Common Ground
Page 29
Thanks also to everyone else who worked on the book behind the scenes. At Hutchinson and Windmill: Jocasta Hamilton, Najma Finlay, Laura Deacon, Chris Turner and Matthew Ruddle. For the exquisite cover, Jason Smith, and for the gorgeous interior map of the edge-land, Emma Lopes. To Hannah Ferguson, Charlotte Bruton and all at The Marsh Agency, and the attentive Alison Tulett for keeping my words in check.
My love and thanks to my children, Thomas and Beatrice, my brother, Matthew, and my father, Maurice, for their knowledge, advice and kindness along the way; also to Karen, Natalie, Freya and Niamh and the rest of the wider, wilder Cowen family. For, variously, the long discussions, long walks, friendship, willingness to lend an ear or a spare room: Tim Jones and Zara Pearson, Alex and Eugenie Price, Charles Westropp and Lydia Sadler, Georgie Hoole and Mark Ballantyne, the Hoole family, Jordan and Alanna Frieda and family, Alex Corbet Burcher, James and Jess Westropp, Theo Cooper and Danielle Treanor, Stuart and Jill Smith and family. For their profound farming insight and knowledge: Andrew Sebire, Michael Flesher and the late Stanley Flesher; and for navigating me through the murky waters of Harrogate District’s planning and housing development policies, Matthew Bagley. To all my friends for their love and support along the way, especially: Simon Skirrow and family, Rob Menzer and family, Sophie Smyth, Leo Critchley, Phil Westerman and Caroline Toogood, Will and Frankie Ridler, George and Alison Scott-Welsh, Lizzie and Danny Varian, Amy and Tom Holmes, James Yuill and Ruth Tapley, Fiona and Geoff Scholtes, Katie Sotheran and Ash Anderson, Xavier and Rachel Archbold, Paul Schofield and the much-missed Peter Westropp.
Various institutions have given me the space, literally and metaphorically, to write and research ideas. My thanks to: the Telegraph (especially Paul Davies), Independent, Guardian and all the staff at Harrogate and Ilkley libraries, especially Irene Todd. In recent years libraries have come under overwhelming financial strain, tasked with ever-greater areas of responsibility to the community. Writing this book has shown me how important such quiet spaces, repositories of local memory and gateways to new worlds, are – especially in a virtual age. These institutions and their staff deserve recognition, support and financing, as the day that we allow free and public centres of learning to degrade or disappear is a step down a dangerous road. I am hugely grateful to all those that sought to record Bilton’s past and present before me, namely the local historians and naturalists of Bilton Historical Society, Bilton Conservation Group (especially the ever-inspiring Bill Williams and Keith Wilkinson), Knox Valley Residents’ Association and Harrogate District Naturalists. History is imperfect and I have recorded fictions too real to not be true and truths that seem nothing short of fiction. The Bilton that appears here is mine; people’s names have been changed in some cases, in others it was important that they had to remain the same. But all mistakes are my own fault and mostly intentional. My grateful thanks also to the staff and grounds team at Bilton Hall Nursing Home and the fantastic midwives, doctors and nurses of Harrogate District Hospital.
Profound thanks to Tim Dee for the words, the birds and the beers. He has been a great friend, inspiration and an invaluable resource during the thinking and writing of this book. To Martin Simpson for granting me permission to use the lyrics to ‘Never Any Good’ when I couldn’t think of anything that said it better, and thanks also to the music of Mike Oldfield, John Martyn, Nic Jones, Nick Drake, George Harrison, Michael Chapman, Anne Briggs, Steeleye Span, Arcade Fire, Bob Dylan and Tom Waits. Lastly to all those others who have trodden literary paths into nature or place before me, and in whose footsteps I humbly follow: J.A. Baker, Richard Mabey, Roger Deakin, Robert Macfarlane, Kathleen Jamie, Helen Macdonald, Luke Jennings, Horatio Clare, John Clare, Richard Jeffries, Edward Thomas, Thomas Hardy, T.S. Eliot, J.L. Carr, Mark Cocker, W.A. Poucher, Richard Muir, Bill Williams, Marion Shoard, Nan Shepherd, Christina Hardyment, J.G. Ballard, W.R. Mitchell, Henry Williamson, W.G. Sebald, Patrick Barkham, George Monbiot, Tim Binding, Philip Hoare, Melissa Harrison, Simon Armitage, Olivia Laing, Nick Papadimitriou, Iain Sinclair, Will Self, Paul Farley, Michael Symmons Roberts, Michael McCarthy, Bill Griffiths, John Crace, Alan Bennett, Philip Larkin, Tony Harrison and Ted Hughes.
Notes and Selected Bibliography
Place of publication is London unless otherwise stated.
Epigraph
1 ‘To know fully’: Patrick Kavanagh, ‘The Parish and the Universe’, Collected Pruse, MacGibbon and Kee, 1964.
Prologue: New Year’s Eve
Marion Shoard, ‘Edgelands’, as it appears in Remaking the Landscape (ed. Jennifer Jenkins), Profile Books, 2002.
Marion Shoard, This Land is Our Land, Gaia Books, 1997.
Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside, J.M. Dent, 1986.
Jean Clottes, Chauvet Cave: The Art of Earliest Times, University of Utah Press, 2003, translated by Paul G. Bahn, from La Grotte Chauvet, l’art des origins, Éditions du Seuil, Paris 2001.
David Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave, Thames & Hudson, 2002.
1 ‘Becoming-animal’: taken from Gilles Deleuze, ‘The Body, the Meat and the Spirit: Becoming Animal’ from Tracy Warr (ed.), The Artist’s Body, translated by Liz Heron, Phaidon Press, 2000.
Simon Schama, Landscape & Memory, HarperCollins, 1995.
Crossing Point
Ely Hargove, History of the Castle, Town and Forest of Knaresborough: with Harrogate, and Its Medicinal Waters, York Edition, 1798.
Bernard Jennings, A History of Harrogate and Knaresborough, Advertiser Press, Huddersfield, 1970.
William Grainge, History and Topography of Harrogate and the Forest of Knaresborough, Smith & Co., 1871.
Bill Williams, Bilton Through the Ages, Bill Williams, Harrogate, 1985.
Walter J. Kaye, Records of Harrogate, F.J. Walker, Leeds, 1922.
Phyllis Hembry, The English Spa, 1560–1815, The Athlone Press, 1990.
G. Body, PSL Field Guides – Railways of the Eastern Region, Volume 2, Patrick Stephens Ltd, Wellingborough, 1988.
Walter Weaver Tomlinson, The North Eastern Railway, its Rise and Development, Longmans, Green and Co., 1914.
On the development of Harrogate’s railway lines, see: http://lostrail-wayswestyorkshire.co.uk/Leeds%20Harrogate.htm.
Malcolm Neesam, Harrogate Great Chronicle, 1332–1841, Carnegie Publishing, Lancaster, 2005.
H.G. Lloyd, The Red Fox, Batsford, 1980.
Martin Wallen, Fox, Reaktion Books, 2006.
Kenneth Varty, Reynard The Fox, Leicester University Press, Leicester, 1967.
Laura Spinney, ‘The Lost World’, Nature, 454, 2008.
Derek Yalden, The History of British Mammals, T. & A.D. Poyser, 1999.
Richard Jefferies, The Gamekeeper at Home and The Amateur Poacher, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1960.
Hope P. Werness, The Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in Art, Continuum, 2003.
C.G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Routledge (2nd edition), 1991.
C.G. Jung, Psychological Types, translated by R.F.C. Hull as in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Bollingen Ser 20, Volume 6, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1971.
Laurie Milner, Leeds Pals: History of the 15th (Service) Battalion (1st Leeds) the Prince of Wales’ Own (West Yorkshire Regiment), 1914–18, Wharncliffe Books, Barnsley, 1993.
Chris Mead, Robins, Whittet Books Ltd, 1989.
Ultrasound
Bertel Brunn (with illustrations by Arthur Singer), Birds of Europe, McGraw-Hill, 1971.
John R. Mather, Birds of the Harrogate District, Harrogate and District Naturalists’ Society, Harrogate, 2001.
Chris Mead, Owls, Whittet Books Ltd, Stansted, 1994.
Leanne Thomas (with illustrations by Chris Shields), Guide to British Owls and Owl Pellets, Field Studies Council, 2008.
Colin Harrison, A Field Guide to Nests, Eggs, Nestlings of British and European Birds, Viking Press, 1982.
Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey, Birds Britannica, Chatto & Windus, 2
005.
Mark Cocker, Birds and People, Jonathan Cape, 2013.
Paul Sterry, Collins Complete Guide to British Birds, Collins, 2008.
On tawny owl calls and mating, see: http://godsownclay.com/TawnyOwls/tawnyowlsentrypa.html.
Philip Stewart Robinson, Birds of the Wave and Woodland, Hard Press, 2013.
Krystyna Weinstein, The Owl in Art, Myth, and Legend, Grange Books, 1990.
Virginia C. Holmgren, Owls in Folklore and Natural History, Capra, Santa Barbara, 1989.
Gertrud Benker, While Man and Nature Sleep: Owls are Cultural Symbols of Dark Mystery and Good Fortune, The World & I Online (Kindle edition), 1993.
1 ‘She is a bird indeed … but conceals her shame in the darkness; and by all the birds she is expelled entirely from the sky’: Ovid, The Metamorphoses (FABLE IX), translated by Henry T. Riley, Digireads.com, 2009.
2 ‘He is the very monster of the night … if he be seen, it is not for good, but prognosticates some fearful misfortune’: Pliny (The Elder), Natural History: A Selection, translated by John F. Healey, Penguin, 1991.
3 ‘It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman, which gives the stern’st goodnight’: William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 2.ii, 4–5.
D.W. Snow and C.M. Perrins, The Birds of the Western Palearctic (concise edition), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998.
Robert Burton, Bird Behaviour, Granada Publishing, 1985.
Karel H. Voous, Owls of the Northern Hemisphere, Collins, 1988.
4 ‘All of the night was quite barred out except …’: Edward Thomas, ‘The Owl’, as it appears in Annotated, Collected Poems, edited by Edna Longley, Bloodaxe Books, Hexham, 2008.
The Union of Opposites
1 ‘A change in the weather’: Marcel Proust, In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 3: The Guermantes Way, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff, D.J. Enright and Terence Kilmartin, Vintage Classics, 1996.
George Ewart Evans, David Thomson, The Leaping Hare, Country Book Club (reprint edition), 1974.
2, 3, 4, 5 ‘The man who encounters the hare’: the sections of folk terms for the hare throughout this chapter are taken from the Middle English poem ‘The Names of the Hare in English’, which appears in many forms. This is the version transcribed by Ewart Evans and David Thomson in The Leaping Hare, Country Book Club (reprint edition), 1974.
John Layard, The Lady of the Hare, Shambhala, Boston, 1988.
Simon Carnell, Hare, Reaktion Books, 2010.
Christine Gregory, Brown Hares in Derbyshire: The Story of One of the Peak District’s Most Enigmatic Mammals, Vertebrate Publishing, Sheffield, 2012.
Heather McDougall, ‘The pagan roots of Easter’, Guardian, 3 April 2010.
Adrian Bott, ‘The modern myth of the Easter bunny’, Guardian, 23 April 2011.
6 ‘The hare springs up the hero in many flood myths’: this telling of the hare’s role in saving Noah’s Ark is explained by Alan Dundes and appears in his The Flood Myth, University of California Press, Oakland, 1988.
7 ‘For one month it becomes male, and the other female’: this example is taken from Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales: laws supposed to be enacted by Howel the Good, an insightful and revealing repository printed in 1831.
Jeremy Rifkin, Biosphere Politics: A New Consciousness for a New Century, Crown Publications, New York, 1991.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, translated by George Norman Garmonsway, Everyman’s Library, 624, 1953.
Kevin Cahill, Who Owns Britain, Canongate, Edinburgh, 2001.
Simon Fairlie, ‘A Short History of Enclosure in Britain’ as it appeared in The Land, Issue 7, 2009.
Colin Ward, Cotters and Squatters: The Hidden History of Housing, Five Leaves Publication, 2002.
Claire Joy, ‘The roots of our rootlessness – a history of enclosures’, as it appears on http:/www.reclaimthefields.org.uk, accessed 2 April 2012.
George Monbiot, ‘The Tragedy of Enclosure’, in Scientific American, 1994.
Joan Thirsk, ‘The Common Fields’ as it appeared in Past and Present, 29, 1964.
Giselle Byrnes, Boundary Markers, Bridget Williams Books, New Zealand, 2002.
C.S. and C.S. Orwin, The Open Fields, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1938.
Thomas More, Utopia, Everyman, 1994.
‘The Harrogate Improvement Act being an act for improving certain parts of the townships of Bilton with Harrogate, and Pannal, called High and Low Harrogate, for protecting the Mineral Springs and for other purposes therein mentioned; (Verbatim from the Parliamentary Copy) Prepared by the Solicitors for Obtaining the Act’, Pickersgill Palliser, Harrogate, 1845.
James Manby Gully, Water Cure in Chronic Disease, Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1884.
Gillian Thomas, ‘Lime and Coal in Bilton’ as it appeared in St John Bilton’s Parish Magazine, date unrecorded.
Bernard Jennings, A History of the Wells and Springs of Harrogate, Harrogate Corporation Department of Conference and Resort Services, Harrogate, 1974.
Adam Hunter, A Treatise on the Mineral Waters of Harrogate and its Vicinity, Longman and Co., 1830.
Neville Wood (ed.), Health resorts of the British Islands, University of London Press: Hodder & Stoughton, 1912.
Andrew Scott Myrtle and James Aitken Myrtle, The Harrogate Mineral Waters and Chronic Diseases, with Cases, R. Ackrill, Harrogate, 1867.
John B.L. McKendrick, ‘The Value of Sulphur Baths in Rheumatism’, a Thesis for Degree of M.D at Glasgow University, 1934.
Robert Mortimer Glover, On Mineral Waters: Their Physical and Medicinal Properties, Henry Renshaw, 1857.
Malcolm Neesam, Harrogate Great Chronicle, 1332–1841, Carnegie Publishing, Lancaster, 2005.
William Grainge, History and Topography of Harrogate and the Forest of Knaresborough, Smith & Co., 1871.
Bill Williams, Bilton Through the Ages, Bill Williams, Harrogate, 1985.
Walter J. Kaye, Records of Harrogate, F. J. Walker, Leeds, 1922.
Richard Muir, Shell Guide to Reading the Landscape, Michael Joseph Ltd, 1981.
8 ‘There are voices today that call for “re-wilding”’: I’m grateful to Tim Dee for our numerous conversations on modern forms of enclosure and the challenges of nature conservation and mediated experiences of landscape. He also touches on these subjects in his wonderful Four Fields, Jonathan Cape, 2013.
DNA
Richard Prior, The Roe Deer: Conservation of a Native Species, Swan Hill Press, Shrewsbury, 1995.
Henry Tegner, The Roe Deer – Their History, Habits and Pursuit, Tideline Publications, Rhyl, 1981
Emma Griffin, Blood Sports: Hunting in Britain since 1066, Yale University Press, Yale, 2008.
Ruth A. Johnston, All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World, Volume 1, ABC-CLIO LLC, 2011.
Richard Almond, Medieval Hunting, The History Press, 2011.
John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk: Art of Medieval Hunting, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988.
Edward of Norwich, edited by William A. and F.N. Baillie-Grohman, The Master of Game, The History Press (reprint edition), 2011.
Mike Brough, History & Hikes of the Ancient Royal Hunting Forest of Knaresborough, Colin Michael Brough, Harrogate, 2013.
Bernard Jennings (ed.), A History of Nidderdale, Pateley Bridge Tutorial Class; Advertiser Press Limited, Huddersfield, 1983.
Early Yorkshire Charters Volumes I and IX, based on manuscripts of the late William Farrer, Charles Travis Clay CB, FBA (ed.), Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 1952.
Arnold Kellett, Historic Knaresborough, Smith Settle Ltd, Otley, 1991.
Arnold Kellett, The Knaresborough Story, Lofthouse Publications, Pontefract, 1990.
Nicky Milner, Barry Taylor, Chantal Conneller and Tim Schadla-Hall, Star Carr: Life in Britain After the Ice Age, Council for British Archaeology, 2013.
J.G.D. Clark, Excavations at Star Carr, Cambridge University Prress, Cambridge, 1954.
T. Clare, ‘Before the first woodland clearings’, British Archaeology 8, htt
p://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba8/BA8FEAT.HTML, 1995.
R. Chatterton, ‘Star Carr reanalysed’, in J. Moore and L. Bevan (eds.) Peopling the Mesolithic in a Northern Environment, Archaeopress, Oxford, British Archaeological Reports International Series 1157, 2003.
C.J. Conneller, ‘Star Carr recontextualised’, in J. Moore and L. Bevan (eds), Peopling the Mesolithic in a Northern Environment, Archaeopress, Oxford, British Archaeological Reports International Series 955, 2003.
Brian G. Dias & Kerry J. Ressler, ‘Parental olfactory experience influences behavior and neural structure in subsequent generations’, Nature Neuroscience 17, 2013.
Nessa Carey, The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance, Icon Books Ltd, 2012.
Benjamin Elliott, ‘Antlerworking practices in Mesolithic Britain’, PhD thesis, University of York, Department of Archaeology, 2012.
One Day
E. Percival and H. Whitehead, Observations on the Biology of the Mayfly, Ephemera Danica, Mull, reprint from the Leeds Philosophical Society, Leeds, 1926.
Malcolm Greenhalgh, The Mayfly and the Trout, The Medlar Press, Ellesmere, 2011.
Paul Giller and Bjorn Malmqvist, The Biology of Streams and Rivers, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998.
Gary Lafontaine, The Challenge of the Trout, Mountain Press, Missoula, 1983.
The Turning Time
Chris Kightley, Steve Madge and Dave Nurney, The Pocket Guide to the Birds of Britain and North-West Europe, Pica Press, 1998.
R.S.R. Fitter, Collins Pocket Guide to British Birds, Collins, 1966.
Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey, Birds Britannica, Chatto & Windus, 2005.
David Lack, Swifts in a Tower, Methuen, 1956.