#Lens-Artists

Sky Views Over Townsend Meadow

I do miss the ever changing sky-show over the field behind our Wenlock cottage, the weather and cloud effects heightened by a false horizon created by the crest of Wenlock Edge and the way the ground there falls steeply through some thousand feet of hanging woods to farmland and the North Shropshire plain.

I think our elevated viewpoint of the lowland’s rising clouds might explain an unusual ‘rainbow’ phenomenon witnessed one fine, dry June evening after the sun had dropped behind the Edge. Here it is (it was rather more vivid in real life)…

At the time I thought it was a fire rainbow, but I’m not sure it was. They apparently occur in fluffy cirrus clouds at around 20,000 feet when the sun shines at a particular angle through ice crystals. Anyway, I’m assuming the reason for the effect seen in the photo is something similar – to do with rising cold air above Wenlock Edge, some icy vapour caught by the sun shining up from below. Further info welcome from any atmospheric scientists out there.

Another early evening sky in June

February sunset and shower from the office window

Winter at the Sytche Lane rookery

Late summer storm brewing

A rare dawn shot

And a soothing cloud view to finish – because it’s definitely good for our well-being to gaze at clouds. It helps to broaden our visual and mental perspective. I learned this last week while listening to an interview about mindfulness and anxiety with Harvard Medical School professor and psychotherapist, Dr. Ron Siegel. He has some recorded guided meditations HERE for anyone who needs a bit of extra soothing.

Lens-Artists: Skyscapes or cloudscapes This week Amy sets the theme with some stunning examples.

Backlit From The Wenlock Archive

This week Ann-Christine at Lens-Artists wants to see our backlit subjects – always an appealing approach as far as Mrs. Farrell’s concerned. This year, though, the sun has been so tricksy – more going than coming – there seem to have been few chances for new naturally backlit shots.

Which means dipping into the archive: a Much Wenlock retrospective in other words; I know some of you won’t mind revisiting Sheinton Street.

Underneath the Horse Chestnut tree, last summer on the old railway line

Wild Arum Lily/Cuckoo Pint/Lords and Ladies last spring on Windmill Hill

Evereste Crab Apple blossom over the garden fence

On the kitchen table: lilac and hawthorn blossom

Looking up into the ‘upstairs’ garden: lemon balm and montbretia leaves

Winter sunset in the Sytche Lane rookery

Late summer sunset on Townsend Meadow with nettles

Lens-Artists: Backlit

Broseley: A Town Of Many Views

Well they say that moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do ~ and it was, and for more than a year, but here we are in a new small town, scarcely a crow’s flight from our old home in Much Wenlock.

Broseley as a town isn’t as ancient as Much Wenlock. There were only 9 residents recorded in 1086. Much Wenlock, by contrast, had its Priory which saw much growth from the Norman period onwards, the new cult of St. Milburga (who was abbess of the first religious house there in the 7th century) attracting pilgrims, and thus spurring demand for local trades and services throughout the Middle Ages.

Broseley, with its once well wooded and agricultural lands, was part of Wenlock Priory’s domain, providing prime territory for deer-hunting monks. The Priory also exacted various rents from Broseley manor tenants, including the lord himself, who held his land according particular obligations to the Prior.

In the 1200s the Lord of Broseley kept his possessions on the basis that on St. Milburga’s day he was to dine at the Priory and carve the principal dish. His immediate neighbour, the Lord of Willey was obliged to bear the Prior’s robes to Parliament. Rents were charged for pannage (grazing of pigs in the woods) and also for operating coal pits in the area.

In 1570 Broseley was a small (mostly) agricultural village of around 125 individuals. But this changed when the lord of the manor, James Clifford encouraged the immigration of miners to work the local coal deposits. He let the newcomers build cottages on irregular plots of the uninclosed commons and wastes to the north of the village above the River Severn, a part of the town now known as Broseley Wood.

Soon the mining households outnumbered the locals’ homes more than 2:1, their presence leading to riots during the early 1600s, as Broseley villagers grew increasingly angry over their loss of common rights. Nonetheless, the hugger-mugger building of cottages in Broseley Wood continued as the mining enterprises(ironstone and clay as well as coal) thrived. As might be imagined, there was a proliferation of taverns to serve the workforce, and by 1690 Broseley Wood apparently had the looks of ‘a country town’. Miners were the main inhabitants, but there were also watermen (handling the export of coal down the River Severn), potters (making tavern mugs) and clay-pipe makers. Interestingly too, the hillsides down to the River Severn wharves were, from 1605, laid with a network of railways, the earliest ones made of wood, the haulage of trucks provided by humankind, often children.

New builds in the town emulate traditional local idioms and continue the habit of filling every available space, no matter how awkward to reach.

The cottages cling to the sides of precipitous ridges, access only by winding narrow lanes and cross-paths known as jitties.

I still have much to discover about the jitties, but on my short walk from the house yesterday, I revisited Maypole Jitty. It hives off Woodlands Green where the new maypole stands (reinstated in 1985), also the locale of the 1600s riots between villagers and miners.

Standing here, you can just see the top of the Severn Gorge above Ironbridge.

And here’s the maypole:

A nearby information board tells me that maypole dancing was part of an age-old fertility rite:

And now in case you’re wondering where the header image comes into this, well it was an unexpected discovery. After passing the maypole I found myself at the end of a cul de sac on Maypole Road where a discreet footpath sign caught my eye. It took me down a narrow bosky bridleway of celandines and wild garlic…

And in no time brought me to this spot at the top of the Gorge, and thence to the wood on Ball’s Lane and the maypole.

And so back into town:

With a here and there burst of spring colour if not spring warmth:

More Broseley views to follow.

Lens-Artists: New experiences This week the theme is set be Anne at Slow Shutter Speed

Primrose Peace In The Midst Of Moving House

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve not been around much in the last few months. And the reason? The Farrells are on the move, out of Much Wenlock and into next-door Broseley (ten minutes drive away), leaving the edge of Wenlock Edge for a new edge atop the Severn Gorge and above the world’s first cast iron bridge (1779).

In fact the Iron Bridge will be in walking distance of the new house, although maybe only on the outward foray. The Gorge is so steep, a bus ride back could well be called for. Anyway, this is what’s been going on – house selling, possessions culling, allotment retreating and finally, in the last three weeks, the hair-raising dash to find a rental property before the new owner moves in. Phew and double-phew. (Who knew that renting anywhere these days is so fraught with difficulties).

We began this whole moving process over a year ago, and it scarcely needs saying that it’s been very stressful. It’s definitely been a matter of snatching peaceful moments as and when. And of course, for gardening types, spotting signs of spring is always a welcome distraction from domestic chaos. I was busy repatriating allotment tools when I first noticed the primroses along the hedge bank beside Townsend Meadow. This was around the end of January, and I was surprised to see them flowering so early (neck and neck with the snowdrops). Clearly, unlike Mrs. Farrell, neither mind the frigid temps we’ve been having.

Some of you may also be wondering why we’re moving when there’s no obvious necessity. On anxiety-ridden days I have been wondering this myself. But then I have long been hankering for a home with a vegetable garden attached as opposed to one a field’s walk away. Not that I won’t miss the walk, or the views above the town, or the raven that flies cronking over my polytunnel in the late afternoon, or the chats with fellow allotmenteers.

But I will be glad to leave the allotment’s dispiritingly claggy Silurian soil, the endemic pests and weeds typical of free-for-all community gardens and the outrageous numbers of snails. And of course, I am getting on a bit! I would like to nurture my soil, not do battle with it. Nor do I really want to dash across the field for the lettuce I forgot to pick earlier.

So the plan: to rent for a time in Broseley while looking for a place to buy – hopefully somewhere over Wenlock Edge into South Shropshire and closer to dear younger sibling, the hill country, and also to better functioning public transport systems.

And yes, I will be sad to leave our upstairs-downstairs garden, and Graham his custom-made, super self-built shed. We’ll also miss our quirky cottage (though not the spiders). I’m sure, too, we’re going to feel more than a touch stranded in a rented house that’s not at all our style, to say nothing of the daunting prospect of moving TWICE.

Summer garden and Graham’s peaceful place freshly built

But then Broseley is a very fascinating old town, whose maze-like streets (jitties) of higgledly-piggledy cottages, reflect the arrival of immigrant miners way back in the 1590s when the town’s population of 5,000 was apparently much the same as today’s. The other key industry was clay pipe making, the products exported around the world, and the pipes themselves referred to as ‘Broseleys’.

Here’s a nice taster of what’s to explore from Broseley Historical Society.

Meanwhile, as the packing cases pile high in the living room, and sixteen years of covert dust alarmingly reveals itself, out in the garden, all is still wintery, the crab apple tree eaten bare and the guerrilla garden over the fence very endy.

But then in the shady corner behind Graham’s shed there’s a small scatter of miniature crocuses. So soothing to spend a few quiet moments with them before the big move at the end of the week (with the added thrill of forecast SNOW!)

Lens-Artists: Finding Peace This week Tina’s theme could not be more apt here on Sheinton Street.

Looking Back: The Old Stones Of Din Lligwy

We came here last week, Monday 2nd January 2023. I’d been here before – the north-easterly corner of Ynys Mon (Anglesey) and to this field above the sea, where there are ruins of a Norman chapel (12th century) and a Romano-Celtic settlement of the late 300s AD.

And with all these chronological markers in place, I should perhaps add one more and say that it was probably 60 years since I was last here. Sixty years. Ye gods! How time does fly.

Back then, we were visiting what my mother mistakenly called ‘a stone age village’. It was one of my big holiday excitements whenever we came to Anglesey.

Above and below are the settlement’s two circular houses, inhabited during the later Roman era, but abandoned by 400 AD when the legions departed. So, mummy dear, not a Stone Age village at all, though unknown to me at the time of those childhood visits, there is in fact an impressive Stone Age monument very close by.

As you can see, the stone houses have massively constructed walls, faced inside and out with huge slabs, and the space between packed with rubble. They probably supported conical, timber-framed and thatched roofs. (A reconstruction HERE)

There are also at least 7 rectangular buildings associated with the houses. Two of these contained several smelting hearths and were probably iron-making workshops supplying the local Roman legions with tools and weapons. The whole site was then bounded by a pentagonal wall, well over a metre thick, and entered via a gatehouse. There were also further house remains outside the boundary wall.

To me it has the looks of a secure unit. Perhaps with workshops under direct Roman control. By the 4th century the locals could well have been growing restive; itching to arm themselves. This is just my hypothesis. Other interpretations are that the outer wall was for keeping cattle in, and that the defences were considered ‘light’.

But now a step back in more recent times and the way things were for the Ashford family circa 1960:

And finally a giant’s leap back – some 5, 000 years:

It’s only a short walk from the Romano-Celtic settlement, and barely a stone’s throw behind a field hedge, but here we have a Stone Age cromlech, the burial place of some thirty Neolithic farmers, men, women and children. Among their remains archaeologists also found animal bones, flint tools and pottery.

The hugeness of the capstone is breath-taking. It’s reckoned to weigh 25 tons and, in consequence, it’s also thought that the stone was already in situ at the time of construction (a handy glacial delivery?) and that the tomb builders excavated underneath, wedging it on boulders to create the chamber. The whole was then probably covered with turves and soil, and as with similar monuments that were in use over a period of time, may also have included some kind of ceremonial forecourt. But however it was constructed, it surely took a massively concerted effort.

Our visit over, we turned back to the car. Back to the present. Across the lane from the tomb was the misty view of the Great Orme on the mainland (named by the Vikings during the next invasion phase). Behind us was the small place called Din Lligwy – five millennia of human history documented in stone.

On my personal time-scale, I’d like to say I’ll be back there in another sixty years, but it seems unlikely. Still, you never know…

Lens-Artists: Looking Back This week Sofia sets the challenge.

The Best Of All Seasons 2022

New Year on Newborough Beach, Anglesey – mainland Wales in the mist

We began and ended 2022 on the island of Anglesey in North Wales. In between there were meanderings to favourite spots in Shropshire and around and about the town of Much Wenlock.So here we have a random selection of a year’s happy moments and things that caught my eye.

January walk on Wenlock Edge – looking down on Much Wenlock

On the Cutlins in February

And finding aconites: first signs of spring

The Linden Walk in early March

And alder catkins in the Linden Field

April over the garden fence

Oil Seed Rape in full flourish in the Corve Valley

May on the Linden Walk

And on Windmill Hill

June on Wenlock’s old railway line

And on the Stiperstones viewing the Devil’s Chair from a respectful distance

June in the garden

And on the Bull Ring, Much Wenlock

July in the garden

And in the Shropshire Hills at Mitchell’s Fold

August over the garden fence

And with the Cutlins MacMoos during the two-day heatwave

And after the wheat harvest on Callaughton Ash

September: harvesting the field beans in Townsend Meadow

Gathering storm clouds, but no rain

Early October and back to Wales: Barmouth Beach

And October’s end in Ludlow

November: windfall quinces at the allotment

And a sundowner stroll on Windmill Hill

December over the garden fence

And on hoar-frosty Downs Hill

And so back to the beach, Lligwy, Anglesey, January 2023

Lens-Artists: Favourite 2022 images John at Journeys with Johnbo sets the theme for this week.

Across The Gulf ~ Mirage Or Mountains?

I’m still not sure if the Taygetus mountains of the Mani Peninsula are fact or figment, and I stared at this view for an entire week – at daybreak, at twilight, in sun and in storm. Real or not, these mountains beckoned. And I was entranced. Still am, when I look at the photos. They were taken from Harakopio (Peroulia Beach) in Kalamata, Greece, overlooking the Gulf of Messenia.

I’ve read my Patrick Leigh Fermor (Mani: Travel in the Southern Peloponnese) which sets off most beguilingly, penetrating on foot this all but impenetrable mountain peninsula (that until recent times scarcely had a road into the interior), but then, after some stunning episodes, the account digresses into convoluted regional history that this reader found more uphill-going than the near-vertical terrain. Still, it’s a book worth tackling for the magical inside-Mani experiences. It truly is.

But if the mountains have long kept people out, then it’s a different story for the coastal foothills. Some settlements along the shore, accessible only by sea, have been occupied since Mycenaean times, i.e. the Ancient Greek Bronze Age (c1750-1000 BCE). If you squint, you can see signs of humanity in the first photo.

But that’s enough of the prosaic. These scenes are just for dreaming.

Lens-Artists: the mountains are calling This week Amy sets the challenge.

Good Heavens: A Real Sand Castle?

We did not go inside the castle on our recent visit to Harlech on the Mid-Wales coast. To tell the truth I’m rather offended by the tyranny that these brutish bastions of Edward I represent. He, the irascible English monarch (1272-1307) built a whole string of overbearing fortifications between 1277 and 1304 (Caernarfon being the very grandest), this in a bid to subjugate the Welsh. Of course, in a nice twist of historical irony, the castles are now major international tourist attractions, bringing welcome income to the Welsh economy. (Take that, Edward Longshanks!)

What interested me was a little photo exploration of the castle’s present setting.

For instance, the header photo is something of a trompe l’oeil. Quite misleading in fact. The castle does not sit among the massive sand dunes that have invaded much of the Welsh coast over past centuries and are still growing. It sits on a 200 foot (61 metres) eminence of ancient Cambrian rock (the Harlech Dome), whose footings were once lapped by the sea, and where ships bringing in supplies would once have docked.

So yes, here we have a fascinating case of falling sea levels, or rather, rising land levels. Parts of Britain’s landmass have risen, and apparently some are still rising (e.g. Scotland) in response to the post-glacial ice weight reduction (isostatic rebound), as in ten thousand years after the event, while others, e.g. south east England, where there are newer rocks and/or compacting clay strata (as in London), are sinking or eroding each year.

Geology has much to answer for. It is ongoing, never static. A pity that most of us (and that very much includes Mrs. Farrell) know so little about it, or the forces that have shaped and continue to influence the planet. I seem to remember my geography teacher, aeons ago, telling us that Britain was tilting. And it’s far from being the only place where geology is still moving upwards or downwards. [e.g. an unrelated phenomenon in the Pacific where satellite data show many atolls and islands are growing in size rather than eroding].

But back to Harlech. There’s a diagrammatic reconstruction of the early 14th century castle’s outer defences and setting above the sea here:

This photo above gives you a glimpse of the golf course that lies between Harlech (castle and lower town) and the massive dune system behind the now distant beach.

And looking from the other direction:

It should be said that the Welsh people did not take English oppression lying down. There were a good few revolts and uprisings, and one in particular in 1400 under Owain Glendwyr, an actual Prince of Wales (as opposed to the fabricated English ones of recent times). He captured Harlech in 1404 and made it his family home and military HQ for four years. He also held his second parliament there in 1405. However, for all that, Welsh rule was short lived. English forces retook Harlech in 1409 during the reign of Henry V.

Looking from the castle towards North Wales, to Eryri, the mountains of Snowdonia, and the plain below where once there was sea.

It is intriguing how things change, and how if we fail to grasp in what ways they change and why, we truly risk losing the reality plot. As we headed to the beach I was amused by this sign on the golf course:

Where once there was passage for ships, the biggest risk is now flying golf balls. Who’d’ve thought it.

And finally an old image of the castle around 1890-1900 courtesy of the Library of Congress on Wikipedia:

More about the Morfa Harlech dune system HERE. Yes, it is still growing.

Lens-Artists: One Subject Three Ways Patti wants us to look at our subject from different angles.

Over The Home Hill: More Hills

Wenlock Edge behind our house runs for twenty odd miles, a wooded escarpment that bisects the county of Shropshire on a north-east-south-west axis. It’s not always easy to see out for the tree cover, but here and there, a few choice viewpoints give you a glimpse of Shropshire’s other hills, the Long Mynd living up to its name in the distance here. I’m fumbling for the name of the hill in the middle distance (not recognising it from this angle). It could be Caradoc.

If we turn right round in the other direction, then we can see Clee Hill:

Closer to home, you can take the National Trust footpath out of Much Wenlock and head for the Edge landmark, Major’s Leap, from where, on a winter’s day, you may be treated to an other-worldly view of the Wrekin, subject of many quaint Shropshire tales. (My version here).

And coming down the Edge footpath behind our house you have a fine view of Much Wenlock hugged round by hills, Walton Hill and Shirlett Forest:

And while I’m showing off our local hills, I can’t leave out the town’s favourite landmark: Windmill Hill with a small turquoise person heading over it:

Lens-Artists: over the hill Donna at Wind Kisses has set this week’s challenge.

Light, Shadow, Sun And Storm…

This week at Lens-Artists, Tina shows us many creative ways to interpret her chosen theme ‘opposites’. I thought I’d choose just one photo – a chance weather moment in Wales – one of those hard-to-credit solar beams piercing a storm-heavy sky. I mean to say, how can that field be so luminously green when the town of Harlech below is so deep in shadow, and the clouds above so full of rain? I even desaturated the image a notch or two. Of course there are other opposites here too: townscape-landscape; manmade-natural; urban-rural.

Lens-Artists: opposites

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge