A Winter's Tale

I have a great many books - shelves and shelves of them in fact. Some I have bought and never quite got round to reading properly and others I haven't read for many years. A couple of days ago I decided to gather a pile of these together and put them on a small table next to the sofa so that I can spend some of the dark winter afternoons and evenings reading or re-reading them.

Vanishing England is one of the pile that I've read in the past but I want to make a few notes of the places and buildings mentioned this time and see whether later this year I can look for some of them to see whether they have indeed vanished. If they are still there it will be interesting to see how much they have changed from the time when the book was first published in 1910. There's quite a lot on East Anglia so those I may well be able to check on when I'm visiting Neil and Cesca.


England is A Village I have read not just once in the past but several times, it was written during the early months of WW2 and published in 1940 and describes a country village life that is now long gone but one that I can just about remember.

Something else that makes this one of the books I would grab if there was a fire are the lovely illustrations by Denys Watkins Pitchford, they are so atmospheric.
Denys Watkins Pitchford is the real name of the author of three of the other books in this pile - 'The Wayfaring Tree', 'Tide's Ending' and 'Dark Estuary'. 'BB' was not only an artist but a wildfowler, angler, conservationist and superb naturalist.He was responsible for the re-introduction of the rare Purple Emperor to a wood in Northamptonshire which is now one of the best sites in Britain to see this beautiful butterfly. I own 16 of his books at present and hope to acquire more but the ones I don't have tend to be expensive as they are very collectible. The two I want most are 'A Summer On The Nene' (a really good copy is over £100 - by some distance!) and 'Indian Summer' which ranges between £40- £110! There is every chance that one of these will be joining my collection this year:)

These are the two little books sitting on top of the pile, there are two more in the series which are on my book wish list. Published in the late 1940s they are simple guides to what you might see through the year in each location. 'A Walk Down The Lane' begins

"It is damp and raw on this Winter's morning, with heavy clouds, cold,clinging mists,mud and sodden grass; chilling to the very marrow of ones bones. The lane takes on a forbidding appearance. Nature is in her nakedness and the trees shiver as Boreas, the great North Easter, blows through them."

That pretty much describes many winter mornings on the lane that leads up to Blackamoor where I walk every day with B Baggins.
The other three are 'A Walk In The Woods', 'A Walk By The River' and 'A Walk O'er The Downs' - I rather suspect that the author lived in Sussex:)

This photograph comes from Seasons of Change and shows a woman plaiting rushes into baskets. Many women supplemented the meagre wages of their ag lab husbands by making lace, straw plaiting and other rural crafts in the 19th century. The book itself chronicles the impact of the Industrial Revolution on rural life between 1850 and 1914. It is profusely illustrated with photographs throughout. I've had this book a long time but have never yet done more than leaf through it.

From the same book comes this photograph which shows how quickly people forget how hard life was only 100 years ago - the lifetime of my grandparents! This is John Brinkworth still working as a hedger and ditcher at the age of 81! No old age pensions in those days, you had to keep on working as long as you could and then if your family couldn't support you it was into the Workhouse. My mum was born in 1910 and all her life she was terrified of having to go into hospital because she associated hospital with the Workhouse. Of course many hospitals did begin life as the local Workhouse which was definitely not a place where you would want to end your days. I do seem to have strayed off the subject a bit here don't I? :)

A modern reprint of book originally published in 1952 and full of all kinds of interesting bits and pieces about the countryside and country life as it was then. I was 6 years old in 1952 and regularly walked 5 or 6 miles with my mum along local country lanes, my dad worked on Sundays so in Spring, Summer and Autumn mum and I usually went out walking taking a picnic lunch with us. We used to sing as we walked - The Happy Wanderer, Daisy,Daisy (Lend Me Your Bicycle Do),The Gypsy Rover, It's A Long Way To Tipperary and lots of other songs. It was a different world then.
Edited to add:
Did anybody notice? I was walking up the field back to Short's Lane this morning when I started singing to myself 'Daisy,Daisy, Lend me your bicycle do' when I suddenly thought 'LEND ME YOUR BICYCLE'? By the time I reached the lane I was laughing out loud and singing the proper words ''Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do'. What on earth was I thinking last night when I wrote that? Talk about a senior moment!

The Time Travellers group has a little sub group devoted to researching the Brigantes tribe which ruled a large area of Northern Britain. Cartimandua was queen of the Brigantes at the time of the Roman conquest so she is going to be my introduction to the Brigantes about whom I currently know very little indeed.

Another book I've had a good while and still not read, it's about the history, folklore, wildlife and people of the Fens - a very special area of England most of it barely above sea level which until very recently was remote from the rest of the country.

The Fens are famous for the wonderful array of wildfowl, waders and other birdlife to be found there. Here also can be found the fen raft spider, this is the UK's largest and rarest spider, one I trust I shall only ever see from a distance and preferably not at all!

So that is that is my reading for the next few weeks. I think you can glean quite a lot about me from those titles. There is of course another pile - the new books that arrived over Christmas! That's for another post though.