Caen Hill and the Flight of Time

The best night and day of the year are six months apart: Flannelette Sheet Night vs The Morning You Realise For The First Time That There's Going To Be A Summer After All. This year the latter fell yesterday, and it felt especially sweet to be spending it in Wiltshire with Lovely Artists. 

With NBs Netty and Eve heading inexorably eastwards, I'd wanted to catch up with Chris, Jinny and Dru before they disappear over the horizon, especially since I had a couple of vintage plane identification books from my father's collection that I thought Dru would enjoy.

Just a quick stop with Chris and Jinny as Ted, I fear, would not have treated Secretary Cat, who owns Chris and Jinny and is the most senior partner in Skyravenwolf,  with the deference she deserves. 




Incidentally, Chris is holding a beautiful leatherwork in progress which I'm not going to describe because it's secret. But someone's going to be really lucky. 

Then we wandered up the nearby Caen Hill Flight of 29 locks - although we only saw 23 of them because rather than going all the way into Devizes, we stopped when we got to the Caen Hill Cafe at the top of the hill. 

NBs Netty and Eve will be ascending them presently on the next stage of their journey to the Thames. 

It's breeding time. We saw a couple of swan's nests, right on the side of the canal ... 

... and a couple of Dru's information boards too. 

Good to see former works in progress in situ.

As usual, eagle-eyed Dru spotted far more than I did (too busy talking!) but only the heron was in reasonable range for a snap.

Can you see it?

Time for a Wiltshire cream tea and a quick pop into the local Spar before we walked the three miles back to Sells Green.



Driving home I was amazed at how late it was. Once home, I was astounded and astonished too because I haven't got around to putting the car clock forward an hour yet and it was even later than I'd thought. Time in Flight. 

Remembering Robin Tanner and Old Chapel Field

After twenty-one months and a lot of redecorating, I finally hung my Robin Tanner etchings in my not so new house a few days ago, and it has felt like coming home, but to a place that is tranquil and safe. 

I've been thinking about Tanner and his wife, Heather, a fair bit - how they aimed to live William Morris's dream, and the symbiosis of their shared lives. (See video below.)

I've also been recalling a visit my friend and I made almost a decade ago now, to the village Bristol-born Tanner grew up in, and which he and Heather immortalised as Kington Borel in their book, Wiltshire Village. I blogged about it at the time on a now obsolete platform, so I've reproduced it here. 












17 May 2008: A visit to Old Chapel Field

Today's trip to Wiltshire with my friend Julie was primarily to explore the village and surroundings of a hero of ours, the etcher and teacher, Robin Tanner, who lived in Kington Langley with his wife, Heather, and their adopted son, Dietrich, from the 1930s until his death in 1988. With pleasing synchronicity, his house stands on Old Chapel Field where the ancestors of Francis Kilvert lie buried, so we would be paying homage to the great Victorian diarist too. 

After an abortive trip to Devizes Museum to see their set of Tanner etchings which turned out not to be on display, we made for the village, clutching the Robin Tanner Heritage Walk we'd downloaded from North Wiltshire District Council's site.  It soon became clear, however, that both map and directions were so incomplete as to be useless.  We couldn't even find our starting point, Jacksom's Lane.

The common was packed with people celebrating the annual Scarecrow Festival, so we made our way through the Morris dancers and the funfair and what can only be described as a crucifixion of scarecrows to make enquiries at the plant stall in the churchyard.  'I'm not really local,' one of the stallholders told me. 'That is, I live here but we don't really know the area. Probably drive past it every day, though.'  'Well, could you could point us in the direction of Robin Tanner's house, then?' I asked the other woman. 'You know, the artist.'  She looked blank. 'Sorry,' she said. 'Robin who?'

Eventually we located the beautiful 17^th century Greathouse at the eastern end of the village and managed to orientate ourselves, but as we wandered back down the main street it soon became apparent that Tanner's much loved village was now largely populated by well-heeled commuters unfamiliar with its surroundings or its former noteworthy inhabitants.  It seemed ludicrous that in a place only a stone's throw from the M4, we would have been better off equipping ourselves with an OS map and compass than relying on local knowledge to find our way around.

At the opposite end of the village we found a gate which, by process of elimination, we decided must be the Poet's Gate, so called because Kilvert used to lean on it to admire the view, but it was difficult to be sure because the plaque dedicating it to him was missing.  

We then eagerly sought out Robin Tanner's house, but all we could see was its gate and the tiniest, most tantalising flash of tiles between the trees.

Thwarted, we made our way down through Bird's Marsh, a lovely wood boasting fine oaks and beeches. As we went, we consoled ourselves with the knowledge we were following paths Robin and Heather walked over decades to sketch stone stiles, old chalk roads, and majestic elms, all fast disappearing from the locale. 

Sadly, the wood had also been planted with at least four different species of rhododendra which, unchecked, were crowding the native trees and smothering any undergrowth that might have flourished. They looked outrageously out of place and were the cause of so much fulminating on our parts that we forgot to watch where we were going and lost our way.  Finally we met a woman walking a dog and asked her for directions back to the village.  'I come here every day,' she said, 'but I've no idea where you mean. You could try that way.  Or maybe that way? – Yes, go that way!'

It was with a sinking feeling that we eventually drove back home.  The Tanners had been acutely aware of the loss of countless features of the Wiltshire countryside, and had sought to record and commemorate them through their art, but today it was apparent that there had been another loss – that of the connectedness of people to the landscape in which they live.  It might just have been coincidence, but I found it bewildering that every person we encountered seemed to lack even the vaguest acquaintance with their surroundings, let alone the intimate knowledge that comes from walking its tracks and woods and fields.  I know it's a cliché, but if I'd bothered to count the number of shiny 4x4s that thrashed past us, they'd have amounted to several dozen.

Back at my house over tea Julie leafed through my copy of 'From Old Chapel Field', which contains a selection of Tanner's letters, and tried to make the best of a disappointing day.  'At least, when we reread this we'll have a better idea of where he's talking about,' she said. 'Listen to this. "Never was rain so light nor leaves so green nor buttercups so yellow nor hedge parsley so white as now". Just like today! Only written on 17^th May 1931.'  She paused. 'What date is it today?'

Some things have endured then.  And maybe one day nature might prevail. 

           

Let Union Be In All Our Hearts

We went to Seend last weekend for a handfasting.  And a beautiful day it was too - one of the last blasts of summer, I suspect. 

The proceedings took place on Lye Field, off Rusty Lane, within spitting distance of the Kennet & Avon, upon which many of the guests, including the happy couple, live.  

There was a lovely view over to the honey-coloured spire of what, looking at the map, I suspect is the Church of St Nicholas at Bromham.  

Even the field mushrooms had their posh hats on. 

Not that it was that sort of event. The dress code was princess or pirate, and most of the guests, unsurprisingly, had opted for the latter. 

What princesses there were seemed to be running around brandishing swords, which was gratifying.

In fact, it was wonderful, all of it. 

Back at the edge of the field, I was intrigued by a configuration of the hills nearby. Their shape reminded me of those at Cherhill, where one of the white horses is. In fact, several of them seem to be in - or on - a curved line of hills. 

'That's Roundway Down, ' Dru said when I told her, 'The new Devizes chalk horse is just along and round the corner. It replaces the lost one ... which was on Roundway Down.'  

So ... yeah. 

Bitterning in Devizes

Bitterns are secretive birds.  If they sense they've been seen, they will point their bills directly upwards and blend in with the surrounding reeds.  This is called 'bitterning' and it's all well and good if you actually are a bittern, not so if you're a book about them.  These must be ushered into the well-deserved limelight, so whilst on a visit to Holt in Wiltshire to see our potter friend, Jan Lane, Dru Marland and I popped into Corsham and Devizes to visit a couple of bookshops. (Yes, really, they still have bookshops on the Chalk.)  

Corsham is crooked and quaint in an almost-the-Cotswolds sort of way; Devizes is a proper place.  I really like Devizes.

Couch Lane: former hospital for animals

my clever and talented friends

Is this a genuine Victorian pillar box?

Either way, Ted wasn't impressed.

Monday Market Street

Pigeons

Mission darn well accomplished

Ted says "'Inking Bitterns' - a book of poems and pictures for wild places, illustrated by Dru Marland - is published in association with Poetry Can and available from Gert Macky books and good independent bookshops - in Bristol, this means Durdham Down Bookshop, Standfords, and Foyles, price £5.  So please buy one so that I'm not reduced to foot warming duty in that draughty old bone-rattler they insist on bumping around in. Please.'