Enjoy!
Kenya’s Prolific Green Highlands ~ Thursday’s Special
Nothing could have prepared me for my first glimpse of Kenya’s fertile uplands all those years ago when I ran away to Africa. I’d flown out from Paris on the overnight Air France flight to Nairobi. It was my first long-haul flight, a good eight hours, and I did not sleep a wink despite being served a very delicious small-hours’ supper, and having a whole row of seats to myself.
I was pent up with the prospect of meeting up with Graham, whom I had not seen for some weeks, rather than wondering about my destination. Quite ridiculous I know. I was flying blind, having done not a scrap of research on Kenya. In fact I had set out armed with only my brother-in-law’s comment: you’ll either love it or hate it; there’s no in between.
And so early one February morning as the great jumbo jet slid down the valleys of Central Province towards Nairobi, I could scarcely believe my eyes. Volcanic hillsides unfolded beneath us – every scrap of earth burgeoning green to their summits, the patchwork plots of Kenya’s smallholder farmers. Before we set down at Jomo Kenyatta International I was already in love. I did not know then that this was the start of an eight year affair with a land that could not be more different from my Shropshire homeland. I am still infected.
Some years after this arrival, when Graham was combining his project work at Kenya Agriculture Research Institute with some field work for his doctorate, I had the chance to visit many of those highland farms and meet the farmers and see at first hand the kind of crops that they were growing so prolifically – maize, tea, bananas, fodder grass, squash, beans, potatoes, plums, apples, cabbages and kale. This photo was taken on one of these expeditions, and like me it has aged somewhat. But it was the first image I thought of when I read through Paula’s list of word prompts as this week’s Thursday’s Special. Do drop in there to join in the ‘pick a word’ challenge.
For more of my Kenya story see also:
“When I came last to Ludlow…”
This week in her Black & White series, Cee gives us a free hand, and says we can post our favourite B & W images. Here is one of mine: Dinham Bridge over the River Teme, with Ludlow Castle above. For those of you who do not know England, Ludlow is a scenic market town in South Shropshire. All looks so tranquil here, and the town itself ever has a sleepy air.
Historically, though, Ludlow was an important border stronghold commanding the Welsh Marches to the west, and repeatedly the scene of bloody battles and political intrigue down the ages.
The castle is almost a thousand years old, having its beginnings on the crest of the hill in around 1075. The outer fortifications were added a hundred years later, and the castle continued to expand and become ever more grand over succeeding centuries.
I’ve mentioned before that one of the castle’s claims to fame is that it was here in 1501 that fifteen-year old Prince Arthur Tudor, son of Henry VII and thus Henry VIII-to-be’s older brother, spent his honeymoon with sixteen-year old Catherine of Aragon, and that Arthur caught a fever and was dead within the year, thus leaving Catherine to be betrothed to Henry.
Nearly thirty years later when Catherine was embroiled in Henry’s ugly attempts to be rid of her so he could marry Anne Boleyn (he demanded an annulment on the grounds that it went against biblical teaching for a man to marry his brother’s wife) she claimed that nothing had happened between her and Arthur at Ludlow; that their marriage was never consummated.
So much for Ludlow-past as a honeymoon destination.
But the castle has older more grizzly mysteries associated with it. They relate to the Wars of the Roses mentioned in the previous post. Ludlow Castle was one of Richard Third Duke of York’s key strongholds until it was lost to Lancastrian forces in 1459 at the Battle of Ludstone Bridge – the next bridge downriver from the one in the photo. Three years later in 1461, when his son defeated the Lancastrians and became Edward IV, the castle was restored to the Crown, and it was during Edward IV’s reign that both castle and town grew in political prominence.
And it was in Ludlow Castle where Edward IV’s sons, Edward and Richard, spent much of their childhood, and whence they were taken in 1483 to the Tower of London. Their father had died, and Edward aged twelve had been pronounced Edward V, but was not yet crowned. His father’s brother, Uncle Richard Duke of Gloucester, aka Richard Crookback and soon to be Richard III, was Lord Protector.
Then came news that Edward IV’s marriage had been proved invalid. His young sons were declared illegitimate, and Richard quickly had himself crowned. The boys, thereafter referred to as the Princes in the Tower, were never seen again. Behind them only argument remained – did Richard III have his nephews murdered? Did the two small skeletons, later unearthed in the Tower, belong to young Edward and Richard? When I think of them in the brooding Tower of London, which incidentally was then a royal palace and not a prison, it still gives me a pang. I sense their feelings of loss and displacement, a pining for Ludlow, ‘the hill beside loud waters’**, the forests and wide Shropshire vistas below the battlements; just the place for growing lads.
If Richard did kill the boys in a bid to secure his claim to rule, it didn’t do him much good. He was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 after only two years as king. His remains were buried in the church of a Franciscan Friary in Leicester, and in 2012 were re-discovered with much fanfare during an excavation of the site, which by this time lay buried under a city car park. Leicester University scientists then set out to prove the identity of the skeleton, an exciting piece of forensic archaeology and genealogy which is detailed at this link.
After Richard came Henry Tudor who won the day at Bosworth Field, the last significant conflict in the Wars of the Roses. So ended the Plantagenet Dynasty, and so began the Tudor Dynasty with the coronation of Henry VII – which is pretty much where this post began.
These days Ludlow Castle is a prime tourist attraction. It is privately owned by the Earls of Powys, and has recently been subject to much restoration work. If you can’t visit in person, then follow this link to do a virtual tour. But if you do get a chance to go there, the town itself is also a treasure. You will not be disappointed.
copyright 2016 Tish Farrell
* “ When I came last to Ludlow…” from A E Housman’s A Shropshire Lad LVIII
** The name Ludlow is said to derive from the Old English meaning ‘the hill beside loud waters’
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Related:
A Five Hundred-Year-Old C.V. ~ And All Kinds Of Timeless Connections…
THIS TOMB
IS TO THE MEMORY OF
SIR RICHARD CROFT . KNT .
SHERIFF OF HEREFORDSHIRE
1471-72-77-86
FOUGHT AT MORTIMER’S CROSS 1461
TEWKSBURY 1471
M.P. FOR HEREFORDSHIRE 1477
GOVERNOR OF LUDLOW CASTLE
CREATED KNIGHT-BANNERET
AFTER THE BATTLE OF STOKE 1487
DIED JULY 29 1509
ALSO OF ELEANOR HIS WIFE
DAUGHTER OF SIR EDMUND CORNWALL BARON
OF BURFORD SALOP
WIDOW OF SIR HUGH MORTIMER OF KYRE
Sir Richard Croft (born 1429) lord of the manor of Croft Castle in Hereforshire was advisor to Edward Duke of York during the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross in 1461. The Duke was eighteen years old and had recently succeeded his father, Richard third Duke of York, to the title. Richard had been killed in the previous year at the Battle of Wakefield. Lady Eleanor Croft’s first husband had also also killed in that battle. These were Wars of the Roses times wherein the Houses of York and Lancaster vied bloodily for the British crown. The Battle of Mortimer’s Cross was fought on Croft land not far from the castle (and in the English Midlands nowhere near either York or Lancaster) and was a turning point in the conflict for reasons I’ll get to in a moment.
First I should say that this week’s theme at Paula’s Black & White Sunday is TIMELESS. And the reason I’ve chosen these photos is because there is quite another timeless connection – i.e. the words of William Shakespeare whose 400th memorial anniversary is being celebrated this year. In Henry VI pt 3 Act II scene i, he makes reference to a strange meteorological event that occurred before the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross, although the actual battle does not feature in the play.
This is Shakespeare’s version of what was seen, expressed in an exchange between brothers, Edward 4th Duke of York the soon-to-be Edward IV, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III:
Edward: Dazzle mine eyes, or do I see three suns?
Richard: Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun; Not separated with the racking clouds/But severed in a pale clear-shining sky. /See, see: they join, embrace, and seem to kiss, /As if they vowed some league inviolable./Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun. /In this the heaven figures some event.
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The phenomenon described here was a parhelion or sun dog, a refraction of the sun’s rays through ice that created the impression of three separate suns rising simultaneously. According to historical accounts Edward decided that this extraordinary vision was a great portent promising victory, while his opponents were filled with terror. Thus inspired with holy certainty, Edward’s army won the day. A few weeks later Edward was crowned king. The sun thereafter featured as part of his personal emblem.
I’m afraid I have only one sun in my photo of Croft Castle and the chapel where Sir Richard and Lady Eleanor have their magnificent tomb, but then there are other interesting signs in the sky. Incidentally, Sir Richard served in his various official capacities (quoted in the memorial plaque above) under four successive monarchs, including Richard III.
Also to coincide with this year’s Shakespeare celebrations, the BBC is currently airing its own ‘Game of Thrones’ version of Shakespeare’s War of the Roses history plays, The Hollow Crown; proof of the timeless quality of good yarns, even if a few liberties have been taken with the playwright’s text. But then ‘the bard’ was nothing if not a past master at recycling other people’s tales and historical accounts, and giving them his own particular gloss; even during his own time players of his works apparently changed the words. It was ever thus with the art of good storytelling…
copyright 2016 Tish Farrell
See How Her Garden Glows ~ Thursday’s Special
Here at our house on Sheinton Street – also spelled Shineton at the other end of the road, we try to live up to our location with as much shining and glowing as we can muster. This year the yellow tulips have certainly done their stuff, but now they are gone, and we’re waiting on the oriental poppies to keep the glow going.
Please visit Paula to vote on last week’s park entries, and to add to this week’s glow
The Power Of Green And Dappled Sunlight This Morning On The Linden Walk
You can almost see the sap rising – gushing forth in fact to catch up after a slow-start spring. Anyway, walking amongst it this morning made the pursuit of allotment chores a complete and utter pleasure.
The chore in question is part of my on-going experiments with no-dig cultivation. So armed with my big green polypropylene bag I was out gathering up some of the piles of tree shreddings left around the Linden Field by the chap who comes to trim the lime trees’ overgrowth. I then haul them up to the allotment where I am covering a 6 feet wide x 20 feet section of uncleared plot with cardboard plus several inches of chippings on top. It’s rather a slow process, but I’m over half way there.
I’m hoping that by the time I get round to cultivating this section next year, most of the worst weeds will have turned up their roots, and the mulch rotted down enough to produce a reasonable planting medium. Oh yes, and that in order to achieve all this both the cardboard and the mulch will have attracted a lot of very happy worms.
The thing is, though, once I’m out on the Linden Walk it is so easy to forget about heavy labouring, and slip into a complete green daze. And as you can see, I also had my camera with me. I was particularly taken by this fence post:
And then at the end of the avenue near one of my target chippings piles, I noticed a nice flat area between the limes and the old railway line. I had not spotted it before, but it looked just the place for some qi gong. Secluded enough, I thought, not to frighten any of the Wenlock dog walkers who might otherwise come upon me in the midst of repulsing the monkey or being a wild goose flying. So this is where I stood – beneath a canopy of limes and sycamores, accompanied by bird call and the soft flutter of pigeon wings. Aaaaah. Wishing you a similarly blissful, green-filled, sap-rising, sun-dappled day.
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Now please pop over to Jo’s Monday Walk for a truly inspiring excursion in beautiful rural Poland. And to add your own walks to Jo’s go HERE.
Textures Of My Ancestral Landscape
These are some of the landscape textures that my maternal ancestors, the Fox family of Derbyshire’s High Peak would have known well – windswept moors and weathered scarps of millstone grit. They were yeoman farmers and lead miners, and they made a living from this bleak and beautiful country for hundreds of years.
Family legend has it that the Foxes arrived in England with William the Conqueror, but Fox is a name with Germanic origins so they may well have been Saxons, belonging to the conquered rather than to the conquering forces. The earliest records for Foxes in the Hope Valley, and Offerton in particular – where my Foxes farmed until the end of the nineteenth century, are around the thirteenth century, although I and my fellow Fox researchers are yet to establish direct lineage from these times.
There were centuries of prosperity when various family members lived in large stone farmhouses, made ‘good’ marriages, and owned land and lead mining concessions, but by the early twentieth century there was only one member of my Fox line left in the area, and he was living modestly in Eyam. The family farm of Callow where he was born, and by then owned by the Duke of Devonshire had been relinquished with a farm sale in 1892. High rents were besetting many Derbyshire farmers at this time. The Mr Fox mentioned in the sale advertisement is my great great grandfather, George Brayley Fox:
The Sheffield & Rotherham Independent
Saturday 29 October 1892
Callow Farm Sale
Important Sale of 23 cows, heifers, steers and calves, two horses and foal, 30 sheep, hays stack, three wheat stacks, seven oat stacks, farm implements etc.
Mr Hattersley has been honoured with instructions from Mr Fox who is give up the Farm, to sell by Auction on Wednesday, Nov 3, 1892, the very superior LIVE and DEAD FARM STOCK, as briefly enumerated below:
Black Mare, believed to be in foal, excellent worker;
Valuable Brown Horse, six years old, with splendid action, believed to be sound, and quiet in all work;
Roan foal by Bedford;
One Cow in calf for December 25th, four in-calf cows for April, two barren cows in milk, four very choice heifers in calf for April, two barren heifer stirks, five strong bullock stirks, five spring-reared calves, 11 superior stock ewes, six fat sheep, one two-shear ram, 12 strong lambs, two very fine ducks, one fine drake.
Samuelson’s 2-horse combined mower and reaper, nearly new with additional shafts; wood tippler, horse rake, Cooke’s wood plough, set of wood harrows, nearly new; set of three harrows, swingtrees, fallow drag on wheels, stone roller, with shafts, horse turnip hoe, sheep troughs, joiner’s bench and tools, quarry tools, hay rakes and forks, 2 1-horse carts, winnowing machine, wheel chopper, with rising mouth, in excellent condition; corn chest, cart gears, stone cheese press, lever ditto, cheese rack and boards, nearly new; vats, garths etc, cheese pan, two brewing tubs, two oak chests, and a portion of furniture.
One stack of very prime new hay, three stacks of wheat, five stacks of white oats, two ditto of black oats and a quantity of table and other turnips.
Sale to commence 12 noon.
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Every item here tells of great intimacy with the land. Just to read this notice gives me a painful sense of roots yanked up. I feel the touch and then the loss of the fine ducks, the strong lambs, the black mare in foal, the oats and the stone cheese press; even the turnips and the quarrying tools. But I would like to think, too, that somewhere in my bones are still traces of that High Peak millstone grit, the hardiness and courage that it took to carve a living from these uplands, and in my lungs the sharp, clean air of the moors of Longshaw where earlier generations of my family, so it is said, grazed four hundred sheep on their own run, and also owned the shepherd’s byre, that dating from 1399 was later sold and expanded into a handsome house for the Duke of Rutland’s agent, and is now the well known inn, Fox House, just outside Sheffield. Somewhere within this sturdy stone carapace is the earlier shepherd’s dwelling of quite another texture.
copyright 2016 Tish Farrell
This week at Black & White Sunday, Paula has given us the theme of ‘texture’. She also included a quotation by novelist British Paul Scott, which is very much responsible for my take on the challenge:
“The past becomes a texture, an ambience to our present”
P.S. Paul Scott served in the Intelligence Corps of the British Army in India during the World War Two. He wrote the phenomenal Raj Quartet, set in India during these years, and which was made into a very excellent TV serial back in the 1980s. The TV version is available on DVD, and with its all star actors is well worth watching. But read the books too.
The Changing Seasons ~ May With Zest Of Lime And Cricket
Only last week did the lime trees on Wenlock’s Linden Walk show any real signs of coming into leaf. The avenue itself was a faint haze of juicy green. The leaves may be late, but they sum up the sap-filled exuberance of spring.
Another sign of spring around English villages and towns, is the weekend sight of chaps in their whites lingeringly engaged in the friendly cricket match. It’s one of those things, cricket. I scarcely understand the game, but I’m glad someone does. Or to quote the chorus from 10CC’s Dreadlock Holiday “I don’t like cricket, oh no, I love it”. At least I love the idea of it: a quintessential cultural marker layered with notions of perfect summers that never were.
It conjures ghosts too. The thwack of ball on willow. Resounding cheers at a good catch. An inexplicable sense of something lost. This doubtless explains why many cricketing poems are interwoven with strands of war. Here’s one such from A E Houseman’s A Shropshire Lad cycle, poem XVII. It alludes to young men lost in the Boer War:
- Twice a week the winter thorough
- Here stood I to keep the goal:
- Football then was fighting sorrow
- For the young man’s soul.
- Now in Maytime to the wicket
- Out I march with bat and pad:
- See the son of grief at cricket
- Trying to be glad.
- Try I will; no harm in trying:
- Wonder ’tis how little mirth
- Keeps the bones of man from lying
- On the bed of earth.
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And now to relieve that sombre note, my May gallery in and around the Linden Field:
Related: Heading for the Light ~ Wenlock’s Linden Walk in Winter
To join in Cardinal Guzman’s The Changing Seasons challenges go HERE
Strawberry Fields Forever In Central Park
It was so hot when we visited New York a few years ago we spent most of our time in Central Park, drinking ice coffee at every available opportunity. There’s anyway so much to explore. On one of our forays we set out to find the Imagine mosaic, laid in tribute to John Lennon who created the song, and was so sadly murdered outside the nearby Dakota Apartments.
It took some finding too, even though we thought we knew exactly where it was. Part of the problem, we discovered, was that it was surrounded with barriers to shelter the two artists who were painstakingly working on its restoration. I didn’t mind not seeing the mosaic in its pristine form. The fact that it was being so actively cared for, given the song’s message, was heartening.
This elegant artwork lies in the middle of Strawberry Fields, a two and a half acre oasis of quiet also dedicated to the memory of John Lennon and his work. It is a designated Garden of Peace, and 120 countries contribute to its upkeep.
It is a very beautiful place to visit, so not to be missed on any New York trip. You can find out more details HERE.
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Paula’s theme this week at Thursday’s Special is ‘Park’
