Stiperstones

Musings On Time Past ~ What Do We Make Of It?

Remains of Pentre Ifan chambered tomb, Newport, Pembrokeshire c. 3,500 BCE

We humans have problems with time: too much of it; not enough; the wrong kind for a planned action or pronouncement; then there’s ever that tale of elders who forget what they had for breakfast, but recall in minute detail events of decades past.

We try to pin it down of course, have long done so with all manner of devices. Most likely the late ‘Stone Age’ people who constructed Pentre Ifan above, had contrived the means to keep track of it. For instance, the placement of so-called standing stones, the particular configuration of megalithic circles, the siting of tomb entrances, whence to observe the movement of stars, the angle of the sun, and so know where they stood in relation to the earth’s perceived cycles. A time to plant; to make a journey; to hunt; to trade; mark seasons for rites and festivals.

Mitchell’s Fold Bronze Age stone circle, Shropshire-Powys border

We don’t know who these prehistoric (pre-literate) people were. There is no apparent connection between us and them. How do we even begin to grasp what five and half thousand years actually means. Most of us, unless we spring from some dynastic household that records family pedigrees down the centuries, or derive from some close knit community where little has changed for generations, cannot name our four pairs of great grandparents without the help of genealogy.com. We certainly have no true idea of how they lived day to day, unless they kindly left us their diaries; and even then…

As L.P. Hartley says in the opening of his novel The Go-Between: ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.’ And for most of us, too, our generations of ancestors left no mark, but were ever caught up in ‘big people’s’ histories; the machinations of church and state.

There are anyway far bigger pasts than our human one. Here in my home county of Shropshire, in the borderland known as the Welsh Marches we have some of the planet’s oldest parts. Seven hundred million years old, in fact.

Set against such a monumentally unimaginable timescale, the history of humanity, including that of our primate ancestors, is not even a magnified dot on the horizon.

This is what Peter Toghill has to say about the Marches geology:

The beautiful landscape of the Welsh Marches
is underlain by a rock sequence representing ten of
the twelve recognised periods of geological time…
This remarkable variety, covering 700
million years of Earth history, has resulted from
the interplay of… (1) erosion and
faulting which have produced a very complex
outcrop pattern; (2) southern Britain’s position near
to plate boundaries through most of late
Precambrian and Phanerozoic time; and, most
importantly, (3) the incredible 12,000 km, 500
million year, journey of southern Britain across the
Earth’s surface from the southern hemisphere to
the northern, caused by plate tectonic processes.

An introduction to 700 million years of earth history in Shropshire and Herefordshire

This distant view of the Stiperstones from Mitchell’s Fold stone circle, shows two of the Ice Age tors along the five mile summit, (Manstone the highest point on the left). This hill was probably formed from the laying down of quartzite sand when the whole of Southern England lay in the southern hemisphere, somewhere near the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean. That was around 500 million years ago, about the time when it began to move north. The tors themselves were exposed far more recently, by the repeated freezing and melting of glaciers that nudged up against them during the last Ice Age (115,000 to 12,000 years ago).

Makes me think we humans sometimes think too much of ourselves and what we think we have achieved. Maybe the planet has the edge on us by a few hundred million years. It’s certainly done some momentous shunting and shifting.

Lens-Artists: Ancient

Two By Two

This week at Lens-Artists, Elizabeth of Albatz Travel Adventures has us thinking about diptychs. This is what she says:

“A diptych is two images placed in proximity to one another, forming a pair. To make a successful pairing there should be several things in common, and something very different, contrasting.”

Please see her post for a range of inspiring examples.

My header pair is perhaps a bit daft, but it appeals to my sense of humour: man ruminates deeply on the ebb and flow of the Celtic Sea.

Man makes up mind: enough is enough.

Location: Anglesey, North Wales.

The next pair also has a Welsh location, taken on the Tallyllyn Steam Railway. Some of the enthusiastic volunteers who help run the trains:

Crab Apple Tree (with Japanese anemones) in our old Wenlock garden:

Townsend Meadow, Much Wenlock and a fine crop of wild oats:

Up in the Shropshire Hills: the Stiperstones

Also on the Stiperstones – fields of gorse, once widely cropped for winter animal fodder; these days, more valuable to bees and other insects:

And finally some light and shadow. Leaves – back lit and top lit:

Lens-Artists: Perfect Pairs

Stiperstones Trail: Not For The Tender Footed

In the last post you saw the Stiperstones in brooding monochrome. Those photos were taken on a dull and windy summer’s day. It was our first attempt to reach the Devil’s Chair. I had never seen it at close quarters. But in the end, the lack of light and the high wind across the tops put an end to the expedition.

The big problem on this particular trail is the surface. The higher you climb, the worse the path becomes, forming a devilish spread of upended pointy cobbles, designed to turn ankles and gouge soles, even when the walker is shod with sturdy footwear. The wind only made navigation harder: hard to focus with watering eyes. At one point I tried deviating through the heather, but it was a struggle to stride over; and it meant walking twice as far, and the rocks still ambushed me. A retreat was called.

We then made another attempt on a windless sunny day, when these photos were taken, but again were defeated by the terrain; nobbled by the cobbles. Still, despite hazy skies, there were some good views of the South Shropshire Hills as we headed down. And there is no doubting: this is one dramatic landscape, the quartzite rock of the the tors and outcrops laid down 480 million years ago, then fractured and shattered during recurrent freeze and thaw phases of the last Ice Age, 15,000 years ago. Back then, the ice sheet that covered much of Britain lapped against these hills.

It’s quite a thought: the repeated cycles of warming and cooling, cooling and warming that planet earth has gone through over many million years. And here we are in a warmish interglacial (it was apparently warmer in Britain in the Bronze Age, during Roman times and in the Middle Ages), and we’re probably due another cooling, since the geological timetable appears remarkably consistent, or at least it does when one’s dealing in millennia. I’m not sure we’ll like it though, the cooling.

Cee’s Which Way Challenge: walks

Mysterious In Monochrome: The Shropshire Borderlands

This week at Lens-Artists, Anne from Slow Shutter Speed asks us to think about monochrome and black and white photography. Click on the link below to see her post.

My first photo here was edited from a colour image, although however it comes, it’s an odd composition. It was taken at Mitchells Fold, the Bronze Age stone circle on the border with Wales, and I was only aware of the passing figure as I snapped the shot. I neither saw him arrive, nor leave the scene. Gives one a bit of a shiver.

These next two shots were taken with my Lumix point and shoot (before it gave up the ghost), using the ‘dynamic monochrome setting’. It was midday, and in high summer, but the light was penumbral; as if the sun had been switched off. Again very strange, although you can well see why these hills inspired tales of the Devil and gatherings of evil ones whenever mist shrouded the heights.

This last photo was again taken on the Stiperstones, but on a brilliantly sunny day – a view of the Devil’s Chair (edited from colour). It looks like a ruined citadel, the quartzite rocks catching the sunlight.

Lens-Artists: Black & White or Monochrome Please visit Anne at Slow Shutter Speed. She’s given us a snappy little essay on this topic.

Nice To Meet Ewe…

The sheep eyeing me here is posing so neatly beneath the rocky outcrop of the Devil’s Chair. She is clearly untroubled by that landmark’s eerie and supernatural associations.

This is a stunning landscape, the hills rolling westwards out of Shropshire and into Wales. But it is no easy place to live, the ground marginal, rocky and exposed to all weathers. These days, many farming families struggle and must deploy much ingenuity to keep a viable foothold in the small upland communities, sheep being the primary source of income. Yet, as managed wildernesses go, this is surely priceless terrain; rightly protected and designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

It is also a landscape that has been inhabited across five and more millennia. The prehistoric people who lived here left us many signs of themselves – their cycles of living and dying, their field systems and burial cairns, house circles, standing stones, hillforts and henges. The fields, in particular, appear to be at altitudes too exposed for successful cultivation. But then there is also evidence from various post-glacial times indicating the climate was warmer than today, particularly during in the Bronze Age. So perhaps those prehistoric farmers did enjoy their place in the upland sun and a spell of good growing and grazing.

There are other historical ironies. The whole locality is riven with old lead mine shafts and workings, some dating from Roman times, but most belonging to the lead mining heyday in the 1850s when the nearby Snailbeach Mine employed 500 men and was known as the richest land per acre in Europe. It is hard to comprehend this now. Other valuable minerals were also extracted: barytes (the main source of barium used in the taking of X-rays), zinc, calcite, fluorspar and even some silver.

Now lamb chops are the primary resource along with farmhouse B & Bs catering for holiday hikers and cyclists. But also, we can be glad to hear, after many difficult years, hill farmers are now being given credit and support as they continue to farm environmentally protected landscapes.

Here’s a nice story of smallholder Hare Hill Farm and how its owners are making a living with sheep and vegetable growing.

Corndon Hill, Powys border sheep country.

Photo taken from Mitchells Fold Stone Circle

By contrast, the easterly parts of Shropshire below the hill country, are plain-like. As you can see, it is largely farm fields and scattered habitation. Most production is arable (wheat, barley, hay, oil seed rape, root crops including sugar beet, maize) with some beef, pig and dairy farming.

Photo taken from Shropshire’s most famous hill, the Long Mynd.

And now for a favourite sheep photo. One of a flock of sheep, so I was told, brought from Wales to Much Wenlock for a spot of sheltered winter grazing on the Wenlock Abbey estate.

To find out more about Shropshire’s Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and all the things that go on in our beautiful uplands, take a look at the AONB site HERE. Lots of stunning photos.

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: all things farm related

Stiperstones ~ On The Diagonal

In an earlier post HERE I said the Stiperstones ridge has to be one of Shropshire’s most compellingly strange landscapes. And that its cragginess was wrought by the scything, crushing and cracking action of ice during the last glacial period some 150,000 – 11,000 years ago. Periods of alternating thaw and freeze also made their mark. But now I’m also noticing another striking feature – the way the geology is so determinedly set on the diagonal, the outcrops’ pitch a piece of ‘set-in-stone’ evidence attesting to recent epic earth forces.

When I say ‘recent’ I am of course wearing my prehistorian’s hat. Also I should make clear that the word ‘last’ as in ‘the last glacial period’ does not mean ‘final’, or that we have seen the end of ice ages. We are currently in an interglacial period, otherwise known as the Holocene. In the past, ice ages have occurred in regular cycles, beginning in the Quaternary about 2.5 million years ago, coinciding with the formation of the Arctic ice sheet. There is no reason to suppose that that this cycle has stopped. Today’s sudden drop in temperature is also giving me pause for thought. Thank goodness for alpaca leg warmers and woolly socks is all I can say (and that’s in the house).

Now for more Stiperstones diagonals:

Lens-Artists: diagonals This week Patti sets the challenge and provides an inspiring photo-essay on making the most of diagonal vistas and subjects.

Stranger Than Fiction

And Shropshire’s Stiperstones with its brooding Devil’s Chair outcrop has indeed provided the setting for several works of fiction: the novels of Mary Webb, Malcolm Saville’s still popular Lone Pine adventure stories for children, and also D.H. Lawrence’s novella St. Mawr. And naturally, given its dramatic looks, it also features in local myths and legends, particularly those associated with Wild Edric, the Saxon earl who refused to surrender his lands to the Norman invaders and stirred up rebellion, allying himself with the Welsh princes of Gwynedd and Powys just over the border.

In real life it is an utterly strange place. These photos were taken on a summer’s day, but somehow, when we reached the hilltop, the light leached away. Even so, the grey-white quartzite outcrops seemed to have an unsettling luminosity. The photos I took using the monochrome setting on my camera are especially other worldly. There also appears to be an odd patch of mist on the next photo. I can’t explain it.

And in colour, too, the landscape’s disturbing presence is scarcely diminished:

Lens-Artists: Surreal This week Tracy challenges us to post some surreal images, and believe me, she has her own very original take on the topic. Go see for yourselves.

On The Ice-Sheet Path ~ Stiperstones Revisited

This time we approach from the west, the Shropshire border with Wales below and behind us. The path from The Bog climbs up through sheep pasture hedged with gorse. The gold is dazzling. In sun-sheltered hollows, out of the wind, the flower-mass gives off coconutty scents. The grassland too is flushed with gold – a mass of buttercups.

After a steepish climb, the path sets off more evenly along the foot of the Stiperstones ridgeway, the quartzite tors of Cranberry Rocks and Manstone Rock standing proud on the skyline. We are making for the Devil’s Chair (header photo), but it is still invisible at this point along the path.

The tors’ rubble spill (stone runs) makes them look more like man-made spoil heaps than natural phenomena. And of course this was an industrial landscape across nearly two millennia: from Roman times to the early 20th century. Although back then the activity was mostly hidden from sight in the deep mine shafts and caverns dug for the extraction of valuable lead ore.

The tors, though, are their own work, their response to environmental pressures – the fractured tumble created by the freeze-thaw cycles of the last glaciation when the Welsh ice sheet nudged up against the hillside, but did not cover it. In fact, as we follow the path, we must be walking over terrain where the ice would have lain feet deep, the far edge below the tors ebbing in surface melt-water in summer, resuming the deep-freeze lock-down in winter.

It’s surely not too hard to imagine?

For as we walk here under the sun, the bright gorse and lush new bilberry bushes, bleating of lambs, distant mew of a buzzard, I note that even now in late May, the wind still has a piercingly icy edge.

It reminds me, too, that for some reason most of us have decided, on the basis of nothing in particular, that the planet has somehow done with ice ages; that they must be a thing of the past. Yet the last ice sheets only retreated 10,000 years ago; we are presently in an interglacial, the Holocene.

Within interglacial periods there are phases of warming and cooling. E.g. It is generally accepted that around 6,000 years ago that the northern hemisphere was much warmer (Holocene thermal maximum) than it is today (NOAA National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration US). There is likewise evidence from analysis of pollen and other prehistoric deposits in peat bogs across Europe of periods of dramatic climatic decline e.g. the Late Bronze Age Britain (from around 3,000 years ago) when it became much wetter and cooler. Yet by the time the Romans had taken over the land, there was another warm phase. And again in the Medieval period, this before the general descent into the Little Ice Age of 14th-19th centuries for which there are also historical accounts. (I mentioned the London Frost Fairs of the Little Ice Age in a recent post on chaotic weather.)

The cycle of ice ages and climatic variation within interglacial phases is apparently dependent on shifts in the inclination of the earth on its axis, plus associated so-called ‘wobbles’, together with variations in the sun’s energy output. In other words, there can be no doubting that here we have in play planetary cycles that are stratospherically beyond humanity’s capacity to control. Anyway, it’s making me think that hanging on to the woolly jumpers and thermal underwear might not be a bad idea.

And talking of woolly jumpers, as the Devil’s Chair comes into view I find myself the subject of ovine scrutiny…

And now for the Devil’s Chair, long the subject of Shropshire myth and witchery:

And the view from this spot, back towards Cordon Hill, the border and Wales. Remember that ice sheet. This was the land that it covered. At the glacial maximum around 22,000 years ago the ice was estimated to be up to half a kilometre deep. Sheffield University has produced some interactive maps.

The dark tussocks are heather which will bloom in late summer. The bright green bushes are bilberries, locally called win- or wimberries – our native version of blueberries, ready to pick around August time, but presently flowering. The little rosy bells are hard to see, but the bees are finding them:

As we retrace our steps to The Bog where we’ve left the car, I’m stopped in my tracks by the sight of a mountain ash tree seedling. There it is, growing so strongly atop a weathered gate post. It makes me smile. It seems like a sign: the earth, the real world, has much to teach us when we choose to pay attention.

Odd Rocks On The Stiperstones

With its series of other-worldly outcrops, the Stiperstones ridge has to be one of Shropshire’s most compellingly strange landscapes. The cragginess was wrought by the scything, crushing and cracking action of ice during the last glacial period. But natural forces alone don’t explain the sense of weirdness. It is also a place of old lead mines (going back to Roman times), and of older-still Bronze Age burial cairns.

And on the supernatural front, there are ghosts there, most notably of Saxon lord, Wild Edric, our local King Arthur, who rampaged against the Norman invaders and is said to have been imprisoned in an abandoned lead mine. When he rides again, it is said the natural good order of things will be restored to the land.

And last, but scarcely least, there are the sinister witchy happenings, especially when the mist falls and Old Nick himself is said to occupy the most mysterious of all the outcrops – otherwise known as the Devil’s Chair. (See Mary Webb’s novel Gone to Earth whose heroine Hazel Woodus is tragically enthralled by the landscape and legends of the Stiperstones.)

As a 6/7th Shropshire lass, I’m ashamed to say I have not yet got myself to the Devil’s Chair. On our last two expeditions we did not get further than Manstone Rock. This year’s ambition perhaps. On a mist-free day of course!

The Square Odds #8

Shropshire’s Most Unsettling Hillscape: The Stiperstones

Well, the name alone is enough to set the nerves jangling. Stiperstones. There’s more than a hint of menace here, and local Shropshire folk will tell you exactly what that menace is. They will say that when the mist settles on this ridge of strange and craggy outcrops, that the devil has come, returned to his quartzite throne to preside over a gathering of witches and evil spirits.

These photos were all taken on a summer’s day, though it’s hard to believe looking at them here. For more about that particular visit and more about the Stiperstones go here.

Lens-Artists: creepy Ann-Christine has set the challenge this week. She has posted some marvellously creepy images. Please take a look.

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge