The land talks

24/6/2018

Here in Warwickshire, the land speaks its history.

The ancient strip farming from the mediaeval period,  the furrows and ridges, still evident everywhere.  Now the fields are larger, hedges fewer, and sheep grazing the strips. We read of the policy  of killing the sheeps' predator, the wolf,  allowing the expansion of wool farming, funding the wealth of some, pressuring the common farming practices.  Then industrialisation, spinning moving from cottages to factories.

Then depopulatioin of the countryside. Yesterday a walk west of the Oxford canal, across poor farm land to the sites of two abandoned villages, (Wolfhamcote and Braunstonbury), the land showing the mounds of homes, a moat ditch round the site of the manor house, the 14th century church folorn in its overgrown graveyard. It remains a consecrated church, rescued by the very English, Friends of Friendless Churches!  The interior is spare, reflecting the absence of a congregation, but some delightful mediaeval hand adzed pews, narrow, uncomfortable,  one would stay awake for the sermon.

While we were absorbing the peace of its isolation, a bearded tall bloke entered, was he a fellow rambler? No, a local farmer, who maintains a watch over the church.

Will the church still stand, decades to come, used twice a year by candle-bearing visitors (no electricity), singing, celebrating? Join them at 4pm on a 2nd Saturday in December.

Finally, a humble line of nettles, along a shallow ditch, signals the earlier line of the Oxford Canal,  over enthusiastically following the contours of the land. It was shortened  to improve a journey's time, and compete with a neighbouring canal.

Just a 3 hour ramble, slow travel, a fascinating story,  told by the land.