Jimi Bush

My kind of landscape gardening (via The Poke). Jimi Hendrix as the Green Man. No more needs to be said.

God's Own Country

I've just finished reading God's Own Country, the 2008 debut novel of Ross Raisin. And its compact 210 pages were 'gradely' compelling.

Ostensibly the book is a tale of a Walter Mitty-esque farmer's son and his obsession with the daughter of middle class incomers who move into the next door farm; a fixation which, rather predictably, ends in tragedy, although not necessarily the denouement you expect.

But the real interest in this story lies in its rootedness in a particular landscape, the North York Moors, and its narration by the unfortunate but dangerously deluded protagonist himself, Sam Marsdyke, in vernacular language liberally sprinkled with Yorkshire dialect.

Although the going is not as initially linguistically tough for the uninitiated as, say, an Irvine Welsh novel, there are many words and sayings casually thrown into Sam's thought's and pronouncements that will be very new to many readers. Often adding to the humour that runs through the novel, the language also provides a refreshingly alternate take on describing the landscape that is not merely the setting but the very pulse of the story.

"I got up early, feeling bruff, fit for anything. I could see outdoors the wood it was a gradely day. The rain clouds had buggered off west over the Moors to go piss on the Dales and it was belting bright and warm, perfect suited for us to get moving".

The North York Moors provide a fitting location. Sam himself is an outsider, a loner: contemptible of and patronisingly scorned by the 'towns', whether local or outsiders, who are slowly colonising his patch of 'God's Own Country'. Although a National Park and place of stark and often understated beauty, the Moors are part of that belt of far-eastern England ranging from the Wash to the Northumberland coast that is both gifted and cursed to be unknown and unvisited by much of the population of the wider world. Despite the common talk and received wisdom of our 'overcrowded island', there are many areas where settlement and people are thinly spread, and this is one of them.

"Their sort were loopy for farmhouses - oh we must move there, the North York Moors is God's own country - but they couldn't give a stuff for the Moors, all they wanted was a postcard view out the bedroom. They know nothing what I knew of it. Spaunton, Rosedale, Egton, thirty moors each bigger than your eye could frame, fastened together by valleys cutting into the earth between, lush with forest, flowers and meadow grass, where there weren't towns and villages drying it all up". 

This combination of first person narrative by a rural innocent, embodying a way of life threatened by creeping (sub)urbanisation, and a storyline crackling with tension in a knowable landscape of mud, wind and burning sun sets up a book that you can treasure; one that allows you to vividly visualise and inhabit the places in which the storyline takes place. And bringing to mind not just the language of Welsh's Trainspotting, but also the writing style and content of Alan Garner's The Owl Service, Barry Hine's A Kestrel for a Knave, Alan Warner's These Demented Lands and Paul Kingsnorth's poem, Kidland.

Select bibliography

Garner, Alan, 2007 The Owl Service. London: Harper Collins

Hines, Barry, 2000 A Kestrel for a Knave. London: Penguin

Kellett, Arnold, 1994 The Yorkshire Dictionary of Dialect, Tradition and Folklore. Settle: Smith

Kingsnorth, Paul, 2011 Kidland and other poems. County Clare: Salmon

Raisin, Ross, 2009 God's Own Country. London: Penguin

Warner, Alan, 1998 These Demented Lands. London: Vintage  

Welsh, Irvine, 1993 Trainspotting. London: Madarin        

Land Observations: Roman Roads IV-XI

Just released on Mute Records, Roman Roads IV-XI is the first release by Land Observations (James Brooks)

An intriguing mix of metronomic Neu!/ Spacemen 3 sound and topographical subject matter, each track on the album relates to a particular Roman Road radiating out from London.

"Is there no end to this accursed forest?"

Back from a long weekend camping above the Wye Valley, on the edge of the Forest of Dean: "The very rim of England" (Roger Deakin, Wildwood). 
As the visit was punctuated by the biblical downpours that have characterised this summer, a trip to Puzzlewood, with its network of rocky pathways winding through a dense woodland canopy, seemed appropriate.

The paths through the wood were laid down by the landowner in the 1800's and explore the rocky mini gorges known locally as Scowles, formed through the collapse and exposure of the cave systems that riddle the carboniferous limestone of the area; the result of natural erosion, and subsequently exploited for mining iron ore in the Iron Age and Roman period.  

The wood, more recently used for atmospheric sylvan scenes in television series including Dr Who and Merlin, was an inspiration for JRR Tolkien in formulating his imagery for the dark and forbidding great woodlands of Mirkwood in The Hobbit.

The magical character of the woods results from a dense treescape of yew, beech, ash, oak and lime overlying the narrow rocky ravines; creating a dark and damp environment where mosses, lichen and ferns thrive and tree root systems encase the rocks in fantastical patterns. 

Here are some images and words that capture the spirit of the place.

"Deeper into the forest it got darker, like a mineshaft" (Roger Deakin, Wildwood).
 

"As their eyes became used to the dimness they could see a little way to either side in a sort of darkened green glimmer. Occasionally a slender beam of sun that had the luck to slip in through some opening in the leaves far above, and still more luck in not being caught in the tangled boughs and matted twigs beneath, stabbed down thin and bright before them." (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit).

"The first grows in damper places...reared on the creeping dankness of the earth" (John Silken, Moss)











 

"The yew in British folklore tales is often invested with dark or magical associations" (Robert Bevan-Jones, The Ancient Yew).

And from a few miles south, on an extant section of Offa's Dyke cresting the lower Wye Valley, the comforting light and airy beech woods that have colonised the eight century earthworks; a counterpoint to the gloom of Puzzlewood.



"About four days from the enchanted stream they came to a part where most of the trees were beeches. They were at first inclined to be cheered by the change, for here there was no undergrowth and the shadow was not so deep. There was a greenish light about them, and in places they could see some distance to either side of the path. Yet the light only showed them endless lines of straight grey trunks like the pillars of some huge twilight hall" (JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit).

"Nostalgia links the Old Forest of Middle Earth with the Wildwood of Kenneth Grahame, and its a link that goes back through Edward Thomas to the pre-enclosure woodlands of John Clare" (Richard Hayman, Trees).

Select bibliography

Bates, Brian, 2002 The Real Middle Earth: Magic and mystery in the Dark Ages. London: Pan

Bevan-Jones, Robert, 2002 The Ancient Yew: A history of Taxus baccata Macclesfield: Windgather Press

Cotter, Gerry (Ed.), 1988 Natural History Verse: An anthology. Bromley: Helm 

Deakin, Roger, 2007 Wildwood: A journey through trees. London: Hamish Hamilton

Hart, Cyril, 2000 Between Severn (Saefern) and Wye (Waege) in the Year 1000. Stroud: Sutton

Hayman, Richard, 2003 Trees: Woodlands and Western civilization. London: Hambledon and London

Hill, David and Worthington, Margaret, 2003 Offa's Dyke: History and guide. Stroud: Tempus

Tolkien, JRR, 1999 The Hobbit. London: Harper Collins 

Walters, Brian, 1992 The Archaeology and History of Ancient Dean and the Wye Valley. Cheltenham: Thornhill Press

"Songs, like the grass, are evergreen": Landscape as a musical motif

The pastoral opening scene to Danny Boyle's Isles of Wonder, Olympic Opening Ceremony.

“How do you soundtrack a city? Or a nation? Is there a score to be written for this green and pleasant land of song, our forever awe-inspiring country? How do you start to summarise the very sound of a place when – in just under two hundred years – one small border town is capable of producing both Edward Elgar and Fuck Buttons? You can’t, so you don’t even try. You follow your heart and you look for the defining moments in culture, the sounds that continue to resonate...

...Two hundred years ago Goethe said that architecture was like frozen music. Well in today’s Britain the inverse is true, music is the fluid architecture all around us.

The isle is full of noises. The soundtrack writes itself.”

Rick Smith, Music Director, London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.

Inspiring words from The Isles of Wonder soundtrack, summing up the strong and urgent relationship between music and the land and people of the British Isles: a subject matter rich in material but, perhaps, somewhat neglected compared to the analysis of landscape related art, poetry and prose. 

I have, though, a slight wariness in writing a post on the theme of landscape and music. Partly because its such a personal interconnection: people will have their own favourite soundscapes of place in their head, on the car stereo,  their i-pod or at a festival: Hubert Parry/ William Blake's Jerusalem, a traditional folk standard, psychedelic wig-out or paean to the city. And also because Rob Young's Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's visionary music is, in my opinion, such a tour de force; the inter-weaving of folk music, landscape, culture and more through a sweeping history of "Albion's soundscape" over the last 100 years or so.

In The Making of the English Landscape WG Hoskins memorably likens England's landscape to a symphony, enjoyable as an "architectural mass of sound" but more satisfyingly appreciated if the individual themes are isolated "to see how one by one they are intricately woven together"; a suitable entry point into the relationship between music, sense of place and landscape. And a deeply rich symbiosis this is. Hardly a song lyric exists without an allusion, however hackneyed or banal, to "river deep, mountain high" topographical and morphological symbolism. The default visual motifs for classical music routinely feature scenes of pastoral magnificence to complement both the epic or more contemplative sounds inside.

The Land Song

 

Curious old recording of radical Liberal anthem The Land, with even more curious video's from YouTube. Michael Foot's favourite political song (a fairly thin canon admittedly), its a rousing pro-land tax, anti-landowner call to arms, originating in America and adopted by Lloyd George's Liberal Party in the general election's of 1910.

 

 

"Sound the call for freedom boys, and sound it far and wide,
March along to victory for God is on our side,
While the voice of nature thunders o’er the rising tide,
“God gave the land to the people!”

Chorus: The land, the land, ‘twas God who made the land,
The land, the land, the ground on which we stand,
Why should we be beggars with the ballot in our hand?
God made the land for the people.

Hark the sound is spreading from the East and from the West,
Why should we work hard and let the landlords take the best?
Make them pay their taxes on the land just like the rest,
The land was meant for the people.

Clear the way for liberty, the land must all be free,
Liberals will not falter from the fight, tho’ stern it be,
‘Til the flag we love so well will fly from sea to sea
O’er the land that is free for the people.

The army now is marching on, the battle to begin,
The standard now is raised on high to face the battle din,
We’ll never cease from fighting ‘til victory we win,
And the land is free for the people."

Reading the landscape

There is a wealth of content and material relating to landscape and sense of place on line, as categorised in the gazetteer of landscape on the web on this blog. And yet, to really get under the skin of the subject the physical book (or the ebook, if you are that way inclined) remains for me the best routeway into deeper understanding and contemplation; although building up a personal library does require both space and an understanding partner.

Click here for a selection of the books and journals that I feel provide a comprehensive and diverse landscape biblio-resource.

A temporal space: channeling the Knights Templars, an exorcism and the Blitz

 



It may be due to the fact that I had just left the pub, but I think these images capture some of the mysterious, dare I say it, 'energy' that places with a long and eventful history seem to have; temporal layers interacting with spatial permanence.

This is Temple Church in central Bristol, now half-hidden in a somewhat bland and nondescript commercial district, its riverside location was one of the first areas of settlement during the city's earliest phase of development. Built in the late fourteenth century on the site of an earlier Knights Templar church it was bombed to its current shell in the Blitz of 1940, and was the scene of a famous eighteenth century exorcism.

Rural rides

I don't know why this image particularly appeals to me, but it does. 

Taken today in the deer park of Dyrham Park, a National Trust property a few miles outside Bath, this is the shuttle bus that trundles all day up and down the hill from the car park to the main house.

What interests me is how this landscape of Arcadian perfection has been so thoroughly designed and redesigned over the last few centuries.

Originally a wooded combe cut into the southern-most extremity of the Cotswold scarp slope, this steep sided valley became part of the emparked hunting grounds of a medieval manor house. In an act of deliberate dislocation with the past the house was demolished in the late seventeenth century and replaced with a baroque mansion complete with ornate formal gardens, re-imagined in the fashionable Versailles style of the period and almost impossible to imagine on the site now (see image below). By the later eighteenth century the lavishly ornamental grounds had fallen out of style and were overlain with a 'naturalistic' designed park laid out by Humphrey Repton. This is largely the landscape that we can see today, possibly now fossilised into perpetuity by the National Trust, the stream issuing from the springs at the head of the valley long since buried underground.

And so back to our bus, following the course of medieval hunting parties and carriages transporting the Georgian and Victorian gentry through their contemporary visions of the ideal landscape, to be eventually replaced by who knows what.  

View of Dyrham Park by Johannes Kip (1712)

Sustainable transport v biodiversity and community food production: case study of a landscape dilemma

An interesting case currently bubbling up on my doorstep in East Bristol that highlights the difficulties created when competing demands, each with their own merits, are placed on the landscape.

For a city that prides itself on being progressively 'green', Bristol has been slow off the mark in addressing car dependency and the city council is seeking to address this with its Bus Rapid Transit Scheme, a major infrastructure project in partnership with adjoining local authorities to connect employment and transport hubs with residential districts via upgraded or new dedicated bus routes. The scheme includes a proposed new 'bus-only' junction at Stapleton giving access to the M32 motorway into the city centre. The council has put the plans out to consultation with a formal planning application later in the year.

This is a worthy and progressive scheme to try and put Bristol's transport infrastructure on a more sustainable footing. The problem is that the site adjacent to the motorway earmarked for the development is part of a 'green finger' of open land that extends well into the urban suburbs of the city. Under threat is a belt of overgrown but well-loved fields and old market-garden allotments, mostly held by local tenants; grade 1 agricultural land under-utilised in recent times but of high value in terms of potential productivity, biodiversity, habitat and the aesthetics of urban open space. Furthermore, the lands premature early retirement into ragged nature has been partially halted by a Lottery-funded Avon Wildlife Trust initiative called Feed Bristol, which has recently seen 7 acres at the heart of the area in question given over to a community food growing project. Many people, myself included, are now advocating that such traditionally overlooked and neglected edgelands should be utilised much more for crop and livestock production through community schemes like this with the multiple social and environmental advantages that accrue, rather than facing incremental loss at the hands of commercial development with often dubious local benefit.

And there is the rub. If this was a rapacious multi-national predator threatening green space then how much more straight-forward the case for opposition would be to construct, albeit not necessarily more likely to succeed. However, if you are concerned with environmental impact both locally and more widely (and there are many who do not see this as a concern, whether due to apathy or the perceived automatic primacy of 'the economy'), where does your support lie in a case like this? In defence of the local green space or the, perhaps, wider social good of the rapid transport scheme?