and culture in the region. For example, it runs workshops on how to look after and revive <i>la châtaigneraie</i>; it promotes traditional <a href="http://www.cnrs.fr/inee/outils/docs/WEB_PEPS_Schatz.pdf" target="_blank">apiculture</a>; it specifies that roofs are to be made of heavy, overlapping slabs of raw schist known as <i>lauze</i>. The Park also has a say in who may buy property in its domain: it prefers people with strong local connections. It promotes efforts to record the last scraps of surviving <i>paysan</i> oral culture <sup>(2)</sup>. The aim is to conserve local culture and a distinctive sense of place.<br />
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
Today, we had visitor from Paris, a man interested in buying Le Castel - house, ruins, chapel, terraces, forest and scrub - all 23 hectares. He shares his surname with one of the managers of the National Park. Is he the kind of man to rebuild a productive <i>Cévenol</i> landscape - can he lift boulders?<br />
<br />
Whoever lives at Le Castel, the granite will continue to crumble from the mountain side and wildlife will continue to invest the place with its own anarchic wealth and beauty.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nqBwYC14WAw/UE3Y6LOEVUI/AAAAAAAAAaI/B5vw5mibvKU/s1600/500+Le+Castel+bank+rockfall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nqBwYC14WAw/UE3Y6LOEVUI/AAAAAAAAAaI/B5vw5mibvKU/s1600/500+Le+Castel+bank+rockfall.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Episode after rain</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zKFVA0haNRk/UE-tVy2CUxI/AAAAAAAAAb0/xyMA03ZELAU/s1600/500+2a+-+Lou+Cabanis+wildlife+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zKFVA0haNRk/UE-tVy2CUxI/AAAAAAAAAb0/xyMA03ZELAU/s1600/500+2a+-+Lou+Cabanis+wildlife+1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Jersey Tiger <i>Euplagia quadripunctaria</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<hr />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(1) '<i>Votre Chataigneraie</i>' (Parc National des Cévennes, 2008)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(2) Laurence, P,: '<i>Du Paysage and Des Temps - La memoire orale en Cévennes Vallée Francaise et Pays de Calberte</i>' (Sivom Des Hauts Gardons, 2004)</span>
<br />
<br />
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com2Le Masbonnet, 48110 Le Pompidou, France44.221547 3.65182444.210167500000004 3.632083 44.2329265 3.6715649999999997tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-12058988667495282732012-09-01T11:34:00.003+01:002012-12-20T15:05:48.757+00:00Archives and memory<br />
I spent yesterday in the company of many old documents. They are the residues of the old Redgrave Estate and general family admin. Over 7,000 similar documents have already been catalogued by the <a href="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/redgravehistory/rhg_index.htm" target="_blank">Redgrave History Group</a>, and there is already an archive in the <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=173-ha240#0" target="_blank">Suffolk Record Office</a>. While there is little family material of public interest, there is much information about local people and places over two centuries, and through them it is possible to get detailed insights into the life of villages such as Burgate, Botesdale, Hinderclay, Rickinghall and Wortham as well as Redgrave. The oldest papers go back to the 16th century, the most recent date from the 1970s, though most span the period 1780 to 1860. The residue has passed into my hands since my father's death, and it is my little task to sort it for posterity. Once catalogued, most of it will go to the Record Office and the rest into a box of family history.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AZIeWaINPfI/UEHT1FgN_WI/AAAAAAAAAWw/rHHPNTKAcmQ/s1600/hall_derelict_1955-SU.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AZIeWaINPfI/UEHT1FgN_WI/AAAAAAAAAWw/rHHPNTKAcmQ/s1600/hall_derelict_1955-SU.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The remains of Redgrave Hall, c.1955. The Georgian house was demolished in 1946, <br />leaving the Tudor core, with the eventual intention of restoring it. This never happened, <br />and these ruins were demolished c.1970. Photo courtesy Shaun Addy.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nfkUMOyba80/UESW2zQXXZI/AAAAAAAAAZI/SflG-56uTWQ/s1600/550+drainage+plan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nfkUMOyba80/UESW2zQXXZI/AAAAAAAAAZI/SflG-56uTWQ/s1600/550+drainage+plan.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Drainage plan, C16th.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="color: white;">.</span><br />
Here, I am inevitably drawn into the story of <a href="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/redgravehistory/redgravepark.htm" target="_blank">Redgrave Park</a>. I first encountered it at the age of six. I was fascinated by the crumbling ruins of the Hall and its overgrown gardens, the rambling Park and beautiful lake. The impression made by that place has never left me. Who would not be amazed by such a place?<span style="background-color: white;"> The landscape had been designed by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancelot_%22Capability%22_Brown" target="_blank">Lancelot 'Capability' Brown</a> to catch the human eye and heart. My sister Pip and I swam in the lake, collected birds' eggs on the islands, explored the hollow oak trees; we picked plums in the overgrown gardens, visited <a href="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/redgravehistory/holt/kennels.htm" target="_blank">'Wop' Garnham</a> in his keeper's cottage beside the lake, and had picnics at the <a href="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/redgravehistory/holt/roundhouse.htm" target="_blank">Round House</a>. The Park is a focal place in the Mythic Geography of my life.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6EmNjlr9mBo/UEHcKck-ZRI/AAAAAAAAAXQ/ckXKp_YbwT8/s1600/600+hall+1803.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6EmNjlr9mBo/UEHcKck-ZRI/AAAAAAAAAXQ/ckXKp_YbwT8/s1600/600+hall+1803.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">From an Estate terrier, 1803</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">The Park was sold in 1971, when I was 12 years old; my parents split up and my mother moved to Scotland. </span><span style="background-color: white;">As a teenager I pored over photographs, maps and plans, resurrecting the prelapsarian life of the Park in my imagination. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Cjk4C-W6g2o/UEHcj1ltvLI/AAAAAAAAAXY/p5_DAZbwm54/s1600/1930_photo3U.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Cjk4C-W6g2o/UEHcj1ltvLI/AAAAAAAAAXY/p5_DAZbwm54/s1600/1930_photo3U.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1yog6HUlBiM/UEHcuNOF9CI/AAAAAAAAAXg/SNz9Y_DjJ2I/s1600/1930_photo4U.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1yog6HUlBiM/UEHcuNOF9CI/AAAAAAAAAXg/SNz9Y_DjJ2I/s1600/1930_photo4U.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CZDV6NcQ4vA/UEHkdm9HQ_I/AAAAAAAAAYU/ucZeC4Bbnas/s1600/1930_photo5U.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CZDV6NcQ4vA/UEHkdm9HQ_I/AAAAAAAAAYU/ucZeC4Bbnas/s1600/1930_photo5U.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Views of the Park, c.1935</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
We never lived at Redgrave Park, but it is still alive in my psyche, as if it were a cherished homeland destroyed by a War. I recently caught some words by a<span style="text-align: right;">uthor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Coe" target="_blank">Jonathan Coe</a>, speaking on the radio. I </span>think they are a clear statement about the importance of 'place' in the psyche, and importance of personal memory in creating - and re-creating - it. </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"Sometimes I think that these spaces we inhabit are not physical places at all, just layer upon layer of memories. They are built out of experience - human experience - not steel or pre-cast concrete. A friend of mine used to live on the 19th floor of a tower-block near Liverpool. They knocked it down, but he still used to drive past that place every day, and look up into the sky and remember all the things he had done, the friends he'd met, the women he'd loved and lost - and all these in a few cubic metres of space which were now hung, suspended in mid air. When this place is gone what will be left of the people who lived here? That mound in the middle of the court, my court, Bobby's court, will be flattened, no one will remember it. No one will remember I met Susan there, fell in love with her, and when we were children we called that The Moon; and that other people lived within these concrete walls, had their own memories, had their own stories. It will all disappear, it'll all be lost unless we struggle to remember. Someone has to keep the records". </span></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(</span><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: right;">BBC Radio 4, October 7th, 2011) </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
If I set fire to the Redgrave Estate papers nobody would ever miss a thing. But perhaps future generations would lose some richness which I have it in my power to give them. This archive is a resource of memory for other people's families as well as my own. The struggle to remember serves the future, but in doing so it also serves the people of the past. Someone could use the archive to resurrect the bare bones of past life, and through diligent research, give them flesh. Maybe I am standing with one foot in the land of massive unreason, but I feel as though I have a responsibility towards the dead and the places they knew. I have only a few more documents to catalogue, then I can hand their records over. My part in their resurrection will be done.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-haUqskB7TSw/UEHd0yqiTUI/AAAAAAAAAX4/n5eA6WblR5s/s1600/2000_parkviewQU.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-haUqskB7TSw/UEHd0yqiTUI/AAAAAAAAAX4/n5eA6WblR5s/s640/2000_parkviewQU.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Redgrave Park today</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-45639306473278067142012-08-24T00:00:00.001+01:002014-01-09T13:43:51.348+00:00Man in the maquisThe Ardèche - 15th August 2012<br />
<br />
The village of Grospierres (in English, 'boulders') lies at the foot of a range of low, rounded hills, overlooking the Chassezac plain of the Ardèche, southern France. A big holiday village is sited on the lower slopes, otherwise Grospierres seems dedicated to cultivating vines and tapping trade passing along the D111.<br />
<br />
The land is dry this August; the atmosphere is heavy with fumes of heat and veils of cloud.<br />
<br />
Grospierres is the essence of the Midi: tracts of stony ground bristling with maquis scrub; dark green hills of holm oak and pine rising from hot, open plains; villa houses with red-tiled roofs, shuttered against the sun; roadside fruit vendors; hectares of tailored vines. The Ardèche is the edge of the Mediterranean world, and its place names are evocative: Cabaresse, Prade, Salavas. I am reminded that the Occitan language is closer to Catalan than French.<br />
<br />
My friend Nicolas Panel and I are visiting his friends Marc and Violette who are staying at the holiday village. Their children are having a happy time, absorbed with swimming and horse-riding. The village has pastel-coloured houses sited on terraces, grouped around a centre complex with a pretend bell-tower. The view includes strategically planted umbrella pines and pointed cypresses. Everything looks neatly Mediterranesque. But the place is too predictable, and I am not used to such vivid concentrations of humanity. I have an opportunity to explore the local landscape. Gathering my water bottle, camera, sun hat and a packet of peanuts, I head for the hills.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zfNW0cmVTFI/UDaz37PSvDI/AAAAAAAAATg/ij6hfx-fueo/s1600/500+holiday+village.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zfNW0cmVTFI/UDaz37PSvDI/AAAAAAAAATg/ij6hfx-fueo/s1600/500+holiday+village.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="color: white;">.</span><br />
I want to get to know the maquis better, and I am also attracted by a series of rocky outcrops visible along the hill crest. The heat makes walking a chore, but away from the village I soon find a stony track leading upwards. It passes exposures of grey, calcareous mudstones and, higher up, limestones. Trees begin to crowd the path. Just short of the hill top, I am surprised by a brown-skinned jogger who overtakes me, sweating on the gradient. This vision of daring male vigour has the effect of condensing my being, focusing it on a sense of its own mortality and the mission in hand.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-X9vCl3IUvsY/UDa0Dn85WpI/AAAAAAAAATo/6vcRjuuCMbU/s1600/500+the+track.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-X9vCl3IUvsY/UDa0Dn85WpI/AAAAAAAAATo/6vcRjuuCMbU/s1600/500+the+track.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="color: white;">.</span>
<br />
I find myself standing on red soil full of limestone fragments - a true <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_rossa_(soil)" target="_blank">terra rossa</a> - surrounded by a low, bristling woodland of box and holm oak; the box lends a strange, meaty smell to the air. There are oaks of a type I have never seen before, and a fine shrub with ribbed, spear-shaped leaves and clusters of small, coral-pink fruits. There is almost no ground flora. Piles of dead twigs are scattered among small trees of several years' growth. In other areas the holm oaks are much larger, about 20ft high, with no signs of recent attention. This land is evidently being managed as a kind of rotating coppice, most likely for firewood. Perhaps this is the best possible land-use for this environment: the soils is thin, very stony and very dry; if ever it yielded more abundantly then centuries of over-exploitation for sheep and goats may well have destroyed its fertility; if ever thicker soils were present they have now been washed off onto the plain. By a long process of selection, the flora here would tend to feature plants which grazing animals found unappealing because of their thorns or bitter, aromatic oils. The result is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maquis" target="_blank">maquis</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrigue" target="_blank">garrigue</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matorral" target="_blank">matorral</a>, whatever you call it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5zlnvuNcpRE/UDe9psrXQtI/AAAAAAAAAVA/dy5YC3BEbjQ/s1600/500+scrub.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5zlnvuNcpRE/UDe9psrXQtI/AAAAAAAAAVA/dy5YC3BEbjQ/s1600/500+scrub.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: white;">.</span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZH0K0HAzF-k/UDe-d9qlQWI/AAAAAAAAAVI/432anqkrTN8/s1600/500+oak.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZH0K0HAzF-k/UDe-d9qlQWI/AAAAAAAAAVI/432anqkrTN8/s1600/500+oak.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Quercus pubescens - a species used in truffle culture</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: white;">.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ah_WcS604_0/UDe63U2wVRI/AAAAAAAAAUo/sj5_7F3eWO4/s1600/500+pistachia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ah_WcS604_0/UDe63U2wVRI/AAAAAAAAAUo/sj5_7F3eWO4/s1600/500+pistachia.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Pistachia terebinthus - the turpentine tree</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: white;">.</span><br />
I wander for half an hour among the maquis, immersing myself in its small variations, picking up trails that seem to lead somewhere - then nowhere. I stop to examine seed pods, twigs, fossils. The suspended impression of being lost vanishes when the view opens out before me. I have reached the rocky outcrops which overlook the plain.<br />
<br />
A massive apron of angular stones fronts the hill scarp, through which ribs of rock and a few stunted shrubs protrude. It extends sideways in both directions. If this hillside were a human face, one would say that the forehead was a hard, supra-orbital desert frowning over the village below. The rock fragments clatter and clink underfoot in a metallic, non-human way.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--fkEbfZBH6c/UDa0U18hQhI/AAAAAAAAAT4/7F-xk7GRRL0/s1600/500+hill+crest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--fkEbfZBH6c/UDa0U18hQhI/AAAAAAAAAT4/7F-xk7GRRL0/s1600/500+hill+crest.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Some kind of physical drama is being enacted on this hill crest. I imagine that any rain falling on it flows through the shallow soil across the limestone, flushing away fine particles. Freeze-thaw action during the last Ice Age over 10,000 years ago probably created this mantle of fragments, and winter frosts continue the process today. My thoughts disappear into a geomorphological reverie, experimentally peeling back time to make a series of hypotheses to make sense of what I am seeing here. I pick up a piece of limestone: it falls into pieces, like a sheaf of paper, and fossil shells appear engraved on the pages. Layers of an ancient sea bed are breaking up in my hands.<br />
<span style="color: white;">.</span><br />
The holiday village is spread out below; the sun is veiled by cloud; the heat is abating. The plangent sound of a love-soaked pop song wafts up densely from below, electronically amplified. The place is an oasis of human life grafted onto the rocky soils of the Midi, only made possible by water. The swimming pools are a palette of shocking blue on the plain.<br />
<br />
It is time to return to the human world. Pushing my way back through the maquis, I come across a small clearing with strands of honeysuckle and a tall spurge plant. A few black animal droppings are lying there, probably roe deer, the only signs of mammal life I have seen so far. I shake out a handful of peanuts from my bag and leave them in the clearing, as an offering to the gods of this place. Perhaps wild pigs will find them in the night.<br />
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0Grospierres, France44.400794 4.28977144.3554155 4.210807 44.446172499999996 4.368735tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-63765418548448194222012-08-06T19:16:00.001+01:002014-01-09T22:10:38.142+00:00The High FensThe highest point in Belgium is surrounded by forestry plantations. The site at Botrange is marked by a stone tower at 694 m above sea level, a café and a car park.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kSp3FvZb3uQ/UCAkIv4TmuI/AAAAAAAAATI/o751K99gFUM/s1600/500+botrange+google+map+extract.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kSp3FvZb3uQ/UCAkIv4TmuI/AAAAAAAAATI/o751K99gFUM/s1600/500+botrange+google+map+extract.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">View of Botrange, courtesy of Google Maps.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: white;">.</span><br />
A hinterland of sprawling moorland and forestry known as the <i>Hautes Fagnes-Eifel</i> or <i>Hohes Venn-Eifel </i>lies beyond it, some 950 square miles of upland straddling the German-Belgian border. Clouds rolling in from the west are forced to rise and spend their water on this plateau of impermeable Cambrian quartzite. Thick snow drifts accumulate in winter; impenetrable fogs may descend at all seasons. Unable to drain away easily, the water ponds here, and decaying vegetation turns to peat and mor in the acidic soils. The Hautes-Fagnes are literally the 'High Bogs'; the word 'fagnes' has deep north-west European linguistic roots, being related to French 'fange' (mire), Old German 'venn' and English 'fen'<sup>(1)</sup>. Maybe it was originally pronounced 'fenyes' by the early Franks. The creature Grendel would have felt at home in this landscape:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
'<i>a famous boundary-stepper, who held the moors, the fen and the fastness</i>'.<sup>(2)</sup></blockquote>
I have been staying with my friends Corinna Whatley and Mario Paquet. Our trip to the Hautes-Fagnes took place on a day which threatened rain, but never quite succeeded in delivering it. Had it rained, there would just have been more water to swell the sphagnum. We parked at the Mont-Rigi café and took a walk around. I cast about for British parallels for this distinctive landscape: the Galloway moors, the Cambrian hills, the peat bogs of Dartmoor? The patchwork of heath and pine forest of Breckland, perhaps? Elements of these places were present, but disconcerting elements obtruded, such as the stands of bog asphodel and the spruce standing like Christmas trees.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fnIGasAH7gM/UBxFlLfOGOI/AAAAAAAAASI/VJe4y325Sno/s1600/500+P1010127.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fnIGasAH7gM/UBxFlLfOGOI/AAAAAAAAASI/VJe4y325Sno/s1600/500+P1010127.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Fagne de la Polleur</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: white;">.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Grey stone pillars engraved with 'B' and 'P' on opposite sides mark the former boundary between Belgium and Germany (Prussia). Local people speak both French and German dialects. What was it like here in August 1914 - did the <a href="http://wiki-de.genealogy.net/IR_25" target="_blank">Infanterie Regiment Lützow (1. Rheinisches) No 25</a>, brigaded at Aachen, do their first boundary-stepping here? How did the <a href="http://lunoveleup.e-monsite.com/pages/stembert-un-patrimoine/la-caserne-dite-de-stembert-et-la-garnison-de-verviers.html" target="_blank">12ème Régiment de Ligne</a>, garrisoned at nearby Verviers, respond? The border is not linked with any apparent feature in the landscape - it is an arbitrary line on a map. I wonder if anyone died defending it.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cez7LBgVT68/UBxF_9PHvuI/AAAAAAAAASQ/k7eP5R4lVj4/s1600/500+P1010138.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cez7LBgVT68/UBxF_9PHvuI/AAAAAAAAASQ/k7eP5R4lVj4/s1600/500+P1010138.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">The Fagne des Deux Séries, looking towards Germany</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: white;">.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Boarded footpaths led us conveniently and safely out into the protected landscape; we visited a variety of ecotypes and the degraded scarps left by peat extraction. According to historian <a href="http://users.skynet.be/fa603030/publications/" target="_blank">Serge Nekrassoff</a>, the Hautes-Fagnes was mostly forested until the Middle Ages, after which the surrounding villages began to exploit it for grazing and peat and a source of timber. By the 18th century the landscape had become predominantly open, and had gained a reputation as a hostile and forbidding landscape, perilous for travellers. This made it a source of fascination as well as sinister stories. Nekrassoff has gathered and analysed historical information about perceptions of the area, and has organised it around the metaphor of a mirrored human face. He distinguishes perceptions which have given rise to deforming 'images' of the Fagnes from those which have yielded a true 'visage' or realistic portrait 'without make-up', although admitting that many documents relate to both categories.<sup>(3)</sup> </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
What is the face of the Hautes Fagnes for a visitor today - what is 'image' and what is 'visage'? </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
My view is a fresh reading without benefit of any prior information, shared with friends. There will be as many discourses of the Fagnes as there are geographies: 'image' dissolves into 'visage' as various users and polities perceive the face of the land in their own way, be they bird-watchers, cyclists, dog-walkers, foresters, ice-cream sellers, motorists or planning authorities. Their thoughts and perceptions of the area build mythic material slowly, like peat - and some of it eventually gets shared. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pgCunG99QMc/UCAekH9XScI/AAAAAAAAASo/PtVXCvLsvoE/s1600/500+tourbe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pgCunG99QMc/UCAekH9XScI/AAAAAAAAASo/PtVXCvLsvoE/s1600/500+tourbe.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Stages in peat extraction and processing, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">from an interpretive panel on the Fagne de la Polleur.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: white;">.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
My recent visit to the Hautes-Fagnes was a brief, boardwalk tour of a singular and lonely landscape. I have carried away some memorable impressions. With further information from leaflets, books and photos, I have been able to think about this material in a more detailed way than my three-hour visit could ever allow. My plan is to return one day for a guided walk led by Serge Nekrassoff, and get the benefit of his steadily accumulated knowledge and experience.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Meanwhile, rain keeps falling on the Fagnes, the sphagnum keep growing, and rivulets continue to trickle over the ancient Cambrian rocks; trees and bushes continue to invade the moorland. The High Fens remains a sparsely settled area, and for this reason alone it will continue to attract fascinated visitors and unsettled perceptions. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<hr />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(1) - J. Lechanteur: '<i>Le mot fagne et sa famille'</i>, in: Quenon, J., Schumacker, R. and Streel, M.: '<i>Les Hommes et les Hautes-Fagnes'</i> (Université de Liege; 1994).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
(2) - From the Old English epic 'Beowulf' 2, lines 104-5 - <i>mære mearcstapa, se þe moras heold, / </i><i>fen ond fæsten. </i>A <i>mearcstapa </i>is literally a stepper of the marches, a walker of boundaries, a border riever.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br />
(3) - S. Nekrassoff: '<i>Images et visages des Hautes-Fagnes - Evolution d'un paysage et de sa perception</i>' (Serge Nekrassoff, 2007)</span><br />
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0Signal de Botrange, Naturpark Hohes Venn-Eifel, 4950 Waimes, Belgium50.5016667 6.092777850.4915667 6.0730368000000006 50.5117667 6.1125188tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-60280750229565474012012-08-03T09:23:00.000+01:002012-12-20T15:09:29.128+00:00The SeggsOut on the boundary of a rural parish I have a sense of being anywhere, nowhere. Only the map tells me I am on a significant line, with perhaps a ditch or hedge to anchor this information to a sensed place.<br />
<br />
I am standing on the edge of the shallow valley of the River Dove. It drains part of the plateau of central Suffolk, wending its way quietly northwards into the River Waveney at Hoxne. A jungle of bushes and marshy ground lies before me, rioting with nettles and reeds on an unkempt portion of the floodplain; local people call this area the Seggs. Other parts of the valley have open, grazed meadows and wooded margins, but the Seggs keeps an unruly isolation. It is fed by floodwater in winter and the discharge of a side valley, the Birdwalk Brook, little more than a ditch which drains the Eye Industrial Estate, a mile and a half away. It lies exactly on the parish boundaries of Eye and Brome & Oakley.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DKteVrpoOCQ/UBuSMHQD7cI/AAAAAAAAARw/WnIH5p4dcmI/s1600/500+google+aerial.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DKteVrpoOCQ/UBuSMHQD7cI/AAAAAAAAARw/WnIH5p4dcmI/s1600/500+google+aerial.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Aerial view, courtesy of Google Maps</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="color: white;">.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
My story began here in 1996, when the Environment Agency decided to deepen the channel of the Brook <span style="background-color: white;">with a mechanical digger</span><span style="background-color: white;">. The Industrial Estate was expanding, and more run-off was expected. I decided to look at the excavated spoil spread beside the ditch. At that time I was investigating local archaeology, by walking the fields owned by my landlord Mark Prior, and I had turned up Mesolithic, Neolithic and early Bronze Age flint work. I hoped to find more prehistoric evidence preserved in the peat and alluvium of the valley floor. </span><span style="background-color: white;">I soon found animal bones scattered in the spoil, including cattle skulls. There were two slabs of Niedermendig lava quern stone, and a sherd of greyware pottery. I decided to look at the freshly cut walls of the ditch to see where this stuff was coming from. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--Z580emYKCA/UBuPUeGSGXI/AAAAAAAAARg/6YoTaijShq8/s1600/ditch+at+eye+nr+river+dove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--Z580emYKCA/UBuPUeGSGXI/AAAAAAAAARg/6YoTaijShq8/s400/ditch+at+eye+nr+river+dove.jpg" width="260" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Peat and alluvium exposed where the Birdwalk Brook <br />entered the Dove valley. Summer 1996.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<span style="background-color: white;">Over the course of two months I excavated a layer of </span><span style="background-color: white;">compacted peat beneath the floodplain alluvium of the Dove, recovering </span><span style="background-color: white;">bones </span><span style="background-color: white;">from it </span><span style="background-color: white;">(cattle, horse, pig, dog), also worked roundwood and evidence of a wattle fence, but no pottery or metalwork. Geomorphologist Alistair Pitty and soil scientist Bill Corbett helped me understand the sub-surface geometry of the peat and alluvium by hand-drilling a series of core-sampled transects across the basin. I explored the Brook a little way upstream and found evidence of a dumped clay dam spanning its valley. Since the sediments and fossil pollen at <a href="http://www.geoeast.org.uk/geoimap/norfpdf/diss_mere.pdf" target="_blank">Diss Mere</a>, five miles away, had been so well studied, I thought it might be possible to relate the environmental evidence here to a robust local framework going back 10,000 years.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">Gradually the story of the archaeology and geology came together in some hypotheses about the history of the site. Far from being a quiet, forgotten corner of the Dove valley, the Seggs could tell a story of human business and environmental change. </span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">The animal bones came from a farmstead at the Seggs, possibly later prehistoric, and the peat dated from this time.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">The arrival of farming in the Dove valley, possibly in the Iron Age, led to increased run-off from local fields, and hence deposition of the layer of alluvium over the peat. </span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">There was a mill sited where the Brook enters the Seggs, perhaps in Mediaeval times.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="color: white;">.</span></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3yAoun_1c1g/UBuPQC6i4yI/AAAAAAAAARY/uKjmCFtyXNg/s1600/600+south+bank+section+annotated.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3yAoun_1c1g/UBuPQC6i4yI/AAAAAAAAARY/uKjmCFtyXNg/s1600/600+south+bank+section+annotated.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I wrote a simple report of my findings and gave the excavation archive to the <a href="http://www.suffolk.gov.uk/libraries-and-culture/culture-and-heritage/archaeology/" target="_blank">Suffolk Archaeological Service</a> for <span style="background-color: white;">posterity.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> There it stayed until 2010, when I met <a href="http://www.ba-env.bham.ac.uk/staff/gearey.html" target="_blank">Ben Gearey</a> who was excavating the <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oxbow/jwa/2011/00000010/00000001/art00002" target="_blank">Iron Age site at Barsham</a> in the Waveney valley, and I told him my story. We revisited the site, now much overgrown, and he took some wood samples for carbon-14 dating. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">The results dated the worked roundwood to 420-610 AD. </span><span style="background-color: white;">So we have rare evidence of life in </span><span style="background-color: white;">the post-Roman period in East Anglia - the time of early Anglo-Saxon settlement and the age of Arthur. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
This information has transformed my awareness of the Seggs. Somewhere here, on the boundary between the two parishes, there was a farmstead where people were born, lived and died. Perhaps they were Christian Britons, but they are more likely to have been among the pagan Angles or Saxons whose settlement sites are typically found along the valleys of Suffolk. I am reminded of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Stow_Anglo-Saxon_village" target="_blank">West Stow</a> in the Lark valley. Perhaps they buried their dead in the cremation cemetery discovered in 1818, a half a mile away at Waterloo Plantation. They lived in the days before Christian parishes, and when the boundaries were drawn here, perhaps in the 8th century, the existence of their homestead may already have been forgotten. People had moved by then to village centres on higher ground, leaving the valley to its pagan desolation - its trees, meadows and wetland - much as we see it today.<br />
<span style="color: white;">.</span><br />
The Seggs reminds us of an abandoned ancestral geography, and when I walk there my awareness is dense with all the silent memories written into the sediments of the valley floor, which only excavation could give a voice to.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com2Oakley, Suffolk IP21, UK52.356829 1.17884752.347131 1.159106 52.366527 1.198588tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-7193939760290497692012-07-17T22:48:00.000+01:002020-02-09T09:10:19.953+00:00Grimes GravesFew places in Norfolk have more mystery attached to them than <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimes_Graves" target="_blank">Grimes Graves</a>.<br />
<span style="color: white;">.</span><br />
Its name, for a start -<span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><span style="background-color: white;">'</span><i style="background-color: white;">Grim's Diggings</i><span style="background-color: white;">', in which Grim is one of the titles of the </span><span style="background-color: white;">old English god <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%8Dden" target="_blank">Woden</a> (Odin), </span><span style="background-color: white;">meaning 'masked', 'atrocious' or 'cruel'. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><br />
<span style="color: white;">.</span>
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Dirt is grime and dirt is grim, and so are graves; one walks away from them wiping one's hands.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> The name comes down to us from the Dark Ages, as though the place were best avoided.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">The site is a lonely cluster of pits and mounds on open heathland surrounded by forestry plantations. </span><span style="background-color: white;">In some ways the place itself is an anti-climax for visitors. How could it ever live up to its name? An English Heritage visitor centre squats in the middle of the site, </span><span style="background-color: white;">housing introductory displays and</span><span style="background-color: white;"> a range of gift items, such as wines, jams and wooden swords. One is obliged to wear protective clothing before descending the ladder into the only open mineshaft. Once below, some 30 feet from the surface, with eyes adjusting to the dim light, one finds a series of low, lit tunnels and chambers </span><span style="background-color: white;">radiating</span><span style="background-color: white;"> outwards into the surrounding chalk bedrock, from which slabs of flint were extracted by late Neolithic and early Bronze Age miners. The entrances are blocked with iron grilles and the chalk is grouted with white concrete - a far cry from the days of my childhood when I could scramble down the tunnels, and emerge covered in whiteness, my hands scratched by flints. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EJdX9urMgjM/UAXUWevSNrI/AAAAAAAAAQU/2JMZ42Q-3Nk/s1600/500+grimes_graves_gallery_thw+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Grimes Graves gallery © Tim Holt-Wilson 2012" border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EJdX9urMgjM/UAXUWevSNrI/AAAAAAAAAQU/2JMZ42Q-3Nk/s1600/500+grimes_graves_gallery_thw+2.jpg" title="Grimes Graves gallery© Tim Holt-Wilson 2012" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="background-color: white;">I first met Grimes Graves through the historical dioramas at <a href="http://www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk/Visit_Us/Norwich_Castle/index.htm" target="_blank">Norwich Castle Museum</a>. They uniquely opened my eyes to Norfolk's history. The most compelling and disturbing model was that of a semi-naked man with an antler pick in hand, twisted awkwardly and bleeding, hacking out flints in a flickering darkness. I found his vulnerability frightening. I could turn with relief to the next diorama of the series, a sunlit Breckland scene during the Bronze Age. </span><span style="background-color: white;">These displays have been 'retired' in recent years, but their impact remains. It is rivalled by that of the dark reconstructions of the site by </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sorrell" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Alan Sorrell</a>,<span style="background-color: white;"> commissioned by the Ministry of Works in the 1960s, with their grainy atmosphere of prehistoric despair. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: white;">.</span>
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gN5uOCDkSss/UAXWBSiI5II/AAAAAAAAAQc/Ev8Kq3GRu4E/s1600/500+P1010027.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Grimes Graves landscape © Tim Holt-Wilson 2012" border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gN5uOCDkSss/UAXWBSiI5II/AAAAAAAAAQc/Ev8Kq3GRu4E/s1600/500+P1010027.jpg" title="Grimes Graves landscape © Tim Holt-Wilson 2012" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: white; text-align: -webkit-auto;">.</span>
</div>
<span style="background-color: white;">Last Saturday, I joined the <a href="http://www.hertsgeolsoc.ology.org.uk/" target="_blank">Hertfordshire Geological Society</a> at Grimes Graves for their Breckland field trip. I was asked to say a few words about the site, so I spoke to them of trading networks and flint, heathland and vegetation patterns. But while members descended into the pit, I explored the pockmarked landscape above. </span><span style="background-color: white;">The turf is soft and enchanting, like downland, and is cropped by primitive-looking sheep.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> Some 400 craters are scattered across the site, e</span><span style="background-color: white;">ach one pays homage to Man's ancient and powerful ally, flint, and </span><span style="background-color: white;">beneath each </span><span style="background-color: white;">is an unexplored deposit of chalk rubble and prehistoric debris with a story to tell. I suspect it was from a place such as this that the maggots hatched from the Earth to become the race of dwarves, '<i>who acquired human understanding and the shape of men</i>' ('<a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/pre/pre04.htm" target="_blank">Gylfaginning</a>', XIV).</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">However, a horse's skull is my strongest association at Grimes Graves - t</span><span style="background-color: white;">he skull of a mare of Bronze Age date. It was recovered during the British Museum excavations in the 1970s, and represents </span><span style="background-color: white;">the earliest known domesticated horse in Britain. S</span><span style="background-color: white;">he was evidently old at the time of her death, for her teeth were worn. </span><span style="background-color: white;">Exotic and valuable,</span><span style="background-color: white;"> she was evidently worth caring for into old age. </span><span style="background-color: white;">I think of her as the ancestress of all native horses in Britain. She doth appear in my imagination ghastly white, covered in chalk. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0Weeting, Norfolk, UK52.468558 0.60952652.429865 0.530562 52.507251000000004 0.68849tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-8108784115868263522012-07-08T10:32:00.000+01:002013-09-18T13:03:42.074+01:00MonocultureRushall, Norfolk - 7th July 2012<br />
<br />
A warm wind from the south-east, with disturbed cloud shifting through a blue sky - change is in the air in this part of England, while other parts (Devon, Dorset, Somerset) experience torrential rainfall. Fields of corn and sugar beet are basking in shifting sunlight.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sfh9I1gZTMk/T_nVyF3Z91I/AAAAAAAAAOY/2PQ2c59ay8k/s1600/500+Dodd's+Wood+footpath.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Rushall landscape 1 © Tim Holt-Wilson 2012" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sfh9I1gZTMk/T_nVyF3Z91I/AAAAAAAAAOY/2PQ2c59ay8k/s1600/500+Dodd's+Wood+footpath.jpg" title="Rushall landscape 1 © Tim Holt-Wilson 2012" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">I am walking along a footpath southwards towards Dodd's Wood. The path follows a strip of grassy land, a set-aside or conservation margin, between a wheat field and a hedge. In contrast to the block of uniformly coloured wheat to my right, the field margin and the hedge are alive with a variety of insect and plant life.</span><br />
<ul>
<li>A dusky brown butterfly with slow erratic flight, grey margins to its wings;</li>
<li>A copper-coloured butterfly, wings ajar as it rests on a leaf;</li>
<li>A fleshy looking water plant with spear-shaped leaves in the ditch;</li>
<li>Flowering grasses;</li>
<li>Pale pink, sweetly-scented dog roses like stars in the hedge;</li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">A large puff-ball seed head like a dandelion clock but much larger and bolder; has green flower buds.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white;">I search for names to make sense of what I am seeing in the landscape. Sometimes the particulars are there, and sometimes they are not: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">A big humming insect > a bumblebee > White-tailed Bumblebee </span><i style="background-color: white;">Bombus lucorum.</i></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">A wood > a square of deciduous trees > perhaps a plantation 200 years old.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">A field of corn > wheat > I don't know the name of the seed variety (how can I find out)?</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7294cuUmbo8/T_nXMuBC7yI/AAAAAAAAAO4/na4ujdH3Y7g/s1600/500+small+skipper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7294cuUmbo8/T_nXMuBC7yI/AAAAAAAAAO4/na4ujdH3Y7g/s1600/500+small+skipper.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">A Small Skipper butterfly <i>Thymelicus sylvestris</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XEyDKy40bBs/T_nauX5zgmI/AAAAAAAAAPE/HXyzW1DwWjU/s1600/500+plant+in+ditch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XEyDKy40bBs/T_nauX5zgmI/AAAAAAAAAPE/HXyzW1DwWjU/s1600/500+plant+in+ditch.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The dramatic leaves of Water Plantain <i>Alisma plantago-aquatica</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: white;">.</span>
</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">The sheer diversity of the life along the </span><span style="background-color: white;">hedgerow</span><span style="background-color: white;"> and ditch contrasts absolutely with the lack of diversity in the wheat field. A regiment of stalks rise regular and stiff from the bare brown soil. A small moth flies up from my feet and lands in the wheat. Frankly, I am a little afraid for its safety, as if the wheat were laced with pesticide - which it probably is. From a biodiversity point of view, if we could see the field as a painting then the frame would be the most valuable part of the tableau. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: white;">.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">I pause on the threshold of the wood, my eyes adjusting to the dim, green light and my skin to the change of temperature. </span><span style="background-color: white;">Tree trunks rise up, giving contrasting vistas into deeper places beyond the path. Pale brown, voracious sparks of life - mosquitoes - begin drifting round me. I follow the </span><span style="background-color: white;">footpath across ground carpeted by Dog's Mercury and Enchanter's Nightshade, flanked by traces of a ditch brimming with leaf mould. Through the trees, I see that many branches have been gathered into a conical shelter round the base of an ash tree, as if adventurous boys - or </span><span style="background-color: white;">Mesolithic man</span><span style="background-color: white;"> - had recently passed through. It is more likely to be a rough shelter for feeding pheasants in winter.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: white;">.</span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zmqnxlGWacw/T_nWRM3hLDI/AAAAAAAAAOg/5cVaLw3naDg/s1600/500+camp+in+the+wood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zmqnxlGWacw/T_nWRM3hLDI/AAAAAAAAAOg/5cVaLw3naDg/s1600/500+camp+in+the+wood.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: white;">.</span>
</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">In contrast to the wheat field, the hedgerow, ditch and the wood are places of richness - visual, cultural and biological. They have developed in a time-depth dimension, as years and centuries have passed by with ecological continuity. There are occasional punctuation marks in their development - cutting, ditching, coppicing - but nothing compared to what happens to the wheat field, reset to ground-zero </span><span style="background-color: white;">each year </span><span style="background-color: white;">by the farmer. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: white;">.</span>
</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Of course, all this land was once forested, perhaps a thousand years ago, and the fields were won from the forest by hard labour of humans, horses and oxen. The diversity of life in the field margins, hedgerows and ditches </span><span style="background-color: white;">has developed since then. I am thankful for the Environmental Stewardship scheme which allows it to continue flourishing in the face of industrial agriculture. If the wheat field is 'modern', perhaps the conservation margin is 'postmodern'? (answers below, please).</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: white;">.</span>
</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Meanwhile, I am reminded of a quote by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">...civilization is no longer a fragile flower, to be carefully preserved and reared with great difficulty here and there in sheltered corners of a territory rich in natural resources... All that is over: humanity has taken to monoculture, once and for all, and is preparing to produce civilization in bulk, as if it were sugar-beet.</span><br />
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="background-color: white; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-align: right;">- 'Tristes Tropiques'; transl John Russell; 1955.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="color: white;">.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L79fPCC9jS0/T_ncSNrG6cI/AAAAAAAAAPM/mRAE2mBFOSE/s1600/500+view+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Rushall landscape 2 © Tim Holt-Wilson 2012" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L79fPCC9jS0/T_ncSNrG6cI/AAAAAAAAAPM/mRAE2mBFOSE/s1600/500+view+1.jpg" title="Rushall landscape 2 © Tim Holt-Wilson 2012" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0Rushall, Norfolk IP21, UK52.397448 1.228575952.387758999999996 1.2088349 52.407137 1.2483169tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-30198024098900077072012-06-29T14:37:00.002+01:002023-05-11T22:01:52.508+01:00Tales of a Crow <span style="background-color: white;">While one person sees a shopping mall, another person may see the open fields on which it was built - or even a mythic landscape. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: white;">.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Take the case of the Crow Tribe living at Billings, Montana. I recently discovered a poignant article by journalist Lorna Thackeray in </span><span style="background-color: white;">the </span><a href="http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/winter-tales-crow-historian-retells-stories-of-area-s-past/article_e614d298-6249-5e86-a46a-4dbe1edad464.html" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Billings Gazette</a><span style="background-color: white;"> (09-02-2012), interviewing</span><span style="background-color: white;"> the Crow historian Elias Goes Ahead. He tells us about important places in the history of his people, places now swallowed up by 140 years of colonisation and built development.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Plenty Coups, the last of the great Crow chiefs, lived his final years south of Billings in Pryor... "Ten years later, his father, Medicine Bird, was killed by Piegan Indians," he continued. "This took place down South Billings Boulevard at the end of the bridge, just to the right.". These spots are unmarked, as are most of the places named in his stories, but they linger in Crow memory.</i><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: center;"> </span></blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IEhGFWpITac/T_AcvEci4nI/AAAAAAAAAMI/m16EC1jHIag/s1600/Crow+map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="224" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IEhGFWpITac/T_AcvEci4nI/AAAAAAAAAMI/m16EC1jHIag/s400/Crow+map.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">[Extract from Billings Gazette]</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i>Among the Crow heroes was Chief Four Dances. <span style="background-color: white;">"Four Dances went fasting," Goes Ahead said. "He had four fasting sites." </span><span style="background-color: white;">One was near Airport Road and another was west of the airport. One was in the current Four Dances Recreation Area and the fourth was near Highway 87 </span></i></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i>as it goes into Emerald Hills, he said. At Four Dances, he was adopted by the great-horned owl </i></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i>...</i></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span></blockquote>
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F6tykJ2lL74/UBuCfZv9jgI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/cZLJmU9XRGw/s1600/billings+airport.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="306" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F6tykJ2lL74/UBuCfZv9jgI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/cZLJmU9XRGw/s400/billings+airport.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Near Airport Road. Image courtesy Google Maps</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">These stories open up a new perspective on the landscape of the city and its suburban hinterland. They invite us to look through the westernised life-world, with its roads, houses, shopping malls and factories, into that of </span><span style="background-color: white;">an elder people</span><span style="background-color: white;">. The politics are poignant.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">Before Billings was the Magic City or the Sugar City or Montana's Trailhead, it was Crow Country.</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span></i><span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white;">Taking for a moment the Crow perspective, what words might we use to describe the present urbanised landscape? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">--------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><i>Winter tales: Crow historian retells stories of area's past</i> -</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;"><span style="color: #333333;"><a href="http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/winter-tales-crow-historian-retells-stories-of-area-s-past/article_e614d298-6249-5e86-a46a-4dbe1edad464.html">http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/winter-tales-crow-historian-retells-stories-of-area-s-past/article_e614d298-6249-5e86-a46a-4dbe1edad464.html</a> (accessed June 2012)</span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-21050603536180463082012-06-27T12:51:00.000+01:002012-09-12T09:39:06.772+01:00Hrēod Græf<span style="background-color: white;">I was in Redgrave yesterday evening, at a meeting hosted by the <a href="http://www.scva.org.uk/education/culture_countryside/" target="_blank">Culture of the Countryside</a> project of the SCVA. We discussed ideas for creative collaboration with the <a href="http://www.lohp.org.uk/" target="_blank">Little Ouse Headwaters Project</a>. </span><span style="background-color: white;">A </span><span style="background-color: white;">wicker eel trap </span><span style="background-color: white;">stood on the table, </span><span style="background-color: white;">along with a </span><span style="background-color: white;">terracotta statuette of a Mexican rain god and the prow of a Polynesian canoe. </span><br />
<span style="color: white;">.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Including both wooded uplands and valley fen, Redgrave was called <i>Redegrafe</i> in the Middle Ages, from the Old English </span><i style="background-color: white;">Hrēod Græf, </i><span style="background-color: white;">'Reed Ditch'. So it probably started life as a settlement down near the Fen, perhaps on </span><span style="background-color: white;">on the sandy soils</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">round Moneypot Hill. The main area would have developed later around the Green, perhaps in the 12th century, a mile away on the clayland plateau. Redgrave has strands of continuity with the Mediaeval world, with relics that include its Green, Church and Park (which once belonged to the Liberty of St Edmund), its </span><span style="background-color: white;">Lord of the Manor, and </span><span style="background-color: white;">the pattern of its roads and lanes. It also has its people, many of whom may be more local than they know, and of course its plants and animals - </span><span style="background-color: white;">the parish </span><span style="background-color: white;">is their homeland too.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9tmrNjzmsII/T_rCHUFqmYI/AAAAAAAAAPo/f0VasvBC5UU/s1600/500+P7020051+cut+adj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Hodskinson © Tim Holt-Wilson 2012" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9tmrNjzmsII/T_rCHUFqmYI/AAAAAAAAAPo/f0VasvBC5UU/s1600/500+P7020051+cut+adj.jpg" title="Hodskinson © Tim Holt-Wilson 2012" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Extract from Hodskinson's map, 1783,<br />showing Redgrave Green and the Fen</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: white;">.</span>
<br />
How can we creatively engage with the local distinctiveness of the Little Ouse headwaters area? The river starts life as a ditch in Burgate or Rickinghall, depending on which way you are looking. It swells with groundwater seeping out of the Chalk bedrock and boulder clay. Its valley is the westerly part of a former glacial meltwater channel fifty miles long joining the Fenland basin to the Waveney. Seen from the air, it is a rank green corridor of grazing meadow and marsh, carr woodland, fen and even patches of heathland. Its resources down the centuries have been a province of the poor: it has supplied them with timber, peat and firewood; hazel and furze; wicker, reed and sedge; meat, fish and nuts; even pools for retting hemp. <span style="background-color: white;">Like </span><i style="background-color: white;">Hrēod Græf</i><span style="background-color: white;">, local parish names evoke the ancient life of the valley: </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Blo' Norton - </span><i style="background-color: white;">Blaenorton</i><span style="background-color: white;"> – ['North farmstead where woad grows']</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Hinderclay - </span><i style="background-color: white;">Hyldreclea</i><span style="background-color: white;"> – ['River fork where elder grows']</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Thelnetham - </span><i style="background-color: white;">Thelfetham</i><span style="background-color: white;"> – ['Village frequented by swans']</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zh_JwroMRJw/T-zJpS5TbyI/AAAAAAAAAL8/dtvPBfwCp3E/s1600/500+ochre.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Marsh ochre © Tim Holt-Wilson 2012" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zh_JwroMRJw/T-zJpS5TbyI/AAAAAAAAAL8/dtvPBfwCp3E/s1600/500+ochre.jpg" title="Marsh ochre © Tim Holt-Wilson 2012" /></a></div>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="background-color: white;">After the meeting, as dusk was falling, </span><a href="http://www.justinpartyka.com/" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Justin</a><span style="background-color: white;"> [Partyka] and I set out towards the Fen down the footpath of Mill Lane. We met Neville Culley out walking his dog. He has lived all his life in the village, and was brought up at Sandyhurst cottage near the Fen; his father Eric was the Redgrave Estate carpenter. We talked about people and places. Later, Justin and I continued towards Sandyhurst. The footpath skirts the wood, where Eric said the nightingales once used to sing so loud they kept you awake. We passed the lighted windows of the lone cottage where his widow Daphne lives. Neville clearly makes himself useful about the place: the grass in the lane is kept as immaculately as ever; its clippings are tipped in a huge navel-pile against the hedge, towering up beside a neatly trimmed ivy bush. Sandyhurst is an empire of order in the chaos of June.</span><br />
<br />
Mill Lane finishes at the Fen. Dark trees give way to a gloomy expanse. A large hawk suddenly darted towards us, veered up and turned away - perhaps a Goshawk (Cully?). A crescent moon appeared between shifts of cloud, eyeing us also from the surface of pools. In autumn, this part of the Fen is swept with 50,000 wings, as flocks of starlings twist and turn in dark acrobatic masses before settling to roost. The brooding stillness and otherness of this valley landscape challenges us to find messages that people will want to hear. It is liminal and borderline; its messages are unhuman. Would our tribal ancestors have seen it any differently?<br />
<br />
Picking our way back up to Redgrave, the cottage windows were now in darkness.
<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rOnEeeKXW5k/T-s5z6fGwSI/AAAAAAAAALU/KPemMlZj9qY/s1600/500+R+Fen1+adj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="© Justin Partyka 2012" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rOnEeeKXW5k/T-s5z6fGwSI/AAAAAAAAALU/KPemMlZj9qY/s1600/500+R+Fen1+adj.jpg" title="© Justin Partyka 2012" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Photo courtesy Justin Partyka</span>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-68805823794789812622012-06-17T10:07:00.002+01:002013-09-14T22:20:52.321+01:00Everything<i>"Everything we think we know about the world is a model</i>".<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> - Donella H. Meadows: 'Thinking in Systems: A Primer' (Routledge; 2009)</span>Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-43333503369916786072012-06-15T14:49:00.003+01:002013-09-14T22:21:32.325+01:00Subject-ObjectI am seated outside my front door in the sunlight, reading.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"<i>Our most immediate experience of things... is necessarily an experience of reciprocal encounter - of tension, communication and commingling". </i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(1)</span></blockquote>
I glance up suddenly, aware of being observed. A grey squirrel is draped along the ridge of the roof, warming itself in the sun, watching me. I give a low whistle; its head is quizzically raised for a moment.<br />
<br />
<u>Awareness</u> is aware of me.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K4v07Mke8Hg/T9tXOkoBemI/AAAAAAAAAK0/z3PQ4rmvWPo/s1600/pog+aug+07.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K4v07Mke8Hg/T9tXOkoBemI/AAAAAAAAAK0/z3PQ4rmvWPo/s320/pog+aug+07.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bacon</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color: white;"><i>"Only by affirming the animateness of perceived things do we allow our words to emerge directly from the depths of our ongoing reciprocity with the world</i>" <span style="font-size: x-small;">(ibid).</span></span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">David Abram suggests we must decentre our perception from seeing things in subject-object terms, and recentre them in the primordial connection we have with the life-world, and our symbiosis with it.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;">.</span><br />
But what about the subject-object dichotomy? Isn't it central to perceiving and knowing things factually? Where would Science and the Enlightenment project be, since <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei" target="_blank">Galileo</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon" target="_blank">Bacon</a>, without objectivity?<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="background-color: white;">Abram and the phenomenologists recognise that by trying to represent the world we inevitably forfeit its direct presence.</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"<i>It was Husserl's genius to realise that the assumption of objectivity had led to an almost total eclipse of the life-world in the modern era, to a nearly complete forgetting of this living dimension... In their striving to attain a finished blueprint for the world, the sciences had become frightfully estranged from our direct human experience</i>." <span style="font-size: x-small;">(2).</span></blockquote>
However the objective way of seeing the world, and the achievements of science, are rooted in subjectivity.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"The striving for objectivity is understood, phenomenologically, as a striving to achieve greater consensus among a plurality of subjects... The pure 'objective reality' commonly assumed by modern science, far from being the concrete basis underlying all experience was, according to Husserl, a theoretical construction, an unwarranted idealisation of intersubjective experience".</i> <span style="font-size: x-small;">(3)</span></blockquote>
Science is thus an intersubjective project, the product of competition and consensus-building between scientists as subjectivities. This is a radical position, which gathers both subjective and objective modes of experiencing reality into its orbit.<br />
<br />
For Mythic Geography, writing about the meaning of 'place' inevitably brings into play our wealth of subjective and intersubjective experience, ranging from personal memories and perceptions through folklore to scientific information. This is the myth in the 'Mythic': the fiction we create to explain our place in the world - and no less real for being fiction.<br />
<br />
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(1) David Abram: <i>'</i><i>The Spell of the Sensuous: </i><i>Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World'</i> (Vintage; 1997; ISBN 0679776397; p56).
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(2) Ibid, p41.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(3) Ibid, p38.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367933442785981605.post-4224966421244379812012-06-08T13:51:00.000+01:002012-06-18T23:23:56.561+01:00The lives of othersA squirrel is busy retrieving acorns - a small hole in the grass, the husk of the acorn lying beside it = the evidence. New potholes appear on the lawn every few days. She presumably locates her buried treasure by smell: I have often seen her sniffing about the grass, and she often has mud on paws and nose. I don't think I can attribute great feats of memory to her however - grey squirrels cannot match the astounding <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark's_Nutcracker" target="_blank">Clark's Nutcracker</a> in North America, which may recover 70% of its cached nuts from a territory of over 100 square miles (see <a href="http://suite101.com/article/birds-remember-where-food-caches-are-a68698" target="_blank">article</a>). Every year I have several oak seedlings sprouting from the lawn, which have presumably grown from the acorns that have escaped her or her fellows.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-d-fZDof2U_c/T9H0x2J0VdI/AAAAAAAAAKo/t9rUF6bZwQU/s1600/acorn+hole+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-d-fZDof2U_c/T9H0x2J0VdI/AAAAAAAAAKo/t9rUF6bZwQU/s320/acorn+hole+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
I am reminded how important smell is in the non-human world. The beetle which flies heavily past me in the garden is unlikely to be pursuing a random path. The ants which forage among the grass stems are following scented tracks laid by their fellows; the closer they come to their native ant-heap, the stronger and more reassuring must be the smell of home. The voles have their runs in the undergrowth. The moorhens are patrolling their part of the garden, reinforcing an invisible territorial boundary between their domain and that of the moorhens on the back pond. The rabbits have taken to sitting on top of the ant-hill on the lawn, and crapping there, making a pile of <i>hraka</i>, as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Adams" target="_blank">Richard Adams</a> might have put it.<br />
<br />
My garden has places and spaces with meaning of which I know nothing. It is filled with tracks, trails, signs and boundaries; if I could read them all I would be astounded - and completely overwhelmed with the quantity and complexity of the information. I just filter out what is important to me - and the other inhabitants do the same.<br />
<br />
<br />Tim Holt-Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679512754779338962noreply@blogger.com0