On the Edge at Kinver

I like Edges. The one I want to visit most is Alderley Edge, in homage to one of my favourite writers, Alan Garner, and I will get there one day. And then there's the Edge of the Cotswolds at Wotton, just up the road from where I live, and the lovely walk to Tyndale Monument at North Nibley. 

I first heard of Kinver Edge back in the 1990s, when the celebrated rock houses - the last troglodyte dwellings occupied in England - were being restored. It's taken a long time, but with Son the Elder roboteering nearby in Brierly Hill, and me on chauffeur detail, I finally had the opportunity to visit. 

First, though, a wander through the woods. 

Cathedral of beech trees

Meadow cranesbill

Common poppy

A beech and oak having a smooch

The National Trust was given their first tranche of land at Kinver Edge in 1917, but it wasn't until 1963, when the last inhabitants left, that they were able to acquire the rock houses. The earliest written record of people living there dates to 1777, when one Joseph Heely sought refuge from a storm and describes how he was given shelter by a 'clean and decent family', but it's probable the caves had been used as dwellings long before then. Indeed, the fact the cliff is known locally as Holy Austin Rock, probably after a 16th century hermit, points to a longer tradition of people making their home there.

 

There are several rock houses at Holy Austin Rock, consisting of natural caves with hollowed-out spaces behind them over three levels. The 1861 census lists eleven families living here.

Two of the houses on the lowest level have been furnished by the National Trust to replicate how they would have looked at different times in the past, a task made easier in the instance of the first, the home of Mr and Mrs Fletcher at the turn of last century, who were visited by both Sir Benjamin Stone, a Tory MP and documentary photographer in 1895, and artist Alfred Rushton RA in 1903. 

The reconstruction is so exact that the mirror between door and window is positioned at the same angle as in the painting (much to the vexation of the NT volunteer, who confided that she longs to straighten it).

It was very warm in the front room, where a fire was burning, and several degrees colder in the bedroom behind it, and it struck me how cool the cottage must have been on hot summer days and how cosy in winter. 

There were lots of household items familiar from my grandmother's Victorian terrace, that made the slightly disorientating experience of being in a house that's actually a cave rather more reassuring. 

the ubiquitous mangle

wooden clothes horse

William Holman Hunt's 'The Light of the World'

Sandstone is, of course, very soft and easy to carve. Furniture too tall for the ceiling? Just hollow it out so it's a little higher.

There's also a tunnel cut through the stone between this house and its neighbour. 'No one knows why,' the volunteer said. 'Maybe it was to let the children run between houses, or perhaps it was cut when there was no one living next door and the inhabitants in the one house thought they'd use the space.'

Of the three houses facing you as you arrive up the path, the middle one is used as an information centre ... 

... while the third is inhabited by a colony of horseshoe bats.

The second furnished house is around the corner from the first. It was home to the Martindale family, and, using old photographs, it's been restored to what it was like in the 1930s. 

Again, there are so many items, familiar from my own (later) childhood, some of which I still use today, like the mixing bowl and willow-patterned plates.

The marks of tools from where the man-made rooms were chiselled out of rock are clearly visible on the walls.

There's a photograph of Mrs Martindale making Bedfordshire lace at this window. 

The dwellings on the middle 'floor' of the escarpment haven't been restored and aren't closed off to visitors. They appear to be little more than hollowed-out caves and it's hard to imagine how they might have looked when they were inhabited.

From the top level, there's a panoramic view which gives some idea of the geography of the place, as well as its geology. 

A terrace of rock cottages here have brick frontages, disguising their origins. The Reeves family lived in one of these, and as the houses became a tourist attraction in the early 20th Century, they served tea to visitors, a tradition the National Trust continues. 

There are vestiges of other rock dwellings on Kinver Edge at Nanny's Rock and Vale's Rock, but for reasons too dull to iterate, I wasn't able to linger. However, since roboteering events have a habit of repeating themselves, maybe I'll get a chance to revisit.