Following on from my last entry on Cherryburn and the naturalist and engraver Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) here’s a summary of the resident artists programme since 2017, when my own association with the birthplace also began.

Bewick’s work was widely popular in his own day as well as with succeeding generations of artists and crafts people. Numerous woodblocks and preparatory drawings are in museum and private collections worldwide, alongside those of his thirty five apprentices at the Newcastle workshop, like Luke Clennell and Robert Johnson.

In 2017 a project to reflect that artistic association and craft legacy was launched. In association with Northern Print and the Arts Council contemporary arts duo Juneau Projects, AKA Philip Duckworth and Ben Sadler, exhibited Birds Want You To Listen during September & October. The exhibition featured an interactive print kit, viewfinders, prints, sculptures, and print blocks. I had a lot of fun as a new volunteer at Cherryburn, helping out in the print room (below) doing simple hands on work with children and adults using the duo’s templates, designed with the input of local schoolchildren.

From 2018 onwards the contemporary arts engagement project was expanded. The Arts & Heritage charity facilitated along with Mapping Contemporary Art in the Heritage Experience. The latter is a major research project led by Newcastle University with the National Trust, Churches Conservation Trust, Arts Council England and Contemporary Visual Arts Network. Our resident artists work is usually on display within the birthplace itself and/or adjacent museum. These season long events draw extra visitors, stimulating discussion and further involvement.

Conference of the Birds by Marcus Coates (2019) Six bird species engraved by Bewick, given personalities by Coates, articulated by guest contributors with natural history expertise, recorded and played through speakers in an extended conversation covering all aspects of the birds lives and behaviour. Members of the public either stood near or sat beneath the heads – all fabricated by the artist in the style of Bewick – to listen in. Which we all did…enraptured! An original and engaging exercise that many visitors said was the best contemporary art exhibition they’d ever experienced.

Walking, Looking and Telling Tales (2018) by painter Mark Fairnington. (above) The exquisite small paintings reflect the place, the Northumbrian landscape and the work of Bewick. Mark gathered information by walking the county, his work becoming a record of the people and places he visited. The paintings, on display in the birthplace itself, include miniature landscapes that look at the countryside Bewick knew well from a contemporary viewpoint.

Birds, Beasties & Bewick (20/21) Capturing the spirit of Cherryburn through observations and encounters of animals and plants in the landscape, in the Spring and Summer of 2021, arts graduate Phoebe Connolly’s installation of 20 finely detailed engraved glass panels sought to inspire visitors to reconnect with nature. Despite the bedevilment caused by the health emergency Phoebe’s beautiful work drew a great deal of admiration.

This year’s artist in residence is George Shaw. Turner prize nominated George (b.1966) grew up on a council estate in Coventry and his finely detailed work, executed in humbrol oils, have become well known for creating distinct observations of alienation and discord in contemporary urban Britain. The pieces on display here, entitled Home is Unspent take a slightly different course.

George’s show opened at Cherryburn in mid July and runs to the end of October when the property shuts down for the winter. Everyone had a good chatty time of it at the well attended private view which took place both outdoors and indoors on a lovely warm evening.

The wee pictures on easels in the birthplace are of George’s former childhood home after he’d moved all his mother’s possessions out following her death. The paintings in the house chronicle nests and dead birds in the garden of his current home on Dartmoor, done during lockdown. He calls these a ‘History of Dead Birds’.

If you’re in the area please come and visit! Property open on Thursdays and Fridays until end of October. Bookings preferred but you can also rock up, though you may have to wait a short while if numbers are limited. Check out the website www.nationaltrust.org.uk/cherryburn for details and to book a slot.

‘Oh now that the genius of Bewick were mine / And the skills that he learned on the banks of the Tyne’ (Wordsworth)

When in 2017 I moved from Lancashire to live in Northumberland, encouraged by Kim I took to volunteering for the National Trust at Cherryburn, birthplace of the engraver, artist and naturalist Thomas Bewick (1753-1828)

Post Covid I’m now employed there as a ‘Customer Services Assistant’ on the two opening days, Thursday and Friday, up until the end of October. With mine and Bewick’s birthdays fast approaching I thought it a good time to write a few words about man and place…

Cherryburn is a preserved 18th century farmhouse situated on the steep southern flank of the Tyne valley, a dozen miles upstream from Newcastle. The Bewick family’s new farmhouse next door, dating from the 1820s, made the former stead redundant as a residence, when it was part demolished and given over to stock and storage use. Cherryburn was the first museum to be taken into the care of the NT, in 1990. It only had 8 acres attached to it in Bewick’s day but the family also leased and worked a small coal pit and enjoyed grazing rights on neighbouring Mickley Common.

Thomas was born at Cherryburn in August 1753, the eldest of 8 children. He spent the first 14 years of his life here before leaving to serve out a seven year apprenticeship to the engraver Ralph Beilby in his workshop at Amen Corner by St Nicholas Cathedral in Newcastle. The two men later became partners in the thriving business, engraving everything that could be engraved on any surface, from glass and precious metals to wood, ivory and leather. The busy premises have long gone but a bust and plaque to commemorate Bewick marks the spot.

Thomas Bewick perfected the art of wood engraving in Georgian England, revolutionised the illustration of natural history and was the first artist to make a living from book illustration. Seeking to produce the illustrated wildlife book he sought out as a youth but never found, the young businessman set out to produce it himself.

The resulting volume, 5 years in the preparation, was A General History of Quadrupeds (1790). A glorious muddle of illustrations and descriptions of familiar four legged creatures – horses, cattle, sheep, badger, fox etc. – mixed in with the unfamiliar – kangaroo rat, lapland marmoset, cameleopard, spotted hyena and many other creatures novel and exotic to European eyes.

Encouraged by the widespread popularity and commercial success of Quadrupeds he went on to produce the influential masterwork on which his reputation rests, A General History of British Birds (land birds, published 1797 and water birds in 1805). Its breakthrough style – pocket sized, with detailed illustration of animal in its habitat with description under – established the format for future field guides.

The young untutored Thomas had been obsessed with ’figuring’ on every available surface with anything he could get hold of – bird feather quills, nails, pencils or chalks. In between doing hard every day physical work around the farm and mine he flunked elementary education at the village school to roam the fells, woods and riverside. Acute first hand observation and total immersion in every aspect of nature and country life, through all the seasons, would stand him in good stead for his future chosen career. He would draw freely on that rich memory bank of imagery and incident which, when combined with outstanding technical mastery of craft, resulted in the extensive range of work we admire today.

Bewick is also famous for the ‘tail pieces – or ‘tale pieces’ as he called them – which filled in any blank white space on a page at the end of a description. These delightful miniature vignettes usually tell a story or point a moral. Just like the bird engravings they capture and distil an intimate and earthy knowledge of the subject matter and encapsulate it brilliantly despite, or because of, the restrictive space.

Up until his parents died in 1785 Bewick would spend most weekends at Cherryburn, walking there and back from Newcastle as a matter of course. A big personality, mentally and physically, Bewick prided himself on his physical fitness, self improvement activities and clean living. Only when both parents died in 1785 did the young man consider himself free to marry childhood sweetheart Isabella the following year, the couple going on to have four children.

Thomas Bewick became famous in his own lifetime, much to his great embarrassment. He died, aged 74, still working to the end, having spent virtually all his life on Tyneside. Bewick’s work is better known than he is, most of our visitors knowing little about him when they arrive but leave knowing a lot more, sharing our love and respect for this remarkable northerner and his singular achievements.

If you’re in the area and fancy discovering Cherryburn for yourself please pay a visit. You’ll be greeted on arrival either by me or my lovely colleague and friend Norma. She is someone guaranteed to give you the warmest of Geordie welcomes! https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/cherryburn

If an actual visit isn’t possible but you’d like to know more about Thomas Bewick and his world check out the beautifully designed and comprehensive Bewick Society website. http://www.bewicksociety.org/

Leading biographer Jenny Uglow has written a highly readable award winning biography of Thomas Bewick entitled Nature’s Engraver (2007) https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571223756-natures-engraver/

A gate and a field half ploughed,/ A solitary cow,/A child with a broken slate,/A titmarsh in the bough. But where, alack, is Bewick / To tell the meaning now? (Tennyson)

Temperatures have been taking wild swings, from sizzling to chilly. More thankfully rain revived the greenery and topped up the near empty water butts. We continue to save bath water and fill the zinc trough in the yard. Very pleased to source and fit covers for our other open top tubs thus ending the accidental drowning of summer songbirds. Being permeable they let the rainwater in and will keep falling leaves out. A real win-win and only regret I didn’t do it earlier.

Sitting on the deck, reading or writing, I hear the whirr of wren wings as the parents nurture a second brood in their moss mounded nest high above the log stack. At the other end of the stone paved deck the second set of swallows swoop in to their mud thatch home in the rafters. We thought this pair was about to produce young but despite much coming and going and general twittering nothing’s happened so far. Do they go through the reproductive motions only to then prove barren I wonder?

This year’s swallow babies, now in the avian stage of teenagerdom, have taken to hanging together out on the telephone wire running the length of the lane between us and Southridge. Our crew and the much larger kin group up at the farm number in excess of 30 juvenile birds. Insect activity is high, especially on humid windless days, and all our resident bird species – wagtail, wren, robin, dunnock, tits – are actively feasting and foraging on them, some to raise a second brood. From my study window I see the swallows beating the air in freeze frame, picking off the assorted bugs that get corralled under the glass pitched roof of the porch just feet across from their nest.

Delighted to spot the elegant shapes of willow warblers – delightful melodious summer visitors – insect hunting on the garden foliage. Even more delighted to eventually distinguish them from their near identical cousins, the chiff chaffs.

Another wild animal that likes what our summer garden has to offer is a brown hare. It turned up the other evening in the fading light, cautious yet fearless, making a leisurely circuit round the gravel paths and steps, sampling plants as it lopped along. Kim thinks it was probably responsible for dispatching some of the kale plugs she planted earlier in the season. That doesn’t stop us from being thrilled that it’s gracing our patch. Laden with symbolism in most human cultures, such a beautiful creature will be forgiven almost anything.

Any guest at the corner house this time of the year might well be invited to help pick a seemingly endless supply of fruit from the laden branches of our blackcurrant bushes. (If only we could get raspberries to thrive in the same way!) What isn’t turned into jam gets packed away in plastic bags for the freezer.

The meadow as it matures produces new flower species each year. Making a welcome debut in 2022 is that pretty wayside plant, musk mallow. More common in the drier south this plant originated from the shores of the Mediterranean. The French name for mallow is ‘mauve’ and is where the colour name came from.

Having the two youngest grandchildren (Max 7 & Lois 5) in residence with their mum for five days recently was lovely. Did lots of stuff together and got the two little Londoners that little bit closer to nature. A walk in the nearby woods, following the stream, worked a treat. Especially when we came upon scores of tiny froglets making their intrepid way across the path, hopping through the grass to reach water. 

Another time I gave the children jobs to do in the garden (under close supervision) like lifting potatoes, deadheading spent roses or watering plants in pots. Hopefully this may give them both a taste for gardening in future…

Max adores his miniature version of ‘Floss’ while Lois has long been in love with Seymour and Henry and the two little ducklings that were Kim’s models for the picture book were never far from her side during the children’s stay with us.

But most where trees are sending / Their breezy boughs on high / Or stooping low are lending / A shelter from the sky.

(From: ‘Moonlight, Summer Moonlight’ by Emily Bronte)

A favourite local walk threads through a mile and a half of mixed woodlands and riverside where Kielder Forest intersects with the rough upland pasture that surrounds it. I think of this as the Forestry Commission’s factory shop window. With nearly nine trees in ten being either a Sitka or Norway spruce, the vast bulk of the country’s biggest made forest does not invite entry for rest and recreation, but this delightful spot they’ve created always does, whatever the season. This week, during a rare spell of prolonged warm dry weather, it made for a fine cooling stroll with visiting family.

Youngest son Patrick is a chef at a Lake District gastro pub and pointed out as we passed a bank of it that Meadowsweet is as good a bet as elderflower to make a seasonal cordial from. Took the man at his word and the creamy blossoms picked were prepared immediately by him on returning home…And yes, it does indeed.

Shocked to find the normally fast flowing burn so perilously low and sluggish. We watched inch long salmon or brown trout fry (I’m not sure which species) as they darted through the stony shallows seeking shelter and food. The Tyne, of which this stream is a tributary, is currently the only English river in a stable state to support healthy salmon numbers.

This is partly due to major environmental improvements cleaning up the post-industrial river estuary and partly due to the well established salmon breeding centre by the north Tyne river headwaters in Kielder village. (A tourist attraction in itself). The centre releases many thousands of fry into the North and South Tyne river systems every year. Survival rates for game fish in the wild are low; only around 1 in 20 salmon and trout fry survive their first year of life.

Flocks of goldfinches flicking through the lodge pole pines while the cool woods and wide rides at this point are alive with butterflies. Most of them were reluctant to settle, so unable to take a decent photo with my phone. However daughter Grace and I managed to ID a male Meadow Brown. This common butterfly feeds on grasses and loves this sort of environment. There were even greater numbers of ringlets on the wing. Giveaway dark velvety appearance with the halo fringe of white and the palest of dots on the wing in the one I eventually got a shot of when it finally alighted.

Both butterfly species love nectar rich brambles, of which there were a good supply here on the wooded slopes below the pines. I admire the subtle mauve colouring of the flowers and forget about the plant’s wounding barbs.

The forest is estimated to be home to half of England’s endangered red squirrel population and (as noted in ‘Red Alert’) it was here I last saw some in early January last year. No sightings now but always glad to see something striking, like this fungi working its way through a fallen tree trunk or a toppled shallow rooted conifer re-configuring the forest floor.

The winter storms brought down whole swathes of mature trees, causing a path diversion and the foresters have been gradually cutting and clearing masses of windblow timber on this site. Most is now stacked and ready to be loaded and driven off to be turned into chipboard, used as fuel for biomass or sliced up in saw mills.

Across the narrow tarmacked lane a whole hillside was clear felled last year. Today we heard then saw a harvester on caterpillar tracks lifting and stashing a stout wall of brash and brushwood left in the wake of that clearance. They’ll be replanting soon and I’ll be interested to see whether it’ll be all spruce or a mix with deciduous and/or pine.

At one point the path crosses over, or rather through, a shallow bank and ditch, even less noticeable when filled with the flush of tall summer grasses. This is a section of what was once an ancient south to north earthwork known as the Black Dyke, which predates Hadrian’s Wall (where the dyke disappears as the Roman wall runs east to west across it). The earthwork is traceable from the junction of the Allen and South Tyne River to above the North Tyne between Bellingham and Tarset; a distance of approximately 13 miles. The planting of Kielder forest in the 20th century obliterated more, but here the course is clear, while elsewhere the dyke and bank have been incorporated into field boundaries or used as farm tracks and footpaths. It’s generally assumed – though cannot be proved for lack of evidence – the earthwork was originally intended as a boundary between neighbouring Iron Age tribes.

I was reminded of another ancient earthwork, the Giant’s Hedge in Cornwall, a section of which I ‘d walked last month. (see ‘Rail and Trail’ entry)

Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn / A sunlit pasture field with cattle and horse feeding / And haze and vista, and the far horizon fading away. Walt Whitman: A Farm Picture

The summer heat wave has finally arrived, like a long awaited and keenly anticipated guest. Here in the far north of England we’re allowed to revel in its luxurious presence. House and garden are surrounded by fields and the lanes are busy with verge to verge fast moving machinery as farmers and contractors make proverbial hay while the sun shines.

Our neighbouring big meadow was finally cut and turned mid week and on Saturday morning the same contractors returned for part two. First the rowing up with tractor and tedder (machinery that can both spread and ‘row up’ cut hay), soon joined by the tractor with baler and finally a tractor hauled long flat bed trailer makes an appearance with another tractor whose hydraulic forks lift and load the round bales that the baler has just dropped. The whole exercise is fabulously efficient and as skilfully and gracefully executed as a piece of dance theatre.

I make little videos of each stage of process to WhatsApp for viewing by the youngest grandchildren, Max (7) and Lois (5) at home in London who love all things mechanical in action; from cranes to trains to agricultural kit. I did the same last year so this is probably old hat to them now, but I hope they like to be reminded of these classic countryside scenes none the less.

Eldest grandson Joe (18) has, to our delight, opted for a career in farming. We fixed him up for initial work experience with two of our neighbours last year and he’s gained a place at Newcastle University to study agriculture, starting this Autumn. Earlier this Summer he did a two day tractor driving course near his home in the Scottish Borders so in a few years time, who knows, maybe it will be Joe driving one of those tractors in a field near us at hay time!

The garden meadow has produced a flush of oxeye daisies where none flowered before. It was a bordering metre wide strip I’d scarified in previous years so chances of seed taking were greatly increased. Still surprised me though as it took a couple of years for them to finally flower there. Meanwhile the yellow rattle, now spreading freely of its own accord without me needing to reseed by hand, is colonising large patches of grass and consequently reducing the height and density of the sward so that next year, with any luck, other more delicate meadow plants should be able to join the floral cast on display. The pretty yellow flowers have now mostly died away to brown seed pods, whose characteristic rattle give the plant its common name.

The common orchids bought at a local nursery’s closing down sale last summer, re-planted as plugs in the meadow borders have, to my great delight, taken and spread. Having a clump of birds foot trefoil making a debut in the most intensively prepared top triangle of meadow made me very happy too. I hope it too colonises next year. And that, in essence, is the joy of any meadow a gardener creates. You never know what will happen year on year as the character changes with the appearance of different plants, whether deliberately planted or opportunistic arrivals.

I’ve a soft spot for that recurring symbol of pre Christian paganism, the green man. While walking the main thoroughfare out of Polperro when we were back in Cornwall  last month I discovered the workshop of a local woodcarver and bought one of his green man imaginings fashioned from a curving flank of ashwood, to station in our garden back home. Lots of places it could go but for now it has residence in the lush flower and shrub beds of the bank border. I hope it will be happy there, keeping an eye on the landscape.

I love gathering heads of elderflower from our garden trees for Kim to make cordial. Particularly like the blossoms of our single black elder which yield a beautiful deep pink cordial. Some we’ll have over the coming weeks while the rest (decanted in plastic bottles) goes to the freezer to re-conjure the scent of summer in winter.

We’ve caterpillar tent moths camping out on the apple fans for the first time this year. Going round removing them whole by hand eased the problem and reduced chances of the caterpillars devastating leaves and buds. All the apple varieties doing well and the fruit beginning to swell. The James Grieve, the oldest established and most productive of the fan varieties on our south facing wall, doing particularly well.

Two swallow pairs nested this year and one couple are currently sitting on a second brood we suspect, having built a second nest. I guess they have the time to do so, but why bother I wonder? Unless, of course, they’re not the same parents. I say this because the pair that set up shop in our open fronted garden shed (the old railway goods wagon chassis) seem not to have bred there successfully. After initial nest building flights in and out seemed to cease I found a dessicated newly hatched dead nestling on the ground beneath their nest there. There was also a lot of intense chirruping and chasing agro a few weeks back between adults in and around the traditional open porch area where the first pair nested. It could be that the second duo have forced their way in from the old hut to what is clearly the more favoured location. Only a team of ornithologists working with ringed birds could tell if my theory is true!

Northumberland skies are the gift that keeps on giving. Sunsets crown the darkened uplands in spectacular fashion with an infinite variety of clouds forms, while daytime scenes remind us just how busy the skies are with summer flights, as plane vapour trails dissolve in the azure of a near cloudless sky.

Third leg of our west country odyssey spent in the highly entertaining company of our old friend Michael, staying over at his home at Landkey near Barnstaple.

Michael’s low beamed cob walled cottage faces directly onto the road at the front but out back a long narrow garden stretches gently down to a footbridge that crosses the leat which once powered the village’s old sawmill three doors down. This leads to an attractive stream, wavering with weed and water crows foot, forming a boundary with pastures the other side frequented by sheep and rabbits.

Luckily the bunnies aren’t inclined to cross the watery barrier so the small patches of produce Michael grows on what is effectively an island are not unduly threatened. This quiet secluded spot also has apple trees set in a mini-meadow and is the perfect spot to relax with a Pimm’s on a sunny afternoon!

We took a stroll around the lovely Millenium Green, in the creation of which Michael played a key role and is chairman of the charitable trust set up to plant and maintain its local distinctiveness. Mazzards are cherries peculiar to north Devon, first recorded in the 16^th Century and a commercial crop in these parts until WW2. The flowering season draws sightseers to admire the mass of stunning blossom.  The green (orchard) has become a source of great pride to the villagers.

A return trip to RHS Rosemoor in the Torridge valley is always a pleasure. Love the wonderfully varied well curated horticultural environments. Each leads artfully one to another, and are full of interest, whatever the season. Am especially drawn to the rise of meadow field, damp stream side, generous ponds, orchards of regional apple varieties and classic cottage garden…No doubt subconsciously seeking further inspiration and making comparisons to home.

Visiting over the platinum jubilee holiday so amused to encounter this neat and witty leafy tribute to HM The Queen from the gardening crew…

Next day Michael gave us a whistle stop tour of Lynton and Lynmouth in the car, so we could get our bearings. Climbing out of the super steep valley of the Lyn River on the A39 we came up to the hamlet of Countisbury on Exmoor.

Parked at the Blue Ball Inn, a Grade II listed building dating from the 17^th century, and clearly popular with visitors down the years as this wonderful photo from late Victorian times shows. We returned for an outside lunch here after a walk round Countisbury Head, which is in the care of the National Trust.

At nearly 1,000 feet this is the highest point on the whole south-west Coastal path, and not to be traversed if you’ve no head for heights. We were blessed with good weather to enjoy fabulous vistas up along the Somerset coast eastward (above) or looking back along the Devon coast westward (below) while across the Bristol Channel the extensive expanse of South Wales clearly presented itself, from Glamorgan to Pembrokeshire. The imposing mass of Exmoor too looked stunning seen from the television mast on the high point that commands a 360 degree sweep over valleys hills and sea.

Countisbury’s name is deprived from the old English Cune + Burgh meaning camp on the headland and it was here that the Saxons defeated a Danish invading force in AD878. The little parish church of St John the Evangelist, tucked into the hillside with its graveyard just above the pub car park, was a modest but charming old place and we particularly liked this sign by the alms box.

Tom and I have been friends since our secondary school days in Devon in the 1960’s. Have known his wonderful wife Janet since they were married and in recent years they’ve become firm friends with Kim too, cemented by their mutual understanding and shared vocation as hill farmers. A trip back to the western flanks of Dartmoor is not complete if we don’t meet up. Nothing quite matches a traditional farmhouse lunch where the lamb is home produced and beats anything you’d ever sample at the finest restaurant for flavour and texture.

Kim’s stone litho print of a pair of Blue faced Leicester tups has a special place on the farmhouse kitchen wall, as our friends keep rams of this breed themselves.

Before Tom could get back to join us for that exquisite lunch Janet had invited us to join here in the all terrain vehicle on a jaunt down the lanes to their riverside pastures for an inspection of their herd of South Devon cows with calves at foot. The sire, a pedigree Beef Shorthorn bull – informally dubbed Anthony – was beached recumbent on the sward. Janet got out to give him a firm but gentle poke so he’d heave himself up and walk on a few yards before resuming his rest. That way she’d know he was in good working order with no mobility problems.

After a great catch up conversation over lunch we stepped out again, pausing to admire the terrace of house martin dwellings under the eaves before a trip down to the track to the original farmstead over the brow. The new farmhouse where our friends live is a Duke of Bedford model farm dating from the 1850’s. Tom’s forebears were the Duke’s tenants, who’d come up from Cornwall to run this then state of the art agricultural holding. The new structures superceded the old longhouse style dwelling, partly embedded into the field beyond, and connected at right angles to its barn.

Following the passing of Tom’s parents, who had retired here when management passed down the line, the old farmhouse has been undergoing a gradual programme of repair and refurbishment to bring it up to modern standards. The barn, which qualified for heritage grant aid, has been beautifully restored to peak condition. Renewed lime mortar re-pointing and electrical wiring has allowed installation of interior strip lighting to greatly improve working conditions for lambing and other routine tasks.

The old barn has been expertly re-roofed in a traditional ‘graduated’ style where the slates vary in length and width, with the larger slates closer to the eaves and the smaller ones closer to the top of the roof. This style was developed in the days when local quarries produced slate on an ‘as available’ basis, rather than in specific sizes, which required the roofer to sort the slates by hand when they arrived on the job site. By laying the longest and widest slates at the eaves, where they carry the most water, and ‘graduating’ to several other lengths closer to the top, water is more effectively diverted away from the building. A properly constructed graduated slate roof like this one shows no obvious disconnect between the different sizes of slates used as the eye moves up the roof.

The winter storms had ripped the rusted corrugated roof from its moorings on a shed set into the lower side of the yard across from house and barn. Looking more closely at this much altered rectangular building my attention was drawn to some curious features. Small square windows and, more strikingly, regularly spaced stone pillars set within the oldest looking wall. Presumably the pillars preceded the wall, indicating an open structure and a load bearing capacity. So why this feature, and what was the original function? Did some research in my friend Michael Gee’s library at our next port of call in north Devon and was able to get back to my friends with what I’d discovered.

Their humble building must originally have been a linhay and tallet. These were once common in Devon and Somerset but today you’d be hard put to find one in anything like its original condition. (As with many redundant old farm buildings they have been converted into attractive holiday accommodation). A linhay is a two storey open fronted building that housed cattle through the winter months with a tallet, or hayloft, above. First recorded in the 17^th Century they went on being built well into the 19^th so they clearly served a very practical purpose. Today large prefabricated metal and wood farm sheds sheltering bigger numbers of livestock have dispensed with such structures. The true original Linhay had circular wood or stone piers (either granite or mortared stone) at the front with no internal divisions within; examples varying from one to eighteen bays in length. (Each bay being approx. 8 – 10 feet square. The tallet, normally constructed of wood and 6-8 feet above ground level, with the eaves of the double pitched roof some 4-6 feet above that). Hay could be easily loaded from a cart drawn up alongside and conveyed to the animals housed beneath through the winter. An added advantage was that hay provided extra insulation for the stock below. In some farms the linhay was adapted to garage carts when not used for cattle.

Here’s an example on a farm at Holwell, mid Devon, which has had wall infill for the linhay part and whose pillars stretch right to the top of the tallet section.

The outer defence of a castle or walled city, especially a double tower above a gate or drawbridge. Usually barbicans were situated outside the main line of defence and connected with the city walls with a walled road called a ‘neck’.

A day trip to Plymouth, car free, thanks to the Looe to Liskeard rail connection. I remember the odd brief visit to the Barbican, many years apart when it was a more workaday waterfront environment rather than the leisure and cultural destination it has now become. That spirit was captured in the exuberant life affirming paintings of local landlady and self taught artist Beryl Cook (1926-2008). Victoria Wood memorably described her hugely popular and instantly recognisable work as ‘Rubens with jokes’.

This is the historic heart of the settlement that grew to be known as Plymouth and the C14th castle on the hill the Barbican led to only exists as a fragment today. The modern day harbour walls are crammed with commemorative plaques, most famously the one recording the sailing of the Mayflower for America in 1620. Over the road that leads to the hoe and its outstanding views, the great grey cliff like bastions of the Royal Citadel, built in the wake of the civil war and still a military base, marks one boundary of this eclectic maze of narrow cobbled streets where post war social housing rubs shoulders with expensive penthouses. Today the harbour is chock full of yachts moored at pontoons while the old Victorian fish quay has become home to a variety of eateries and artisan outlets. The new quay, relocated across Sutton harbour, thrives as a major landing and market for the commercial fishing community and the neighbouring national aquarium draws the crowds .

I’d recalled from my youth the astonishing mural produced by that other famous Barbican artist and resident, Robert Lenkiewicz (1941-2002). Eventually rediscovered his ‘Everyone is Welcome’ old studio and, on its end wall, the now ghosted and crumbling 300 square foot mural. Created with such verve 50 years ago, and fusing art and life in using local people as his models, it celebrates the metaphysics of the English Renaissance and the Barbican’s role as a dynamic mercantile powerhouse at that time c. 1580-1620. Here’s an online re-coloured version. More at: https://www.robertlenkiewicz.org/

The Barbican’s Southside Street leads one way traffic into what is billed as the largest concentration of cobblestoned streets to be found anywhere in the country. Sitting out on the pavement of the busy narrow thoroughfare over a coffee we watched as a lorry driver halted and man managed all traffic for nearly ten minutes so he could, deftly as any athlete, unload and deliver two pallets worth of goods to one of the many art and craft galleries here

There are some 200 listed buildings in the Barbican, many of them only existing today thanks to bodies like the Plymouth Barbican Trust (PBT) formed in 1957. No 32 New Street has been a museum since being saved from demolition by a big public campaign in the 1930’s and has recently been extensively renovated and given new visitor facilities by the city council. In descending its three wooden floors we discovered a history reflecting that of the neighbourhood at large. Built by a local merchant adventurer in the 1580’s (when the street actually was new) the house was subdivided in the 18^th with a wigmaker occupying the middle floor. As the middle classes left to the suburbs in the 19^th century the lower floor had a through passage added and rooms were given over to multi-occupation. A female sex worker’s story is told here. The Elizabethan house, like others in New Street, recycles a ships mast as newel post, around which the steep stairs wind, extending through to the loft.

The biggest surprise was an attraction I never knew existed until this day. The Elizabethan Garden is actually a recreation of garden designs from the C17th and is a PBT initiative dating from 1970, set behind the New Street properties where once cottages had stood, cleared as slums in the last century, and can only be accessed by a narrow side passage & steps. We were entranced by the garden’s specimen black mulberry tree, the boxwood knot garden, gravelled paths and cool fountain. An inscribed slab lists all those who sailed in the Mayflower and a stone replica of the ship is set in an arch.

The contrast of formalised greenery with walls of grey marble stones was striking. A welcome peaceful haven stepped back from the heart of the old town, overlooking the long narrow gardens of New Street’s cafe bars with their shaded outdoor seating. (proved ideal for a laid back lunch, al fresco).

Despite the old city centre being largely destroyed in WW2 and the naval dockyards badly damaged the Barbican itself survived relatively unscathed and now seems to embrace yet another social and cultural role for the 21^st century.  

Enjoyed a recent family holiday back in the home country. There were outings we took together, like a return visit to the Lost Gardens of Heligan and to the picture book perfect village of Polperro and ones I took on my own to indulge twin loves exploring the countryside on foot and by rail. This holiday offered the opportunity to do both, on the same day!

An affordable summer trip to the seaside for working class families, when I was a boy growing up in west Devon, was a coach trip over the border to Looe. The narrow winding streets of the old fishing port were thronged with visitors then, as indeed it is now. I recall a crowded beach with legions of deck chairs with boat trips fishing for shark especially popular with the menfolk vying to land the biggest catch. Today we saw no deck chairs anywhere on the beach and the resort prides itself on its shark conservation programme.

Our rented cottage in West Looe gave a fantastic view over the confluence of the east and west rivers in their respective sunken river valleys, or ‘rias’. The conjoined Looe river is relatively shallow and fast flowing, sparkling clear, green with waving weed, hundreds of small boats moored on it and bustling extended harboursides to east and west. Sitting out on our veranda, we could see the two carriage trains arrive and depart along the riverbank embankment, appearing from this distance like a model train set. Dating from 1860, the former mineral line was built to replace a canal carrying quarried granite and other produce for export with fish, lime and other imports coming inland. The line was extended in 1901 via a steeply inclined horseshoe loop which finally connected it to the main line at Liskeard. Looe then became the main seaside resort for nearby Plymouth. Housing to accommodate a rapidly expanded population pushed the ancient town’s boundaries up the steep hillsides, linked by flights of steep steps and lanes. It was in one of those former artisan dwellings we were staying.

The sweeping Beeching cuts of the 1960’s proposed closure of the Looe branch. Only the last minute intervention of Transport Minister Barbara Castle overrode that terrible decision and the line is once again thriving, with passenger numbers doubling in the 21^st century. The three stations the track passes through are all request stops. One has what is possibly the most charming station name in the country: ‘St Keyne Wishing Well’. Along with Causland and Sandplace halts it is well maintained by the community rail partnership that manages the line today.

The line is better loved and much improved since the early 1980’s when it was in a sorry state due to under funding and general neglect. I was last here in 1982 undertaking my first TV film role. A 30’ contemporary paranormal drama entitled ‘The Beast’, one of six ‘West Country Tales’ produced by BBC South West, directed by John King (Father of naturalist & broadcaster Simon King). The narrator, also a character in the story, is seen travelling the line in the opening sequence. I wince today when revisiting my own performance as a hapless husband and householder who becomes the beast’s victim. There is a (poor quality) copy on You Tube.

The temperate rainforest of the East Looe River is a delight to travel through by train and the conductor was busy taking fares and dealing with passenger enquiries while also being responsible for working the points at Combe Junction while the driver swops ends. The train then reverses and revs its way out of the valley bottom, up onto the steepest of engine straining inclines, hedge greenery swirling in its wake, to slide under the high arches of the main line viaduct and through concrete tunnels below the A38 to emerge into the restored and well maintained terminus at Liskeard. There, an ace museum in the original waiting room and booking hall tells the line’s fascinating history. More at: https://dcrp.org.uk/category/looe-valley-line/

Jack the Giant, having nothing to do / Built a hedge from Lerryn to Looe’

Despite the temptation to start a walk at one of the rail halts I opted instead to take my country stroll on foot from the holiday home. Circumnavigating the huge visitor car park next where the town’s old boat building yard stood by the confluence of the rivers, to Kilminorth Woods. Everything changed as I was immersed in the cool quiet of its shady green groves stretching from estuary to hilltop. Below me, where oak boughs daily touch high tides, little egrets were quartering the esturial mudflats joined by a scattering of crows. Kilminorth is now an official nature reserve and the biggest area of semi-natural deciduous woodland in Cornwall. Commercially worked for at least four hundred years this varied woodland was a rich source of sustainable timber for a whole range of construction, agricultural and boat building uses.

At some point in the 6^th Century local chieftains had built a nine mile tribal boundary wall and ditch in the west Looe valley and large sections of this remarkable structure remain today in the wood that it probably preceded. Today the roots of invasive trees have altered the nature and appearance of this of the stone flanked earth bank but it remains an impressive landscape feature.  

I emerged from the woodland to continue uphill along a narrow sunken lane dense with ferns, mosses and other damp loving plants typical of this precious topography; an increasingly fragile one as our climate changes. 

Once the land had slowly levelled off, I found myself back under the sun on rough farm tracks skirting a quarry and ploughed fields, yielding fine views over blue seas and distant shorelines. Despite the promise held out by initial signage the public footpath disappeared at some point and I had to zigzag my way by field boundaries looking for signs of a legitimate way forward. Thought I’d discovered it when what from a distance looked like a high style turned out to be a shooting seat for wildfowlers.

Fortunately, just a few yards further along, I found sufficient breach in the earth bank to regain access to the woods. Threading through the undergrowth, putting up speckled wood butterflies and startled blackbirds, I eventually regained the wide tracks that lead me, weary but happy, back to base.

Tell me a thing or two about bones / how they rise from the earth like stalks of wheat / vertebrae on vertebrae / defying gravity for a while, odds stacked / and when the breath is passed / only bones remain. (From One Day a Year by Juana Adcock)

Last year Kim was commissioned to do the illustrations for a poetry booklet which involved her heading over to the other end of the county to do some on site research. I happily went along as her bag carrier, and history being my bag I was more than happy to carry it!

Our destination was Bamburgh. The one time capital of Bernicia, as the Saxon kingdom of Northumbria was known when allied with Deria (modern day County Durham). The sea roads were the motorways of the day and the fortress cum palace atop the mass of Whin sill rock, then as now, dominates this awesomely beautiful stretch of coastline.

Bamburgh – or Bebbanburg as it was then known – was the centre of Christianity in the north of England and home of the early Celtic saints who established and rooted the faith here and at nearby Lindisfarne, or Holy Island. It remains a major place of pilgrimage, secular & religious, to this very day. St Aidan, called from Iona by King Oswald in AD 635, founded the first church that bears his name. The village’s current parish church is Grade 1 listed and it was this, in part, we were coming to discover more about.

Our destination was also the inspiration for Bernard Cornwell’s series of historical novels set in 9^th Century set here and in the other Saxon kingdoms of Wessex & Mercia, The Warrior Chronicles, brilliantly adapted for television as The Last Kingdom. We’re both huge fans so having even this most transcendental connection with saga’s protagonist Uhtred, son of Uhtred, rightful lord of Bebbanburg made us very happy. In our rugged hero’s own words, ‘Destiny is all’!

In the early 19^th century a violent storm revealed part of the extensive dune system south of the castle to be a long forgotten graveyard. Little was made of the discovery in the ‘bowl hole’, as the spot is known locally, and the site was lost again to common memory until recently when from 1997 – 2007 a detailed comprehensive scientific study was made of the remains of the 110 individuals whose bodily remains were re-discovered there. Thanks to the wonders of radiocarbon dating we know them to be members of the Saxon royal household, who had lived during the 7^th and 8^th centuries. Burial in the foetal position, pre AD 900, with faces looking west indicates a Christian burial site, though whether they were all Christian or not it’s impossible to say. Approximately half were born and brought up away from this area. Immigrants who had come to serve the court in one capacity or the other from as far away as Mediterranean Europe and Scandinavia – or closer to home – from Scotland, Cumbria and Ireland.

Apart from dental decay caused by richer sweeter foods these folk enjoyed relative good health, indicating high status. (Their diet was more animal based than marine, which seems curious for a coastal community). It’s the unique identifiers that bring individuals into sharper focus though. The 20 year old professional warrior who had suffered severe axe wounds, or the Irish seamstress with the nick between her incisor teeth caused by habitual biting of thread; the middle aged monk from the Hebrides who could have accompanied Aidan, the nine year old girl and her Mediterranean born mother who brought her here, and so on.

Musing on all this and more after lunch in one of the village’s cafes we wondered the near deserted sea shore and dunes, never far from the lengthening shadow of that ever present fortress on the rock, restored and extended by the Victorian arms magnate Lord Armstrong and still a family home. I lingered in Kim’s wake, with bag for samples and shoot, while she focused her camera lens on marram grass in the sand dunes, or gathered shells and seaweed under the wash of the retreating tide. The great expanse of bright winter sky arching over the timeless sea road, empty now of any visible traffic.

In 2016 the bodies of the dead, laid in zinc ossuary boxes imported from the continent, were escorted on horse drawn hearses before large crowds of onlookers to be solemnly re-interred in the crypt of St Aidan’s after a special service. Today an audio-visual display illuminates the story of the Bamburgh Bones on the crypt’s medieval stone walls, while the caskets – like safe deposit boxes with crosses – lie behind a frieze of Celtic style metalwork securing their new found place of eternal rest. We drove home enlightened by the poignancy of the migration story, grateful to have been immersed in the spirit of place. Darkness made visible, thanks to science and the power of human imagination.

But now something of seashell, something of seafoam,/is the arrangement of your puzzle in a vault / beside the sea, where flickers a candleflame / for what they didn’t find. There’s a strongbox for the rest. (From Find by Jacob Polley)

The Bamburgh Bones project is an ongoing cultural enterprise combining the skills and resources of community, academic and tourist bodies, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Find out more at: https://bamburghbones.org/

Footnote. Three days after our visit Storm Arwen struck and we spent the next 10 days living a modern day version of ‘the dark ages’ without electric power. Those experiences are recorded elsewhere on these pages. Kim, keen to make the best of winter daylight hours, set up her easel and drawing equipment by the south facing living room window and started the drawing process for what would become ‘A Hut A Byens’.

Sitting still for hours without heating added an extra challenge. (It certainly kindled an empathy with all those hard working monks illuminating the gospels back in the day at Lindisfarne). When power was restored the pace of work picked up and she met her deadline in mid January.

Poems commissioned and arranged by Dr John Challis (Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts, Newcastle University) and Dr Tony williams (Northumbria University) in partnership with Jessica Turner and Northumberland Coast, AONB.

Skyeldeman, wor nyems, fetched far fr’ hyem / Hanted amang ee, a hut a byens / Happed up wi’ sand ahint the Fairen. / Hunkered i’ the Boolie Hyel / Waitin’ on a hooley /T’howk ‘em oot, th’ baad unkent. (From A Hut A Byens by Katrina Porteous) Translated from the Northumberland coastal dialect, with its roots in the Anglo-Saxon as: Stranger, our names, fetched far from home / Hung around among you, a heap of bones / Covered up with sand in the lee of the Inner Farne. / Crouched in the Bowl Hole / Waiting for a storm / To unearth them, the remains unknown.