Shropshire

Seeing Things In A New Light

Hurrah for May and Becky B’s month of squares. The themes are burgeoning, move forward, reconstruct, renew to interpret how we will. The only rule: the header photo must be SQUARE.

This photo is a view of very familiar terrain as seen from the upstairs windows of our cottage in Much Wenlock. It was a piece of landscape we looked at every day for sixteen years. What wasn’t familiar was this glorious copper light and that cloud come visiting from a Baroque masterwork.

It was early spring, the sun already up at 5 a.m. a time I rarely saw. And now here was the field, usually so plain in the flatness of main-day light, quite transformed. It felt like a parallel universe. So, I thought, this is what Townsend Meadow gets up to when we’re not looking, showing itself off in this magically theatrical glow. What have we been missing?

I never saw anything like it there again, although there were many other light and cloud shows over the years, usually at sunset. But it made me think. Sometimes it pays to break a habit. And if that unexpected view changed the way I saw the meadow, what other bigger shifts may be possible?

#SquaresRenew burgeoning, move forward, reconstruct, renew

Welcome To My World ~ A Late-Day Walk Above Bishop’s Castle

On Sunday I did a lot of complaining about the cold and lack of sunshine. Perhaps the weather gods took pity. At five o’ clock the clouds lifted and the sun came out, and although it was still chilly, we thought a walk was called for. There was a path I had my eye on back in the winter when it was too muddy underfoot to attempt it. But after a couple of downpour-free days and lots of drying wind, I thought it should be passable.

First, though, a spot of orientation by way of some archive photos. Above is Bishop’s Castle High Street as viewed from the Town Hall window. Our street runs parallel to it, behind the ancient timber-framed house in the right hand foreground (the Porch House).

Next is an autumnal view of said street, named Union Street after the Clun Union Workhouse that once occupied the site next door to us, now a care home with a community hospital behind.

Our walk took us uphill, and left between cottages into Laburnum Alley, a shadowy path that runs between old stone walls and gardens. I imagine much of the stonework along this ginnel came from the demolished castle.

The path exits onto Welsh Street near the top of the town. There’s a handy kiosk here selling eggs and garden plants and sundry items that need a good home. I noted the tray of chunky broad bean seedlings, and pots of strawberry plants. There was also a notice advertising baby rabbits for sale.

Just beyond the kiosk are a couple of striking looking barns – a case of scenic dilapidation…

And across the road is The Wintles, an upmarket community of eco-homes, built in the days before eco-homes were quite invented:

We’re on the edge of town now, and this is the green lane path that had caught my eye. It borders The Wintles’ communal ground of allotment and vineyard.

The verges were bright with stitchwort, wild garlic flowers, cuckoo pint, violets, cranesbill, unfurling ferns and cow parsley just opening, Jack by the Hedge aka Garlic Mustard. The lane was sheltered, but even so, I wished I’d put a hat on. It was easy, then, to promise Graham that this was not a major expedition; simply a brief foray to see where the path led.

It led us to a gate and wobbly stile into a sheep field. We struggled over. Ahead the pasture rose steeply, and I could tell G’s enthusiasm was waning. Just as far as the horizon, I said, in winning tones.

But once we were in the field, we found ourselves looking at marvellous hill country. On our right stretched the Long Mynd, its westerly flanks bathed in sunshine…

The sight of the hills all around had us striding on and up, now and then stopping to look back on the town. You can see the parish church of St. John the Baptist, dating from the late 1200s, in the second photo. It stands at the foot of the town.

We were watched of course…

At the top of the sheep pasture there was another stile and beyond it an increasingly uncommon sight – a ploughed field (no-till farming becoming the norm these days).

But beyond the plough, what a fabulous scene, the hills of the Shropshire-Wales borderland. A hint of The Lost Continent somehow miraculously manifested on our almost doorstep? It was too exciting. And anyway it was at this point we lost sight of where the path actually went. The way marker arrow suggested straight ahead, but tramping on wind-dried plough is v. bad for the ankles.

A retreat was declared. But we’ll be back to discover more.

Heading for home down Union Street.

Jo’s Monday Walk Go here for some stunning Portuguese walking.

Apple Blossom, Wintery Weather And A Puzzling Plant Pest

The wind is roaring round the house as I write this. The good news is the house roof is back on and fully restored. Ace builder Alan finished it off today, up there on the scaffold top, in the teeth of gale and squall, painting the gable tops, realigning a dodgy gutter. He said it was freezing up there. What a hero.

The re-laid slates are looking pretty smart, but the grand reveal will have to wait till the scaffolding comes down at the end of the week. In the meantime, it’s good to know that the weather will now stay outside the house and the fragile gables stop crumbling into the bedrooms.

In the garden, spring is happening despite the perishing wind. Our gnarled little apple tree by the compost bin has dared to open three buds, but you can tell they’re shivering. I think it’s a Crispin. We had a few good apples from it last year. The other two apple trees that came with the garden, had to be hard pruned, as in eight feet of top growth removed, so we’re not expecting much from them for a while.

In between rainstorms, and wrapped up in sweaters, padded parka, fleecy pants and woolly hat, I’ve been a) digging up the lawn to create more vegetable growing space; b) attempting to dig out and unpick ground elder, Spanish bluebell and Mexican cigar plant colonies*; and c) continuing to disengage the hedge from chicken wire and the ivy overburden. This last activity is proving slow going. My presence causes the sparrows to dive from the hedge-side feeding post and into the hedge, where they shout loudly until I go away.

*Now for the plant pest and a note of caution, as in beware of letting Mexican cigar plant (Cuphea) loose on your property. In our garden, it’s like ground elder on steroids. Even the tiniest root fragment will turn into a shrub; the new roots spreading several feet in fleshy festoons, thick as macaroni – under paths, into lawns. When in flower, it has a trillion tube-like blooms that also make seeds. Only if you have the chance of entertaining humming birds should you have it in the garden, and only then in a container.

Needless to say, we do not have humming birds in Bishops Castle. It’s also astonishing that a tropical plant should make itself so at home in this rather draughty, frost-prone corner of Shropshire, although I gather there is at least one variety of the the 250 that is winter hardy.

When we moved into the house last August, this promiscuous entity was sprawling out of our garden, admittedly from a very sheltered, sunny bed, and up over next door’s garage roof, i.e. two metres taller than it’s supposed to grow. Though it did occur to me that perhaps it had found some ancient long-drop W.C. to root itself in. It was also giving itself a leg up along the length of a pine tree that was growing horizontally across the back of the flower bed. But I keep wondering if I’ve misidentified it; maligning an otherwise innocent shrub.

Any thoughts, gardeners? The serrated leaves are puzzling me, but when in flower, it looks like THIS. And descriptions of the swift growing/spreading roots/long flowering season fits.

There Goes Our Roof…

Yesterday, the specialist asbestos tile removing guys exposed the bones of our hundred year old roof. Today, all the wooden battens came down. We now have huge piles fore and aft, and Graham is painstakingly de-nailing and cutting them into kindling. (Some of you won’t be surprised.)

We were lucky with the weather, at least until late afternoon. And then the builders had to step on it. They only just managed to secure a tarpaulin sheet before the downpour happened. Today, they have worked doggedly through rain and perishing wind. (N.B. Global warming in NOT happening in Bishops Castle. Nor are we having any lamb weather to see out the March roaring lion).

But we do have new battens for old. They’re holding down the roofing felt (there was none in the original roof). And of course plenty of insulation has gone in too. The only downside is all the hammering is not suiting the fragile plasterwork in bathroom and bedroom ceilings. Much mortary fall out and a few cracks in some quarters (Another job then).

And here we have sight of the next big job. Once the roof is done and the scaffolding down, it’s demolition conservatory time; this to be replaced by a properly insulated kitchen, built on the same footprint (single storey), but extending further along the back wall. Half of the rear house wall (furthest away from the present door) will be taken down, a supporting beam installed, so the new kitchen opens into our existing sitting room with its L-shaped galley kitchen. The latter will then become a utility room, and open into an existing cloakroom (window just visible behind the blue fence, which also needs to go).

Meanwhile, our excellent builders have cleaned up all the surviving Welsh slate tiles from the front roof, and begun to rehang them. The gables, which were very fragile and uninsulated, have been reconstituted and will have leaded side panels. (Pity about the plastic windows. They’re early UPVC, and beginning to fail, so their days are also numbered).

So there you have it: the Farrell plans for domestic chaos for months to come, and I haven’t even mentioned the work needed in the rest of the place. Because, after all, it is a modest little house, and until we have the new kitchen, we are in log-jam mode with the rest of it. A tad frustrating, but at least we have the trusty log burner to huddle round on these cold spring evenings, and by day, all the front windows face the morning sun, should it care to shine. And so, muddle and all, it feels like a happy house. Upwards and onwards…

Bishops Castle Days

At last. Three days of fine weather, days that feel like spring. Days for sowing seeds – Tuscan kale, Swiss chard, spinach, carrots, cauliflowers, leeks…

…for digging up the lawn and mowing what’s left of it…

…for tackling the ‘hedge of iniquity’ that runs the length of the back garden, extracting the tangle of ivy, holly, privet, hawthorn, sycamore and ash from the chicken wire that some erstwhile inhabitant has laid along the entire inner perimeter so creating an interweaving thicket of manic vegetable intensity that is impossible to cut properly. Meanwhile, inside the hedge the ivy has grown stems as thick as mooring ropes, looping and leaning, causing the holly to loop and lean too and think it is a creeper…

But I’m dealing with it calmly – one snip at a time. The only problem is my presence hedge-side keeps the sparrows away from their feeding station, and at the moment they are ravenous. I’m giving them a break while I write this post.

For the last few weeks, through chilling winds, frost, rain and rare bursts of sunshine, we’ve been blessed with cherry blossom. Not our tree, but one growing just over the hedge near the back door. Now, the flowers are fading and falling and when we go outside, we’re sifted with tiny petals. The terrace flagstones too. It looks like confetti.

But our own small cherry tree has begun to flower. It’s a Japanese variety, Kojo-no-mai, more of a shrub than a tree, and in time growing to around seven feet high and wide. It will be fine in a pot until the garden is finally ready for it. (Which won’t be soon). And while it’s so small, it can best show itself off on the terrace wall, where the honey bees have already found it. In fact as I was busy transplanting a Dame’s Violet (brought from the Wenlock garden) in the bed behind it, I suddenly realised my head was filled with bee-hum. Happy bees.

As I work in the garden I lose track of time. This is a special Bishops Castle feature, the locals tell us. I hear the Town Hall clock strike the quarters between the hours: one chime for a quarter past, two for half past, three for quarter to. You can see the dilemma.

Sometimes a red kite drifts up and up over the garden. I feel myself lift and drift a little too.

We’ve become avid sparrow watchers since we set up the bird feeding station. This was created from an existing tall post (of no obvious purpose) that rises from the hedge of iniquity, and seems to belong to the era of the dreaded chicken wire application. Anyway, it’s good for suspending feeders, and we can covertly watch the birds from the kitchen window. I like the way they pop in and out of the hedge.

Mostly, they’re good at taking turns.

Lately, with the drier weather, dust bathing is the thing. The sunny front garden is a favourite spot. We’ve lifted all the ugly paving slabs that covered the two borders, leaving a skim of loose mortar on the soil. Ideal for synchronous avine plunging and dousing. On Monday, over lunch, we watched four go at once: essence of sparrow-joy as they worked the dirt through all their feathers. Later, as I go out to the shop, I spot the four neat little hollows left behind. There’s an inclination to cup my hands and gather one up. Yes. Sparrow-joy. There’s much to be said for it.

Happy Spring , North-dwellers

P.S. As I write this, scaffolding is going up around the house, a two-day job apparently. Next week the roof is coming off. Heavens!

Here In The Marches, March Comes In Like A Lion

And we can only hope that old country lore comes up to snuff when it says that March coming in like a lion, goes out like a lamb. It can’t be too soon for some lamb-weather either. At least yesterday, after I’d taken this first photo of Ragleth Hill, the sun came out and melted the snow. But it was a one day wonder. Today, after more overnight frost, the wind is roaring round the house and down the chimneys and it’s wet, wet, wet. Downcast daffodils all round.

So, Weather Gods, more skies like this, please. (You can hold on the snow).

Ragleth Hill, Church Stretton

The Weather In The Garden

So far this week at The Gables we’ve had frost, biting wind, and yesterday an all-day deluge with wall to wall gloom. But today, St. Valentine’s, the rain has held off. In fact it’s been almost warm, with a glimmering of sunshine, and up in the top garden this clump of seedling crocus was in full fanfare.

And not only that, Mr. Whippy, the ice-cream man, was back in town. Jangling rendition of O Sole Mio up and down streets. And then while I was snapping the crocus, along buzzed a honey bee, the first I’ve seen and heard this year.

Anyone would think it was spring.

But then February can be a tricksy month in England, ambushing us with a day of sudden warmth, only to whip up more icy blasts just when we’ve been daft enough to cast off our thickest winter woolly.

So: best not to count one’s spring chickens too soon.

This bee, though, is definitely seizing the moment, making the most of fine weather, and a rich pollen harvest. (Note the gathering sac on the rear leg; full pollen facial thrown in). What’s not to love.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Lens-Artists: Weather This week Anne at Slow Shutter Speed has us weather watching. Plenty to inspire us in her lively photo essay.

A Spot Of Kite-Flying In Bishops Castle

Now that we’ve moved our dining table to its winter position – i.e. from the conservatory at the back of the house to the front sitting room window – we can eat breakfast while watching a red kite scanning the town. It comes most days, drifting over the High Street, circling high above nearby gardens. With a wing span of around six feet (180 cm) it is one of Britain’s largest birds of prey (i.e. bigger than a buzzard and easily distinguished from that particular raptor by the forked tail.)

A few years ago the species was believed to be near extinction. In the early 20th century the birds were targeted by gamekeepers who thought they were eating their pheasants. Not so, it seems. The birds’ main menu comprises carrion and worms and sometimes small mammals. In fact, back in Tudor times, kites also frequented towns in large numbers, filling an essential function as street refuse cleaners.

When we lived in Kenya, their cousins, the black kites, performed similar duties. Less welcome, we discovered there, was the cousins’ tendency to ‘gate-crash’ Nairobi’s ambassadorial garden parties. They had learned to spot the distracted guest, one with wine glass and plate politely poised and as they hung on the words of some ministerial bigwig. In the birds swooped, snatching up the undefended sailfish canape or piri piri chicken wing. Whoosh and away.

That scene jogs another black kite memory. An indelible brain cell recording. One used to roost in our front garden on Mbabane Road. It would perch in the jacaranda tree and mew all night long. A mournful cry.

But back to the red kite. Here in Shropshire and Wales, and some illegal shooting incidents apart, they are mostly thriving. This thanks to a re-introduction programme late last century which helped boost remnant populations. And while of course we are more than happy to see them, we can only hope they do not recover the habits of their distant ancestors.

The Wildlife Trusts website explains (also see a nice video clip of a kite in flight):

Red kites were common in Shakespearean London, where they fed on scraps in the streets and collected rags or stole hung-out washing for nest-building materials. Shakespeare even referred to this habit in ‘The Winter’s Tale’ when he wrote: ‘When the kite builds, look to lesser linen’. The nest of a red kite is an untidy affair, often built on top of an old crow’s nest. It is lined with sheep’s wool and decorated with all kinds of objects like paper, plastic and cloth.

I will let you know how my washing fares when drying weather resumes.

2023 Began Beside The Sea

When last year began we were on the island of Anglesey in North Wales – gathering with family for a belated Christmas celebration. It was good to soak up some blue tranquillity. At the time, we were fretting over the sale of our cottage, plus trying to find a bolt-hole to rent while we looked for a new home to buy. All unnerving in all sorts of ways; nothing straight forward.

Finding a house to rent proved almost as hair-raising as selling the cottage (Huge demand, few available properties). Only by the skin of our teeth did we secure a place in time for moving day in early March. And then it snowed – for two days, an unexpected blanketing that closed most of the roads. Snow – of all things. The Farrells had not factored that in. Still, a day later than planned, and by devious routes, the removal lads came through. We were re-homed.

Then more unforeseen happenings.

View from one of Broseley’s many country paths: bright and cold in March

By the time we moved to Broseley (East Shropshire), we had already set our house-buying sights on Bishops Castle or points well south-west of the county. For one thing, we wanted to be nearer to my sister, and I’d anyway dismissed Broseley as a final destination. I’d known it from an earlier chapter in my life and always thought it a plain and unalluring town.

Just shows what I know. I didn’t expect to fall in love with the place. It began with finding a maypole at the end of our street; and from it a sweepingly magnificent view above the Ironbridge Gorge. And it began with finding beguiling footpaths that meandered in and out of town and took us to some wild, wild places that seemed slipped out of time. And most of all it began when I discovered the network of thoroughfares and alleyways that belonged to Broseley’s ancient industrial past, the wonderfully named jitties, that to my mind suggested jetties, or things that jutted like prows of ships. Exploring them on our cool summer days felt like voyaging – through time, space, the imagination.

Go HERE for the jitties posts.

Here is one of many favourite finds: some historic re-purposing of discarded artefacts in an old wall on Gough’s Jitty. It’s been built from saggars. These earthenware boxes were once used for the packing of clay pipes, then stacked in a bottle kiln for firing. There were several factories in the town from the 17th century onwards. They exported their wares around the world. In fact clay pipes were often referred to as ‘Broseleys’.

Apparently the spot for some illicit fist-fighting back in the day.

Lodge Lane became a favourite walk. Once there would have been the heavy rumble of trucks hauling coal from Broseley’s mines, an area still called the Fiery Fields due to the old coal pits’ erstwhile tendency for spontaneous combustion.

Broseley sits above the Severn Gorge, directly across the river from Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale, so-called birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. The town evolved from an early 17th century squatter community of immigrant miners. Coal, clay, ironstone and limestone were plentiful. There was timber for construction and for the making of charcoal for fuelling furnaces and forges. And there was the river for transport down to Bristol. The wealth of local resources attracted the likes of ironmaster-pioneer, John ‘Iron Mad’ Wilkinson, who lived here from 1757 in a very fine mansion opposite the parish church.

I loved these views of multi-period, multi-layered habitation.

And likewise across the River Severn on the opposite side of the Gorge:

Broseley’s neighbours – Ironbridge and the Iron Bridge (1779)

I suppose if the little house in Bishops Castle hadn’t cropped up, we might well have stayed in Broseley. The folks were so friendly there. As it is, it’s good to think of our brief sojourn, even with the little pang of loss. Strange, how things turn out.

But now we’re here in an ancient agricultural town, where the folks are also very friendly. Clearly there’s many a tale to unravel here, or will be, once we’ve sorted out the house. This may take a while. For one thing, come spring there’s a new extension in the offing: this to remove an old conservatory and transform the space into a bright new kitchen with doors onto the garden. Apart from this, every room needs some serious attention, plus two chimneys to rebuild, and maybe the roof to replace. And then there’s the garden…

So all is in flux and not a little confused. But even so, with the turn in the year, it’s beginning to feel like home.

Lens-Artists: Favourite photos of 2023

“Clunton and Clunbury,Clungunford and Clun…

…are the quietest places under the sun.” A E Housman A Shropshire Lad

Except there was no sun on Tuesday when we went to Clun, only rain clouds, bloated, iron grey, hanging in shrouds across the hills and pine woods; the lanes streaming with run-off from two days’ deluge; field hedges newly farmer-sheared to thorny starkness, the herbaceous version of a convict cut.

It did not matter. We were on an outing after several days indoors.

Clun is the next large village along the A488 between Bishop’s Castle and Knighton on the Welsh border. These days it is home to around 700 souls, and with or without sun, it is always quiet there, except perhaps during the Green Man Festival in May when I gather things may become a touch excitable. Once, though, it was a nexus, standing on the ancient drovers’ route out of Wales. You can picture it now, can’t you, the herds of cattle and sheep being driven on well worn paths to faraway markets in the Midlands and London; passing through many a town, the taverns en route places where news and other goods were exchanged. This then is essentially a Saxon landscape, later knocked somewhat into shape by the invading Normans, but all rooted in five millennia of farming life going back to the Neolithic period.

The packhorse bridge in the header photo is not that old however. It dates from the 1300s, leaving us with only 8 centuries of passing traffic to contemplate. But you do have to keep your wits about you when you cross, dodging the occasional speedy van-man, making sure you’re tucked into a niche before standing and gazing at the River Clun. In fact there is a local saying that could be said to confirm the necessity for alertness: “whoever crosses Clun Bridge comes back sharper than he went”. On the other hand, it may refer to long ago times when the crossing formed the link between Saxon Clun on one side of the valley, and the newfangled Clun of Norman interlopers on the other.

There was a purpose to our visit on such a gloomy day. I recalled there was an ironmongers there – an all but disappeared facility on Britain’s high streets. Brasso was needed – a good old fashioned metal polish, and also dubbin for keeping the rain out of our boots.

And we found them both immediately when we opened the door and stepped back in time in Mr. Britten’s magic emporium. It proved to be the hardware enthusiast’s equivalent of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, including the glimpse of snug ‘Dickensian’ office beside the counter.

There might be no sun outside, but there was everything under it inside. On top of that, Mr. Britten proved the most engaging proprietor, a true gentleman. He told us he was happy to sell us two screws if that’s all we needed. We didn’t, but we appreciated the gesture, and said we’d be back when we did.

After that we mooched about on the High Street, were greeted as we went by passing locals, and also some nice dogs, found a good bottle of wine and sticky pastries in the Spar supermarket plus more welcoming encounters. And then headed for home. By midday it was almost twilight.

So no, it really did not matter that it was such a dank and gloomy day. Human and canine warmth sufficed; another grand trip out and only a few miles from home.

The ruined keep of the Norman castle looking especially lugubrious. We will return for a sunnier exploration.

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge