Field and Farms Forever??

How the landscape Beatrix Potter loved came to be.

It's easy to understand why Beatrix Potter, like many others, fell in love with the Lake District.  The pattern of undulating fields and stone walls sprinkled with farmhouses and woodland, along with the quaint villages and quiet tarns, give it a special feeling of intimacy.  This is set against the grandeur of the fells - when they don't disappear mysteriously into the clouds!

Fields around Near Sawrey  showing Castle Cottage where Beatrix Potter lived as Mrs Heelis

Moss Eccles Tarn above Near Sawrey

However, the landscape, even that of the high fells, is largely man-made and would have been woodland.

People started to change the look of things in the Neolithic (around 6,000 years ago).  Polished stone axes from Great Langdale became the 'must have' gifts exchanged by the upper classes across the country.

The sporadic woodland clearance became more extensive in the later Iron Age (say 300 BC to Romans).  Recently (I mean that - about 2013!) an observant boy found a strange piece of metal in a hedgerow near Hawkshead.  Not convinced that it was a bit of junk, he took it to Kendal Museum and it proved to be an Iron Age sword!  Esthwaite Water was probably larger then so the sword might have been ritually broken and thrown into the water as a gift for the god.

Iron Age sword - broken intentionally (Kendal Museum)

From around AD 300 and through the early medieval the climate became warmer and drier - sorry, you missed it!  The Lake District would have been patched with cereals, grown for food, and blue flax and hemp mainly for their fibres.  No, they weren't all high on cannabis!

The many 'thwaite' names, Norse for 'clearing in a wood' suggests that more woodland was cleared under the Danelaw.  Hawkshead's name derives from the Norseman, Haukr, who had his dwelling, Saetr, there.  Sawrey, a muddy place, had its first mention in 1336 as Sourer and Esthwaite Water is literally the 'water by the easten clearing'.

After AD 1000 more trees went and in the late medieval sheep ruled as there was money in wool and monasteries (in this area Furness Abbey) practised large scale sheep farming in the uplands.  The Court House in Hawkshead served as the administrative centre for this area.  If you want to find out more and look inside, call in the National Trust Hawkshead Corner shop for the key.

The Courthouse, Hawkshead

After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, Hawkshead developed as a market town and many of the buildings, including the one which houses the Beatrix Potter Gallery and retains many original features, date from this time.  The name 'Rag, Wool and Putty Street' reminds us that much of the 'industry' would have been based on animal products and the air redolent with more pungent odours than that of roast dinners!

Leather, Rag and Putty Street, Hawkshead

Stone walls make good barriers, and shelter, where hedges might be hard to establish and useful places to put stones cleared from the fields.  In medieval times, ring garth walls marked the open fell from cultivated vally bottoms.  Cultivated land was divided as feudalism gave way to individually farmed land.  Finally, the Enclosure Movement of the 18th and 19th centuries led to the long walls crossing even the most forbidding areas of the high fells.

In the late medieval there was a 'Little Ice Age' (ending around AD 1700 but persisting in Hill Top ticket office) which contributed to the spread of mire and acid grassland.

Sam particularly likes mud! (and moves too fast for my camera action)

From AD 1600 to AD 1900 coppicing for charcoal has left patches of overgrown or managed coppiced woodland in which oak and other species may be encouraged to regenerate.

For more on how we're caring for the landscape now, check out the Rangers' blog.

Looking at trees

One of my favourite jobs at this time of year is looking at trees. If that sounds like a pretty cushy occupation I'd better explain further. As a large landowner, the National Trust 'owns' a lot of trees and because many of those trees come into contact with people and property we need to make sure they are safe.
November and December is the perfect time to undertake Tree Safety Inspections and responsibility for that falls to our Forest Ranger, Richard. But because we've got thousands of trees and only one Richard, some of the other Rangers and I help him out a bit and that's how I found myself one lovely bright afternoon walking around Sawrey looking at trees.

The first thing to look at is the crown of the tree. Is there any dead wood or any broken-off branches hanging up in the tree? Are the branches unbalanced, with too much weight on one side of the tree?
The next thing to look at is the root plate (the area around the trunk where the roots go into the ground). Has the swaying of the tree moved the soil around the roots? This might indicate a problem with root decay. Are there any fungi present in the area? Again a possible sign of decay underground.
On the trunk of the tree we need to look for cavities or splits as well as fungi which might weaken the trunk. Some specialised tools are needed for this bit, namely a rubber mallet and a long screwdriver ground to a point! The mallet is for knocking on the trunk to identify any hollow areas and the screwdriver is to probe into any cavities to see how far in they go. The spray paint is for marking any trees which require the attention of our Forestry Team.

Tools of the trade

I'm happy to say that on my walk around Sawrey I found all the trees to be in good health and identified no potential hazards. I did find a couple of interesting specimens though.

The first was one of the many magnificent ash trees in the area which is in the process of consuming a section of iron railings!

Mmmmm.....railings!

The second interesting tree is actually three trees in one. The original tree is a pollarded ash which in its old age has begun to decay and is playing host to not one but two different species.

Three for the price of one, earlier in the year.

Ash, Rowan and Yew.

You can see from the photos but there is a rowan tree and a yew both growing happily in the decaying wood of the original ash trunk although the rowan has now got its roots into the ground as well.

So if you've got nothing more pressing on this weekend go out and have a really good look at the trees in your garden, local park or National Trust property. Give them a hug too while you're at it.

For my musical link this month I could have gone for 'Shaking the Tree' by Peter Gabriel or the excellent 'Bend Down the Branches' by Tom Waits but finally plumped for this .

Bye for now.

Words and pictures by Pete the Gardener

Summertime, and the livin' is.....

....quite hectic actually!

It's been a busy month since I wrote my last blog post; and the Lakes, like most of the country, has been basking in glorious sunshine. We had three weeks without so much as a drop of rain and it got to the stage where I was forced to break out my hose pipe to water the wilting Astrantias and parched rhubarb patch. We've had some heavy showers in the past few days which have watered the garden far more effectively than I ever could and cooled things down a bit.
The dry weather didn't stop the weeds growing though and as the season progresses many plants finish flowering and need to be dead-headed or cut back completely to produce a new flush of leaves and hopefully a few more flowers. The roses flowered well but didn't last long in the dry weather, so there's plenty of dead-heading to do there too.
Other flowers are taking their place though, the Shasta daises, phloxes and evening primroses are blooming nicely.

Shasta daisy

In the vegetable garden we have had more rabbity visitors (six were reported one afternoon) and I eventually discovered two large holes in the paddock fence, caused by the sheep putting their feet (hooves?) on the netting to try and reach an overhanging rose bush. Once the holes were repaired, no more rabbits have been seen.

The dry weather has kept the slug population nicely under control and kept them away from the strawberry patch long enough to produce this absolute whopper of a strawberry, pictured sitting in an egg cup for scale.

Bigger than a sheep!

In my role as Hill Top's unofficial handyman I'm quite used to wielding a drill and a screwdriver to fix everything from shop fittings to gates and even the coal bunker, but the most unusual request so far came from the shop team. Could I make a 'rustic hat stand' to display our range of headgear outside the shop. Always one for a challenge I set to with saw and drill and produced this-

Hat stand or art installation?

It's amazing what can be done with some hazel poles and an off-cut of oak beam. The only problem is Hawkshead and Wray Castle shops want them now too!

Also this month, I made a brief appearance on Radio 4 Gardeners' Question Time http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036l5kq (my bit starts at 11 minutes and 10 seconds if you don't want to listen to the whole thing). I was suffering with a nasty bout of food poisoning at the time and had to literally drag myself out of my sick-bed to be interviewed, so if I sound a bit spaced out, you know why!

We also had a visit from renowned photographer Allan Pollok-Morris who spent two days (and two very early mornings) in the garden taking pictures for a feature in The English Garden magazine, to be published some time next year.

He didn't get a picture of a giant strawberry in an egg cup though!

See you next time.

Words and pictures by Pete the Gardener.

Ne'er cast a clout...

The expression 'ne'er cast a clout 'til May be out' is well known and often repeated at this time of year. Most of us take it as a warning not to be too keen to put away our warm clothes (clouts) until the end of May when summer is definitely here. There is another theory that the 'May' refers not to the month but to the blossom of the Hawthorn tree, known as May blossom. So to put it another way, 'don't go out without a jacket until the hawthorn is flowering'! The hawthorn isn't flowering here yet so I'm keeping my jacket handy.



May blossom (not this year)!

It was the Sawrey May Queen festivities this weekend when the new 'Queen of the May' and the retiring queen ride in a horse drawn carriage between the villages of Near and Far Sawrey. The rest of the village children ride in a trailer pulled by a vintage tractor while the parents and others walk behind. The village hall in Far Sawrey then plays host to a brief play featuring St. George (hurrah) and the dragon (boooo), maypole dancing and the crowning of the new queen. Inside the hall there is a cake stall, plant sales, a tombola, cream teas and a raffle. A good time is had by all.

My job for the last few years has been to decorate the trailer with flowers. This year with spring being late and the festivities a little earlier than usual there weren't a great deal to choose from. Fortunately the daffodils were still flowering,  so I begged, borrowed and stole flowers from various gardens in the area! I think it turned out ok in the end.



Spot the dragon!



Meanwhile at Hill Top, the garden seems to have gone into overdrive in the last couple of weeks especially the rhubarb which I swear if you stand still you can actually see growing. It's producing a load of flower spikes which look very spectacular but need to be cut off to concentrate the growth into the leaves. It's doing so well, I might even be persuaded to give some to the house staff!


Rhubarb

 There's lots of seed sowing to be done in the veg garden in the next few weeks, runner beans, peas, carrots etc etc all need to be sown but it still feels too early to put out any tender plants so my courgettes will stay in the greenhouse for a while yet, at least until the May blossom is out!

Words and pictures by Pete the Gardener



What a Whopper!

Gardener Pete reflects on the summer that was (if you can call it that!) and introduces a strange local pastime...

The Beasts