Tish Farell Writer

Today Over The Garden Fence

This morning we woke to thickly frosted panes on the cottage roof lights. But what a change after the dank and gloomy days. The frost came with added sunshine. And blue-sky brilliance. And frosted sparkles. And somehow cold weather doesn’t seem half so shivery when it brings wall-to-wall brightness.

This is the Evereste crab apple tree by the back garden fence. The pigeons and blackbirds have been scoffing the tiny apples. At least half the crop has gone already. It helps that the fruits are much smaller this year so the birds can get their beaks round them. And in between times, the apples that remain make fine beaded garlands, which we can see, looking up through the kitchen’s French windows. It truly is a treasure of a tree.

Back in August and September:

CFFC: Apple Red Colours

End Of The Day ~ School’s Out

William Brookes School pupils walking home across the Linden Field

The last day of #WalkingSquares, and a big cheer for Becky for getting us out and about. And an even bigger cheer for Becky for getting herself out and about: such a spirited and generous stepping out as she finds her own path through grief. In fact, I’m really going to miss these squares. Even though my own participation has been sporadic, I enjoyed the IDEA of the daily walk, the mysterious cyber magic of people sharing their wanderings around the globe each day.

Thank you, Becky!

Walking Squares #30

A Quick Trip To The Plot

Yesterday morning we woke to glorious sunshine, this after days of gloom and deluge and nights of rain battering the rooflights. With all the wetness, the lean-to greenhouse against the back door had been leaking and turned itself into a paddling pool, the garden water butts were overflowing and everywhere turned to mud. I had not been up to the allotment for days.

But then came the sunshine, and I needed leeks and herbs for the risotto I’d planned, and also salad stuff to go with it. And then there was the vegetable waste to take up to the compost bins. So I set off, though not before I’d grabbed a stick to avoid an undignified up-ending along the field path. (Done that: got the muddy bum to prove it).

It truly was all slip and slide, though in passing I noticed the winter wheat in Townsend Meadow had grown an inch or two, though there was also an unscheduled stream of water along the field boundary. Climbing through the hedge gap into the allotment also proved problematical. No foothold on the mud bank. I was glad I’d brought the stick.

Allotment plots have a tendency to dreariness in the winter months, but the paths had been mowed and some diligent allotmenteers had worked hard to tidy away the listing bean poles and decaying vegetation. I’m afraid I’m not one of them, nor did I feel inclined to make a start yesterday. Instead, I inspected the winter greens, pulled up leeks, prised some container-grown parsnips out of their bucket and gathered rocket, lettuce, parsley, fennel and baby spinach from the polytunnel. There were even a few Sungold tomatoes to pick. Now that was a treat. Then I had natter with stalwart gardener Phoebe, who was on her way home for lunch, and then, guess what…

…it started to rain. A blanket of wet mist descended and I headed home, though not before taking the header photo, snapped because somehow the drizzle made everywhere look gauzy. But by the time I reached the garden gate the light had gone and the rain set in. I turned back to scan the field: dusk at lunchtime? I really do not remember a November with so much day-time darkness. Nor a month that has gone so fast: not so much walking as galloping.

Walking Squares #26 Becky thinks we should not let bad weather stop us from walking; in fact confronting wild weather elements may well do us good.

The Cliff Path At Marloes Sands

Scenes from Pembrokeshire, South Wales.

And the cliffs below:

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: lengthy subjects This week Cee wants to see anything long.

And Another Wenlock Walk

This feels like a old path, the way hollowed out between field boundaries, the ground worn threadbare to rock and knotty tree roots. As you leave the town and climb towards Callaughton, you need to watch your step, and take the occasional breather. Which is good too, because it means there are chances to stop at windows in the vegetation and look back on the town.

In the next view, I’m looking roughly north, the Wrekin in the distance, and in the far right you can just spot the windmill atop Windmill Hill. The field directly beneath the Wrekin and woods (bordered by a short row of pink roofs) is Townsend Meadow. Immediately forward of the field is the allotment, but you can’t see it for trees.

Now turning towards the east so you can the tower of Holy Trinity Church. It was once part of the Wenlock Priory complex. But the oldest parts of the church are said to date to the days (before the Norman Conquest) when the priory was a convent for both men and women, though they worshipped seperately. It is thus believed to be the site of the original women’s church, but has obviously undergone much rebuilding over the centuries. In fact during reburbishment in 1101, the supposed remains of St. Milburga were found near the altar, she who was the first abbess of Wenlock (675-690). The discovery of the saint’s bones, described in 1190 by Bishop Odo, as ‘beautiful and luminous’, put Much Wenlock on the pilgrim route and led to the town’s rapid growth. Happy days for the Priory coffers.

The path brings you out on Callaughtons Ash, a field on the boundary with the historic township of Callaughton. To our ears the word ‘township’ is perhaps misleading. These days the settlement is little more than a hamlet, and it may never have been much bigger in the past, though records show there was a weeping cross in the vicinity in the 13th century which doubtess attracted the devout. It is anyway one of seven ‘townships’ that surround Much Wenlock and once fell within the town’s ancient parish boundary. Others include Bourton, Farley, Harley, and Wigwig. And I have no idea how the Wigwig name came about.

There’s a fine view of Clee Hill at the top of the path:

Walking Squares #7 Keep walking with Becky.

Wildegoose Garden’s Sculpture Show

Real-life rabbits are the last thing this gardener wishes to encounter in her garden, but these terracotta ones by artist Sharon Griffin would be more than welcome. They were spotted back in September when our favourite plant place Wildegoose Nursery (set inside a historic walled garden) hosted a sculpture show by our favourite gallery, Twenty Twenty. It was a perfect match all round: art among the late summer perennials on a dreamy afternoon. And blissful to meander the garden paths and come upon some extraordinary creations. Here is a selection of works that caught my eye.

Self in stoneware with sgrafitto by Sharon Griffin

Mitosis: a storm fallen field maple by Glen Farrelly

Flaunt 2022 powder coated steel by Anya Beaumont

Starlight Tower in terracotta stoneware by Emma Fenelon

Insight: stone and bronze resin by Sue Jones

Walking Squares #4

Join Becky on her November walks.

Windfall Quinces At The Allotment

For one reason or another, but mostly due to some serious rainstorms, I had not been to the allotment for several days. When it wasn’t raining, slithering across the field in the mud did not appeal. And then the wind got up. And then just when I thought I’d go, another downpour began. And so it seems that after our too arid summer, we’re in for a very wet autumn.

But yesterday came the window of opportunity. The morning was almost sunny. We anyway needed some veggies. So wellies on, off I trudged along Townsend Meadow, which is now a green haze of sprouting wheat. The rain is suiting it. It has also been suiting all the field beans spilled during the summer harvesting. They have been pushing up through the wheat, and I noticed yesterday that the farmer has clearly been over the field with his big herbicide sprayer. I find it astonishing that plant-killing chemicals can be so attuned as to know a broad bean seedling from a wheat stem. Anyway, the application is clearly doing its stuff, and the wheat looks fine.

Up on the plot all is soggy and much blown about, and certainly not at all photogenic. There was lots to gather though – leeks, beetroot, chicory, carrots, and still some tomatoes, lettuce and rocket in the polytunnel. I didn’t stay long. The wind was gusting up into a small gale. You can see what it did to quince crop. The tree this year was laden. It seems a waste not to use the fruit, but apart from quince jelly, which needs loads of sugar, it’s not really a favourite in the Farrell household.

Townsend Meadow: wheat and field beans (before the spraying)

#WalkingSquares This November join Becky in her daily walks, or whenever you can, the only rule, the header photo must be SQUARE.

Castle in the Air?

Does this look real to you?

It doesn’t to me, and I was there, a coupld of days ago on All Hallows Eve, taking this photograph. It’s a view I’ve captured before, but somehow these ruins of Ludlow Castle set high above the River Teme, always manage to look like some idealised Victorian watercolour; or a film set; even dream-like. Yet there was nothing dreamy about the conception of this massive fortification. Its construction began in the 11th century with the sole intention of keeping the Welsh princes in their place behind the nearby England-Wales border.

It’s other significance, in my mind at least, is that in the winter of 1501 Prince Arthur Tudor, heir to the English throne and Henry VIII’s older brother, spent his honeymoon here. He had married the Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon, both of them still in their teens. You can read more this story here: Honeymoon Destination Anyone?

But in any event, even with the walls intact, and some well tapestried royal chambers somewhere within, it takes a great leap of imagination to consider this an ideal honeymoon venue. Presumably Arthur’s presence was a political gesture to impress the Welsh neighbours. In any event, it did not end well. It seems that both Arthur and Catherine fell ill with the ‘sweating sickness’, a strange and passing disease of Tudor times. Catherine recovered but by April 1502 Arthur was dead. And the rest, as they say, is history.

My own experience within the castle walls dates back to the late 1960s. It was a summer’s evening and the time of the Ludlow Arts Festival which every year staged a Shakespeare play inside the castle’s massive inner bailey. Open air of course and on very hard wooden seats. My mother had tickets for Shakespeare’s Richard III. It had poured with rain all day, and I (in grumpy teen mode) didn’t want to go. But by early evening the sky cleared and so we set off for Ludlow, armed with cushions and blankets and a flask of coffee.

There was no set to speak of. Only a platform with a throne against the looming backdrop of the bailey walls. Swifts and swallows whisked by overhead, but as it grew dark it was the turn of the bats to swoop and dive around the battlements. And then came Act 5 scene 3 – the night before the battle of Bosworth Field when Richard is visited by the ghosts of all those he has murdered. And out of the shadows, from different spots around the castle walls, echoed the eerie voices. It was thrilling. Unforgettable. And to think I hadn’t wanted to come.

#Lens-Artists: Flights of Fancy Johnbo has set this week’s challenge. Go see his different approaches for this theme.

On the Road In Much Wenlock ~ ‘A Rip Van Winkle Kind Of A Place’

Sheinton Street looking towards Holy Trinity Church

It’s a while since I posted any photos of my home town. These shots are all from the archive, but I had a notion to edit them in sepia tones, along with a touch of over-exposure here and there to accompany the century-old quotation from Shropshire writer Mary Webb. I mean to say, even with all the cars, it still has that look. There’s definitely a sense of Winkle time-slippage. This may well have something to do with the fact that this small town has been continuously occupied for more than a thousand years. And before that, there would have been Romans and Romano-British wandering around the place with the likelihood of a villa/bathhouse on the site of the medieval Wenlock Priory. And before that, itinerant Bronze Age smiths may well have passed through, one of whom lost his stash of arrow and axe heads in the River Severn not far from Wenlock. Or maybe it was a donation for a safe crossing.

Many of the facades you see in the photos have been added on the front of much earlier buildings – this during periods of particular market-town prosperity when there were attempts at gentrification. I say ‘attempts’ because by all accounts even in the late nineteenth century there was a smelly open sewer running through the town. Also the place was regularly doused in limestone dust with every blasting at surrounding quarries. And there would have been some evil smog too from lime burning kilns (this to produce lime for building mortar and fertiliser).

Looking down on the High Street

The Bull Ring where once the popular sport of bull baiting took place on fair days and holidays

The Square (looking past the church towards Wilmore and Sheinton Street) with the Museum on the left (once the Butter Market and then a cinema) and the 16th century Guidhall opposite. The assizes were held on the upper floor, the lock-up down below. These days the town council holds its meetings there.

Queen Street and Brook House Farm, one of the last surviving town farms, now ‘done up’ into several desirable residences. I remember it with cattle in the barn.

The High Street featuring our star timber-framed residence – Reynolds Mansion, a fifteenth century hall with a grand 1682 frontage

Top of the High Street. This row of stone clad cottages contains some very ancient inner parts.

Looking down Sheinton Street from the Farrell house

Downs Lane beside Wenlock Priory

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: roads

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.

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge