#Lens-Artists

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.

How Did My Garden Glow…

There’s more than a hint of nostalgia in my choice of photos here. With the turn of the year and the first hints of spring, I am thinking about gardening; and more especially, of gardens left behind and the things I used to grow there.

The new home garden, though small, has potential as they say, but much like the house, every part of it needs attention. We’ve had the hedges cut into shape and the apple trees pruned. The greenhouse is all but mended, and the slab for Graham’s shed is laid and ready for his latest creation. But the biggest challenge is reining in the overall infestations of ground elder, ivy, Spanish bluebells and a devilish creeping shrub with red tubular flowers that seems intent on taking over the place.

Basically, when it comes to fresh planting, we’re pretty much at ground zero, with an awful lot of ground to shift. And while it is feasible, with serial determination, to clear areas of the invaders, it will likely take a few seasons to do so. All of which means holding back on plans for any permanent planting, at least on the herbaceous and shrub front. I am resisting using weed killer.

The invaders’ persistence is not such an issue when it comes to making vegetable plots. They can be cleared and weeded every year at the end of the growing season, and again in spring. In fact it has crossed my mind to grow this year’s potatoes in the front garden where we’ve lifted a load of unsightly paving. I’ve also thought of using that space for a mixture of annual flowers, beans and greens, i.e. cottage garden style. I probably will do that. After all, you can grow climbing beans up sunflowers. They like to cohabit. And it seemed to work at the Broseley rental house where I made a quick-fix garden last year.

In the meantime, I’m thinking of starting some perennials off in pots. I know we will miss the allotment raspberries, so I’m trying a small bush variety called Yummy . It will apparently grow well in containers, at least in the short term. I’ve also rescued a few of the previous occupants’ plants from the infested beds, and ‘quarantined’ them in pots too, thus capturing any remnant ground elder which can be carefully unpicked during re-potting or planting out.

But then I’m truly missing our Evereste crab apple tree from the Sheinton Street garden. It’s a very slow grower, so if I do give in to buying a replacement, it might well manage in a big pot for a while.

So: onwards and upwards. I’ve come to the conclusion it is my lot in life, much like generations of my Hampshire gardener ancestors, to wield a spade, endlessly making new gardens wherever I end up living. You may expect some of the results to crop up here. For now, some very pleasing ‘borrowed landscape’ from back in the autumn – the rowan tree over the hedge by the greenhouse. A wonderful birds’ pantry.

Lens-Artists: warm colours This week Egidio wants to see warm colours in our photos. Please see his blog post for some wonderful warmth and inspiration.

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

Ancestral spaces

Offerton Moor viewed from Callow Farm, Highlow, Derbyshire

I’ve been posting views of South Shropshire lately, the green and wooded hill country of my home county. It is a terrain that, on the whole, seems more amiable than rugged, although in bad winter weather the tops of Stiperstones and Long Mynd will ever prove challenging.

But today, on another hoar-frosted day in Bishops Castle, I’m thinking of the Derbyshire Peak District where my maternal Fox family ancestors farmed over many generations. What a tough life they must have led, running sheep on the high moors, struggling to raise essential oat crops in more sheltered enclaves, raising a few cattle to provide milk to make cheese and butter: the cheese a staple with ale and oatcakes, the butter to sell at market.

The header photo is the view from the former farmyard of Callow Farm, last occupied by 3x great grandfather George Brayley Fox in 1892.

Most of the High Peak farmers (even if they were yeomen owning some land and property) were also tenants of large estate owners – the Dukes of Rutland and Devonshire as well as lesser lords of manors. The farms provided food and shelter, but Derbyshire farmers were opportunists too. For centuries they mixed farming with other trades, butchery, hat making, grindstone making for milling and the Sheffield cutlery trade, weaving, haulage, and most dangerously of all, but potentially lucrative, lead mining; this last usually carried out in winter months when there was little farm work.

These next views are of Stanage Edge. This gritstone escarpment lies across the valley from Callow Farm. This is where millstones were once cut and hauled to nearby Sheffield. I know there were farmer Foxes who went in for this arduous trade, but none, as far as I know, in my immediate family tree.

This next photo is of Scraper Low Farm also known as Scraper Low Hall. It stands above Hathersage, and for a short time was the home of my 2x great aunt, Sophia Lister nee Fox who married Mr. Lister the silversmith while still attached to hill farmer, John Brocklehurst who himself had bigamously married a young next-door widow. You can read the story at the link.

When we first came upon Scraper Low, I was astonished that the Listers would choose to move to such a lonely place after living in a Sheffield city centre flat, to say nothing of taking on a farm in their sixties. But then when I walked up the long approach lane, I realised that whenever Sophia walked this way from her extraordinary castellated porch house, she would have been able to scan across the Derwent Valley and spot Callow Farm where she was born in 1814, the place where her brothers George and William still lived.

But then was she engaging in family feeling, or cocking a snook at the relatives now that she could pretend she’d finally made something of herself?

This is the view from Scraper Low: Hathersage Moor – Higger Tor, Carl Wark hillfort and Burbage Rocks. It’s a landscape that already looks bleak in September. Imagine it in winter:

And finally back to Callow Farm, a more benign scene of the fields below the house, once worked by four generations of Foxes: George, Robert, George and William.

And an early morning flight trail across the valley. Not the sort of phenomenon the ancestors would have spotted, nor dreamed of seeing.

Lens-Artists: Empty Spaces Over this past week Patti has asked to show her empty spaces, however we chose to interpret the theme.

Fully Framed

This week Anne at Slow Shutter Speed sets the Lens-Artists’ theme ‘filling the frame’. Please visit her blog for her thoughts (and excellent examples) of this approach to composition.

Lens-Artists: Filling the frame This week Anne at Slow Shutter Speed sets the challenge.

Off-Centre In Lamu

Once, a long time ago when we were living in Kenya, we spent Christmas on Lamu Island. I wrote about our brief stay HERE. It seemed like a dream when we were there. And here in this photo (posted a few times before) Mzee Lali, dhow captain, also dreams, the late-day breeze bearing us along the Manda Strait back to Shela village.

Stone Town: a World Heritage site

Shela Beach above, and Shela Village below. Donkeys were ‘parked’ under the thorn tree until needed for transport.

Crossing Manda Strait to the air field in a sudden squall

Lens-Artists: Asymmetry This week Donna sets the theme and shows us how asymmetrical framing can give compositions a different kind of balance.

Nice Symmetry ~ Symmetrically Nice

A flight of fancy was needed on this drizzly Shropshire day. So why not skip off to Nice for some dreaming Cote d’Azur light. And (somewhat loosely interpreted) take up Sofia’s this week’s challenge at Lens-Artists to look for all manner of things symmetrical.

The Promenade des Anges beside the glimmering Mediterranean seems a good place to start – glorious under the sun even in late October. And what could be more cheering than an azure avenue of beach brollies…

…glamorous by night:

…vibrant in its old town streetscapes, markets, palaces, churches, museums….even a sudden cloudburst doesn’t dampen its spirits…

and when the sun comes out again…oh, that light, shades of Matisse, Chagall, Dufy…

…and then it’s back to the beach for some symmetrical sunbathing:

Lens-Artists: Symmetry This week Sofia shows us many exquisite examples of symmetry. Please visit her blog and be inspired!

In A Winter Light

This week Amy at Lens-Artists wants us to show her contrasts. Here are some of mine from winter sojourns on the island of Anglesey in North Wales – a favourite destination for family Christmas gatherings.

And a favourite place for photo-taking too. The combination of solstice sun, cold air, mountain weather and light off the sea creates some striking effects, especially along the Menai Strait between island and mainland.

Lens-Artists: Contrasts Amy sets the challenge with some fine contrasting compositions. Go see!

Enter The Dragon

We’ve been ‘moving in’ to our new Bishops Castle home for a month now; more an ongoing state of flux than a settling in. There’s a lot to do and for months ahead, including work on roof and chimneys. And so not a little frazzled, it was a relief to abandon the house and head for the streets.

Yesterday was Michaelmas Fair day. Time to find out what kind of a town we’d moved to. Time to mingle with our new community and connect. After all, it’s what humans most need beyond basic sustenance – connection. And when we think we don’t (because there’s just too much to do), it’s probably when we need it most.

Proceedings kicked off at noon with street stalls and roaming performers, bands on the Town Hall stage; classic cars lined up on the High Street – primped and prepped; fleet of steam traction engines huffing coaly steam in the cattle market, waiting on the 3 o’ clock grand parade.

But as you can see, it was a dull old day – autumnal mist and drizzle plus intermittent showers, so we dipped in and out of the afternoon’s programme, met some new neighbours, reprised earlier introductions (yes, I do remember your name), bought a very fine rudbeckia, caught the Shropshire Bedlams Morris Dancers, but then listened to Jane the town’s singing florist (much amplified) while installing the new plant in the front garden. It was the evening’s events we wanted to go to.

The Lantern Procession began at 7.45. We stood at the top of the town to welcome it, wondering why the street was so sparse in humanity. (Was everyone in the pub? It surely looked like it. The nearby Vaults inn was full to bursting). And then down the hill the drumming began. Then out of the gloaming, the sinuous twists and twirls of the Hung Gar Light Dragon. And strung out behind him, the town’s lantern-bearing children and all their friends and relations.

Now we understood. Most of Bishops Castle had been busy making lanterns in the Church Barn. They were all in the procession. What a throng.

And so as the dragon and Chinese drummers climbed the hill, so the Broseley Beats Samba Band struck up at the top. (I wish we’d discovered them when were living Broseley). A drumming play off then, the beats ripping from toe to crown. No choice. The body says, DANCE!

Then just when we thought the show over, the dragon came whiffling back round the Town Hall, heading off down the hill. Followed by the samba band. Followed by us and everyone else, the descent choreographed by the drummers, stopping at intervals to give a bravado performance.

When we reached the King’s Head at the bottom of the town, we (somewhat astonished) came on a line-up of several steaming traction engines outside the pub door. What a hoot, and literally too. One owner was a tad whistle-happy. I trust he wasn’t driving home.

So there you have it, a fine finale to the Michaelmas Fair. All good spirits restored. And a taste of good things to come? I should think so.

Lens-Artists: recharge This week Egidio sets the theme as he hikes Colorado’s fabulous trails.

Old As The Hills: That Would Be 570,000,000 years

I recall being told by my geography teacher (aeons ago) that the Shropshire uplands comprised some of the world’s most venerable rocks i.e from the Precambrian era. The hills in question lie either side the Church Stretton fault, just across the Long Mynd from where we live now in Bishop’s Castle. On the east of the Stretton Valley are Lawley, Caer Caradoc and Ragleth, all formed from volcanic lava and ash around 570 million years ago. The Long Mynd lies to the west and began forming a little later with the build up of mud- and sandstone sediments in shallow seas.

Most astonishing of all, this whole process began when the earth’s crust beneath the land on which I now live was sited south of the Antarctic Circle. I’ll say that again: South Shropshire once lay south of the Antarctic Circle. Which obviously means this part of the British Isles has travelled from one end of the globe to the other.

On that journey, over millions of years, sea levels rose and fell; tectonic plates collided as continents shifted and shunted; uplifted landmasses were compressed, folded, tilted.

Then a succession of Ice Ages knocked the hills into shape. The Long Mynd is probably the most dramatic example – seen here in the the next photos taken in Carding Mill Valley, near Church Stretton. From 2.4 million years ago to 20,000 years ago glaciers shifted around the Mynd. When the ice sheets melted during interglacial periods, streams fed by melt water and rain carved out deep valleys, locally known as ‘batches’.

How mind-bogglingly amazing is this for a piece of landscape sculpting: water power plus the passage of time.

Lens-Artists: Time

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge