Back in March I went on a road trip to Chichester. A friend's daughter had asked me to write a poem to accompany her fine art degree show, a portrait of place using paints made out of soil samples she'd collected. To do that, I needed to feel the earth beneath my boots.
So I saw her work in her studio and at the University art department; toured the fabulous mosaics at Fishbourne Roman Palace, popped over to Pagham Harbour and St Wilfrid's at Church Norton; and ended the day walking the ancient holloway up to Halnaker Windmill.
Well, the poem got writ and submitted. More importantly, the paintings were finished ...
... the exhibition catalogue designed ...
... the works hung. After a lot of input from the artist's dad, who happens to be a precision carpenter (ret'd).
Unfortunately I'm not able to get to the exhibition myself, but here's a couple of pictures from the talk the artist gave.
So very lovely to see what a confident, creative woman she's become.
Apparently, Halnaker means half-naked. (Just thought I'd get that out there.) Or rather, that's what the hamlet, which lies four miles north-east of Chichester, was called in mediaeval times. Upon reflection, it might well mean something else altogether, but I've no idea what.*
Anyhow, we were there because a) the traffic on the coast was still too heavy to bother pressing on to Selsey, and b) Halnaker holloway had popped up in my Facebook newsfeed by chance the evening before, and I'm suggestible enough to think that means we were supposed to go there.
So we did.
What's a holloway? Well, it's a path that has been worn down by rain, feet, hooves and wheels for so many centuries that it's sunk down into its landscape. This one is probably getting on for ten feet below the surface of the surrounding fields. (Some are twice as deep.) The best - this one included - have trees that arch and meet over the top, so that in the summer they're like green tunnels.
It was also the chance for Bryony to make paint from somewhere historically very resonant. (Luckily, I had some dog poo bags handy.)
The holloway leads up a hill to Halnaker windmill, from where there's a good view down to the coast and over to Chichester. On the way up we passed a chalk pit ...
... and the fields gave the impression of being frosted with the stuff.
Bryony took some more samples.
When we got to the top of the hill, it was too hazy to see the sea ...
... and the windmill's sails had been removed for restoration.
Even so, it was worth the climb to take in lungfuls of still quite wintry air and listen to the relentless krikking of pheasants.
I'd assumed the octagonal brick enclosure near the windmill was a WWII anti-aircraft gun emplacement, like Purdown Percy on Purdown, but it turns out it was one of several High Frequency Direction Finding Stations in the vicinity.
(What? ... Oh, I dunno - something to do with determining the position of aircraft by exchanging high-frequency radio signals, apparently.)
The sun was setting, though, and it was time to make tracks back to the car and home along the M4 with enough inspiration to write a half-decent poem.
The holloway was getting darker but a clump of distant daffodils provided light at the end of the tunnel. It's getting more spring-like by the day.
My friend James Giddings adds: ‘Halnaker’
does mean half-naked in modern Swedish, but I didn't think Scandinavian words
were common in the South Country. ‘Bær’ would be the most common word for naked
in Old English, but ‘nacod’ was also used, with the implication of ‘too poor to
afford clothes’. A compound adjective with ‘healf’ would be what you'd expect: ‘healfnacod’.
‘Hal’ would be a noun meaning a secret place or hideaway, but with an accent,
it could be an adjective meaning ‘healthy’. ‘æcer’, meaning ‘acre’ might be the
second part of the word, and ‘hel’ (to hide or bury) as a verb has an ‘n’
ending in some grammtical forms, so it could mean ‘hidden acre’, ‘helenæcer’.
In order to write a poem for her exhibition of landscapes, I needed to visit sites where Bryony had taken earth to make paint. Our original plan was to visit Church Norton and Selsey, before heading to the holloway at Halnaker.
The traffic had other ideas, however. Still, at least there was a good view over flat fields to Chichester Cathedral.
Time was already getting on when we reached Church Norton, so we hurried through the salt marsh of Pagham Harbour to the beach.
My sort of bleak. It seems to fit into my eye comfortably, somehow.
Bryony pointed out the spots where she had taken sand and mud to make her paints.
The beach itself was lonely and lulling ...
... and with a tidal range far smaller than that of the Severn, we could loiter happily on Church Norton spit, unlike the causeway at Sully Island in South Wales a couple of weeks earlier.
There was sea kale and yellow horned poppy sprouting in the shingle ...
... and fossils to be photographed.
Heading back to the church, we passed the site of Norman castle, the earthworks of which are still visible.
I was a bit puzzled about the Chapel. It too proclaimed itself to be Norman, but the dimensions were wrong. It looked more like a Saxon Church to me.
Then I learnt that what we see here today is actually just the chancel of the original Church, the rest having been transported to, and rebuilt at, Selsey. It seems that with the transference of the Church's HQ to Chichester and the building of the Cathedral, there was simply no need for a large church here.
The Chapel is now in the care of the Churches Preservation Trust.
There's a gruesome plaque on the tomb of John and Agnes Lewis of the martyrdom of St Agatha. Who, in a twist (ahem) of that peculiarly Roman Catholic propensity to take things literally, is the patron saint of breast cancer patients.
There's also pleasing, modern stained glass in there, of St Wilfrid 'teaching the locals to fish' and of the salt marsh and its inhabitants. More landscapes made out of sand ... but it was time we moved on to our last destination of the day.
To set Bryony's stripped back landscapes in context, I'd wanted to explore something their historical setting. Before I started researching, all I knew of the Romans' presence in Chichester was the city's name, but within two minutes, I'd come across Fishbourne Roman Palace, and it was clear I needed to go there ...
... for the synchronicity of squares of fired earth, earth coloured, if nothing else.
Fishbourne was discovered by chance in 1960 when a water main was being laid. Excavatations began the following year, and what the archaeologists uncovered was extraordinary - a 'palace' of around 100 rooms, built c75-80AD.
Around a quarter of the mosaic floors survive, and they are amazing.
Some have subsided and look a bit mad in a sumptuous sort of way. Here you can see the fence post holes from a Roman granary that previously occupied the spot.
Others have been laid over the top of less elaborate mosiacs, which seems a bit profligate when you consider that the Palace was only inhabited for a couple of hundred years, having been destroyed by fire c270AD.
I mean, getting a new one of these is probably a lot pricier than popping down to Allied Carpets.
Here is Bryony's exhibition plan foreshadowed in the central heating system of the palace.
And there were other, unlooked for - though perhaps not unexpected - echoes, this time of apotropaios. In addition to the deliberate mistakes inserted by the craftsmen to appease the gods - 24, it is believed, in the mosaic of the Boy with the Dolphin alone - this seems to be another hexafoil or daisy wheel.
And here, in the museum - imprints of shoes and feet - and paws! - that maybe correlate to the outlines of shoes associated with churches. If so, it seems to be a pretty early example of a symbol replacing the symbolic concealing of well-worn shoes in buildings as magic charms to ward off evil spirits. And in a secular context.
Of course, I'm not an archaeologist or historian - just a poet with an interest in magic and a tendency to make wild connections ...
... but doesn't this paw print in particular look to you like it has been deliberately placed? And next to some possibly apotropaic concentric circles?
But look here, there's a poem to write.
I'd already decided that I needed to study the aforementioned Boy on a Dolphin moasic and it didn't disappoint - especially not the Fishbourne seahorses, which I already knew would feature in whatever I ended up writing.
The other thing which was occupying a big space in my magpie brain were the unmissable skeletons, one in a glass case in the museum, the other lying presumably where it was exhumed.
These are believed to be the bodies of Romano-British squatters who settled into the ruins of the palace after the catastrophic fire.
But my brain was making connections with the bones of much deader people than them; namely, those of Paleolithic people from all over the world, which have been discovered stained with red ochre as part of their burial rites.
It was time to stop fossicking through layers of history, however; we were off for a bit of psychogeography.
So I saw her work in her studio and at the University art department; toured the fabulous mosaics at Fishbourne Roman Palace, popped over to Pagham Harbour and St Wilfrid's at Church Norton; and ended the day walking the ancient holloway up to Halnaker Windmill. 
Unfortunately I'm not able to get to the exhibition myself, but here's a couple of pictures from the talk the artist gave. 
