Kingston and lime trees

Now I'm alerted to lime trees (thanks to Oliver Rackham [see Rackham ‘label’ down the side] and my trip to Berlin) I'm seeing them everywhere, and as often as not they’re big. There’s a nice bunch at the back of the Institute of Education in Bloomsbury.

And then guess what. I'm walking down a few steps this morning to get to the riverside walk on my way to Kingston, where I was (though I didn’t then know it) to have a nice German bratwurst in the market square, and noticed the stainless steel information display erected like an odd-shaped sloping table at the water’s edge and for the first time ever went over to read it. A main item on it is lime trees, evidently a local feature worthy of remark. So are the great crested grebes on the river that I've mentioned before.

There was some good history, too, that I hadn’t been aware of. I knew Kingston had at one time been the seat of Saxon kings, probably because it had the first bridge as you went up the Thames (I presume the Roman London Bridge had fallen down). But it also had royal connections into the middle ages, with the Treaty of Kingston, 1217, about which I read ‘The Treaty of Kingston, describes peace negotiations commenced between John and Louis, dauphin of France immediately after the defeat of the latter's supporters at Lincoln in May 1217. Talks broke down before a further naval defeat at Sandwich persuaded Louis to agree terms at Lambeth’ (Wikipedia).

Also, Raven’s Ait, an island (old English eyot = ‘island’) in the river up by Surbiton, was the source of osiers for the basket makers. The baskets, I guess, would be for the salmon that were the main product of Kingston.

And finally Sopwith! Tommy Sopwith had a works in Kingston -- 6 fitters and carpenters and a boy -- designing flying boats for the First World War. The prototypes were tested on the Thames until the Thames Conservancy objected, so Sopwith moved down to Richmond where the Port of London Authority, who control the river up as far as it’s tidal, were more hospitable. Sopwith’s colleague in the venture was none other than Hawker, Harry Hawker, later of Hawker Siddeley.

So fancy living in a place like that. The sausage was nice, too.

Trees on Box Hill

Reading Oliver Rackham has made trees more interesting. On the heavily wooded Box Hill, which I went up the other day, fallen trees had been left lying and not cleared away. (The pics look much better if you click them.)

Rackham’s right. They grow again from the upturned root.

On that chalk hill a typical underside looks like this – it’s surprising how shallow tree roots often are:


But looking along the length of the fallen trunk the root mass seems like the source of whole new thicket.



David Hockney was sad recently on returning to a small beech wood in East Yorkshire that he regularly painted to find it had been felled by the owner .

Hockney saw this as a permanent loss to the landscape. But one of Rackham’s most insistent points (one also made by some respondents to the article) was that you don’t destroy a wood by chopping it down; only by grubbing out the roots. Provided you keep deer away, fresh shoots grow from the stumps and in a few years you have another wood. Indeed, most woods until a few generations ago were regularly felled because the main need was for the smaller growth that was used for firewood, poles and fencing. This was coppicing (see John Medway's blog on this).

Then the trees were allowed to grow again. Only certain trees were managed for their timber; that is, the mature trunks and branches that provided material for construction (furniture, buildings, carts etc.). The language made a clear distinction between timber and the smaller, more consumable wood that came from the younger growth.

I'm not sure if this is the wood in question – but it’s certainly the artist:

[source]

Hockney, of course, went to Bradford Grammar School, but that’s another story.

Late winter in the Peaks

Today it’s spring in London, but in Derbyshire a couple of weeks ago it was still winter.


You can see on one tree, though, that winter will soon be ending. (A sycamore, I think.)


Being in the middle of Woodlands by Oliver Rackham (see my earlier posting) I paid special attention to trees. This landscape would I think count for him as savannah – grassland with scattered trees -- though not at all like our usual image. Here’s a wood, too, which Rackham would know how to date (with historical documents, geography and botany).

The tree that’s blown over would, in Rackham’s experience, probably go on growing.

Everywhere are dry stone walls, the ones, I assume, by which the Enclosure Acts were implemented. The presence of grazing animals and free-standing trees make these valley fields seem like parkland.

Oliver Rackham on Woodlands

What a lovely book. It’s number 100 in Collins New Naturalist series. Lovely cover, lovely paper, lovely illustrations and lovely printing (done in Britain, too, by Butler and Tanner of Frome).

And a text that’s sheer pleasure. Oliver Rackham writes beautifully and draws on his knowledge as scientist, historian, teacher, traveller and observer. He seems to have been to most of the world’s environments, poking about wherever there are trees. (Australia comes out as a case on its own: it ‘might as well be another planet’.)

The science appears to be bang up to date, with theories and hypotheses and evidence presented, as well as his own views. He tells us what his students have suggested as explanations of this, that and the other. He gives us a history of woodland in the British Isles (wildwood, wood, wood-pasture, forest and Forest are all distinguished). It never seems to have been dense forest; woodland was often more like savannah – grass with sporadic trees. Everything changes over time – the type of tree, the health of trees (see the Oak Change of c.1900 when oak lost the ability to propagate in existing woodland.) There was probably little more woodland in Roman times than until quite recently. He includes lots of maps and lots of quotations from charters and surveys. He has a good go at the misapprehensions of many conservationists. He’s great on coppicing and pollarding, fire, cattle and deer and royal hunting.

It’s a nature book that gives huge intellectual pleasure. Here’s a sample couple of double pages spreads.