Countryman March 2015

march 2015

celebrating britain’s countryside

Spring in the countryside

Wildlife of the Suffolk sandlings Making traditional Welsh harps How to become a beekeeper Britain’s weirdest weather

ALSO INCLUDES Cornwall, Dorset, Essex, Isle of Wight, Staffordshire, Vale of Glamorgan AND MORE

£3.70

Welcome from the editor The snake’s-head fritillary is one of the jewels of a wildflower meadow in spring. The exquisitely patterned purple flowers demand close examination, if one is lucky enough to see the plants in a wild environment. (We are fortunate in having snake’s-head fritillaries in the walled garden here on the Broughton Hall estate — see photo, left.) Its many local names — frog-cup, leper’s bells, chess flower and minety bell — demonstrate its enduring place in British folklore, and in 2002 the people of Oxfordshire chose the snake’s-head fritillary as their county flower. But is this species as British as we might think?

In this issue, Dr Ken Thompson, a former lecturer in the Department of Plant and Animal Sciences at Sheffield University, considers the conundrum of whether the snake’s-head fritillary is in fact a native British species, in a wide-ranging examination of what constitutes an alien plant or animal, and why we often have such negative feelings towards our alien invaders — see page 71.

Elsewhere in this issue, Nia Bell is in the Vale of Glamorgan in search of an enigmatic Welsh saint — see page 29; James Lowen is our wildlife-watching guide in the Suffolk sandlings — see page 66; and Seren Evans-Charrington (right) begins a new series telling of her humorous misadventures as she leaves the rat race to fulfil her dream of the good life in rural Wales — see page 24.

Enjoy all we have to offer in this issue of The Countryman.

GLORIOUS BRITAIN Winskill Tree, North Yorkshire, by Robin Hudson “A lone hawthorn stands on the limestone pavement at Winskill in the Yorkshire Dales,” Robin explains. “This was taken on a late March afternoon, when the moody light really boosted the textures and forms of the limestone pavement without making it too harsh. I was drawn to this specific image by the way the cracks in the limestone pavement drew my eye towards the lone tree which looked twisted and forlorn in the harsh landscape.”

Classic View, Landscape Photographer of the Year, Take a View 2014; all the winning and shortlisted images are in Landscape Photographer of the Year: Collection 8, AA Publishing, £25. More information at the website www.take-a-view.co.uk

volume 121 no 3

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FEATURES

Cover photo © Jerome Murray – CC/Alamy

 maintaining the

 the heart of

tradition of making welsh harps H elen H arrison watches artisan harp-maker Greville Hunt at work (pictured)

essex’s ancient woodlands Rosam ond Richardson visits the countryside in search of the best wildflower habitats to explore

 my new life in the

 unearthing saxon

countryside Seren Evans-Charrington tells of leaving the rat race to fulfil her dream of the good life in rural Wales

 fifty shades of black and white Tony Francisvisits a village with a look so picturesque that it’s been exported as far away as Japan

 in search of an

 how to become a beekeeper Sim on Cavill continues his regular feature on bees and beekeeping

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sexy sadie and enigmatic welsh saint friends RobertColley N ia Bellvisits St Brynach’s paints a colourful picture of the characters who Church, Llanfrynach regularly visit his garden wildlife in focus a husk of hares Shanny Trio by M ark N Chloe Rhodescontinues Thom as her series telling the stories behind collective the art of the nouns, those curious and garden M ark W hitley previews a new exhibition charming features of the English language at Buckingham Palace







secrets Siân Ellisreports on the remarkable Staffordshire Hoard, the largest cache of AngloSaxon gold and silver metalwork ever found

 our weird weather PeterNaldrettlooks at unusual weather events through the years, starting with the bone-chilling blizzard of March 1947

 pigments from the past Fran H alsallexplains the remarkable geology of Alum Bay on the Isle of Wight

 serpents of the sandlings Wildlife expert Jam esLowen offers advice on wildlife-watching in the Suffolk sandlings

Don’t miss out — save over 25% with our special

 partaking in the

 horses that my

potential of spring Andrew Fusek Peters celebrates the benefits of wild swimming

father drove Alison Brackenburyexplains her equestrian heritage and why it inspires her to verse

 our fear of alien invaders D rKen Thom pson questions what constitutes an alien plant or animal and why we have such negative feelings towards them

 hare today and…

Linda Auld looks at the plight of one of our most iconic animals

PLUS

33 81 86 87 87 90 92 94 98 98

funny signs win fair tickets forthcoming events next month what’s in a name? book reviews readers’ letters nature watch tailcorn watch the birdie

COLUMNISTS

17 80 82 75 60 51

mark whitley’s country diary robin page’s rustic view shaun spiers of the cpre country cooking with mrs simkins john vince’s curiouser & curiouser rural memories with humphrey phelps

General enquiries Tel 01756 701381 Editorial Editor: Mark Whitley Tel 01756 701381 Email: editorial@thecountryman.co.uk Production: Peter Evans, Lisa Firth, Linda McFadzean

Place an advert Tel 01756 701381 Email: ads@dalesman.co.uk

GLORIOUS BRITAIN Enjoy the beauty of our landscape and wildlife through the eyes of some of the country’s top photographers:

4-5 Winskill Tree, North Yorkshire, by Robin Hudson 88-89 Swyre Head, Dorset,

by Andy Farrer

COUNTRY BREAK Relax with our special section featuring your favourite brainteasers and much more:

54 Crossword 55 Cryptogram 56 What on Earth?, Wildlife wonders 57 What year?, Country words, Do you know? competition winners 58 Wordsearch, What’s the birdie?

59 Writers and their words, Sudoku 91 Quiz answers

Publishers

Subscriber Hotline

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Audited circulation 10,944 Jan — Dec 2013

Classified directory

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Mark Whitley’s country diary

THE MESSAGE IS: THE COUNTRYSIDE IS GREAT ttending the launch of the VisitBritain Countryside is GREAT campaign at Chatsworth House at the end of January was an adventure in itself.

Heavy snow meant that the invited audience of tourism providers, tourist boards, heritage organisations and media could not get to Chatsworth, so the launch event was quickly relocated to the Chesterfield Hotel, where it was hosted by the resourceful and unflappable Sally Balcombe, VisitBritain’s chief executive; and featured a visit by the Tourism Minister, Helen Grant, who said: “We are enjoying record tourism growth in the UK but I want us to do all we can to keep up this momentum and encourage people to explore the very best of Britain.”

Britain’s ‘natural beauty’ has been overlooked compared to other international destinations, according to recent studies. Countryside is GREAT is a threeyear campaign designed to position Britain’s countryside as a place to enjoy modern culture, top-quality food and world-class accommodation in beautiful landscapes.The aim is to grow international

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visits, generating extra visitor spend of £70 million which would see the creation of 1,296 new jobs by 2018.

“Enjoying the beautiful landscape is one of the key drivers for holiday choice

St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, one of the regions which will be the focus of the Countryside is GREAT campaign.

Photo © VisitBritain/Joe Cornish.

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for international visitors — second only to offering good value for money,” Sally Balcombe explained. “Britain has stunning national parks and world heritage sites to rival our competitors but they are currently being overlooked by many overseas visitors. We hope that local tourism businesses get involved with the campaign, and help us boost local economies and their own profitability.”

The first year of Countryside is GREAT will target visitors from the USA and Germany and will focus on the Highlands, Peak District, Cotswolds, Cornwall, Pembrokeshire, North Wales, Warwickshire, Lake District and Yorkshire.

Overseas visitors can see what the Great British countryside has to offer and browse bespoke itineraries on the Countryside Collection campaign website, http://countryside.visitbritain.com/en

HIDDEN HISTORY OF RURAL DEVON Ideas and plans are currently taking shape at Beaford Arts in North Devon for its Hidden Histories archive project, through a development award from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). This award is for a major conservation and digitisation plan, to publish online around 10,000 unseen Beaford Archive images, forming a fascinating picture of rural North Devon in the late twentieth century.

“Beaford Arts plans to turn the archive into a unique heritage resource for future generations, alive with stories from local communities,” project management team FisherHayes explains, “and it would love Archie Parkhouse in a wood near Dolton, Addisford, June 1974. Photograph by James Ravilious © Beaford Arts digitally scanned from a Beaford Archive negative.

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“I don’t care what the satnav says — this is not Sainsbury’s car park!” the Devon public’s help. You could contribute by sharing your views of the archive; or volunteer to help collect oral history stories when the project starts.

Drop us an email at archive@beafordarts.org.uk or call us on 01769 572573, and we’ll let you know more.”

Robin Ravilious is presenting an illustrated talk about the archive on 17th March at Kings Nympton Parish Hall. This is an opportunity to learn more about the Hidden Histories project. Tickets are free but limited; to reserve one, phone 01769 572573, email info@beaford-arts.org.uk or reserve online at beaford-arts.org.uk

SHIRE HORSES ON SHOW The Shire Horse Society’s Annual Show — the world’s largest gathering of Shire horses — is taking place on the weekend of 21st-22nd March at Arena UK near

Grantham, Lincolnshire. “The show is the perfect place to see these magnificent gentle giants of the horse world and find out more about the breed,” explains Shire Horse Society secretary David Ralley-Davies. For more information visit www.shire-horse.org.uk

PAUSE FOR THOUGHT “Spring is when life’s alive in everything.”

Christina Rossetti

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Maintaining the tradition of making Welsh harps Helen Harrison watches artisan harp-maker Greville Hunt at work

t David’s Day falls on 1st March — and just as David is universally recognised as Wales’ patron saint, so the harp is acknowledged as its national instrument. Indeed, four angels playing harps dominate the east window of the Lady Chapel in the saint’s cathedral in Pembrokeshire.

However, the harp certainly predates the saint: it has been a popular instrument for millennia. Animals playing harps were illustrated in Theban art circa 1500 BC. St Gabriel’s Chapel (c1100) has a decorated capital depicting an animal ‘grotesque’ playing a harp.

The tradition of the wandering folkharpist has been embedded in Welsh history for over a thousand years. Circumstantial evidence from the early tenth-century laws of Hywel Dda, the early poets and the mid-eleventh/ twelfth-century stories of TheM abinogion all indicate its longevity.

Figurative images survive too: a medieval harpist is carved on the 1510 bed-frame of Sir Rhys ap Thomas. The bed can still be seen in the National Trust’s Wimpole Hall.

In Wales today there is still enthusiastic interest in harp playing — and a

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parallel resurgence in harp making.

One of its leading lights is Greville Hunt (pictured on facing page), whose workshop is in a converted chapel in Caerleon, Gwent.

“I hand-make lap-harps — just like those the traditional minstrels might have used,” Greville says. “They’re small enough to hold on your lap, just as their name suggests — so my company’s called Telynau Fach, meaning Little Harps.”

Greville started his business in 2001.

“I wanted to source all I required from within the borders of Wales and have succeeded with almost everything.

“I like to use wood with a provenance and use the different local woods such as sycamore [Acerpseudoplatanus], tree of Heaven [Ailanthus altissim a], and walnut [Juglansregia].

They come almost exclusively from Isca Woodcrafts, based in Newport.

But the wood for the soundboards has to come from slow-grown timber from colder climes — mostly European spruce [Picea abies] or red cedar [Thuja plicata].

“Each wood has different properties and timbres for the harpist’s ear. I like to leave the wood lustred rather than

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glossy because I think that’s how it looks best.

“Before starting, I studied the Welsh National Collection of Harps in St Fagan’s Folk Museum. Each one is different, made for an individual, and I try to work like that too.

“I sell to a huge cross-section of folk: some are harpists with large harps who want a smaller one for convenience; others may be folk musicians wanting a harp like those of the ancient bards.

“The designs are all my own, based on images and pictures of earlymedieval harps. I only ever work on two at a time and each one is different.

“They’re robust but quite light — six to seven pounds — and about thirty inches high; with twenty-two

strings, made by a dedicated harpstring manufacturer. Brass sharpinglevers (made in Swansea) on the C and F strings raise the pitch of the string by a semitone, enabling a greater range of keys for the harpist.”

The lap-harp which Greville makes is known as telyn-benglin in Welsh, sometimes also called the bardic harp or telyn-fardol. Historically, it was both a solo instrument and an accompanying one for both song and dance.

“It was very versatile,” Greville explains. “It could be carried, slung over the shoulder; or might have short legs, to balance on a saddle. So, as well as playing sitting down, medieval bards could play whilst walking around — or even on horseback. They could create a mobile stage.”

The Robert ap Huw manuscript (in the British Museum) contains the earliest collection of harp music in Europe. Just thirty pieces, composed between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, it is all that has been found of the original repertoire of the medieval Welsh bards.

These bards depended on patronage for their living but, under the Tudors, Wales was increasingly anglicised and their patronage declined.

However, the bards’ demise in Wales was balanced by a rising interest in Welsh harpists in England. On his restoration, Charles II appointed the first Welsh triple harpist to his new London Court in 1660. The triple harp had only just arrived there from the Continent where Charles probably

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Harp-maker Greville Hunt fitting a string to one of his telynau fach, or ‘little harps’.

This one is made of Welsh walnut.

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first saw it. With a range of five octaves, and about ninety-five strings in three parallel rows, it was far more complicated to play than the bardic harp, but Welsh harpists quickly adopted it and it was soon renamed the Welsh harp.

In the eighteenth century, Welsh harpists like the blind John Parry continued to be popular with London’s cultural élite. The instrument became even more fashionable in the early nineteenth century when mechanical improvements demanded less technical skill from players. (Most of the young ladies in Jane Austen’s novels play the harp.)

Royal patronage no doubt helped its popularity too. The future George IV, well known for his patronage of the arts, appointed Edward Jones his harper in 1788, making him King’s Bard when he ascended the throne.

Although in the early nineteenth century the triple harp was as popular at fairs and taverns as in mansions in Wales (just count the number of Welsh Harp pubs and restaurants you can find), as the Nonconformists’ influence and disapproval grew, and interest in classical music increased, the old folk-traditions — and indeed, the traditional harp itself — were almost completely abandoned in the last century.

However, this century has seen a burgeoning of interest in harps of all kinds in Wales. The annual International harp Festival was introduced in 2012, attracting both the world’s best

harpists and student players.

In 2014, HRH Prince Charles, an enthusiastic supporter of the Welsh harp tradition, donated a full-size harp, made in Wales, for one of its talented young harpists. In 2000 he also revived the position of his Official Harpist, to celebrate and foster musical talent in the Principality.

Many different types of harp are played in Wales today, and whilst craftsmen like Greville are fashioning such beautiful instruments in both appearance and sound, harps in Wales will surely continue to flourish. n Further information: Greville Hunt, 6b Castle Street, Old Baptist Church, Caerleon, Newport NP18 1BR; www.telynaufach.com

Some of Greville’s little harps, set on stands in his workshop.

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You’re in the country now Seren Evans-Charrington begins a new series telling of her humorous misadventures as she leaves the rat race to fulfil her dream of the good life in rural Wales; illustrated by Christine Jopling

MY NEW LIFE IN THE COUNTRYSIDE s the rain lashed down and the mud clung to my boots, it dawned on me that my dream of living in the country may have been the result of watching too many re-runs of The Good Life.

I felt the cold sting of North Wales’ finest weather pelt against my face, but a glance across the fields towards Maiden’s Leap restored my spirits in an instance.

Boundless acres of rugged Welsh countryside stretched out as the sheep calmly grazed on the hillsides.

I had arrived at my destination and I was about to get my first taste of real rural living.

The first morning of my new life in the country had arrived and I awoke from my slumber to the bleats of the hillside sheep seeming ever closer. A quick glance outside revealed that the hill sheep were currently grazing on my garden and potted plants. Yes indeed, these sheep were going to market infused with a whole array of herbs — including my beloved pineapple mint and my cherished marshmallow plant.

As I opened the door to shoo away my woolly neighbours, I realised that my mother had been right all along: flannelette pyjamas really are the best thing

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to wear. I closed the door and went in search of thermal underwear and sensible footwear. Minutes later I emerged wearing a vest, proper knickers, layers of natural fibres and wellies. With my slobbering Irish setter Charlie at my side, I was finally ready to meet my landlords, who were also my neighbours, and the masters and commanders of the rogue sheep.

As I walked past my violated pots of herbs and forcibly pruned shrubs, I was sure that the sheep had accidentally escaped and was ready to accept copious apologies from their owners.

I knocked on the door of Bryan and Pat, my landlords, and was shortly presented with a stocky woman with enthusiastically wild hair, wearing an heirloom

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jumper that had long since relinquished its useful life. I warmly greeted her and introduced myself, before explaining my sheep problem. She smiled and nodded at me with a daft, yet scathing expression. Finally, in a deep North Walian accent she said: “Sheep problem is it, yeah?

They’re not doing any harm.

They just like a bit of variety in their diet, you see?

You’re in the country now — you have to get used to these things.’’

At the sight of my poorly disguised displeasure and drooling dog, she continued: “You see, you don’t get ought for nought as they say.’’

I was none wiser as to the grazing arrangements, but it was certain that I was not about to claim victory in the battle of the sheep.

I retreated back to my cottage, accepting defeat; only to begin peace talks with the cranky 1950s Rayburn

range that was standing coldly in the corner of my kitchen. The warm heart of the home this range was most certainly not but, convinced that cooking on a range was part of life in the country, I proceeded to spend many hours cleaning away fifty years of food history from the decrepit appliance.

Even after a good clean and naming her Maude, this range did not warm to me. I could only conclude that Maude and I had a long way to go in cementing our friendship, starting with me fathoming how to use her.

My initiation into country life had begun, and I had a sneaking suspicion that my silver BMW saloon, manicured fingernails and sentimental gardening were all going to be sacrificed as part of my move to rural Wales. n Next month: the Strange Case of the North Wales Knickers Nicker.

Help for owners of listed properties Owning a beautiful listed building — is the chocolate box cottage dream a privilege or a responsibility? While these properties are filled with character and charm, owners are often subject to some of the most bizarre and restrictive regulations. The laws which limit what you can change about a listed property, some of which date back hundreds of years, may surprise you in their ridiculousness.

The Listed Property Owners Club is the UK’s only advice service dedicated to helping listed property owners and it is to host a Listed Property Show at Harrogate on 7th and 8th March. Owners and those looking to buy a listed property can find out everything they need to know. For more information, lecture timetables and tickets visit www.lpoc.co.uk/property-show

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Fifty shades of black and white Tony Francis, long-time presenter of TV’s Heart of the Country, visits a Herefordshire village with a look so picturesque that it’s been exported as far away as Japan

hey have a football ground but it’s not called Weobley Stadium. That would be pretentious. They have a cricket ground, a bowling green, a deli, a restaurant, three pubs, a cinema and a theatre of sorts. Come to think, there isn’t much Weobley doesn’t have.

This fact persuaded the Daily Telegraph, in conjunction with Calor Gas, to crown it Village of the Year in 1999.

It was judged on the wide range of activities in which the population (about 1,200) regularly immersed itself — and nowhere else could hold a candle to Weobley.

They’re still basking in the afterglow of that success. I was introduced to Jo Ware, a farmer’s wife who had the foresight to set up Weobley’s popular Heritage Trail. Too many visitors seemed to amble aimlessly through the village and miss its landmarks. Jo explained: “If the Daily Telegraph came back today, they’d find very little has changed.”

“Oh yes it has,” interjected Marlene Edge, a barmaid at the Unicorn (where we were having our discussion). “We don’t have galas or dances any more.”

Jo conceded the point but suggested

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that society, rather than the village, had changed. She was referring to the numbing effect of social media sites which eventually cast their spell over Herefordshire, once a Twitter-free zone.

An advert I noticed in Weobley’s parish magazine, The Magpie, perhaps best captured the spirit of this rural outpost. On behalf of the hardware shop, it announced ‘Loose grass seed has arrived’, as though the entire village had been stressing about a bare patch in the lawn.

The shop, incidentally, is run by seventy-nine-year-old Ann Preece, not only born and raised in Weobley but reluctant to accept that life beyond its boundaries is worth mentioning. Her hardware shop would make a telephone kiosk look roomy. It’s packed with an eclectic mix of lightbulbs, Rawlplugs — and Haribo sweets.

Ann glossed over the grass seed story as though it was old news.

Instead, she wanted to talk about her new boyfriend. I heard the opening salvo then made my excuses and left.

Septuagenarian romance wasn’t on my agenda. Iconic though Miss Preece undoubtedly was, I had other things to attend to.

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Weobley is known for its half-timbered cottages. Photograph © Colin & Louise English.

What makes Weobley stand out is its black and whiteness. There are no shades of grey. This village is the jewel of Herefordshire’s famous Black and White Trail, a route created in 1987 to attract tourism. Several villages such as Dilwyn, Pembridge and Eardisland are on the trail, but Weobley has the most eye-catching display of halftimbered cottages. They stand at peculiar angles to its gently sloping streets, just as they have since they were erected seven centuries ago.

Hence the larger-than-life carving of a magpie on the village green.

Weobley’s black-and-white symbol was created by a Polish sculptor,

Walenty Pytel, who works in scrap metal. The magpie was commissioned to celebrate the Daily Telegraph/Calor Gas award.

Although some of the ‘white’ is distinctly cream or faded yellow in places, the overall effect is enchanting. A company called Border Oak exports replica cottages as far as Japan.

But who chooses to live in this rolling landscape between England and Wales where motorways don’t reach. Was Weobley a twee, middleclass retirement haven?

“No,” countered Helen Quinlan, a parish councillor who’d drifted south from Flintshire. “There’s nothing twee

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about it. This is a working village and a strong Herefordshire accent, told me farming community. Our infant and his name was Julian Kowalewski. senior schools are buzzing.”

Could he be related to Walenty Pytel, Helen had another surprise for me. the sculptor? This was too much of a She personally didn’t and wouldn’t coincidence. want to live in a blackAs it turned out, there and-white cottage. Why? was no connection, but “You never know Julian enlightened me what’s inside the wattle about a wartime Polish and daub. Don’t forget, camp called Foxley these were peasant cotwhich was ten minutes tages built cheaply out down the road. Accordof local oak. Oak was ing to Mr Kowalewski, it called the weed of Herewas once a small town. fordshire. In the early These days it’s a tree nineteenth century, a lot plantation but the huts of houses fell down.” are intact. Julian’s famThere’s always a catch. ily escaped there when Thank goodness a lot of The village emblem is of the Germans took course the magpie. houses didn’t.

Ukraine, where they While getting my head then lived. Yep, I get the around that disappointment, I drift, but what about the sausages? bumped into Annie Austin, a middle“I got the recipe from Poznan when aged hippy who flounced into the I went to visit relatives. The sausages butcher’s, hair flowing, cotton shoul- are spicy and herby. Like to try one?” der bag swinging. She told me she was I thanked Julian for the offer but a tour operator who spent most of her opted for a pork pie hand-reared in time in Morocco but kept a house in Weobley. Got to keep the faith. n Weobley.

“I adore the place. It’s a great foil for Tony Francis’s book Marrakesh. My London friends Extraordinary Villages thought I was mad wanting a second is published by Merlin home here. As soon as they visited, Unwin Books (www. they were green with envy.” merlinunwin.co.uk) at To add to the international flavour £14.99 hbk. of this otherwise self-contained The Countryman readers can purchase parish, a notice in the butcher’s shop copies at the special price of £13.50, free urged customers to ‘Buy Polish UK p&p. Tel 01584 877456 and quote Sausages’. The plot thickened when the ‘The Countryman’. Offer valid until butcher, a ruddy-faced man with a 31st May 2015.

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The charm of country churches IN SEARCH OF AN ENIGMATIC WELSH SAINT St Brynach’s Church, Llanfrynach, by Nia Bell

t would be difficult to imagine stumbling across the pretty little church at Llanfrynach in the Vale of Glamorgan by accident.

Most people could be forgiven for passing by this little church without suspecting its

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existence, cosily tucked away in an enchanting, grassy clearing in a quiet, wooded hollow. Only part of its roof peeking out from amongst the trees gives any clue to its presence.

Llanfrynach churchyard is filled with a magnificent display of daffodils in spring, which is appropriate as its patron saint is associated with this season. Photos Š Graham Bell.

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The interior of Llanfrynach Church, with remnants of wall painting, candles for lighting and lime-ash flooring.

It is easier to leave the car at the Cross Inn at Llanblethian and follow a short, winding little cart track down to the lovely little stone church and its tiny graveyard than to try driving down. Conveniently, the Cross Inn holds the key to the church should you wish to see inside.

Llanfrynach translates from the Welsh as ‘The Church of Brynach’ and is dedicated to the sixth-century saint of that name. This Norman church must look much as it did in the twelfth century, when the present church was built. It is believed to be built on the site of an earlier Celtic building founded by Brynach, and is one of several churches attributed to the saint in South Wales.

St Brynach himself seems to be something of an enigma and opinions differ

widely about him. Some say he was Irish, others that he was Welsh or Cornish; he was also reputedly a friend of St David, the patron saint of Wales.

St Brynach was something of a colourful character in his youth, but eventually calmed down to become worthy of sainthood. He was said to be particularly good with animals — and if the occasion demanded was also even pretty good at banishing demons.

Another of the several churches dedicated to St Brynach is at Nevern, West Wales. This is said to be where the first cuckoos of spring sing from the top of a cross on or around the 7th April each year — Brynach’s feast day.

The small graveyard at Llanfrynach still serves the tiny village of Penllyn, a

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Due to the lack of electricity, the church windows provide lighting during daylight hours — and candles at all other times mile away. Originally the church would have also served the village sharing its name, though that village is thought to have been wiped out by the plague during the fourteenth century. The remains can still be seen just inside the graveyard walls on the right as you enter the gate.

Mercifully missed by the Victorians, the church retains much of its original charm. It is an attractive saddlebackroofed building, and is quite large for this small area.

Outside, the church is neat and wellkept, and, unusually for a graveyard, feels

tranquil and not in the least bit sinister; in fact it is a lovely place to pause to take in the stillness — a wonderful antidote to the rush of modern life.

Inside, the church is now somewhat in need of a little TLC, though happily it is still used regularly for special services, particularly at Easter, and is a popular venue for visiting clergy.

Appropriately, since its patron saint was good with animals, the church recently hosted a pet service, which was well attended and included a llama and a ferret amongst the more everyday catand-dog congregation.

Services can prove to be somewhat challenging to organise, it seems, since the church has no water, gas or electricity, but no one seems to mind and everyone pitches in together to make services work; and candlelight only adds to the special atmosphere at Llanfrynach. n N extm onth:beastly goings-on in O xfordshire – StM ary’s.

Keysto see the inside ofLlanbrynach Church are keptatthe CrossInn. Itwould be wise to contactthe pub firstasitsopening hourscan be som ewhatarbitrary:01446 772995, enquiry@ crossinncowbridge.co.uk

Shakespeare for the children Stratford-upon-Avon will be leading the nation, especially children, during Shakespeare Week 2015 (16th-22nd March). Launched by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the campaign is joined by museums, galleries, theatres, libraries and heritage attractions across the UK, taking part in the fun with cultural events and creative activities for families. All activities in Stratford take place daily from 11.30am to 4.30pm. For a full list of events visit www.shakespeareweek.org.uk

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FUNNY SIGNS

Wildlife in focus Shanny Trio,

by Mark N Thomas “These inquisitive little fish (Lipophryspholis) can be found hiding in the nooks and crannies on the breakwater off Criccieth beach, North Wales,” Mark explains. “They often come out to investigate a strange underwater intruder and, last summer, I was able to get this photograph of three individuals peering out at me at the same time.

Mark’s photo was a winner in the Coast & Marine section of the British Wildlife Photography Awards 2015, the best of which are featured in British Wildlife Photography Awards Collection 5 (£25 hbk, AA Publishing) and are being exhibited at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, until 8th March; and Stockwood Discovery Centre, Luton, until 15th March; and then at the Moors Valley Country Park, Hampshire, from 21st March to 4th May. For more information visit www.bwpawards.co.uk

Have you ever thought that, in this modern world we live in, there are too many instructions, road signs, warnings, advertising boards, and other signs and notices cluttering up our lives?

Luckily, they are not all serious, and there are plenty that incite a chuckle, whether deliberately or not — such as this eyecatching home-made effort, spotted by David Pratt on the roadside between Kingsdale and Deepdale on the way to Dent in the Yorkshire Dales.

Have you seen a funny or unusual sign that you would like to share with our readers? Send your photo to 'Funny Signs’, The Countryman, The Water Mill, Broughton Hall, Skipton, North Yorks BD23 3AG; or email a digital image to editorial@thecountryman.co.uk

Farming entertainment Springtime Live, organised by the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, is a special event aimed at families. It takes place on Sunday, 22nd March, at the Yorkshire Showground in Harrogate and includes lots of activities, farm animals and entertainment. Visit www.springtimelive.co.uk

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The art of the garden Mark Whitley previews a new exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, which shows how the garden has been depicted in art new exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, explores the many ways in which the garden has been celebrated in art through the ages.

“Painting Paradise: The Art of the Garden is a celebration of gardens through their portrayal in art from the

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Royal Collection,” exhibition curator Vanessa Remington explains, “including beautiful paintings and other works of art which highlight the evocative story of the changing nature of the garden over four centuries.

“It covers a very wide range of works of art, from oil paintings to woodcut

Johan Jacob Schalch, The Gardens at Kew, c1760. All images: Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

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Thomas Tompion, one of a pair of sundials, seventeenth century.

Liber chronicarum, woodcut of the Garden of Eden, Hartmann Schedel, 1493.

drawings, delicate Chelsea porcelain tableware to colourful tapestries, and from gardening treatises to urns and sundials that once sat in royal gardens, from some of the first gardening manuals to botanical studies by Leonardo da Vinci, and from paintings by Rembrandt and Landseer to artworks by Fabergé.”

The earliest European images of gardens appeared in illuminated religious manuscripts. The Book of Genesis, with its references to the Tree of Life, Tree of Knowledge and Four Rivers, provided a framework for artists to create images of Eden, as in Hartmann Schedel’s woodcut of 1493.

The sixteenth and early seventeeth centuries saw the birth of botanical illustration, florilegia (flower books) and still-life painting.

“My favourite item in the exhibition is a beautiful Mughal manuscript of about 1610 showing a drama unfolding in a walled garden as a gardener looks on,” Vanessa adds. “The surprise about this illustration of a garden is that the plants are not the native Indian plants you might expect to see, but exotic new imports such as the French marigold and the poinsettia, which had recently been brought to India from South America by the Spanish and the Portuguese. The artist was deliberately aiming to show that this garden is no ordinary one, but a high-status and unusual one.”

By the seventeenth century, aristocratic gardens were created on a previously unimaginable scale. The intense rivalry between the French and English kings, Louis XIV and William III, produced two of the largest and most elaborate royal gardens ever made.

The exhibition includes a panoramic view by Jean-Baptiste Martin of the French king’s gardens at Versailles,

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c1700, and A View of Hampton Court,

by Leonard Knyff, c1702–14, the greatest surviving Baroque painting of an English garden.

With their amphitheatres, cascades and fountains, statuary and aviaries, Baroque gardens offered much to engage artists. The only surviving pair of sundials by the seventeenth-century horologist, Thomas Tompion, are shown in the exhibition.

By the eighteenth century, gardens took on a more natural, informal style.

An oil painting of Kew by the Swiss artist Johan Jacob Schalch, 1760, is from a series of views of the gardens designed for Frederick, Prince of Wales, by William Kent and William

Chambers. The distant pagoda is the only obvious sign of human intervention among the gently sloping hills, grazing sheep and lake.

The ‘language of flowers’ was translated into precious luxury items, such as the brooch presented by Prince Albert to Queen Victoria in celebration of their betrothal in 1839. In the form of orange blossom, symbolising chastity, it was the first of a suite of flower jewellery given to the Queen over several years.

Whether a sacred sanctuary, a place for scientific study, a haven for the solitary thinker or a space for pure enjoyment and delight, the Painting Paradise exhibition shows how

Leonard Knyff, A View of Hampton Court, c1702-14.

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Above, headdress, two brooches and earrings from the orange blossom parure, 1839-46. Left, workshop of Carl Fabergé, Bleeding Heart, c1900.

gardens in art are where Nature and imagination meet.

“Although it is set in a gallery, we want to give people a sense of being in a garden,” Vanessa concludes. “We hope to transport the spirit of the garden indoors through works of art.” n Painting Paradise: The Art of the Garden is at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, from 20th March to 11th October; admission fee; 020 7766 7301, www.royalcollection.org.uk

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The buzz from the beehive Simon Cavill on bees and beekeeping

HOW TO BECOME A BEEKEEPER t’s at this time of the year that many beekeeping associations across the UK start their training courses for new beekeepers. In our association here in Fleet, Hampshire, we have around twenty-five new ‘beeks’ keen to learn this ancient craft.

All associations are voluntary, and most teaching is led by enthusiastic amateurs who impart their passion to a new group of eager learners who come from a wide spectrum of ages (12 to 82 in our last group) and backgrounds. Disability is usually no barrier to beekeeping and can typically be handled with a little lateral thinking.

In general terms, the teaching of beekeeping in the UK barely changed from

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the introduction of framed hives in the 1850s right through until the 1990s.

Hives of bees could be largely left to their own devices through most of the year, with the beekeeper simply adding fresh honey boxes (supers) in the spring before removing them and harvesting the collected honey in late summer. Any colonies that succumbed to disease could easily be replaced from collected swarms and, apart from a nasty outbreak of Isle of Wight disease in the early 1900s, there was a general status quo.

Global trade across the world brings many benefits but it also facilitates the spread of pests, parasites and pathogens from elsewhere into Europe and vice versa. The accidental introduction in the 1990s of the parasitic Varroa mite into Europe from its native home in Asia was a disaster. It rapidly became endemic in virtually every hive in the UK, where it has practically wiped out all wild/feral colonies of honey bees and now appears to be impacting our native bumblebees.

Varroa changed everything for beekeepers and, at present, we simply have no means of eradicating it. Each colony now requires active management to Left, a group of young beekeepers under supervision.

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ensure that mite levels stay low enough for the colony to survive.

Over the next year or two, we also expect two new, accidentally introduced honeybee pests, the Asian hornet and the African small hive beetle, to spread into the UK from Europe, putting even more pressure on our native bees.

The one thing I have learnt after over a decade of beekeeping and teaching is that all beekeepers are constantly learning. Even my colleagues with over fifty years’ experience tell me they are still learning new things about their bees each year, and the introduction of each new threat to our honeybees requires new skills to be learnt to deal with them.

Like many associations, our approach is one of ‘benign beekeeping’, where we teach our new beekeepers various techniques over a two-year period to monitor the health of their colonies, only intervening at certain times of the year to keep potential threats from pests and diseases at bay using organic treatments as part of an integrated pest management approach. Any honey carefully harvested at the end of the season in August is now treated as a bonus rather than a right.

So if you want to help the countryside and preserve our native honeybees while learning a new set of skills that are constantly changing, then please consider joining your local beekeeping association — you’ll get a warm welcome. n Next month: Never a dull moment — April is the real start of the beekeeping season when things start getting busy.

Above, inspecting a frame; below, ‘beeks’ getting used to the bees.

For more information, visit Simon’s website at www.beegood.co.uk To join a local association, telephone the British Beekeeping Association on 0871 811 2282; email: bbka@britishbee keepers.com; or visit www.bbka.org.uk /about/local_associations/

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Sexy Sadie and friends Robert Colley paints a colourful picture of the bird life in his garden

sit in my back garden porch in Surrey, looking through a half-open venetian blind; it’s early morning. Outside, a lilac tree grows close enough to brush the window. From the tree is suspended a plastic soup bowl attached to a metal rod. It holds peanuts, birdseed and suet pellets.

Hanging baskets dangle from two of the porch’s wooden stanchions. A bird box is screwed to the third support.

Many families of blue tits and great tits have successfully nested here.

Talking of which, my first hungry visitor has arrived: a blue tit. A brightly coloured little bundle of bolshiness, this one — Mr Gruff I call him. I’ve named my visitors, having

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noticed that even birds of the same species have quite different characters.

Old Gruffy is a perfect example. He sits on the rim of the bowl; should any other bird want to share the food, he flaps his wings aggressively while rocking the bowl and screeching abuse.

When he’s satisfied everyone is keeping a respectful distance he has his fill, and then departs.

Then in comes Butter-beak, another blue tit. This one alights on the bowl, lifts his head to check no predators are about, selects a peanut, sharply lifts his head again to double-check for enemies — then out flies the peanut, which drops to the flowerbed below.

Now Butter-beak eats some seed while bobbing his head up and down, but he doesn’t like being in there and soon flies away, which leaves the feeder to Sexy Sadie the Pole Dancer.

Beak held high, round and round she goes from the top of the pole to the bottom, as if to say “Look at me, boys”.

Gracefully she bows her head and chooses a peanut. She picks it up delicately and flies to the top of the lilac to feed. She brought a smile to my face: I love her self-assurance.

However, one cold March I feared she’d overdone it: she was attacked by another blue tit. After she’d finished her

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Facing page, Um-Er-Um ponders at the bowl; above, Patch wakes up, albeit briefly, to the problem of squirrels (right).

routine, her assailant’s swoop sent her to the ground. I went to the rescue. There she was lying on her back stock-still on the snow, her foe on top of her, his talons on her chest, pressing home his greater strength. I clapped my hands so he would fly off, but he didn’t. In fact they both ignored me. Then it dawned on me: it was mating time.

At least this March is milder, I reflect, as I wait for my next visitor.

Um-Er-Um comes in: a blue tit that just cannot make up its mind. He picks up a peanut, rolls it along his beak, but then throws it down again.

After discarding several peanuts and suet pellets he eats some seed; then, picking up a tiny peanut, he flies off with it. I presume he’s finally happy with his choice, though I can’t understand why.

As I mull this, into the tree fly several great tits — masked invaders — but straight away off they fly again. I look down the garden. “Oh no!” I exclaim. Grey squirrels have arrived.

They can empty a bird feeder in ten minutes. I whistle to my ever-alert sight-and-sound dog: a Parson terrier, renowned for chasing foxes, rabbits and, yes, squirrels. I wait. And wait. He turns up bleary-eyed, yawning and stretching; he then decides to have a scratch.

“When you’re ready, Patch — there are three squirrels in the garden.”

I open the porch door. He takes a step forward and looks out.

“Go on, then,” I urge.

He barks once, watches the squirrels saunter off, turns, yawns again and goes back to bed.

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Back come the great tits: smart, sleek, sophisticated and, as their name implies, bigger than the blue tits. Yet, surprisingly, they will let them feed first if they’re about. But on this occasion they are not, so down from the tree they swoop, one at a time, in orderly fashion.

They are masters of efficiency: onto the pole or rim they land, then down beak, up beak (no pole dancing for them), they pluck out a peanut and, with it firmly clasped, away they fly.

A robin arrives. He gives a short whistle and flies to the rim of the bowl. Bobbing up and down like a nodding donkey he fills his belly with suet pellets — his favourite food.

Should they be in short supply he eats the seed. I’ve never seen him fly off with a peanut; perhaps he doesn’t like them.

I drink the last of my tea and turn to go into the kitchen, but at that point a dunnock I call Mr Bulldozer appears.

With a blue-grey chest, streaky-brown wings and back, he’s not as pretty as my other visitors, but is too entertaining to miss.

Landing in the bowl he shovels food back and forth with his beak, a creature possessed. Over the rim he flies in all directions before he settles on something to eat; having gobbled that down he starts shovelling again. I’ve never seen such a messy eater. Not that flying seed worries the chaffinches that are feeding in the flowerbed.

This causes me to wonder, as I pick up my cup and go indoors, whether Nature devised messy eaters so that creatures with fewer feeding skills still had a chance to survive. I reckon she did, I concluded. n

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Phrases and fables Chloe Rhodes continues her series telling the stories behind collective nouns, those curious and charming features of the English language, with A Husk of Hares. his pleasingly alliterative group name when hunted. Certainly, hares were is something of an enigma. There’s no highly valued as the most noble of quarobvious link between hares and the word ries. Hare coursing using greyhounds was husk, which means the outer shell or coat- popular because of the sustained length ing of a seed, and there are no archaic defi- of the chase and the fact that, unlike animals of chase, the hare could nitions of the word to offer be hunted all year any other interpretation. round. Their The ever-careful pelts were John Eliot Hodgkin also prized and (author of Proper special methTerm s,published ods were used to in 1909) finds prevent their coats “nothing can be from being spoiled. said with cerIn Gaston Phoetainty — Dr bus’ Book of the Bradley suspects Hunt, written in 1387, some scribal error, he describes the different which the later lists arrows used for hunting and have copied”, though Illus tration © brey Smith Au explains that sharp iron points there are no clues as to what the mistaken scribe might have meant to were used for hunting bears, wild boars and stags, while for hunting hares, the write.

We’ll have to be satisfied with know- arrows had a large, club-like end made ing that someone, at some time in the from lead, which was designed to stun 1400s, thought that a husk of hares had a the animal without piercing its body. n certain rural ring to it, and for me that’s Next month: A Cete of Badgers. good enough.

There are other options, though. The An Unkindness of Ravens: Egerton Manuscript (c1450) has “a drove A Book of Collective Nouns of hare” , which is a reference to the way

by Chloe Rhodes is published by they were driven from their burrows Michael O’Mara Books at £9.99.

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Laughter lines “A face on him as long as a hare’s back leg.” M ylesna Gopaleen

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Walking amongst wild flowers Rosamond Richardson visits the countryside in search of the best wildflower habitats to explore; illustrated by Christine Isherwood

THE HEART OF ESSEX’S ANCIENT WOODLANDS undles of withies, tied with twine, lean against a hurdle by the gate on a chilly, clear March afternoon. Entering the wood in winter light, I take a deep breath, feeling the beauty of dormant trees in the quiet of a sleeping wood.

A mass of bare twigs frets the cold sky. Low sunshine filters through bare branches, dappling leaf-litter along the paths. Woodland hawthorn is bursting into bright green leaf. A pheasant croaks. And then, the thrill of a two-note phrase: the first chiffchaff of spring.

The ancient woodland of Shadwell Wood in Essex — fourteen acres of oak and ash with hazel understorey — lies on chalk-rich boulder clay. It has been coppiced for hundreds of years by thatchers and hurdle makers, and used for poles, charcoal and firewood.

An unploughed meadow lies in the heart of the wood where orchids grow: the lovely common spotted, the pyramidal, the bee orchid. Ox-eye daisy, adder’s-tongue fern, hairy violet, cowslip and primrose, and stinking iris (very rare in Essex)

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— these are to come. But now, as winter releases its grip, I see a carpet of wood anemones among leaf litter and broken twigs, petals milk-white among emerald moss and jagged lichens, deep gold stamens laden with pollen. It is ‘windflower’, flourishing in

Wood anenomes and dog violets.

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windy places, its musty smell giving it a local name of ‘smell fox’. In fact, the plant contains proto-anemonin, and is poisonous — although you can safely press a poultice of the leaves to your forehead to cure a headache.

The first dog violets, ink-purple and velvet-petalled, nestle in the grassy paths. Shining darkly from a nest of deep green leaves, heralding spring as the winter world awakens, violets have a surprising ability to dazzle. They play an important role in the ecological chain, the ‘ladder of being’, flourishing in habitats which shelter a myriad of creatures.

A single celandine blazes out of the tangled grass, its deeply-indented leaf fresh green. A cheerful flower, the lesser celandine is a tiny sunburst shining brightly in the winter woodscape, emitting immense energy — a little sun in its universe of the woods.

Wild honeysuckle clambers among hazel and bramble in the undergrowth.

Little rustlings emerge from the leaf litter; a trespassing rabbit scuttles away.

Arum leaves are pushing through the ground, and the first oxlips have come into flower. These are rare outside East Anglia, and more lovely to my eye than the cowslip: larger but more delicate, with drooping heads of creamy, pale lemon petals and butteryellow centres.

An ancient ash stool, pollarded for centuries, has created a cavern, a secret moss-covered hermitage. A lazy bumblebee floats past, basking in sunshine.

When I crush a young leaf of wild

Oxlip.

ramsons in my fingers, a powerful smell of garlic floats up: in a few weeks’ time it will make a carpet of delicate, pure white stars.

I find a rare shrub of wet woodland, D aphne m ezereon, at a crossing of the paths where, in later months, herb paris will grow and where in the past I have found butterfly orchids. A tiny wren darts away from me through the undergrowth, and a robin sings as I leave the wood. n Shadwell Wood, SSSI; near Ashdon, Saffron Walden, Essex; OS map ref TL573412; managed by Essex Wildlife Trust (www.essexwt.org.uk); open at all times.

Next month: flowers of the chalk on Therfield Heath, Hertfordshire.

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Unearthing Saxon secrets Siân Ellis reports on the remarkable Staffordshire Hoard, the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found

t was every treasure-hunter’s dream and a day to rewrite history. For some 1,350 years the earth had held its secret, but on 5th July 2009 amateur metal detectorist Terry Herbert began to uncover what would be the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found.

More usually yielding potatoes and carrots, farmer Fred Johnson’s farmland south of Lichfield in Staffordshire produced a harvest valued at well over £3 million. Totalling some four thousand objects and fragments — more than 11lb of gold, over 3lb of silver and vast quantities of cloisonné garnets — the Staffordshire Hoard dazzled scholars and public alike.

The trove was war gear: helmet cheek-plates, pommel caps, and hilt plates torn off swords and knives.

Curiously, there were also some mangled Christian artefacts, raising provocative questions.

Given the nature of the booty, it should be no surprise that today’s field where it lay hidden was once at the heart of Mercia: the aggressive, expansionist Anglo-Saxon kingdom that reached its zenith in the eighth century under King Offa.

By comparing objects and other

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sites, experts have narrowed the burial date of the hoard to AD 650–670, a period when ambitious Mercian rulers like Penda and Wulfhere were fighting wars with Northumbria and East Anglia; some of the metalwork reflects those areas.

Painstaking work has gone into researching the hoard and in early 2014 all the cleaned artefacts were brought together for the first time. It amounted to a glittering jigsaw challenge that saw groups of pieces matched to show what original hilts looked like and cloisonné fittings teamed into suites; new types of sword fittings were also revealed.

It is now understood that there is at least one helmet in the hoard, comprising more than 1,500 pieces. Only five other helmets of the time are known.

“For one warrior stripped the other, looted Ongentheow’s iron mail-coat, his hard sword-hilt, his helmet too.”

Lines such as these from the AngloSaxon poem Beowulf had been thought an artistic exaggeration, but scenes of epic plunder have their mirror in reality in the hoard.

The misnomer of the Dark Ages is also dispelled by the exquisite

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Top, a sword pommel cap showing applied twisted-wire decoration. Left, a replica of the pectoral cross from the hoard, on show in the Chapter House, Lichfield Cathedral.

Above, a gold mount with two eagle heads.

Below, a replica of the gold inscription strip, one of the most controversial finds.

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jewellery skills of those who crafted the metalwork, much of the detail only fully visible under a magnifying glass.

Intriguing zoomorphic interlaces and garnets backed by gold foil to enhance their glitter extend the craftsman’s hand across the centuries.

Designs that shape-shift from horse to warrior to boar tusks speak of Anglo-Saxon riddles and symbols — boars, for example, represented protection.

Clearly, the pieces once belonged to elite warriors and whoever owned the hoard was very high status. There is three times as much gold as in the seventh-century Sutton Hoo ship burial.

The stash seems to have been amassed over time from different battlefields rather than from one, and pieces selected for burial. There are bits from as many as 150 sword hilts, but just three tiny belt buckles, for instance. The fact that precious pieces were ripped off with no great care could suggest they were to be recycled, the gold melted down.

As to why the hoard was buried, theories range from it being a religious offering to a trophy collection or ‘bank’ of valuables to be dipped into as required. Perhaps it was hidden for safekeeping, somewhere out of the way but easy to remember: it was on a ridge overlooking Watling Street Roman road, which was still in use.

Yet for some reason, whoever concealed the booty never came back.

Selected hoard artefacts are on display at venues on a Mercian Trail, including Tamworth Castle and Left, ‘Dress like an Anglo-Saxon’; at Tamworth Castle is an invitation to try on period clothes.

Facing page top, St Chad (centre) and other statues, on the west front of Lichfield Cathedral. The first cathedral at Lichfield was founded in Saxon times in honour of St Chad. It was later replaced by a Norman building and then the present Gothic structure (bottom).

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Lichfield Cathedral in their respective market towns. The first portrays the hoard in the context of Saxon warfare; the second delves into the religious puzzles raised by the find.

Tomtun (settlement by the Tame) was a capital of Mercia with a royal palace, although today’s Tamworth Castle dates from the Norman era.

Displays unfold the story of Saxon kingship and tribute, elite troops, battle tactics and weaponry when rule was by the sword. Boys as young as twelve or thirteen could be on the battlefield.

Only wealthy Saxons owned swords — an ‘exploded’ hilt shows how pieces from the hoard fitted together — and these could be handed down as heirlooms from father to son. Back at the mead hall, amid storytelling and feasting, victorious warlords rewarded their men with gold and jewels stripped from swords on the battlefield.

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Tamworth Castle.

Today’s castle, on the southwest corner of the Saxon burh, is a typical Norman motte-and-bailey construction. The statue in the foreground shows Aethelflaed, eldest daughter of King Alfred the Great.

Known as the Lady of the Mercians, Aethelflaed built a fortified settlement or burh, in Tamworth, and these defences stopped the Vikings from conquering Mercia and imposing Danelaw in 913.

What then of the mangled Christian artefacts amid the hoard’s war gear? A short drive away, exhibits in the chapter house of Lichfield Cathedral seek to offer some answers.

The Christian Church was weak in Mercia when Chad came as its bishop to Lichfield in AD 669 and the saint brought many to the Faith. An eighthcentury carved angel, believed to derive from his shrine, is on show in the chapter house, alongside the St Chad Gospels of AD 730.

It’s a provocative thought that, around the very time Chad worked here, the hoard was being buried just a few miles to the south, including a broken pectoral cross of the type worn by bishops like him. There’s also a large cross that has been folded and a gold strip inscribed in Latin with the warlike biblical text: “Rise up, O Lord, and may Thy

enemies be dispersed and those who hate Thee be driven from Thy face.”

(Numbers 10:35) Christian warriors could have taken such items onto the battlefield as inspirational symbols. Did a pagan king like Penda capture and desecrate them? Perhaps the hoard offers a last glimpse of Mercia before Christianisation, while the Lichfield Angel and St Chad Gospels carry forward the story of its evangelisation.

Research has revealed much about the glittering hoard, but many questions may never be answered, not least: who did stash it in the Mercian soil and why did they never return? n For more information on the Staffordshire Hoard and the Mercian Trail, visit the website www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk

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Rural memories with Humphrey Phelps THE COUNTRY DOCTOR WAS A TONIC rom time to time we hear of the shortcomings of some doctors. It makes me realise how fortunate we have been in our choice of doctors.

For fifty or more years we have been with the same practice. There were just two doctors. The senior doctor was a bluff, even blunt man and his patients loved him. He used to mix medicines, among which was his special tonic — but he himself was a tonic. His partner was a younger man, who was inclined to be a bit reserved. Although the two doctors were so different, they made an excellent team.

One or the other was always available, weekdays and Sundays, day or night, and they did a lot of visiting.

Nowadays I often wonder how these two doctors did so much and such long hours too. I don’t think they were burdened with so much paperwork as present doctors are. Somehow I think the bureaucrats would have received short shrift from the older doctor.

The time came when he retired, reluctantly I fancy and certainly to the regret of his patients. The younger doctor became the older doctor and after many years he retired.

Then there were three doctors and I expect an increase in patients. I dare say

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there was an increase in formalities, regulations and paperwork. And computers; instead of consulting files, they could press a button and have a patient’s medical history displayed on a screen.

Now the practice had nurses, dispensers, receptionist and a staff of non-medical workers. In rooms upstairs is a host of people, including a manageress, busy I suppose with papers and computers.

But the doctors are no longer available weekends, Sundays or nights.

And yet once two doctors alone ran the practice; of course they were not inundated with paperwork, as so many of us are today.

Farmers are harassed by forms, questionnaires, surveys, demands, threats; all manner of paperwork. New regulations come like cloud banks from the west — tick box, yes or no. Possibly the compilers don’t realise that real life and work is not a simple yes or no.

If a farm is designated in a nitratevulnerable zone, a record, on two sides of an A5 sheet of paper, must be kept for every field of the cropping, the application of manure and artificial fertiliser, and of rainfall. This has to be logged and kept.

If further downstream on a watercourse, high levels of nitrates are found

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in water, that farm is a nitrate-vulnerable zone. This does not necessarily mean that a farm is a contributory factor to the excessive nitrate. To a sensible person it would appear to be a simple matter to trace the offender, but anything so obvious would not appeal to the official mind perhaps.

ask why DEFRA do not pay serious attention to it. Of course many farmers grow maize (which has destroyed many old pastures), and any criticism of it would raise the ire of the NFU. In a few weeks’ time we have our annual TB test. We don’t grow maize but we’re keeping our fingers crossed.

As some of us forecast, the 2013 badgerculling exercise was expensive and unsuccessful. So DEFRA tried again in 2014 with the same result — apart from the desire to kill badgers. There’s little doubt that the badger population has increased but there is doubt about how much or little badgers are responsible for TB in cattle. However, if the slaughtered badgers had been examined for TB there might have been some justification for the culling. Yet no postmortems I understand were conducted. Why? Was it gross negligence or some undisclosed reason?

It is just over two years since we closed the milking parlour and our milking cows became suckler cows. There used to be nine dairy farms, one adjoining another, but six of these are no longer dairy farms.

At present three remain; each produces more milk than we did.

There was a time when we and dozens of others thought our future as dairy farmers was secure. But since 2002, 10,000 English and Welsh dairy farmers have quit dairy farming.

Perhaps farmers with much larger production think their future is secure, or perhaps they do not.

Already there are huge dairy units with hundreds or even thousands of cows which each day produce a tremendous amount of milk. But these cows do not see the light of day, fields of grass and clover. Cows are sentient, living creatures but in these gigantic units they are merely treated as machines, anathema to many a farmer who has been forced out of dairy farming — and a disgrace to humanity. n

At a council meeting, one councillor who is also a farmer said the huge increase in maize growing was a factor in the TB problem. He did not grow maize and for many years his cattle had been free of bovine TB. All his neighbours grew maize and some of their cattle did get TB. In the past I have suggested that maize could be a contributing cause of bovine TB (and incidentally the increase of badgers), so I will say no more. But I do

Laughter lines “If you have a stomach ache, in France you get a suppository, in Germany a health spa, in the United States they cut your stomach open, and in Britain they put you on a waiting list.” D rPhilH am m ond

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Weird weather Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not … one thing you can be sure of is that Britain’s climate is anything but predictable. In this new series Peter Naldrett looks at unusual and extreme weather events through the years, starting with the bone-chilling blizzard of March 1947 fter the cold winters of recent years, you may associate December, January and February with the harshest snowfall of the year. But one of the meanest blizzards on record swept across England and Wales in March, the month we often link with the coming of spring. On 4th March 1947, the impact that the barmy blizzard had on life in Britain was profound, not least because it came on the back of a crazy six weeks when it had snowed every single day somewhere in Britain.

The country was on its post war knees and this early March snowstorm kicked us when we were down. Any post war hope that was still in existence was now frozen by the weather and the government was forced to respond by urging people to use less power.

Coal supplies were running low, power stations were running out and coal barges were stuck in ice on the Thames. Food rationing had been lifted recently but now it had to be reintroduced as public services were cut A truck is transformed into a snowplough to help isolated and wages, like the farmers in Swaledale, North Yorkshire, in 1947. weather, were frozen.

Weeks of cruel winter took its toll on a government radically committed to introducing the NHS. Temperatures in Houghall, East Durham, plummeted to a potentially deadly -21.1˚C on 4th March. Roads were blocked for weeks on end. Some towns actually ran out of food. It was not unheard of for farmers in Norfolk to dig for turnips with pneumatic drills. Chilly times, indeed. n Next month: Rain, rain and more rain.

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Share your memories of extreme weather with us via email at editorial@ thecountryman.co.uk or with the author via Twitter: @peternaldrett

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crossword

Eddie James

The first three correct entries drawn from the hat after the closing date of 24th March 2015 will each win an RSPB Bird Feeder (pictured below) worth £16.99.

Send your entries (a photocopy or list of answers is also acceptable) to: Countryman Crossword (Mar), The Countryman, The Water Mill, Broughton Hall, Skipton, North Yorkshire BD23 3AG. Email linda@ dalesman.co.uk.

Do not include any other correspondence with your entry.

NAME ADDRESS POSTCODE We might use the contact information you provide to keep you informed of Country Publications’ special offers. Please tick here if you do not wish this to happen. [ ] We do occasionally share information with other carefully selected organisations who might send you information by post. If you do not wish this to happen tick here. [ ]

As part of its Giving Nature a Home campaign, the UK’s largest wildlife conservation charity, the RSPB is giving away three prizes consisting of a terracotta apple feeder and 1kg of buggy nibbles bird seed per winner. The charity is asking people to provide a place for wildlife in their own gardens and outside spaces – whether it’s by building a hedgehog shelter, putting up a nest box or creating a pond. For more information and ideas from their online shop, go to www.rspb.org.uk/shopping. All profits go to helping birds and wildlife.

Country break march 2015

Across 6 Young plants — behold 500 heathers! (9) 8 Pansy for one, possibly plucked by a musician? (5) 9 Equestrian’s contractual stipulation (5) 10 Eastern wetlands revealed by definitive US non-PC women? (3,6) 11 Nocturnal birds: end of day given glasses of beer! (9) 13 Pentland Javelin potatoes are ... annually almost beheaded! (5) 15 One who’s an expert in their field! (15) 19 Got the scent of a salmon-like fish (5) 20 Vitamin-rich cereal grain – possibly grew them around start of April (9) 22 Gun dog embarrassed crossword compiler!

(3,6) 24 Flat-topped flower cluster — part of geranium, belladonna (5) 26 Travel west and east, right, for this Welsh peninsula (5) 27 A show-off at an RHS floral competition?

(9) Down 1 Undesirable plant in garden is tiny and dead (4) 2 Part of a cauliflower head — or left out (6) 3 Teachers removing head from daisy-like flowers! (6) 4 Meat substitute from first of seeds of young aubergines (4) 5 As a bog spoils centre of Rhyl (6) 6 Is angry about lilac or mock orange (7) 7 Hazel, maybe, has impudence to form a tree growth (7) 8 Plant popular with butterflies — found in

clover, Ben ascertained (7) 12 Thorny shrub’s good sort of rose (5) 14 Cultivate by growing ... some scorzonera is easy (5) 16 Dandelion-like weed — Tom's spike of corn?

(7) 17 Dig up, near hut possibly (7) 18 A pigeon – one that falls over? (7) 19 Shoots bits of herbs (6) 20 Dry and shrivel like a leaf — in which direction, it’s said (6) 21 They’re opposed to fingers for e.g. pinching out plant growth! (6) 23 Upland tract gets you depressed? (4) 25 To act the goat nevertheless takes time (4)

January solution

This month's winners: Mrs S R Grainger, Guildford, Surrey; Ted Childs, Dorchester, Dorset; Mr J C Lowe, Malton, North Yorks.

Thank you to everyone who entered.

CRYPTOGRAM

Neil Somerville Solve the cryptogram to a reveal an old country saying about the current season.

To give you a start, G = O and U = P.

N UA ZC J Z N NGGC FA A F SG JC Z N FQ O D U M X C E N E L X C O D K F C. The answer can be found on page 91.

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WHAT ON EARTH IS IT? They are the fascinating and intriguing implements from yesteryear that were once part of daily life, and nowadays discovered in cupboards and attics; most of us are just left uttering ‘What on earth is it?’.

This item is a very solid piece of work, a foot long, with half its length taken up by a sturdy wooden handle and the other half a heavy steel section. The metal is slightly curved, with the outside face polished smooth, while the inside is still rough. One edge has a small lip which is also polished on the outside face. It has clearly been much used, but by whom and for what?

The answer is on page 91.

Taken from the book What on Earth is It? Fascinating and Intriguing Objects from Yesteryear, published at £4.99 pbk by Country Publications; to order a copy, telephone 01756 701033 or visit our website www.dalesman.co.uk

wildlife wonders Tim Sharrock Naturalist and ornithologist Dr Tim Sharrock tests your natural history knowledge. This month’s topic is ‘In the Country’, and the questions are graded as ‘Difficult’, so award yourself 3 points for every correct answer, a perfect score being 15 — the answers are on page 91.

1. What is the more common English name for ‘Welcome home husband however drunk you be’?

2. The sleeper and hazel mouse are alternative names for the common dormouse, but what is a seven sleeper?

3. What is known as mousehunter, bronwen, cane, rassel and beal?

4. What is known as hedge mumruffin, bum towel, poke pudding, jack-in-abottle, prinpriddle and nimble tailor?

5. Why, jokingly, might you expect to see the garden plant dusty miller (Artemisia stelleriana) close to traveller’s joy (Clematis vitalba)?

Questions taken from Tim Sharrock’s book The Wildlife Quiz Book (£9.95 pbk, ISBN 978-1-291-81321-0), available from all good bookshops or online retailers, or direct from the author — send a cheque for £11.50 inc UK p&p payable to ‘Tim Sharrock’ to: Fountains, Park Lane, Blunham, Bedford MK44 3NJ.

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country words Neil Somerville

DO YOU KNOW? 1. In which nineteenth-century novel does a man who wants to study agricultural conditions decide to go to Tooting, the author being the founder of newspaper John Bull and an inverterate practical joker best known for the Berners Street Hoax of 1810?

2. What great eighteenth-century preacher said “We ought to be thankful that blackberries are plentiful.”?

3. “The window shutters were not painted green, nor were the walls covered with honeysuckles” is a description of Barton Cottage, but from which English classic romantic novel?

4. Which painter said about the prospect of selling his sketches, “I don’t mind parting with the corn, but not with the field in which it was raised”?

There are a great many wonderful words that are used in the countryside but do you know the correct meaning of the following? It’s just for fun.

Answers on page 91.

1 Wat a barn owl b cider barrel c a hare

2 Lowle a long-eared pig b drainage channel c call of a fox

n The Mini car goes on sale n Postcodes are introduced n United Dairies merges with Cow & Gate to form Unigate Dairies n Ian Fleming publishes Goldfinger n The first stretch of the M1 motorway is opened

5. Which English monarch declared that Presbyterianism “was not a religion for gentleman”?

n The UK entry in the Eurovision Song Contest is Sing, Little Birdie by Pearl Carr & Teddy Johnson

Answers on page 91.

Answers on page 91.

January competition winners: Bob Hill of Bristol, Jake Player of Dunfermline, Jane Purser of Leicester, Sue Warren of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, each win a copy of The Great British Vegetable Cookbook by Sybil Kapoor.

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country wordsearch

Neil Somerville

To help celebrate the approach of spring, find all the following words (solution on page 91): BLOSSOM

LAMB

BREEZE

NARCISSUS

BUTTERFLY

RAINBOW

CHICK

SHOWERS

CROCUS

SNOWDROP

DAFFODIL

SPRING

HYACINTH

SUNSHINE

What’s the birdie?

This month’s mystery bird is coloured streaky brown, with a lighter eye-stripe which meets across the nape. It has a well-developed crest on its crown and a short tail. It is found breeding mainly in eastern and southern England.

Those which remain in winter are usually found in Hampshire, west Surrey and Devon, and in recent years some wintering flocks have been seen in East Anglia. Its sweet and flute-like song earns it the name Lu-Lu in France. But what is it — see page 91 to find out.

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Writers and their words “I have nothing to declare but my genius,” said Oscar Wilde. Test your literary knowledge with these bookish questions, compiled by Ana Sampson. The answers are on page 91.

1. It was in fact Wordworth’s beloved sister who recorded seeing a carpet of gorgeous daffodils in her journal after a happy day spent out walking with her brother; what was her name? a) Maud; b) Dorothy; c) Elizabeth; d) Wilhelmina 2. Which dashing knight stole the heart of the Lady of Shallot, leaving her cursed when she left her weaving to steal a glance at him? a) King Arthur; b) Galahad; c) Lancelot; d) Gawain 3. Which poet eloped in defiance of her over-protective father and fled to Italy with her new husband? a) Elizabeth Jennings; b) Christina Rossetti; c) Elizabeth Barrett Browning; d) Mary Howitt

sudoku Neil Somerville This month our sudoku is based on the Wiltshire village of Aldbourne. Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the letters that make up ALDBOURNE. This is a ‘for fun’ only brainteaser.

Solution on page 91.

4. Which poet was closely involved with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of painters? a) Felicia Dorothea Hemans; b) Ella Wheeler Wilcox; c) Christina Rossetti; d) Elizabeth Barrett Browning 5. Which poem includes the memorable line “The paths of glory lead but to the grave”? a) Elegy in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray; b) Ode to the West Wind

by Percy Bysshe Shelley; c) The Poplar-Field by William Cowper; d) To Penshurst by Ben Jonson

Green and Pleasant Land: Best-Loved Poems of the British Countryside by Ana Sampson is published by Michael O’Mara Books, priced £9.99.

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Curiouser & Curiouser with John Vince Our monthly look at some of the more unusual aspects of town and country.

Please respond by post to Curiouser & Curiouser, The Countryman, The Water Mill, Broughton Hall, Skipton, North Yorkshire BD23 3AG; or email editorial@thecountryman.co.uk

TOURING IN THE 1940S

aurice West has sent us this fascinating photo (above) of his family car that dates from the late 1940s. It is a Morris 8 Tourer which could reach 58 mph and do 45 miles to the gallon. The engine capacity was 918cc.

A car of this kind cost about £142 but you had to pay an extra £2 10s for bumpers and indicators. The cost of such a model these days is measured in eyewatering five-figure numbers. It appears that some 24,000 tourers were built.

One feature shown here is the

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important running board that has now disappeared. Film-makers in the 1930s made good use of running boards when policemen chased miscreants by hanging on the side, long before Health and Safety butted in.

The photo shows Maurice’s family en route to a camping holiday in Wales. He tells us that the bell tent was lashed above the front bumper, via the headlamps, and a home-made cradle on the rear supported tea chests that held the rest of the necessary gear. Maurice

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wonders if a similarly laden vehicle would manage to negotiate a motorway these days.

Who can remember the multiple uses tea chests once had, and how prominently they were in removal vans when people moved house?

The wire wheels tell us of the influence that the cycle had on early motoring design.

If you visit a vintage motor rally you can still glimpse the nostalgia that once was part of the motoring experience.

A RECYCLED ROAD SIGN This elegant obelisk (left), a favourite decoration in the Georgian period, can now be seen on the riverbank at Henley, Oxfordshire. It was originally a pump which stood in the town so that the streets could be washed on market days.

Things changed in 1797 when it served as a direction sign indicating the road to London and Reading.

After eightynine years in this position it was

moved to the junction of the Marlow road where it served until 1970 — another eighty-four years. It now rests by the river, not far from the Boating Museum, where it can supervise the wildlife and boaters enjoying the things that the characters in Three Men in a Boat knew about. After a mere forty-five more years it is to be hoped that it has settled into its new home. Does anyone know how old it really is?

KEACH’S MEETING HOUSE In the seventeenth century those who dissented from the Anglican Church were not well regarded. Most of them lived in modest dwellings that were not large enough to house a congregation, and so separate chapels were built often in places where they were not conspicuous.

This very small building (the interior measures twenty-three feet by fifteen feet) is at Winslow, Buckinghamshire (pictured overleaf). It is associated with Benjamin Keach, a devout Baptist who fell foul of the law for preaching and publishing in the 1660s. He was pastor here for a decade (1658-68). One of his contributions to worship was the introduction of hymn singing within services. Some of his writings were

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publicly burnt in the market square.

There was a period in the 1770s when the congregation diminished and the building was not regularly used.

This photo, taken in the 1950s, shows the condition of the interior at that time. The pulpit was originally on the south wall but was moved to the west end, probably in the Victorian era. The box pews date from the 1800s and the benches reflect the styles of the austere Victorians. The seventeenth-century communion table at the centre was part of the original furnishings.

This building is a significant element in our architectural history as it is probably the oldest Nonconformist chapel in England.

Visitors can explore this restored architectural gem for free by obtaining the keys from Wilkinsons Estate Agents in Winslow Market Square (tel 01296 712717). More information at www.keachesmeetinghouse.org.uk

THE CRAB AND WINKLE LINE The image of a tank locomotive (facing page) was rescued from a muddy negative taken in 1947. It shows an example of a Class R1 engine that had been modified to work the branch from

Canterbury to Whitstable — affectionally known as the Crab and Winkle line. Along its course is the Tyler Hill tunnel which took many months to complete when the original railway was built in the 1830s. The profile of this tunnel was twelve feet wide and twelve feet high. This is why the cabs had a rounded roof.

By the 1940s most of the original twenty-five engines had been scrapped and just three remained. They were numbers 1147,1010 and 1107. By 1959 all three had been withdrawn. Passenger trains ceased in 1931 but good traffic continued until the end of 1952.

The tunnel still exists below the ground of the Archbishop’s School, but one portal

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is bricked up. You can find details of this old railway, which may have been the first to carry passengers, in Leslie Oppitz’s book Lost Railways of Kent or by putting ‘Canterbury & Whitstable Railway’ into a search engine.

OAK PUZZLE Noel Calmfeet has sent us this photo of an unusually large oak leaf he found in woodland in north Cornwall. It is 81/4 inches x 61/4 inches. He wonders what kind of oak this leaf came from. It appears there are many kinds of oaks.

Does its size indicate a very old tree?

Perhaps an expert can tell us to which branch of the oak family it belongs. n

Laughter lines “If your baby is beautiful and perfect, never cries or fusses, sleeps on schedule and burps on time — you’re the grandparent.”

Theresa Bloomingdale

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Britain’s amazing landforms

Pigments from the past Fran Halsall explains the remarkable geology of Alum Bay on the Isle of Wight

hese spectacular cliffs began life as sandy sediments laid down under the sea during the Palaeogene period, approximately fifty-six million years ago. Deposited in a hollow known as the Hampshire Basin, the rocks extend across the county. They are best witnessed here at Alum Bay, on the Isle of Wight’s western tip, where they are revealed in all their technicolour glory. The range of twenty-one pigments is explained by fluctuating environmental conditions that caused the iron-rich rocks to oxidise in subtly different ways.

Along the bay the loose sandy rocks stand side by side with dazzling white chalk, dating from the earlier Cretaceous period. Between the two there is a missing layer of geological time — known as an ‘unconformity’ — where intervening rocks eroded away before the later rocks were laid down.

It is unthinkable today, but during the Victorian era the many visitors were encouraged to collect the sands to make pictures called ‘marmotinto’ and fill decorative glass jars as souvenirs. With our more enlightened outlook this not only seems like vandalism but also somewhat foolhardy considering the fragile nature of the cliffs. Although similar trinkets are still made for the tourist trade, the material is now only collected in small amounts from the periodic landslips that affect the cliff face.

Next month: granite grandeur of Dartmoor — Hay Tor.

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Where to watch wildlife

SERPENTS OF THE SANDLINGS Wildlife expert James Lowen offers detailed advice on where to go wildlife-watching in the Suffolk sandlings and what species you might expect to see this month

he early spring sun proves simply too pleasant, so you pause on your heathland walk to soak it up. The morning air is warmed by effortless southerly winds that whisper the evolution of the seasons. You bask. Then, with a grimace, you notice a dog turd a few yards along the sandy path. Suddenly, the ‘turd’ flicks out a tongue! Not coiled faeces, but a curled serpent. Like you, the male adder is lapping up solar rays, sprawling on sandy soil beneath a gorse bush.

Few places are better than the Suffolk sandlings to watch adders freshly emerged from winter slumber. And few sandling sites are as good for our only venomous reptile as sheltered, southfacing slopes on Dunwich Heath. Males vacate their winter den before females and stake out territories. Early in the season, the snakes are sluggish and often allow prolonged views. As the slopes heat up and cold-blooded bodies

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Above, Dartford warbler; left, small tortoiseshell; facing page, adder and common toad. Photos by James Lowen.

thaw, the serpents slither off to hunt.

Time, too, for you to meander on.

Dominated by bell heather, the sandlings have hosted a remarkable avian comeback. Extinct in Suffolk by the 1920s, Dartford warblers recolonised seventy years later. Today, the sandlings’ population is vibrant. Dunwich and Westleton heaths form the warblers’ heartland. You should see several fieryeyed males scratching out a song atop a prominent perch and additional longtailed, punk-crested forms flitting between heathery clumps.

In terrain peppered by birch or Scots pine, listen for the liquid lullaby of a wood lark or the yaffle of a green woodpecker. Damper areas occupied by birches offer further interest. Birch polypore wreathe dying trees. Once used to sharpen cut-throat razors (hence the alternative name, razorstrop fungus), this unmistakable white bracket fungus can reach eight inches in diameter. If you have a botanical bent, drop to your knees and scour the ground for the diminutive and rare

mossy stonecrop at one of its sole sites outside Breckland.

Returning to the car park above Dunwich cliffs, the trail traverses the gorse-rich territories of a pair or two of stonechat. Near the coastguard cottages, a similar-sized, smoky-brown bird shivers its russet tail: a black redstart. A classic March migrant, only adult males are coal-black, so this is a female or immature.

From the clifftop, look out to sea for harbour porpoise. Up to five of these (comparatively) pint-sized cetaceans regularly cruise offshore.

End the day as you started, relaxing in the sun. Park yourself on a cliff-top bench, imbibing the vista southwards towards RSPB Minsmere. Treat yourself to a literal overview of Britain’s most renowned reserve, where you can easily spend another full day wildlifewatching.

With its majestic diversity of habitats — scrub and scrape, wood and reed, heath and beach — Minsmere is a splendid stage for celebrating the arrival of spring. The Mediterranean breeze has accelerated the arrival of a vanguard of summer migrants. A sand martin worries its way north. A chiffchaff sings its name from the scrub. On the beach, a wheatear bobs, flashing white.

And there are further signs of the shifting seasons. The pond near the visitor centre may host a libidinous ball of mating common toads. Woodland resounds with the territorial outpourings of resident birds. The first brimstone and small tortoiseshell wing across a sunny glade. On the ‘levels’ in the south of the reserve, male brown hares pursue a female, which boxes away their attentions: it is ‘mad March’,

Above, avocet; below, chiffchaff.

after all. Nearby, a Cetti’s warbler explodes into song where bush meets reed.

It is the reedbeds that provide the day’s major interest. To see all of Minsmere’s reedy specialities, you must look in, on, beside and above the sea of sedge. Deep within this painstakingly managed habitat, a bittern ‘booms’ as if blowing across the top of a beer bottle.

Wait a while at Island Mere or Bittern Hide and you should see one of these scarce herons feeding in the reedbed

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fringes or offering a deep-chested, heavy-winged fly-past.

Parties of bearded tit pserch on stems, pinging to retain contact. In water sheltered by reeds — if you are patient — a family of otter may forage, unmolested and unwary. Up above, a marsh harrier pair displays. The male circles at height before tumbling towards the reeds. In established pairs, the female locks talons with her partner, and they flail downwards conjoined.

Once you have filled your boots, explore the rest of the reserve. Rabbits thrive in the sandy hollow near the visitor centre. Mossy stonecrop blazes paths red. A muntjac grazes beside wooded trails. On the Scrape, Minsmere’s famous lagoon, avocets bleat through upturned bills: the RSPB’s flagship species in its most iconic location. Nearby, stunning Mediterranean gulls display with head-bowing and mewing.

As you leave for the evening, a herd of red deer hinds bumbles through the ‘south belt’ woods, pausing to observe you just as you paused in the Dunwich sun at the outset of your wildlifewatching adventure. n James Lowen’s book 52 Wildlife Weekends is published by Bradt Travel Guides at £14.99 pbk.

Readers of The Countryman can claim 40% discount on the book by visiting the website www.bradtguides.com and entering the code ‘COUNTRYMAN’.

Valid until 30th April 2015.

INFORMATION Where to go: Both Dunwich Heath and RSPB Minsmere are signposted from the A12 north-east of Yoxford.

For Dunwich Heath National Trust Reserve (grid ref TM475683, tel 01728 648501, website www. nationaltrust.org.uk/dunwichheath), approach from Westleton, pass Westleton Heath on your left, turn right 1 mile before Dunwich onto Minsmere road, then continue 1 mile to the National Trust car park (fee for nonmembers). For RSPB Minsmere (TM473672, 01728 648281, www.rspb.org.uk/minsmere), leave Westleton village east on minor roads and follow signs.

No dogs.

Suggested bases: Yoxford and Saxmundham (website visit www.saxmundham.org), with villages including Eastbridge and Westleton.

Flexibility: Any March weekend would work. Adders emerge on sunny days from late February.

Brown hares ‘box’ any time from late winter into late spring. The first spring migrants pass through in early March, but later in March is more reliable. Otter and Dartford warbler are resident; mossy stonecrop is easily seen in spring but does not flower until June.

Disabled accessibility: moderate.

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Words and water PARTAKING IN THE POTENTIAL OF SPRING Andrew Fusek Peters celebrates the joys of wild swimming, and how his love of “the water that heals, restores, fills me with glow-worm gladness” helped him rediscover his thirst for life arch still feels like a risky proposition but as I sit in my study, the sun sneaks in at the window. I hear the call of the Clun like an angler’s lure, its song dragging me from work to car, through valleys and blue skies where crows, as is their wont, harry a lone red kite.

I park up at Beambridge, a hamlet that consists of a few houses and a bridge.

Today, the river has softened the threat of winter. Grass underfoot has a new greenness and the woodpecker hammers out his beats in the budding trees. Illness is far behind me and landscape no longer a threat where I wandered in mental torture.

It’s good to feel well again, to strip off, step over the smooth pebble beach in the river’s bend and let my toes soak up a proper shock of cold. The stands of Himalayan balsam that forest these banks have not yet reared their false, ugly heads.

In valleys of springs of rivers,

By Onny and Teme and Clun, The country for easy livers, The quietest under the sun.

The spirit of Housman watches over me, his melancholy lyrics washed away by clear bright water.

Always, at this point, ankle or knee deep, I briefly dither, aware that this still contains and carries a sharp chill from its source high

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in the borderlands, that if I stay in too long, Mr Hypothermia will take me for a dance downstream. So I must wade then dip down, throw myself underwater and grab all the glory that the borders have to offer.

This is not masochism, for the feeling as I rear up and fight my way to the bank again is of absolute delight, a deep partaking in the potential of spring.

Even better, once I am dressed and trying to rub sense back into fingers and toes, I spy a camouflaged bird climbing up the bark of a tree. A simple formula applies, as does good eyesight: ‘down for nuthatch but up for treecreeper’ — the latter being well named, with its feathering a perfectly evolved camouflage. As I melt into water, so this adapted bird sometimes appears to be more bark than feather.

I scoff my sandwich and feel happy that for now, this sky, these roiling sheets of water, these lines of burgeoning alders, all make up, for a little while, my place of both swim and study. n Next month: the glow and goodness of life — Andrew goes in search of a lake in the hills beyond Barmouth.

Andrew Fusek Peters is an author and photographer. His book Dip, Wild Swims From The Borderlands is published by Rider Books. www.andrewfusekpeters.com

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Our fear of alien invaders Dr Ken Thompson, a former lecturer in the Department of Plant and Animal Sciences at Sheffield University, questions what constitutes an alien plant or animal and why we have such negative feelings towards them

f we want to talk about our attitude to ‘native’ and ‘alien’ species, we have a problem: what do we mean by those labels?

This problem is particularly acute here in Britain, since most of the country was covered in ice only 20,000 years ago, so almost our entire native flora and fauna are relatively recent immigrants. To qualify as native, a species must have arrived here without human assistance, from somewhere where it is also native (another option is actually to have evolved here, but in Britain that’s a vanishingly small category).

In practice, the overwhelming majority of native species invaded

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before the land bridge connecting us to Europe was submerged by rising sea levels about 8,000 years ago. The Channel has prevented most unassisted invasions since then, but there might have been a few.

Botanists continue to argue about the small-flowered tongue orchid (Serapias parviflora), previously known only from mainland Europe, but found growing in Cornwall in 1989. Orchids produce vast numbers of extremely tiny, light seeds, and it’s entirely possible that they blew across the Channel. If they did, then the tongue orchid arrived without human assistance, which means it qualifies as a native (and for careful protection).

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Then again, it’s equally likely that seeds fell out of someone’s trouser turn-ups or arrived stuck to the sole of someone’s shoe, or possibly that it was deliberately planted. If any of those is the case, then it’s just another pesky weed, to be ruthlessly exterminated.

Of course, humans have been introducing new species for thousands of years, and some whole classes of organisms wouldn’t be here at all otherwise. For a long time Britain was one enormous wood, so naturally we have almost no native arable weeds, because there was nowhere for them to live.

When humans introduced farming, the weeds came along too, so corncockle, wild oat, burdock, mugwort, white campion, shepherd’s purse, cornflower, corn marigold, hemlock, treacle mustard, common mallow, mayweed, annual nettle and four species of cornfield poppy are all human introductions, and thus aliens.

More European weeds were introduced later, by the Romans and in medieval times.

Which is where the trouble starts, because we like to think of the more attractive members of this weed flora as ‘native wildflowers’, and certainly seed merchants would like to sell them as such. Whether they’re wildflowers depends on how you define ‘wild’, but

they’re certainly not native. There are those who would like to get round this problem by dumping the whole question of ‘human assistance’, and instead adopting a cut-off date; anything here before that date is native, however it got here.

For reasons too complicated to go into here, a popular cut-off date is 1500. Adopting this date would have the desired effect of making nearly all our introduced arable weeds ‘native’. It

would also have the interesting effect of making all Roman introductions ‘native’, from figs to mulberries, but there are species for which even 1500 would be too early.

Consider the snake’s-head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris), a plant that generations of gardeners and botanists (including me) have been brought up to believe is a British native, because that’s what all the books say.

Previous page: no one knows how beavers turned up on a river in Devon, but the official reaction is that they must be captured and put in a zoo. (Photo by Allard Martinius.)

Above: snake’s-head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris), a plant that generations of gardeners and botanists have been brought up to believe is a British native. (Photo by Mark Whitley.)

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The least we would expect of a genuine native is that it is unquestionably native just across the English Channel, in the territory it must have crossed on its way to Britain. Fritillaria fails this test spectacularly; it’s not found at all in north-east France and is regarded as an introduction in Germany. In Denmark it’s also regarded as an alien, and they even have a date (1647) for its introduction. In Sweden they have not only a date of introduction (1658, and possibly earlier) but also a place, Uppsala Botanic Garden. It didn’t escape from there into the wild until 1742.

The nearest place where Fritillaria seems to be genuinely native, or at

least regarded as such with any conviction, is Poland.

The history of Fritillaria in Britain is equally suspicious. It was certainly in cultivation in Britain by 1597, and possibly by 1578 (plant names hadn’t really settled down that long ago, and it’s sometimes not clear exactly which plant is being talked about). On the other hand, the first record in the wild is 1736, and even that is an outlier; no one admits to seeing it again until 1776. That’s a very late date for a real British native, especially such a colourful, unmistakable and attractive one. In other words, if you believe Fritillaria is native, you have to assume

When humans introduced farming, the weeds came along too: corn marigold (Chrysanthemum segetum), corncockle (Agrostemma githago), corn chamomile (Anthemis arvensis), cornflower (Centaurea cyanus) and scentless mayweed (Tripleurospermum inodorum) in a Cambridgeshire field. (Photo by FLPA/John Eveson.)

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that generations of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century botanists were all part of a giant conspiracy not to mention it.

You’ll notice that so far I have adopted the conventional attitude of ‘natives good, aliens bad’, but in reality a bigger divide is between species we like and ones we don’t. We’re happy to believe the former are native (even if they aren’t), and we worry about the latter being alien only after we’ve decided we don’t like them anyway.

Generally, we like hares and we don’t like rabbits; rabbits are human introductions, but we conveniently forget that hares are too. We’re all scared stiff of Japanese knotweed, largely thanks to the tireless efforts of the Daily Mail, but bracken is far worse; if it were alien, it would be a national emergency.

We have even allowed our fear of aliens to colour our attitude to genuine British natives that we have exterminated. For example, no one knows how beavers turned up on a river in Devon, but the official reaction is that they must be captured and put in a zoo, because ‘Our landscape and habitats have changed since then and we need to assess the impact they could have’. In fact, we know beavers are on balance a Good Thing, increasing biodiversity and reducing flooding. At the opposite end of the UK, in Scotland, there are officially-sanctioned reintroduced beavers. Apparently they do belong, unlike their southern cousins, because we put them there.

Nor are beavers an isolated case; the

UK Government is in the middle of trying to change the law to officially classify all extinct British species as aliens, and thus subject to potential ‘eradication or control’. If that happens, then presumably that finally puts the lid on attempts to re-introduce the lynx, another extinct British native and one of our few hopes of controlling our current plague of deer.

In short, few would argue that we should not try to control and modify Nature — it’s only by doing so that we all have somewhere to live and enough to eat (note that almost everything we eat — plant and animal — is introduced).

But too often our attitude to ‘natives’ and ‘aliens’ says more about our prejudices than the species themselves. Most ‘alien invasion’ scare stories are just that — at least 4,000 alien plants are found in the wild in Britain; nearly all of them are no trouble at all.

And finally, we should be honest about why we don’t like a species — not all natives are good guys — and we should certainly stop imagining that persecuting aliens is some kind of moral imperative. n Ken Thompson’s latest book, Where Do Camels Belong? The Story and Science of Invasive Species, is published by Profile Books at £10.99 pbk.

Visit the website www.profilebooks.com

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Country cooking with Mrs Simkins

SIX CUP PUDDING ere’s a lovely old-fashioned pudding, adapted slightly for the modern kitchen and modern tastes. There are no fancy ingredients, just the kind of dry goods you might keep in your store cupboard, mixed with an egg and milk.

The pudding was originally steamed, and you can steam it if you like, but it’s much easier (and faster) in the microwave: the original point of the pudding was that it was quick and easy and relatively inexpensive to prepare.

You will need an ordinary household tea cup and a lightly greased 600ml pudding basin. Serves 4-6.

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Ingredients 1 cup soft dark brown sugar (or slightly less, leaving about a centimetre gap around the rim) 2 cups mixed dried fruit and peel 1 cup melted butter (around 40g) 1 cup self-raising flour (or plain flour plus ¾ teaspoon baking powder) 1 medium egg beaten in the cup and topped up with milk Method Combine the sugar and fruit in a mixing bowl and stir in the butter, making sure all the fruit is coated. Sieve in the flour and mix with a wooden spoon. Stir in the egg and milk. Pour the mixture into a

greased basin (it should come to about a centimetre or so below the rim). Cover loosely with greaseproof paper and tie with string.

Microwaves can vary but as a general guideline the pudding should take 8-9 minutes on full power in a 1,000-watt oven. Cook for 3 minutes, stand for 1 minute. Cook for a further 3 minutes and stand again. Cook for a further 2 and test: the top should look set and feel slightly sticky, and a skewer inserted should come out clean. You may need an extra minute but don’t overcook or it will be too dry.

Stand for 5 minutes — bear in mind the pudding will cook further during the standing time. Slide a small flexible palette knife around the sides and bottom before turning out. Serve immediately with custard or thick pouring cream. Any leftovers can be sliced and buttered. n Next month: Easter cakes.

For more recipes see cooking blog at www.MrsSimkins.co.uk

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Hare today and…

Linda Auld looks at the plight of one of the countryside’s most iconic animals

ulling over to let a tractor pass, I turned my head to look into the ploughed field next to me. I came face to face with a hare just a few yards away.

Hunkering down, disguised as a clod of earth in a furrow, it stared straight ahead, unblinking.

The large eyes and angular head reminded me of when, as a seventeen year old, I’d studied and drawn a stuffed hare in an art class in a museum. Then I’d observed how different it was from a rabbit. Hares’ ears are longer and have black tips, they have larger nostrils and the whole animal is much bigger. This one was almost as still as a stuffed one — the only part moving was the mobile nose.

The long back legs were hunched up, ready to spring into action.

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When no one is looking and a hare is just going about its daily business, it lollops slowly, with its hindquarters disproportionately high, almost kangaroo-like. If running fast, the hind legs propel forward and the whole body appears to fold in half.

This hare didn’t budge. I noticed the fur had a tawny glow, with the reddish tinge it has in winter. Or was it because it was catching the orange glimmer of the low evening sun?

I recalled a few years ago in Ceredigion, Wales, seeing a local man carrying a dead hare home for the pot. Held by its hind feet and the size of a small dog, the hare dangled down to the ground, while a brindle lurcher panted at the man’s side. I remember wondering why he couldn’t buy his

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dinner from a butcher or supermarket like the rest of us, and whether hunting wild animals for sport was any worse than hunting them for food.

First brought to Britain by the Romans for hunting, the common brown hare (Lepus europaeus) became a creature of folklore and mythology.

Seeing hares ‘boxing’, Germanic cultures thought this ‘mating dance’ helped the Earth grow. Hares were a symbol for the Anglo-Saxon’s spring goddess Eostre. A belief that lapwings laid their eggs in the homes of hares led to the connection with Easter eggs.

Long considered game, hares have

little protection. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists hares as of Least Concern, but some countries have them on their Red List. The Bern Convention lists them as a protected species.

Under the Hares Preservation Act 1892, selling British hares is illegal between 1st March and 31st July, so British hares shouldn’t be found in restaurants then, but imported hares are exempt from this legislation.

The confusing, controversial Hunting Act 2004 focuses on suffering rather than killing. It’s illegal to course hares, but private coursing with two

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Above, hares have larger eyes, a more angular head, longer ears with black tips and larger nostrils than rabbits. Facing page, Germanic cultures thought this ‘mating dance’ helped crops to grow. Previous pages, if running fast, a hare’s hind legs propel forward and the whole body appears to fold in half. Photographs © David Tipling.

greyhounds is legal if the hares are shot afterwards. Hunting with two dogs and a gun (as with fox hunting) is legal and, if wounded by guns, hares may be hunted with dogs.

On reaching the edge of their territory, hares tend to run back in an arc.

They jink (leaping sideways), clap (flatten to the ground) and double back on their tracks. Hares accelerate to 45mph for short bursts, but dogs have more stamina and hunts may last as long as two and a half hours.

Numbers have declined by eighty per cent in the last hundred years. It’s the same old story of loss of habitat, intensive farming practices, and

disease also takes its toll.

Eastern Britain, with its lowlands and large open fields, can be a barren desert to other species, but is one of the few stronghold areas where hares thrive. Paradoxically, because of the high numbers in this area, some people argue killing is justified.

Although nationally in decline, the hare is the only species which can be shot all the year round on enclosed land: due to the old 1880 Ground Game Act there is no shooting closed season, even throughout the breeding season. This means orphaned leverets are left to starve. Organised shoots in East Anglia in February and March can

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The Hare Dew Flirt.

Mysterious wild thing of the ploughed earth, birthing in the furrow and living for the free, open ground.

Tales of mystery and magic surround you.

How little we really know you — The Wild One.

kill forty per cent of the national population. Many go to Parisian restaurants.

The Hare Preservation Trust is campaigning for protected species status. But considering what has happened to badgers, an already ‘protected’ species, how much will that help? The Government’s Biodiversity Action Plan aims to increase hare numbers, but this is unlikely through habitat management alone.

The hare in the furrow was still there, as if frozen, after the tractor had rumbled past, so I didn’t see it run, and it was me that moved first. Further down the road, I scanned the fields and saw three more hares. I guessed one was a female, as the other two, presumably males, were chasing her.

Fast-breeding ability has so far saved the species from extinction, but how much longer will hares be around if current shooting practices continue? n

Familiar to the goddess, Freya, as the black cat to the witch.

You stand tall, tipped ears erect, and meet my eyes with a fearless gaze.

Then you are gone, leaping and flying through the air in one gigantic burst of speed.

Sleep with your eyes open if you will.

Dance to the rhythms of time as you have always done.

Shun taming, stay free; but give me the occasional glance to gladden my heart.

Pat Thistlethwaite

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Rustic view with Robin Page AAAAGGHH — RATS! was going to write about Mad March Hares this month, but then came ominous noises from the space between our bedrooms and the roof. So now it’s Mad April Hares next month.

The noises really were ominous; Lulu described them as “manoeuvres by mice wearing boots”. She was wrong. Not mice — rats. Aaaagghh! I hate rats. Even as I write, shivers are going up and down my spine.

The roof space of the farmhouse is cool and dry. It is a mixture of attics and dark mysterious spaces above the bedrooms.

To venture up there ensures that a bath will be needed from the dust, cobwebs and thatching debris from the last time the house was thatched fifteen years ago.

My grandfather bought the place exactly ninety years ago. If it was gentrified then, he gentrified it even more. He started life as a shepherd boy, having left school at eleven, and went on to have a flourishing butcher’s business allowing him to buy the farmhouse and my small farm — thank you, Granddad. (In fact, I don’t remember him; he died when I was about two.) So that is the background; which, with no knowledge of history, the mysterious rodents found to their liking.

Pulling myself through a small hole to get into the roof space above the bed-

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room, I was already plastered with dust and debris. Oh no: there were signs of insulation around the water pipes having been chewed. Fortunately, all the electric wires seemed to be intact.

Hauling myself up and down proved one thing: my upper-body strength is not what it once was. I must do some pressups every morning, if I have time (doubtful — a cup of tea is the main priority).

At the other end of the house I hauled myself up again. “Aaaagghh!” I was eyeball to eyeball with a rat. Now something very strange happened. I shouted, “Lulu, there’s a rat”. Lulu, several feet below me, out of vision to both me and the rat, screamed. Why should or could anybody scream without actually seeing the rat?

Lulu did. The rat scuttled off; Lulu disappeared at an astonishing rate of knots downstairs, and I beat what I considered to be a dignified retreat.

What should I do now? We have a new terrier puppy, Monty — a terrorist. He is the first terrier I have ever shared a house with. Should I throw him up into the roof space and just see what happened? Then of course what would happen if he chose not to come back (as terriers do) or became stuck (as terriers do). No, it was not a good or sensible idea.

The choice seemed to be between

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poison and a ‘sonic deterrent’. A sonic deterrent is a high-pitched noise beyond the range of a human ear, which the rats find unacceptable — in theory. The problem is that some friends told me the deterrents were excellent, while others informed me that they found them completely useless and the rats might just as well have been left listening to Radio 2.

So, with all those electric wires lying around, it had to be poison. It is something that I don’t like doing, but it can be done safely with care. The care is needed to keep it away from dogs, including Monty and our labrador Reuben. And it must also be kept covered to prevent our free-range hens and our returning farmyard sparrows from eating it.

Then of course there are our owls: barn owls, tawny owls and little owls. We don’t want them harmed by eating poisoned rats. So £30-worth of small blocks of

poison were thrown around in the attics and roof space. And a few nights later, the “manoeuvres by mice wearing boots” had stopped. What a relief. No more damage to the insulation around the water pipes and no nightmare of an electrical fire.

Then we found the rodent’s route of access. I reckon it/they had come through the catflap. When my sister moved out of the farmhouse to a smaller house nearby, she took her cat (an excellent mouser and ratter) with her, so the farmhouse had become an area of rat safety. Then the beast(s) had gnawed a hole up the inside of an ancient timber support, giving access to the top of our bedroom ceiling.

Now an apology to anybody else who does not like rats: I have only written half of what I wanted to write about rats. So, more next month. May’s effort will have to be Mad May Hares — hares can be ‘mad’ for far longer than just March. n

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Shaun Spiers from the Campaign to Protect Rural England

DO WE NEED BEAUTIFUL ROADS? oliticians do not usually talk about beauty. It is considered effete. But John Hayes, the Roads Minister, has no such qualms. In a previous job he waged war on wind turbines on the grounds that they are “simply ugly”. And he believes that “a civilisation is largely defined by what it builds”, a thought that should worry us.

So I was delighted when John Hayes told CPRE he wanted to give a speech on how to build beautiful roads. It is not every year — not every decade — that a politician asks us to host a speech on beauty. But beautiful roads? Surely not.

The speech, in early February, acknowledged that “sub-standard, ubiquitous, drab, cheap, soul-sapping design” has become the norm when it comes to roads. No one thinks a new road will be beautiful, and there are few calls to make existing roads less ugly: the pressure is for greater safety or less congestion.

Hayes set out a beguiling vision of a Britain “criss-crossed by award-winning roads which sink softly into the landscape”. “Our goal,” he said, “is not just to

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undo the most intrusive, insensitive road design of the past fifty years. It is to create a new aesthetic, values that reflect and even enhance the beauty of the local landscape.”

It is a wonderful aim, and CPRE looks forward to participating in a new roads Design Panel. But we have two big reservations. First, the money earmarked for environmental and design improvements is a small fraction of the £15 billion roads programme. If the roads we have built in the last fifty years really are so awful and ugly — and they are — let’s start by improving them, before building new ones.

And second, though some new roads may be necessary all the evidence shows that they quickly fill up, leading to pressure for yet more road-building and clogging up the towns where most journeys start and finish. We need to find ways to manage demand for new roads — and on that, the Government has been silent.

Dorothy Levitt’s Woman and the Car (1909): “There are numberless little things which you will buy, not because they are absolutely necessary but because of their convenience — for instance, a speedometer. A speedometer is a very interesting accessory for it has been known to influence the decision of a magistrate when deciding the charge of exceeding the speed limit.”

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Horses that my father drove Alison Brackenbury’s equestrian heritage inspires her to verse

he great ploughing horses of England disappeared from its fields after the Second World War. Had Victorian farming ended? Not quite.

In 1963, a wooden cart, pulled by a shaggy cob, swayed up a limestone scarp in North Lincolnshire. It carried two shepherds, my grandfather and uncle, and an ecstatic small girl (me).

Like her ancestors, Flash stood stockstill in the field, and was given her sacking nosebag at noon. I rode her bareback to the stable.

My quiet uncle, who brushed and fed Flash, came from a dynasty of at

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least five generations of shepherds.

Horses were in their blood.

In the 1940s, my grandfather used a tough stocky pony, jauntily named Buttons. I inherited a tiny photograph of Buttons. It is sobering to see the cropped tail; docking was still cruelly in practice. But a young visiting cousin looks keen to have a ride.

My tall, blue-eyed grandfather, Fred Brackenbury (pictured below, in the saddle), was a confident natural rider.

One of his employers passed on his broken-winded hunter for Fred to ride to his sheep as they grazed extensive

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parkland. Fred could hold the old horse to a safe trot.

But my grandfather, a prizewinning shepherd, had spells away with the pride of the flock at the great livestock shows, like Smithfield.

Once, my father was left to deal with the sheep — and the hunter. As they trotted, faster and faster, the roaring of its own breath terrified the old horse.

At a headlong gallop, it headed straight for a wire sheep fence. My tenyear-old father leaned into the jump.

The hunter stopped dead. My father sailed gracefully over the sheep nets, and landed hard. My grandfather’s fierce instructions never to swear would not have prevailed that day.

Gordon, my shepherd uncle, loved horses, despite youthful mishaps of his own. He once worked for a farmer who bought cheap, ‘rogue’ horses.

One, backing a cart towards a silage pit, decided not to stop. My uncle hung on. Two fingertips and his nose were reshaped permanently.

At fourteen, my father started work as a ploughboy, just like the poet John Clare. He and the other lads lived at the farm, fed by the farmer’s wife. He loved the routine of getting up at four in the morning to get the horses in from the summer fields. He helped with ploughing, and with the corn and hay harvest.

“We never worked on Sundays, even at the height of the harvest,” he recalled.

“But we always got the work done.”

Unlike my grandfather, Harold, my father, was short. The great Shire he

groomed would carelessly plant a huge foot on his toes. He would yell, and pound its huge shoulder with his fist.

The horse simply stared, puzzled. It could not even feel the small foot through its thick iron shoe. Another toenail (temporarily) lost.

My father fought, and was wounded, in the Second World War. He came back to Lincolnshire to find the horse harness being tipped into quarries. The tractor had replaced the Shires and Percherons. But the army had taught him to drive. He became a farm lorry driver for the rest of his long working life.

Neither my grandfather nor my uncle ever learnt to drive. From the 1950s, they reared a show flock at Horkstow (where George Stubbs carried out his famous dissections of horses). Each morning, well into the 1960s, their cart rattled briskly along the village road, then up a steep farm track, with its view of the vast shining Humber, to their flock.

Then the lorries on the main road grew larger, faster and more frequent.

Flash’s young successor was terrified of them, and reared up in the road, with my uncle hanging on to the bridle between the lorries. Even for my intrepid family, this proved too much.

But this was not the end of my family’s passion for horses. University educated and now town dwelling, I learnt to ride (very badly). In 1981, I bought a cob cross, not unlike the shaggy shepherding pony I had ridden as a child. My father groomed him with

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the fervour of the ploughboy he had been forty years ago.

That pony, Glen, lived to twentyeight. My daughter’s pony, Wouldbe-Good or Woody for short (pictured below), bought in 1993, is now also twenty-eight.

I still ride her upon the high limestone tracks of Gloucestershire

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At eighty Spanker, Sharper, Prince and Bob were horses that my father drove through rain, through clay, down car-free roads the workless tramped, for his first job.

He told me as we waited, bored, outside my dozing mother’s ward Bob kicked him sailing down the yard.

Bob also bolted from the tree, dragged with clanked chain. The closest shave came when he swayed back, peacefully, legs tapping Spanker’s sun-warm side, back to the hay, from dinner break.

The great grey Belgian reared beside, horse, cart, crashed toppling like a tree.

The shaft’s kink saved his battered sides.

Six Irish shearers dragged him free.

A bungalow’s quiet bedroom took breath neither weight nor war could rob.

Out of the dark with patient feet came Spanker, Sharper, Prince and Bob.

— and she has not forgotten how to gallop. With good vets and expert advice, twenty-first-century horses can live a long time.

Woody’s eye-catching white markings and her beautiful temperament come from illustrious ancestry. Her great-great-grandfather was the legendary Welsh cob Brenin Gwalia (King of Wales). He would storm round the ring, with his high-stepping

trot, as the champion of Smithfield.

My grandfather, who showed sheep there, could have paused by the rail and watched him. The circle of our horse history is complete.

Before he died in 2006, I asked my father the names of the Shires and Percherons he had worked with. The poem above is based on his own recollections of England’s great working horses. n

Pause for thought “In riding a horse, we borrow freedom.” Helen Thompson

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Forthcoming events n Canaletto: Celebrating Britain, Compton Verney, Warks. 14th March7th June. This exhibition spotlights the paintings and drawings which Canaletto created between 1746 and 1755, when he chose to celebrate the latest achievements of British architecture and engineering. This is the first time that these paintings have been gathered together, collectively they illustrate Canaletto's nine-year stay in Britain.Tel 01926 645541 or visit www.comptonverney.org.uk n The UK’s ultimate grow your own event – the Edible Garden Show – is set to return to London’s iconic Alexandra Palace from 20th-22nd March alongside a fantastic new lifestyle event ‘Good Life Live’. Visitors will enjoy two great shows if they return when the plants burst into bloom later in the year. Takes place in the Great Hall, Palm Court entrance. www.alexandrapalace.com or tel 02083652121.

n A remarkable collection of rarelyseen 18th- and 19th-century bird illustrations is set to take flight as part of an exhibition at Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery. The Illustrated Aviary showcases exquisite ornithological studies amassed by the Victorian naturalist Thomas Eyton, many of which have not been displayed for over thirty years. The historical works, which include engravings and hand-coloured lithographs by James John Audubon, Edward Lear, and John and Elizabeth Gould, are complemented by a new large-scale installation from contemporary artist, Mister Finch. The exhibition ends 14th June. www.museumssheffield.org.uk/museums/ millennium-gallery, tel 0114 278 2600. n Spring is stirring in the woods and it’s time to take your little ones on an outdoor adventure with Sussex Wildlife Trust’s fun woodland activity sessions — Nature Tots. Suitable for three to five year olds (all children must be accompanied by an adult) the trust’s qualified staff will run a variety of weekly themed Forest School activities.

Online booking for March and April is essential. A course of four weekly twohour sessions costs £30 per child for Sussex Wildlife Trust family members, and £34 for non-members. www.sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/naturetots

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What’s in a name?

Ask someone from the North East about the word stot and they’ll tell you it means to bounce. Their famous stottie cakes — oven-bottom bread — are supposedly socalled because they’re so heavy that if you drop them on the floor they’ll bounce.

They and the Scots have a game called stotting which is basically bouncing a ball against a wall. And if they see a young animal such as a lamb, a kid goat or young bullock leaping off all four legs these northerners will tell you it’s stotting.

In a few cases the surname Stott (and variations) may stem from this meaning but in the main anyone so called will

probably have a very distant ancestor who once looked after cattle. For stot is also an old word, from pre-seventh century English, meaning cattle or bullocks. The original bearer of the surname would either have been someone who bred cattle or looked after a herd.

Early examples of the recorded surname include John Stotte in the 1296 Subsidy Rolls of the county of Sussex, and Elena la Stott in the Colchester Court rolls for the year 1312. The first known record of the family name is thought to be that of Gamel Stot, which was dated 1165, registered in the county pipe rolls of Yorkshire. n

Coming up in the April issue of n discover the delights of the Dyfi Estuary in Mid Wales (pictured right) n a wildlife excursion to Orkney n the Welsh organic farm where bison roam free n solving the strange case of the North Wales Knicker Nicker n why the iconic Herdwick sheep (pictured left) is the true taste of the Lakeland fells n walk among the wild flowers of Hertfordshire’s chalk heathland There's much more, as well as all your favourite columnists and regular features old and new, so don't miss out — order a copy today from your newsagent or take out a money-saving subscription by phoning 01756 701033 or visiting www.countrymanmagazine.co.uk The April issue will be on sale from 24th March.

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GLORIOUS BRITAIN Swyre Head, Dorset, by Andy Farrer “This was taken after a long, exhilarating day photographing the storms which hit the South Coast in February 2014,” Andy explains. “The waves had been pounding this beach all day long and the swell was bigger than anything I can recall on this part of the Dorset coast. I had been blown over in the morning, lost a pair of glasses to the wind, and drenched all of my cloths off drying my equipment. After a lunch break to dry off, I was thrilled to capture this sunset without any smears on my lens.”

Your View, Landscape Photographer of the Year, Take a View 2014; all the winning and shortlisted images are in Landscape Photographer of the Year: Collection 8, AA Publishing, £25.

More information at the website www.take-a-view.co.uk

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Country books, reviewed by Mark Whitley Plant Conservation, Timothy Walker. £14.99 hbk. “Without plants, humans would not exist,” is the arresting opening to this new book from Timothy Walker, director of Oxford University’s Botanic Garden, in which he looks at why plant conservation matters and how it works in practice.

Plants under threat of extinction today might provide tomorrow’s food, fuels or health cures, the author posits, so “The future of Homo sapiens … is dependent upon the future of plants”. A thoughtprovoking book for those who know and care about plants.

At Home with Jane Austen, Kim Wilson. £25 hbk. Explore the homes that shaped this beloved author, bringing to life the domestic settings of her great novels.

The Cotswolds’ Finest Gardens, Tony Russell. £15.99 pbk. A beautifully illustrated guide to the fifty best

gardens of the Cotswolds, from grand formal landscapes to contemporary masterpieces, all of which are accessible to the public.

Green and Pleasant Land, Ana Sampson. £9.99 hbk.

A nicely produced anthology of best-loved poems about the British countryside, thematically organised into seasons, and featuring over seventy poets from Matthew Arnold to William Wordsworth.

Wonders of the Plant Kingdom, Wolfgang Stuppy, Rob Kesseler & Madeline Harley. £19 pbk. Take a journey into the startlingly beautiful microcosm of pollen, fruit and seeds, with stunning close-up images that reveal a hidden miniature world full of remarkable colours, shapes and structures.

Please note: the books reviewed on these pages are not available from The Countryman.

We advise you to telephone or visit your local bookshop, contact the relevant publisher direct, or order on the internet. Countryman books and products are available online at www.countrymanmagazine.co.uk

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The Splendour of the Tree, Noel Kingsbury. £25 hbk. Celebrates the beauty and diversity of trees with a look at a hundred key species worldwide, chosen for their importance in the natural world and historical significance.

Wild Fruit, Alain & Marie Jeanne Génevé. £20 pbk. An accessible and thorough field guide to 220 British and European wild fruit species, covering edible, ornamental and toxic plants.

Country break answers Cryptogram: Spring is sooner recognised by plants than by men.

What on Earth is it?: The tool was used by hatmakers to provide the finished shape and sheen to headgear. This explains the high polish on the outer face while the inner one, which was never used, remained rough and unfinished. The intriguing lip along one edge was used to create the crisp angle between the crown and the brim. A less official use was for giving cheeky apprentices a sharp tap, but the wielder had to be careful — too hefty a swipe with one of the heavier irons could inflict serious damage.

Wildlife wonders: 1 houseleek; 2 fat or edible dormouse; 3 weasel; 4 long-tailed tit; 5 old woman and old man’s beard.

Wordsearch

What year was that?: 1959.

Country words: wat is a Norfolk word for hare; and lowle is a Hampshire and Wiltshire word for a long-eared pig.

Do you know?: 1 Maxwell by Theodore Hook; 2 John Wesley; 3 Sense and Sensibility; 4 John Constable; 5 King Charles II — “He [the Earl of Lauderdale] told me, the king spoke to him to let that Presbytery go, for it was not a religion for gentlemen." (Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time).

What’s the birdie?: woodlark.

Writers and their Words: 1 (b) Dorothy; 2 (c) Lancelot; 3 (c) Elizabeth Barrett Browning; 4 (c) Christina Rossetti; 5 (a) Elegy in a Country Churchyard.

Sudoku

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Readers’ Letters

Please send your correspondence to: The Countryman, The Water Mill, Broughton Hall, Skipton, Yorkshire BD23 3AG; or email editorial@thecountryman.co.uk.

The editor reserves the right to edit letters.

POLICING IN THE COTSWOLDS Re John Wright’s reality of policing in the Cotswolds (Jan), I too have happy memories of policing there in the 1970s. There were two types of people there: the gentry and the others.

When I first saw where my police house was, my heart sank. It was in the middle of a council estate similar to another part of the county where my young children had been bullied because they were policeman’s kids.

However, I could not have been more wrong. I, my wife and children were welcomed by these people and, whilst I was pleased that my family were accepted, I was a little embarrassed by being given the status of a valued asset to their community.

One memory comes to mind.

Daylesford House was at that time Lord Rothermere’s seat. The burglar alarm was regularly being set off by bats roosting in one of the many rooms. Normally the police would moan about being sent to such false alarms — but not in this case. There was a mad rush to be there because the

first who arrived would cancel the others but not rush away himself because he would be treated; yes, treated. I remember having a small 1/3 pint bottle of champagne to myself which cost then £26. No wonder there was a scramble with blue lights flashing to be first there. I certainly learned a lot about human nature policing in the Cotswolds.

John Timbrell, by email

A BETTER COUNTRYSIDE? I saw Shaun Spiers’ article A Better Countryside (Nov) and wondered which country he was referring to. It’s certainly not the rural corner of Wiltshire where I live.

The last few years have seen so much which I lament over: hedgerows diminishing, most of the remaining smashed up by flail cutters; stone walls fallen down and not repaired; gates removed and gateways widened to allow large machinery access; fields enlarged to create something akin to prairie farming; and local councils raising waste disposal tariffs which

march 2015

have helped create a marked increase of fly tipping and dumping.

If it all sounds rather depressing, that’s because it is. Robin Page’s article was a reality check and much nearer the truth.

The military finally left the Suez Canal zone in 1956. Some months later the poor lads were back there, fighting in the ill-fated Suez War.

Ian Chapple, Chippenham, Wilts

WHAT IS A WILDFLOWER MEADOW? There is something I would like to know from experts: what do they define as a wildflower meadow? Its where, when and how. Where am I coming from? I am seventy-nine, born and brought up on a small dairy farm in the Low Weald.

My father’s cows had bovine tongues with which they sought their rewards, close at hand; in winter they were fed hay made on the farm — hay from fodder cut when the mowing grass was carrying its maximum nutrients. As I recall, my father did like his mowing grass to have some ‘bottom’ in it — red clover and trefoil; white clover appeared in the rowens (regrowth after haying).

I have learned that ploughing up of both neglected and farmed land started in 1939. Was there no place for wildflower meadows in those years, or since?

NATIONAL SERVICE MEMORIES As a regular reader, apart from all the excellent features in each issue, I enjoy the challenge of the Country Break section. I would like to correct a date in the December quiz, What year was that?.

The answer was 1954, all correct apart from the question ‘Britain ends its military occupation of the Suez Canal’. The answer should have been 1956. I started my National Service on 1st July 1954 at Aldershot. When we arrived, a horrible corporal relieved us of our ration books. It was the last week of meat rationing, believe it or not.

My service continued in the Suez Canal zone until 1956, my final post being to Tripoli. A three-ton truck I was driving had a rear tyre ripped on the old Treaty Road, directly opposite the Suez Canal. I was marooned there for four hours, until a rescue truck arrived from Port Said with a new wheel, much to my relief.

Why am I sure the date was 1956? It was 13th March 1956, my twentieth birthday. Not a date easily forgotten in a desolate place like that.

Peter Poole, King’s Someborne, Hants

Norman Fennell, Whitstable, Kent

WHERE TRUTH MEETS FICTION Am I alone in being surprised that the article on Turville (Feb) failed to mention the highly regarded 1942 British

Laughter lines “A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one.”

Baltasar Gracián

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film, Went The Day Well? The film is not only set in the village but also makes extensive use of the church featured in the article.

NO TO FRACKING I found Martin Waterman’s letter (Dec) about fracking in Queensland, Australia, very informative. I will not be supporting fracking in the future.

tion by bovine TB, even in areas where there is a high incidence of the disease.

The article also mentioned that when mineral licks had been introduced for cattle grazed on artificial leys/pasture, the incidence of infection had been reduced significantly.

Whether this has been tested scientifically I don’t know, but if the information was correct it would support Mr Outhwaite’s theory.

Miss Patricia Bentall, Worthing

Jeremy Hutchinson, Carlton le Moorland

BOVINE TB I was interested in Norman Outhwaite’s letter (Sept) about bovine TB. I recall reading some years ago (I think in an article by Robin Page) that cattle grazed on traditional pasture — which includes not only a variety of different species, but also those with long tap-roots which go deep into the ground and bring up minerals from the subsoil — were less prone to infec-

A READER THANKS READERS Thank you to your readers for solving my query about the poem Prayer of the Tree (Nov). Following up that information, I have viewed photographs of the poem inscribed on woodland notices around the world, and I have listened to the recording of the poem set to music by the songwriter Tony Decker.

Martin Broadribb, by email

Mrs Betty Bunce, Thornborough, Bucks

Nature watch DIVE BOMBERS IN THE MENAI STRAITS I was interested by the letter (Dec) about the dive-bombing hen harrier of Borth. I had a similar experience some twenty-four years ago when my daughter, granddaughter and I visited the tiny island in the Menai Straits which separates Anglesey from the Welsh mainland. The island, known as Ynys Gorad Goch, consists of a house and smokehouse. When we arrived by motorboat we were greeted by scores of terns screaming and wheeling round our heads, trying to distract us from their tiny chicks cunningly disguised on the lichen-covered steps from the harbour. I suggest that the hen harrier mentioned in your reader’s letter had a chick nearby that she was teaching to fly.

Audrey Carmichael, Rhyl

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Tail corn Old gardener, deciding the best way of doing a piece of work: “Aye, that'd be the easiest trouble.”

“Ther's only one month i’ th’ year as muck's wrong for the land, and that's th’ month it does na’ get it,” said an old labourer.

“The leopard cannot change his spots,” quoted the school inspector; but Tommy Bird said, “Yes, please sir, but he can change his spot.”

“You know, Mary,” said the friend, “John was allus a tidy man. He wouldn't like to think he'd been buried with that stubble on his chin. There's a man as would shave him for half a crown.”

The widow wiped away a tear. “No, Jane. John was allus a saving man; half a crown’ll buy a mort o' things.

Besides, it's not as if he was a going anywheres particular.”

Lady of the house: “When I was in my twenties my waist was the envy of the village. I had thirty pieces of steel to hold me up.”

Housemaid: “Oa, Mrs Smith! Weren’t you afraid of lightning?”

“Saw that close-fitting dog round here before breakfast,” said the Wiltshire maid, referring to the short-haired terrier. On another occasion she spoke of a bird being “precisely tame”, meaning ‘particularly’.

Said the rather tired old man on his deathbed, when a crony asked that his remembrances should be given to a parent in Heaven, “Well, if a ’appens to come across un I ull, but a buent gooin’ shucklin’ all over ’eaven arter un.'

Visitor: “Please tell me the nearest way to Wil-ne-cote.”

Local: “There's no such play-us; it’s Winkut.”

…see more of ‘Watch the Birdie’ at www.photocartoon.co