Tag: England

At The Hop

On By Mick CanningIn farming, hops, kent, tradition21 Comments

I was talking about hop pockets and pokes last week – and pigs, of course, which was how it all started, but forget the pigs for now. Let’s stick with the pokes and pockets. At the weekend we went for a walk through a part of Kent we hadn’t walked for a few years and part of the walk took us through this field:

This was a hop garden many years ago. Conveniently close to the oast houses so that as soon as the hops were picked they could be taken in and dried before there was any chance of them spoiling. Taken in bagged up in pokes, and once dried shipped out to the brewers in pockets. A word of explanation for those not familiar with these terms: hops are not grown in fields, they are grown in gardens. Not like your or my back garden, but like a field. But a field full of poles. Hop poles. With huge cable-like wires strung between them to support the hop bines as they grow.

When they are ready for harvesting, the bines are pulled down and the hops picked and put in pokes – large sacks (but you knew that, of course. You remembered it from last week). Then once dried they are shovelled into pockets – another size of sack.

And what are the hops for? Making beer, my friend. Lovely beer.

I don’t have a picture of the hop garden from back then, but late one cold, misty, autumn night about thirty years ago, I walked through it and the eeriness was instantly imprinted on me and once I was home I felt compelled to make an oil pastel painting of it (below).

Anyway, as I said I don’t have a photo of the hop garden in question, but this one from Pixabay illustrates very nicely the hop poles and wires with the growing hop bines growing up and across them:

Image by -Rita-👩‍🍳 und 📷 mit ❤ from Pixabay

The poles were supported by wires kept under tension, anchored into the ground around the edge of the garden. Quite a few of these are still in situ around the very edge of the field and just into the woodland and hedgerows bordering it.

In 1872, there were 72,000 acres of land in England growing hops, the majority of these being in Kent, employing over 100,000 seasonal workers at picking time. By 2003, the acreage in Kent was down to just over 1,000 and for the first time ever the county had been overtaken by Herefordshire, which now grew more, although the decline does at least appear to have halted for now. In 2011 there were a total of just over 2,500 acres under cultivation in England but it is such a small number there were fears the industry could die out. Although hops are still used in beer brewing, much of the requirement is imported, especially with a popular shift towards less bitter-tasting beers. But in much the same way that Kent has also lost a huge percentage of its apple orchards, a once rich and diverse farming landscape has become more and more homogenised, with endless huge fields of arable crops and sheep and cattle replacing the hop bines and apple trees.

I spent one autumn apple picking around thirty years ago and the farm I was working on had a large acreage of hop gardens (both apples and hops all sadly gone, now). It was an incredibly busy and bustling time, with our diverse group apple picking – a mixture of locals and Europeans come over for the work – and a traditional mix of workers in the hop gardens; as well as locals, there were a lot of gypsies and possibly still a few people down from London’s East End, which was a traditional way for those workers to make some extra money in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was busy, noisy, very hard work, and a lot of fun.

And, not surprisingly, there are a number of traditional songs about hop picking. So here is the wonderful Shirley Collins and the Albion Dance Band to perform ‘Hopping down in Kent’ especially for you.

Red Herrings

On By Mick CanningIn crime, culture, detective stories, etymology, language, Red herrings27 Comments

I had a couple of conversations the other day on detective novels, in which red herrings were mentioned, and it reminded me of something I had been reading a few days before, as well as one verse of an old nursery rhyme, the words recorded in the 1800’s, which goes thus:

The man in the wilderness asked of me
How many strawberries grew in the sea.
I answered him, as I thought good,
As many as red herrings grew in the wood.

Pixabay image

It is supposedly one of the lesser-known nursery rhymes, but I came across it in one of the books my children had when they were small. Possibly, the Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. Again, there is an old song occurring along the English east coast called the Red Herring, of which these are the first two verses:

1
What shall we do with the red herring’s head?
Oh, we’ll make that into feather beds, and all such things,
We’ve red herrings and heads and feather beds, and all such things.

Chorus
Of all the fish that swim in the sea, red herring it is the fish for me,
And all such things.

2
What shall we do with the red herring’s eyes?
Oh, we’ll make ’em into puddings and pies, and all such things,
We’ve red herrings and eyes and puddings and pies,
Red herrings and heads and feather beds, and all such things.

There seem to be many versions of this, one of which was collected by Cecil Sharp, well-known as one of the first people to travel around England in the early 1900’s collecting and writing down folk songs, afraid they would become lost as, in a rapidly modernising world, fewer and fewer people now sang them.

Unusually (because I never trust it as a source) I looked at Wikipedia which merely defined a red herring as a distraction, or something misleading. It suggests the term came from a strong smelling smoked kipper which could be dragged across a track to put hounds off of a scent.

And what it reminded me of was that a dictionary of the Sussex Dialect, published in 1875 does not have a particular entry for red herring, yet under ‘White-Herring’ is found the definition: A fresh herring, as distinguished from a dried one, which is called a red-herring. Delving a little deeper, we find references to dried, smoked, herrings – named red herrings – in use to mask the scent of trails both literally and figuratively, in a story published by William Cobbett in 1807 and also a couple of references from the 1780’s. There is apparently a bit of disagreement over where the phrase was used first in that context, but that doesn’t seem relevant here, it’s just interesting to find out that red herrings actually exist, and how they came to assume the role they have in literature and everyday conversation.

Shorelarking at Rye

On By Mick CanningIn larking, sussex, walking27 Comments

We went down to Rye harbour in Sussex, a few weeks ago, on a beautifully sunny but bitingly cold day. The actual harbour entrance is in the middle distance of the above photo with Dungeness Power Station just visible on the horizon in the distance.

This red-roofed hut sits on the shingle on the approach to the harbour and has become the iconic image that everyone photographs. I resisted the temptation this time, but took this one a few years ago. No one seems certain when it was built, but it was certainly in use from the early 1900’s onwards and was used to store fishing equipment.

The salt marshes behind the harbour constitute a nature reserve and are an important place especially for migrating birds. We walked around the marshes for an hour or so and did see quite a few birds, especially when we spent some while in a hide with the binoculars we’d brought. No close-up photos, because we were too far from the birds and I only had my pocket camera that day, but especially noticeable was was a group of some forty to fifty cormorants.

One of the tasks of the Environment Agency here is to continually move shingle in trucks westwards along the coast to shore up (pun intended) the sea defences. Due to the prevailing winds, longshore drift continually moves shingle eastwards along the coast and without this intervention it would choke the harbour mouth and undermine the sea wall at Pett (to the west). They load up the trucks with shingle from the shore, the trucks drive west and tip it out on the shore. The sea washes it eastwards along the coast again. The trucks load up with shingle from the shore…It almost feels a pointless exercise, but I suppose there’s no real alternative.

But longshore drift means that the shorelark on the South coast of England has a chance of finding rocks and stones (and all sorts of other things) that originated further to the west, and we spent some while searching among the stones here to see what we might turn up.

Shorelarking? It’s like mudlarking, but on the seashore. ‘Larking’ in this sense means looking for…well, anything. Coins, interesting rocks, anything lost or old or, preferably, both. Not that we found much, not that we ever find much, but we don’t do it as seriously as some folk. And as nice as it would be to turn up the sort of finds some people find in the mud of the Thames, we’re not that dedicated. But in the past I have found bits of flint tool while fieldlarking, and usually come home from a walk with an interesting stone or two.

We did find a couple of interesting things that day – they don’t look much, do they? But the grey stone in the centre is possibly a Mesolithic hammer stone, used for shaping flint tools while the nail had a tiny piece of wood still attached, but this crumbled away as soon as I picked it up. How old is it? I’ve no idea. Nails like that were in use from the 1800’s through into the 1900’s but it’s impossible to pin it down further. My immediate thought was it could be part of the beach groyne, but when I looked they seem to be constructed entirely with rivets. Maybe it is from an old shipwreck. The rock at the bottom is simply a lump of sandstone from further west along the coast, a piece of what was called Hastings Sandstone when I studied geology, but now known as the Ashdown beds. Nothing special, again.

Just an interesting few finds on the beach on a cold sunny day before we headed off for a warm drink.

Sickness and Diseases

On By Mick CanningIn family history, genealogy, research35 Comments

I’ve mentioned that I’ve been researching my family tree, and a few days ago I was looking for details of one of my ancestors who lived in what was then a small village just outside Norwich. Looking on the parish records not only did I find the entry for his burial, but then noticed that the rector at that time had begun noting down what each person had died of. It was by no means complete, though, because he had added these notes for a year or so and then just stopped. Whether he’d got fed up with it or been told to stop for some reason, I obviously have no idea. But as I glanced through them, I became fascinated by them. I felt they left quite a lot of information about the place and time (rural England in the 1850’s) and thought a bit of it worth sharing.

My ancestor was on page 5 of these records, and the burials had all been conducted by the same rector from the first entry on page one. He added these notes from entry number two, through to twenty nine, then again for number thirty three, and then stopped. This is a summary of the relevant entries:

1   Male     5 weeks   Dec 1851

2   Male       44         Dec 1851      paralysis

3   Male       14         Jan 1852       consumption

4   Male       53         Jan 1852       consumption

5   Male         6         Jan 1852       scarlet fever

6   Male         3         Jan 1852       scarlet fever

7   Female    17         Feb 1852      typhus fever

8   Male        33         Feb 1852      consumption

9   Female    3¾        Jan 1852      scarlet fever

10 Male        53         Feb 1852      liver complaints. Publican.

11 Male        61         Mar 1852      paralysis, consumption

12 Male        19         Mar 1852      consumption 2½ years

13 Female    62         Apr 1852       cancer

14 Female    78         May 1852      old age

15 Male        33         Apr 1852      consumption

16 Male        55         May 1852     decline and heart disease

17 Female    69         Aug 1852      old age

18 Female      5         Aug 1852      inflammation of bowels

19 Female    13         Aug 1852      typhus fever

20 female     21         Aug 1852     consumption

21 Female    76         Aug 1852     coroner’s inquest. Verdict died by visitation of God

22 Male        63        Sep 1852     coroner’s inquest. Verdict died from injury in the head caused by fall

23 Female     71        Feb 1853      paralytic stroke and old age

24 Male         49        Apr 1853      labourer. Decline

25 Female     71        Feb 1853      coroner’s inquest. died by visitation of God, She dropped down dead when in perfect health

26 Male        85         Apr 1853      labourer. Paralysis

27 Male      infant      May 1853      jaundice

28 Female    64         Jun 1853      drowned herself in 11 inches of water. Morbid religious depression. A dissenter. Verdict temp insanity

29 Female   infant     Jun 1853      thrush

After this there are no further comments from the rector, other than:

33 Male        72        Sep 1853      disease of heart

There is quite a lot that is of interest here, and just from a statistical point of view we can see that nine of the burials were children under sixteen – just under a third of the total. Of those six were five or under. Lots of children died in those days. Yet somewhat surprisingly, fourteen of them – roughly half – were over fifty, with four in their seventies and one of eighty five. A very good age for the time. There doesn’t seem much difference in the average ages males and females lived to, although this is a tiny sample, of course. All the rural poor had tough lives, both male and female, which brings us to the comments added by the rector.

Number twenty six really caught my eye. Male, aged 85, a labourer, died of what the rector calls paralysis. No old age pension for them, they worked until they dropped. Number twenty four is also described as a labourer. Obviously the rector felt it worth mentioning, although why just those two, who knows?

Then we have the common diseases we’ve pretty well consigned to the past, now. Scarlet fever. Typhoid. Consumption – properly called tuberculosis. They killed frequently, especially the young.

And when the cause of death couldn’t be determined, even by inquest? ‘Visitation of God’. Although why those ones weren’t just put down to old age I can’t imagine. Unless somebody saw something…

Two more comments I have to mention, though. Number ten, male, age 53, died of liver complaints. The rector had to mention he was a publican, of course.

And then there is number twenty eight. Female, aged 64, drowned herself in 11 inches of water. Morbid religious depression. A dissenter. Verdict temp insanity. The rector belonged to the Church of England, and I’m sure he relished the suggestion that dissenters were mad. All the different denominations of the church seem to regularly go to war with the others, which, if you fancy a bit of a giggle, I satirised here some while ago.

The Compleat Trespasser by John Bainbridge

On By Mick CanningIn environment, John Bainbridge, The Compleat Trespasser, UK, walking39 Comments

This time, the review without any distracting rants. Probably.

51pfb0Ihk8L._AC_UY218_

Sub-titled Journeys into Forbidden Britain, it immediately sets out its agenda: it is both a potted history of how the land was stolen from the inhabitants of Britain, and the long struggles to regain access to much of it, with numerous anecdotes of the author’s own escapades trespassing.

The story of how the inhabitants of Britain came to lose their access to the majority of the land is a story that has been repeated throughout most of Europe and beyond. Land forcibly taken by invading armies and distributed partly to their soldiers, but mainly their officials or nobility. Land enclosed by lords and kings for hunting purposes, burning villages and evicting their inhabitants from the land. Land taken by acts of Parliament to further enrich the gentry. Land given by kings to the established church, so that peasants might labour only to feed the rich and corrupt clergy.

Land that has been kept private and jealously guarded both by strict and cruel laws, and by equally cruel methods by the landowners themselves. Thus laws that deemed the starving and dispossessed villager might be executed for taking a rabbit from land he once lived on, to feed his family. Thus the mantrap that would cut a mans leg off. Thus countless thousands beaten and sometimes killed by gamekeepers and owners.

When I attempted to review this a week ago, it ended up turning into a full-blown rant against grouse moors (I do rants so well, these days!), but even today it is not just grouse moors that are fenced off just so the idle rich can enjoy slaughtering wildlife – there is plenty of woodland and more open land enclosed around the country and dedicated to pheasant shooting, for example. There are country houses with huge estates. Land taken by the MOD for training purposes, and never returned. There are many landowners determined to block access to legal rights of way. Although the Countryside Rights of Way act of 2000 was supposed to restore access to most of the countryside, there is still much that is off-limits.

Yet there are good landowners, too. The tales of John’s own trespassing include several encounters with sympathetic landowners happy to see walkers on their land, with the obvious proviso that they cause no damage.

The improved access rights we do have today were earned the hard way. Since Victorian times there have been mass trespasses intended to both bring the issue into the public forum, and to try to force change. The Kinder Trespass of 1932 is probably the most famous, yet many preceded that. It is thanks to the countless trespassers and campaigners of those days that we have improved access rights today.

The book finishes, though, with a plea. Firstly to campaign for further land reform, for better access rights – rights that are enjoyed in Scotland, but not England, Wales or Ireland. And secondly with a warning – the current government campaigned at the last election on a promise to criminalise trespass, so that anyone who deliberately or inadvertently strays from a public footpath onto private land might find themselves on a charge in a criminal court.

Anyone who enjoys the countryside in any form, enjoys spending time there, and walking in it, should read this book. It provides a very good, clear, account of where we are, how we got here, and what has been done to get us someplace better.

But also that we still have some way to go.

Being Wistful: South Downs Way 4 – Amberley to Winchester

On By Mick CanningIn long distance footpaths, South Downs Way, walking19 Comments

Mmm…I was rather forgetting I said I’d post the last part of this…

Our room looked out over what is called Amberley Swamp. We slept with the curtains open, and were woken by the pre-dawn light, although the bluey greys and purples soon gave way to greens and yellows in the low morning sun.

109a

But once the sun was up, the mist contrived to linger for a while longer and the cool, still air was filled with the cries of unseen birds. Later, as we left Amberley and approached the first steep climb of the day, we saw a yellowhammer on a gatepost singing its traditional ‘a little bit of bread and no cheese’ song.

113a

I tried to get a photo of the little perisher, though I wasn’t very successful.

This is all about the sheep, by the way.

085

Baaa!

The South Downs landscape as we know it today was largely formed by sheep. I don’t mean that large flocks of sheep sat down and planned it as a kind of Rural Development Project, but that for certainly more than a thousand years it was grazed by huge flocks of sheep whose dung helped improve the soil so that in places crops might also be grown. This led to the felling of virtually all tree cover (originally, the Downs were forested, as was most of Britain) and the establishment of the large grassland areas we associate with the Downs today.

Fans of Terry Pratchett will recall that the Mistress Weatherwax series was set in a part of Discworld that bears a large resemblance to the Chalk Downs of England. No coincidence, I am sure, as he hailed from the Wiltshire area which includes, of course, Salisbury Plain. When I read these books, I get the sense that in describing that area, he is writing of an area that is dear and special to him. There are rolling Downs and sheep and a witch who is also a shepherd living in a shepherd’s hut, which is a caravan but not as we know it, Jim.

Shepherd’s huts were the most basic of boxes on wheels, usually with a tiny shuttered glass-less window, a bunk bed, a small wood burning stove and pretty well not much else. The  hut would be up on the downs (there’s an oxymoron that’s not an oxymoron for you) for most of the year, and the shepherd would live up there looking after the sheep. Probably no chance of a day off or a night out, month after month. It was a tough life, and not at all romantic. Even getting hold of water would be a problem, with the general lack of any water at all on top of the Downs, unless they parked up near a dew pond (see part 1).

There used to be one in the grounds of the Visitor’s Centre at Exceat, near Seaford, although I’ve no idea if it is still there now.

A number of companies now make shepherd’s huts for trendy well-off folks with a bit of garden to shove them in, and charge quite a lot of money, and they are frequently much larger than the originals would have been, and fitted out in some luxury – a far cry from how they would have been when built on the farm for the shepherd. Perhaps they need a new name for them: Mock Shepherd’s Huts, perhaps.

A quick look at what Professor Google comes up with when you enter ‘Shepherd’s hut’ into the search engine reveals an overabundance of words like ‘luxurious’, ‘style’ and ‘cool’ and ‘glamping’…you get the idea.

In the first post of this series, I mentioned I had once intended to start an outdoor adventure company, which never happened. Had I done so, it was to be called Red Kite Outdoors. I mention this, as we saw a number of Red Kites towards the end of our walk. Which gives me an opportunity to include a second poor quality photo of a bird in this post.

There, don’t say I never do anything for you.

141a

A Red Kite – just out of range of my camera.

As planned, on the last day we reached Winchester.

We cheated, incidentally. We were so tired after the penultimate day, we walked an easy path for 3 miles or so into the village / small town of West Meon, went for coffee there, had lunch, and then took the bus to Winchester.

We don’t care!

155a

An easy path

After finding our AirBnb guesthouse (pretty damn good, actually) we went and had a look in the cathedral. It is pretty close to the end (or start) point of the walk, after all.

166b

An arty farty reflective light shot of the cathedral that shows nothing of the cathedral

We stood around in the Cathedral as the choir went through their practice before Evensong. I do not know what piece they were singing, but it was a beautiful, haunting, ethereal piece. It was tempting to stay for Evensong, just to hear them sing again, but we had an appointment with a celebratory supper which I was reluctant to delay.

168a

What better way to celebrate our arrival in Winchester?

Being Wistful: South Downs Way 1 – Eastbourne to Steyning

On By Mick CanningIn long distance footpaths, South Downs Way, walking32 Comments

Some of my own response to the Covid-19 crisis and the restrictions we all find ourselves under is to revisit my favourite places, in books or thought, films or photographs, or even old blog posts. It is sobering and depressing to realise I may not be able to go more than a few miles from home over the coming months, but this does help a little.

The South Downs are a favourite, so I’m going to re-post this short series I put up a couple of years ago after our most recent walk along the South Downs Way:

 

Once upon a time, or five or six years ago, if you prefer, I thought I would start up my own outdoor adventure company. It never happened in the end, largely due to the cost of insurance. However, if I had gone through with it I have to admit it would have been largely so I could go on long distance trails both in the UK and overseas without having to pay for it.

Oh, well. It was a nice idea.

The South Downs Way is a long distance footpath of one hundred miles in length, running from Eastbourne to Winchester, or Winchester to Eastbourne, if you must, along the top of the South Downs.

Hence the name.

We walked it in May.

It is usual, when writing about a journey – especially a long distance walk – to write in some detail about the scenery and the route, in sequential order. I don’t think I’ll do that this time. Instead I’ll probably jump about all over the place writing about odd things we found particularly interesting.  And post one or two photos of the stunning scenery…

039a

Such as this one.

So, a few points of interest.

This, then, is a dew pond:

043a

Chalk is a porous rock, allowing any rainfall to rapidly soak away, so the only way of providing water on the top of the downs is by artificial means. Dew ponds have been made up there for hundreds of years; a hollow is dug and lined with clay, which then fills naturally when the rain falls. Dew is probably not a significant contributor, despite the name. The downside to this simple system is should the pond dry out, then the clay, too, will dry out. When this happens, it will shrink and crack, and subsequent rainfall will leak out.

And while on the subject of rainfall, we didn’t have glorious weather all the way:

053a

We were forced to seek refuge in a convenient pub at the Devil’s Dyke for a couple of hours, but we made the best of it. This was clearly A Good Move because although it was still pouring with rain when we eventually left the pub, it began to clear up in about an hour and then we had sunshine for the rest of the day.

008a

These are cowslips. The word comes from the Old English cuslyppe, which means cow dung, because, yes, that’s where they like to grow, apparently. Years ago, before the coming of intensive farming practices and industrial weedkillers, our fields were full of cowslips, but they seem to be met with now primarily in the more open landscapes – like downland. For the first few days of our walk, especially, we saw lots of cowslips.

We had a rest day at Steyning, although we stayed at nearby Bramber.

050a

Bramber Castle is a strange and mysterious place, which magically energises the over sixties and causes them to revert to their childhood.

Although not for long, sadly.

On Windover Hill – The Premier

On By Mick CanningIn concert, music, Nathan James, On Windover Hill, Review18 Comments

It was Saturday 7th March, and we were in Chichester, Sussex, for the much-anticipated premier of Nathan James’ On Windover Hill cantata.

It took place in the church at Boxgrove Priory, in the village of the same name a few miles outside Chichester. Just over a month ago I posted here about a walk we joined at Windover Hill, viewing and discussing the Long Man of Wilmington – the subject of the cantata, which gives some of the background to this work.

Nathan describes this piece as ‘a result of 3 years of writing and research into the ancient figure and how it has inspired writers, poets, artists, and musicians’.

P1060414 (2)

Nathan introducing the cantata

It was performed by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, Harlequin Chamber Choir, and Corra Sound, conducted by Amy Bebbington.

P1060417

The cantata is in nine movements, with each movement scored around a piece from various times ranging from c 1340 BC to 1996. These diverse sources include English folk song, poetry, extracts from plays, literature, and even a piece from 14th century BC Egypt, used here because there is a carving on a chair found in the tomb of Tutankhamun which strongly resembles the Long Man.

The music has a very English feel to it, reminding me strongly at times of Vaughan Williams or Holst, another element that contributes to the sense of it being grounded in Sussex.

Much more about the music, and the story of the project, can be found on the On Windover Hill website, here.

Between several of the movements, there were readings chosen to help illustrate aspects of the mythology of the Long Man – poems, excerpts from books and an extract from an article arguing that the Long Man may have been, in fact, a Long Woman. All pieces by writers challenged by the meaning and significance of the figure. At the back of the church, too, there were a range of artworks inspired by the Long Man. And several times during the performance, a couple of dancers took the floor, their actions visually interpreting the subject of that particular movement.

This, what I might term holistic approach to staging the work, contributed strongly to the listeners total immersion in the work without, I think, distracting from it.

As well as the cantata, the program also consisted of several other pieces, all with a Sussex connection. It began with a beautiful piece by Thomas Weelkes (c 1576-1623) Hosanna to the Son of David. Weelkes, the program notes informed us, was frequently in trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities and was ‘noted and famed for a common drunkard and notorious swearer and blasphemer’. Strangely, I immediately felt an affinity to the fellow.

There were pieces, too, by Frank Bridge, John Ireland, an extract from Goblin Market by Ruth Gipps, and a piece largely unknown today: Wyndore (Windover) by Avril Coleridge-Taylor which was its first performance in this country for 82 years.

The acoustics in the church were wonderful, an especially appropriate setting for a choir. It was a hugely pleasurable and satisfying evening.

P1060405a

The Long Man, photographed on the pre-concert walk

img20200310_16283440

During the afternoon before the concert we wandered around Chichester for a while and I bought a few old postcards of Sussex from the indoor market including, by chance, this one of the Priory church, where the concert was held, about a hundred years ago.

It seemed to fit comfortably into the feeling of history, myth and tradition I felt that day.

Review of Wilding by Isabella Tree

On By Mick CanningIn environment, farming, Isabella Tree, Non fiction, Review, rewilding, Wilding27 Comments

I wrote this just over a month ago, and never got around to posting it, for some reason.

91wfR0v1kNL._AC_UY218_ML3_

I have just finished reading Wilding, and I am almost overwhelmed with several feelings. The first is that I need to come back to this book after a month or two and re-read it, since there is just so much to take in. The second is that this book presents so much information that appears new to us in the twenty first century, yet was common knowledge some fifty to a hundred years ago and was hiding all the while in plain sight, as well as some new conclusions that were also, really, hiding in plain sight. And third, a feeling this might just be one of the most important books I have ever read.

This means I am attempting what appears to be ridiculous, and that is to review a book I don’t think I am yet ready to fully appreciate. But first impressions count for a lot, so here goes, although to keep this brief enough for one blog post, I can hardly even skim the surface.

Knepp is an estate in Sussex, England, which the author and her husband farmed for many years the way most farming is done nowadays – intensively. But as returns gradually diminished and the soil became more and more degraded despite the application of the usual chemical cocktails, they decided in desperation to take a leap of faith and re-wild part of the farm. The reasoning was they were going broke farming traditionally, so something new was needed – perhaps something revolutionary. What had they got to lose?

It was a huge learning curve for them, and many of the steps they took had unforeseen consequences. By allowing the land to revert to the condition it would have been in thousands of years ago, they discovered that many of our birds and insects, for example, actually favour environments and foods different to those we have assumed they do. Interestingly, on reading books written a hundred years or so ago about, for example, birds, they were simply rediscovering what was known then, but overlooked since. Just one example – pigeons do not actually prefer the seeds of cereal crops, but wild grass seed. The fact that they eat so much cereal seed today is due to the destruction of the areas of wild grass they would gave grazed before.

Probably the most important conclusion to take from this book is that a return to a more traditional, environmentally-friendly form of farming is not only better for the environment, but in the long term is even better for farmers who might be initially worried about losing out financially. It’s a win-win situation in that it would enable much wildlife to recover from its precarious, endangered, situation, it would reduce the risk of flooding during periods of heavy rainfall, restore soil fertility without pumping massive loads of chemicals onto the land and, consequently, into the water systems, and reward farmers with not only a better environment but healthier crops and stock which, in turn, would be healthier and more nutritious for the consumer.

Along with most others, I have always understood that back in the Neolithic period, when man was first making his mark upon the landscape in what would become Britain, most of the land was covered in thick, dense, woodland. I also understood that the large wildlife here – the megafauna – consisted of the likes of elk, cattle (aurochs), wild horse, mammoth and the such-like. Basically the kind of large animals that graze and browse the open, lightly wooded, grasslands of the African savanna today. Could we really not see the contradiction in this? This strongly suggests that the natural post-glacial vegetation of the British Isles was an open woodland, rich in undergrowth and grass, maintained by the regular grazing and browsing of this megafauna.

And from that, we understand that much of the habitat association we make today with our native wildlife is just plain wrong – we see birds and animals favouring a particular habitat and assume that is their preference, rather than understanding we have forced them into this by removing their real preferred ones.

There is so much to take in and think about in the this book, as I said at the beginning of this post, that a single review can only begin to hint at the mass of information to take in.

If you have any interest at all in our environment and what we have done to it, this book is an essential read.

The Sussex Downs Murder – Not Really A Review

On By Mick CanningIn Fiction, Review, South Downs, sussex10 Comments

24958623

For anyone who loves the English South Downs – and whodunnits – this book makes an interesting read.

On the one hand, it is a fairly average 1930’s detective murder mystery, although I have certainly read much worse, but on the other it provides some marvellous insights into the South Downs in the area specifically around Chanctonbury Ring in that time, which is really what took my interest.

Personally, I prefer murder mysteries involving ‘normal’ people, rather than the typical country house full of assorted Colonels and ladies and royalty and such-like, so popular at the time – other than the thought of bumping off the Upper Classes, of course! But this book delivers in that it is set on a downland farm, where the farmer goes missing, believed murdered. It even has, as a cover, an adaptation of one of the fabulous Leslie Carr railway posters of the 1930’s – what’s not to like?

The introduction mentions its ‘sense of place’, and the writing seems to me especially good at conveying an accurate feel of the landscape. One thing that comes over very strongly is the emptiness of the countryside at that time. The Downs have been sparsely inhabited since Roman times; before then, much of the population chose to live on the higher, drier, lands of the chalklands of South and South East England, away from the forested and frequently marshy lower areas where travel was difficult and clearance very hard work. After the arrival of the Romans, however, all this changed, and since then the chalklands have been left largely to a small population living mainly by farming sheep.

We now have many people visiting for leisure purposes and on fine days popular routes such as the walk to Birling Gap from Eastbourne (or from convenient car parks much closer!) may easily see hundreds of visitors striding along the footpaths and hanging off the edge of the cliffs taking selfies (other stupid ways to kill oneself are available). On the same day, though, nearby footpaths may see no visitors at all. It is still a sparsely populated area.

John Bude evokes this sense of emptiness well. His descriptions of the roads and paths on and around the area really allow the reader to feel this. His characters walk the lanes and roads of the downs frequently without meeting anyone else on their journeys. Farms and houses are ‘isolated’, and even at a time when most people would travel by public transport to cover any distance, the population is so small that when questioned by the detective on the case, a bus conductor can remember who was on his bus several weeks before.

There are four lime kilns near Washington, on the edge of the area described in the story, which I suspect were the inspiration for the lime kiln featured on the farm in the book. No spoilers, but you might well guess their relevance to a murder mystery.

But it is the descriptions of the roads and paths that particularly take my interest, roads and paths virtually empty of footfall or traffic even during the day, emphasising how lightly populated the area was, and still is today, to a degree. Other than popular footpaths such as the long distance South Downs Way, and those footpaths running between popular tourist spots, it is still easy to find solitude in this quiet area of the otherwise heavily populated South East England.