On the brink of spring ...

 

Less than a week between watching a fox watch us at the junction of Charlton Common and Charlton Road and this ... 

... the wholesale clearance of trees and scrub, presumably in preparation for the construction of an access road for the houses being built in the field just the other side of the footpath.

It was a gutter to see how the young self-seeded oaks and thorns have been smashed to stumps.

I've since been back several times, but it's still quite shocking to see the change, the featurelessness of the skylarks' field now.

Since I haven't been able to in the past because of the scrub, and since I won't be able to in the future because of houses and garages and gardens, I took the opportunity of walking right around the perimeter of the field that's been cleared. It's funny to see how much it drops on either side - something you're less aware of when everything's covered in vegetation. 

Fungus brought blinking to the light

It was also strange seeing familiar trees up close from the other side.

In parts the hedgerow was so big you could walk right inside it ... 

...  and there were messages from beetles, previously left under bark, that had never been read before. 

There was also more water than I'd suspected. 

Although I've photographed them before, I took a couple of pictures of the rest of the lane called Charlton Common while it still looks semi-rural ... 

... and also of Elm Farm and its barns peeking through the hedges, while the fields are still fields.

I also had a little foray around the other side of the Filton Airport runway when I went to photograph the remaining cottages of Catbrain, the hamlet just outside the lost village of Charlton.

We had a good wander about, as far as the fields familiar to us from when we've walked down from Fishpool Hill.

It was especially pleasing to come across a barn owl nesting box and a wildlife pond.

We then walked along the footpath in the direction of the Mall ...

The sluice

... as far as a man-made mound called Teletubby Hill. What is Teletubby Hill for? It's hard to envisage it ever having of the mystery of Silbury Hill, and yet, with its views of the Mall and retail parks at Cribbs Causeway, and its circle of benches, maybe generations to come will interpret it as a wooden henge dedicated to an arcane and ancient god called Retail Therapy.

It's been a few weeks since the last frosts ... 

... and while I'm not daft enough to declare winter over, there's a real feeling of spring beneath the surface of trees and hedgerows.

A week ago we went up the lane to the field and the air was so full of spring it seemed to displace the oxygen, making it hard to breathe.

Looking closely there are signs of new growth ...

Lichens from the formerly scrub-sheltered hedgerow; whitethorn leafbuds; blackthorn blossom buds; the elder at the foot of the hollowing oak; last year's oak leaf and this year's buds 

The birds have also noticed the lengthening days and are gearing up for the new season.

Long-tailed tit

The rookery has been particularly busy. For a while the rooks seemed to have a softer, more bleating tone, while the jackdaws are currently flying around in pairs and making a 'prink prink' noise. I've also seen purposeful magpies zipping to and fro with beakfuls of sticks.

crow seeing off a kestrel

An owl pellet is always a pleasing find ...  

... but the discovery of this feather surpassed it. 

It's a magpie tail feather, but the reason it looks so lustrous at one end and so odd at the other is that it's a blood feather and was still developing when its unfortunate owner lost it.  

You can see how different it looks from this other, well-used tail feather I found that had been shed presumably at the end of its working life.

The corvid wars over territory were raging a month or so ago, so I did wonder if it had been pulled out by a rival bird. Sadly birds can bleed to death if they lose a blood feather. I hope this one was OK. 

Elsewhere, the blossom and flowers have been getting on with it.  

Catkins like those beaded curtains you used to see in the 60s; periwinkle; celandine; red dead nettle; dandelion; snowdrops

We saw a couple of butterflies on one of the warmer weekends in January; this, in mid-February, is a large white (maybe).

The bus at the end of the small dark wood of the mind

The remains of Charlton

It occurred to me a couple of months ago that it might be an idea to photograph the last surviving buildings of the razed village of Charlton in their edgelands environment before the development of Brabazon engulfs them. So I have. 

Though the surroundings of the still existing lodge of Pen Park Manor are already built up and probably won't change that much, apart from more traffic going along nearby Charlton Road.

Strictly speaking, Pen Park Manor was on the edge of Charlton rather than part of the village. An imposing Georgian building, it was demolished in 1969, and apart from the lodge, a much-altered gamekeeper's cottage at the junction of Southmead Road and Pen Park Road, and a sequoia tree, nothing remains. 

Pen Park Lodge 

The Lodge now, surrounded by suburbia. The railings seem to have survived unaltered; not so the house. 

And the sequoia, viewed from the field of the hollowing oak, at the extreme left of this photo. 

Not so altered, which is as well as I can't find an clear old photo of it, is the house known as Pentre when Charlton was razed, but which now goes by the name of Cedar House. You can see the cedar in the above photo too, at the far right.

Cedar House is off the lane called Charlton Common, which I love because it still has a rural feel about it even though it's firmly in the edgelands. It was lovely to walk here during lockdown and pretend we were in the country.

The consultation document for its on-going restoration is online, and it seems  the new owners are keen to preserve their Grade II-listed house's history. In the autumn they had a table outside offering excess fruit to passers-by, of which, currently, there are few.  This seems both admirable and poignant in view of the huge changes coming. 

Although, of course, the really huge change occurred with the compulsory purchase of the land and its buildings to extend the runway at Filton Airfield so it could be used by the Bristol Type 167 Brabazon, which, incidentally, never went into commercial production. 

Charlton village

Extending the runway

It's up on Fishpool Hill, where the lane ends in railings, that this 75-year-old abruption is most stark. 

There are three houses here that were also part of the village. The first two are Fir Tree Cottage, that used to be known as Fir Tree Farm, and its converted barn. I haven't found a photo of the cottage when it was a farm, but I understand it's been extended considerably at some point during the last seventy years, and again very recently, to the point where it would be better named Fir Tree Mansion. 

November 2021

February 2023

Situation of cottage and barn with the runway behind them and the Mall at Cribbs Causeway in the background

Elm Farm on the other side of the lane still pretty much looks the part, though the land's been sold, of course.

The last few houses remaining weren't really part of Charlton, but rather the hamlet of Catbrain just up the road. (The name Catbrain has nothing to do with cats or brains, by the way; it’s a reference to the area's rough stony clay that was known to the Middle English as 'cattes brazen'.)

Here's what they looked like in the 50s. Now there are more houses right up the hill, with a Topps Tiles warehouse serving as corner shop. 

Most of the pairs of cottages have either been extended or knocked together to form a larger house. 

Another pair were recently demolished to make this road leading to a new development of houses.

A skinny little new-build squeezed into a tiny plot and then four more cottages.