Common Wealth And Common Ground

On the Isle's higher ground (never very high - the highest point is only 40m above sea level) you can find traces of medieval open fields, and the long strips into which they were divided. Indeed, in some areas this centuries-old farming system is being experimentally reintroduced. Here you can see alternate strips of beans and barley...

There are only a few places left where you can still witness this ancient practice of strip farming: Laxton in Nottinghamshire, Braunton in North Devon, Laugharne in West Wales - and the Isle of Axholme. It survived in the Isle because the land was never 'enclosed' like most of the low-lying agricultural land of the English Midlands.

'Enclosure' (formerly 'Inclosure') of open fields started gradually in the 13th century, and happened wholesale in the 18th and 19th centuries. Basically this was a massive land grab for already wealthy landowners, who appropriated public land for their own benefit - becoming even richer and more powerful in the process.

In medieval England, the typical manorial village was surrounded by several large, unenclosed arable fields. Each villager (or commoner) was allocated by the landowner (usually the lord of the manor) a number of strips in these fields, which he would then subsistence farm. The rights to use this land were shared between landowner and tenant. Other 'common' rights included rights to cut wood, to run pigs in common woodland, to make hay on common meadowland, and to graze livestock on land where crops were not being grown. There was also a communal village green for social and festive activities.

But by the end of the 19th century most land had been 'enclosed' - hedged, fenced-off and taken into full, private ownership. Only a few common pastures and village greens remained. Despite riots and revolts, the Enclosure movement had become unstoppable. So the traditional common rights to the land enjoyed by the small-scale, peasant farmers had all but disappeared. A mass of working people, hoping to escape the resulting poverty, fled the countryside and crowded into the growing number of towns and cities which had sprung up to accommodate the Industrial Revolution. But conditions there were even grimmer - as anyone who has read Hard Times by Charles Dickens knows only too well.

We tend to forget that England was once 'open', unfenced and unhedged - and, if we sometimes get all lyrical and romantic about hedges, let's remember they are symbols of privatization, the enforced parcelling up of the land for the personal gain of a few. So this is the reason the Isle of Axholme has very few hedges, the reason it looks the way it does: it's a pre-Enclosure landscape...

Here's one of my favourite singers, June Tabor, singing about England, and about 'common wealth and common ground'...

A Place Called England

I rode out on a bright May morning/Like a hero in a song/Looking for a place called England/Trying to find where I belong/Couldn't find the old flood meadow/Or the house that I once knew/No trace of that little river/Or the garden where I grew

I saw town and I saw country/Motorway and sink estate/Rich man in his rolling acres/Poor man still outside the gate/Retail park and burger kingdom/Prairie field and factory farm/Run by men who think that England's/Only a place to park their car

But as the train pulled from the station/Through the wastelands of despair/From the corner of my eye/A brightness filled the filthy air/Someone's sown a patch of sunflowers/Though the soil is sooty black/Marigolds and a few tomatoes/Right beside the railway track

Down behind the terraced houses/In between the concrete towers/Compost heaps and scarlet runners/Secret gardens full of flowers/Meeta grows her scented roses/Right beneath the big jet's path/Bid a fortune for her garden/Eileen turns away and laughs

For wake up George and rise up Arthur/Time to rouse up from your sleep/Deck the horse with sea-green ribbons/Drag the old sword from the deep/Hold the line for Dave and Daniel/As they tunnel through the clay/While the oak in all its glory/Soaks up sun for one more day

So come all you at home with freedom/Whatever the land that gave you birth/There's room for you both root and branch/As long as you love this English earth/Room for vole and room for orchid/Room for all to grow and thrive/Just less room for the fat landowner/On his arse in his four-wheel drive

For England is not flag or Empire/It is not money and it is not blood/It's limestone gorge and granite fell/It's Wealden clay and Severn mud/It's blackbird singing from the may-tree/Lark ascending through the scales/It's robin watching from the spade/And English earth beneath your nails

So here's two cheers for a place called England/Sore abused but not yet dead/A Mr Harding sort of England/Hanging in there by a thread/Here's two cheers for the crazy Diggers/Now their hour shall come around/We shall plant the seed they saved us/Common wealth and common ground

Words by Maggie Holland

To be continued...

Death By Showbusiness

There are three figures who will stand as defining icons of popular music in the second half of the 20th century: Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Michael Jackson. And just like the deaths of Elvis and Lennon, so Jackson's passing can be seen as a consequence of the extraordinary demands and vicissitudes of fame, particularly the extraordinary fame that Jackson came to — can we really use the word? — enjoy throughout his life.

If Elvis’s death can be seen as the most extreme consequence of excess, and Lennon’s as the most horrific outcome of the malevolent attention of strangers, Jackson’s can surely be attributed to the imperative that was driven into him from childhood — to perform, to dazzle and to pay the bills.

Mick Brown in today's Daily Telegraph

Warped

Soon the trees give way and the views open up. This is looking east from the railway bank...

...and this looking west...

The whole area, which is completely surrounded by rivers and drainage channels, is called The Isle of Axholme - the only part of Lincolnshire west of the river Trent.

A thousand years ago the Isle's series of low hills - home to its main villages of Haxey, Epworth, Belton and Owston Ferry - were islands in an inland sea. Later, in the 17th century, the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden came along and drained this wild, remote and inhospitable region. The inland sea became marsh and wet pasture land; however, these 'wastes' were still flooded in the winter months. So, in the 18th century, a more complex system involving sluices, drains and flood gates was engineered - allowing the surrounding rivers to inundate the low lying land in a controlled way.

And the rich alluvial sediments thus deposited - plus the deeper layers of peat already there (the region had been densely forested in much earlier times) - created some very high quality agricultural land. This has been intensively cultivated for the last two centuries, now producing bumper crops of sugar beet, carrots, celery, cereals and oilseed rape. This process of controlled flooding - producing such a rich topsoil - is known as 'warping' the land; and the land thereby created is known as 'warped' land. Pieces of petrified wood from the Isle's ancient forest turn up quite regularly; they're known locally as 'bog oak'.

This is the land I lived in for seventeen years - from babyhood through childhood to adolescence. Bleakly beautiful, I suppose - though I didn't appreciate it at the time. In my teens I just wanted to get away. And as far as possible. Whether the land 'warped' me or not I'll leave you to judge - as this story unfolds. (Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the walk. It's still unravelling - remember, all the best walks have their little detours and deviations, their wrong turnings and their cul-de-sacs.)

Anyhow, so much for the Isle's flat bits. But what about the hills?

To be continued...

A View From The Bridge

Just beyond the field gate, my field gate, you can see the wooded embankment of the former Axholme Joint Railway stretching in a straight line across a flat and fertile landscape...

The line has long been disused. (I vaguely recall it still operating when I was very young, but it was axed in the 1960s by Doctor Beeching when he 'reshaped' the railway network by scrapping thousands of miles of track he deemed underused and unprofitable.) It's now a lovely recreational path for walkers and cyclists. And a kind of linear nature reserve. As a young boy, either alone or with friends, I loved to climb up the side of this handsome, red-brick bridge onto the embankment. There were no steps or handrail back then - it was a short, steep scramble up the edge, interesting when wet...

And this is the view from the top...

The embankment is rank with vegetation and dense with foliage. It's much more lush and overgrown than I remember it. Of course over forty years big trees have grown from tiny saplings, and numerous wild flowers (back then I simply took for granted the huge variety) have established themselves even more profusely, for they've been left well alone - far from the reach of pesticides and 'land improvement' schemes: there's selfheal, mallow, foxglove, poppy, buttercup, fumitory, crane's-bill, teasel, thistle, vetch and bramble; white campion, white clover and white bryony; cow parsley and common nettle; goosegrass, lesser burdock, ox-eye daisy, bird's-foot-trefoil, herb-robert and dog rose. And lots more. Come July, rosebay willowherb will be in flower everywhere. And, more rarely, orchids. Just yesterday, on this ritual walk, I nearly overlooked among the nettles the pink-and-blue flowering spikes of viper's-bugloss (once used as a cure for snake-bite)...

The walk follows the old trackbed...



To be continued...

Ur-Walk

A few minutes' stroll from my father's house, a short stone's throw away from where I sit writing this, on top of the low hill where I spent my childhood, begins a walk. I suppose my love of walking, wildlife and the countryside starts here too. This walk is the essence of my whole boyhood. It's the first walk, the original walk, the walk which all later walks try to recapture in spirit. It's the walk which is the beginning and end of all walks. In a sense, all my subsequent walks are variations on this one: this walk through the memory-fields of youth, this walk fronded and flowered with those earliest experiences - first sight of butterfly and smell of new mown hay, first scent of fox and taste of blackberry. For me this is really the one and only walk. A walk through Paradise before the serpent appeared. A walk alive with symbols, redolent with joy and pain, fragrant with nostalgia. It's the true walk, the ultimate walk, the Ur-walk. It begins unassumingly at the top of Rocket Lane...

A farmers' track bends to the left and leads straight down a slope with an ancient hedge on one side and a cornfield on the other...

...to a small three-cornered field which used to be my father's. It's now my field. It's nice to have a field. I think it's been left as meadow grassland for many years...

To be continued...

One Love, One Heart

One love, one heart, let's get together and feel all right...

500th Post

It seems incredible, but this is the 500th post since I began blogging nearly 2 years back. I started on 23 June 2007, to be exact. This was my very 1st post all those bits and bytes ago. I see that I set the 'literary walking' tone there and then! I don't want to make a big song and dance about it, but I'm quietly pleased I've got this far. I've enjoyed and continue to enjoy the whole cyber-journey.

I'm staying once more at my father's house, my old family home, and preparing it for sale. It stands in quite an isolated position, deep in the country, a mile from the nearest village, in a remote part of north-west Lincolnshire called The Isle of Axholme. It's deliciously lonely.

The picture was taken, looking westward from this house, one evening a few weeks ago.

I'd like to end with a quote I've been eyeing, magpie-like, on Graceful Yoga's excellent blog:

The church says: The body is a sin
Science says: The body is a machine
Advertising says: The body is a business
The body says: I am a fiesta

Eduardo Galeano

(Do check out the Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano - he sounds really interesting, especially if you're already into South American authors like Llosa and Márquez. I must admit I'd never heard of him until encountering his name on Graceful Yoga's blog.)

The Queen Of English Folk

Why is it I have this thing about female singers singing melancholic songs? I don't know, but I do. And here's another one - the incomparable, late great Sandy Denny. (Of course she was part of the seminal folk rock band Fairport Convention - along with Richard Thompson. It's a small and connected world, the English folk world.) Sandy died tragically early, aged 31 - most probably from a brain haemorrhage caused by a tumour (my own sister and only sibling died in the same way - at the equally young age of 29). If, for me, Aretha Franklin is the Queen of Soul, Emmylou Harris the Queen of Country, and Odetta Queen of the Blues, Sandy Denny is indisputedly the Queen of English Folk. I find her voice almost unbearably poignant and moving.

The Sound Of The Tabor

Right up there among my favourite folk singers is June Tabor. Except she's not just a 'folk' singer - the songs she carefully chooses and individually interprets range from wartime ballads like Lili Marlene to jazz standards such as  Round Midnight. She always sings with passion, intensity and commitment. Her extraordinary, unforgettable alto voice is as dark and rich and deep as a fine, oaky red wine - with strong notes of roughness and toughness. Yet she does tender too. Very much so. I love this singer's work.

This song is from her wonderful album Against The Streams - the 1st CD of hers I possessed. (In fact, someone bought it me for a 40th birthday present, um, a few years ago. Better late than never!) Since then I must have heard most of her recordings, and seen her in concert several times. In live gigs she's spellbindingly intense. In the late 1970s I worked with her for a short period in Hornsey Library, London - she was a qualified librarian and I a trainee. This was around the time her first record Airs And Graces came out.

The Barnsley Nightingale

Rotherham's finest? How could I get it so wrong in my last post? I meant, of course, Barnsley's finest. Apologies, our Kate. And belated apologies, too, for nearly upsetting a cup of coffee all over you when you rushed past me, looking for your own pre-concert cup of coffee, in Newark Palace Theatre some years ago.

Wild Goose

This has always been one of my favourite Kate Rusby songs - from her early CD 'Sleepless'. Ain't she gorgeous? Rotherham's finest.

Beeswing

I fell in love with this song the 1st time I heard it many years ago. It's a contemporary folk classic. Richard Thompson's guitar playing is outstanding - as always - and his lyrics are superb: 'Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing'... 'There was animal in her eyes'... 'You might be lord of half the world, you'll not own me as well'. Just take a listen.

Fights For Her Life

Thanks to www.thealchemyofpilgrimage.wordpress.com