These occasional emails formed part of a 12 month plus documentation project on the Piddle Valley in Dorset, England. Only a few miles long, the valley includes the villages of Alton Pancras, Piddletrenthide and Piddlehinton. Circulated to a mailing list of 100 people, these recorded observations made during visits throughout the year of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Through them, the story unfolds. Each email was sent out with a photo-illustration. The project will be resumed and brought to some kind of spectacular and beautiful resolution.
> From: bjay
> Sent: Sunday December 30, 2001 15:25 PM
> To: Graham Peet
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 1
21st December 2001
On this, the first day of winter, the Piddle flows down the valley with barely a murmur. The road, mud slick and salted, runs parallel to the river, following a gently curving north-south axis. It is a road I have traveled many times: on foot, by bike, car and omnibus. It is utterly quiet.
The Piddle runs through the villages, next to the houses and the new school, and past the old army camp to Fisher’s Corner, where the valley broadens and the road forks to go south to Dorchester. The river turns east to run past Puddletown and Wareham, and flows into the sea at Poole Harbour.
The name of the river comes from the Old English word pidele, meaning a marsh or a fen. It has also been known as the Trent, itself an old Celtic river name, possibly meaning ‘the trespasser’ – or a river that’s liable to flood. Last winter, more than 40 houses were flooded in the Piddle Valley.
We are rooted in cities now. We are fundamentally an urban community.
The average home crowd at West Bromwich Albion far exceeds the entire population of Dorchester, the County Town, and the Piddle Valley put together.
As town dwellers, we now ask ourselves, ”What is the countryside for?”
As a place of food production, it’s disappearing. Even 30 years ago, agriculture contributed only 3% of national income. Today, it is less than 1%. This Merrie England is long gone. Has it become simply a place we drive through, or a place to have a second home?
> From: bjay
> Sent: Thursday March 28, 2002 19:37 PM
> To: Gary Stewart
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 2
We begin life as water borne creatures, suspended in the rich amniotic fluid of the womb. Our bodies are primarily water.
In Northern Europe we are rain-lashed and waterlogged. In just one week in February, there were over 100 flood warnings in England and Wales. More than forty houses along the Piddle have been affected in the last year by flooding. The bill to improve drainage and river clearance in the valley, and to install a new culvert and pipeline, will approach £700,000. The religious and magical significance of water is hidden by concern over increasing insurance premiums and taxes as a result of flooding, now a familiar rueful seasonal tale.
At one time, rivers such at the Piddle were used to irrigate fields to enrich pasture – a controlled flood. There is a record of this as early as 1607, from an order of the manor court of Affpuddle.
As a planet, we have water in abundance, and yet it is a scarce commodity. Less than one hundreth of one per cent of the world’s water is both drinkable and renewed by precipitation. The great rivers of the world are contested sites, and the management of water is an increasing source of social and political conflict. Meanwhile our local rivers appear to be drying up and losing their plant, insect and fish life.
An average human being can only survive 3 days without water and we have an ancient urge to live near it; for sustenance, cleansing, for healing, and - latterly - for a view.
> From: bjay
> Sent: Thursday May 22, 2002 16:34 PM
> To: tsjwells
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 3
Lunch at the Brace of Pheasants, Plush:
One pint of Fuller’s London Pride Ale
Trio of Pigeon Breasts, Port and Raspberry sauce
Chocolate Raisin and Rum Pot.
Thus, today, pigeons roost in my mind.
I have never eaten a pigeon before. Each pigeon breast could fit comfortably in the palm of a small hand. An artist from Bohemia told me that in her village they served the whole thing, as there was so little meat to be had in the first place.
Pigeons do not make a single appearance in any of the 200 recipes printed in the Piddle Valley Cookbook - published in 1978 to raise funds for the 12th century church in Piddletrenthide, All Saints. Nearly half the book is taken up with Puddings, Cakes, Biscuits and Bread. There are 18 recipes for Vegetable Dishes, my favourite of which is Green Nettle Bake.
Plush, where I am eating pigeon for the first time, is a small hamlet that lies over the hill to the east of Piddletrenthide. On the way back, in the grounds of the Manor House, near the curving road to Plush, I seek out an architectural curio, an 18th century dovecote.
Pigeon rearing was practiced by the Romans, but it was the Normans who built towers to function as large pigeon houses or dovecotes. Originally an activity that was the preserve of the ruling class of clergy and aristocracy, pigeon rearing became widespread in the 18th century; in the Counties of England, over 26000 dovecotes were recorded at this time. In a hard winter, pigeons also provided food. Later, in the 19th century, pigeon rearing and racing migrated with the working class from the countryside to the new industrial towns.
In folklore, pigeons can be perceived as omens of ill health or prognostications of death. Though of the same family, Columbidae, doves have more positive connotations, as symbols of peace. It was Picasso who provided the drawing of the dove used by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He made many drawings and paintings with pigeons.
Armies have also made widespread use of these birds, to carry messages and for espionage. In the First World War, keeping them was banned in Occupied Belgium. At this same time, a few miles further to the east of the Piddle Valley, at Bovington Army Camp, the first tanks were being tested. The Army explored the use of pigeons as a means of communication between these mechanical behemoths, with a basket or two aboard each tank. However, they were soon abandoned in favour of a semaphore system.
Tank Corps personnel were expected to undertake The Pigeon Course, along with the Revolver Course and Driving and Maintenance Course. One Tank Corps member recalled: "I cannot recall any incident where they proved of much use, as either the tank had to be evacuated in a hurry, the pigeons were either stupified by the fumes, or as has been reported they were used up as emergency rations."
Today, the approach to this dovecote is heavily overgrown. With the Foot and Mouth restrictions in the last year, less people and their dogs have tramped down the paths. It stands in solitude, sun glinting through a high sandstone opening, black birds wheeling slowly overhead.
> From: bjay
> Sent: Monday June 10, 2002 12:10 am
> To: kimabeles
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 4
In 1976, I loitered on the south coast. It was going to be a long, achingly hot summer and I felt lazy. I watched the paint dry on the statue of George III on Weymouth Esplanade, erected in 1809 and being slowly restored by some disinterested youths on a new government youth employment scheme.
I picked up a copy of ‘Highways and Byways of Dorset’ by Sir Frederick Treves, then a month bus pass (‘£5 to Travel ANYWHERE in the West Country!’), a notebook, an ordinance survey map, a borrowed camera and set out to explore beyond the familiar Dorset of my childhood.
Away then in search of Melcombe Bingham, Fiddleford Manor, Arish Mell, Childe Okeford, Rhyme Intrinsica, Spettisbury Rings, Nettlecombe Tout, Toller Porcorum and Clouds Hill.
One day I went to Piddletrenthide to have tea with Colonel Potter and his wife, Joan, who my Auntie had worked with at the hospital. And so, as the Queen’s Silver Jubilee celebrations of the following year unfolded, I began to photograph in this Valley, delve into the archives of the County Museum, and write about my walks and the people I met.
> From: bjay
> Sent: Thursday June 13, 2002 10:43 AM
> To: dudleytipton
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 5
Another 1977
"Of the new bands, Warsaw, The Fall and The Drones
look the most likely to make any headway."
- Stephen Morrissey, writing in the fanzine Kids Stuff, July 1977
The Silver Jubilee marked a strange span of time, from the beginning and end of the fading Empire 50s, forever murky grey in old photographs, through the 60s, the beginning of a blossoming riot of colour and possibility, to the economic depression of the sleepwalking 70s, so brown and down.
When staying with my Auntie Mon in Dorchester, I listened religiously to all the B-sides of her Supremes singles. On vinyl and in mono on a tiny red Dansette record player. She was a fan of Jim Reeves, Englebert Humperdinck and chocolate box cover Irish Traditional stuff, but redeemed herself with The Elvis ‘68 NBC Special and The Best of Dusty Springfield.
In 1977, when not in Dorset countryside, I sat with my ears glued to a teak-effect radiogram, listening to the outpourings of punk rock, the alternate to the Silver Jubilee. In the back room of a council house on the Stowlawn estate, where Joe Motivator begrudgingly lived with his parents and younger brother.
The shambolic energy and DIY ethic of punk appealed to me. My friend Joe joined The Prefects, Birmingham’s first punk band, and I began to photograph this very different and predominantly urban experience.
I made two exhibitions with Joe – Diary of an Unknown Musician (where although he appears in every photograph you never see his face) in 1977 and Going Through the Motions, which was a broader adventure in punk in 1978-79.
My favourite comment from the Comments Book from one of those exhibitions was: "What sad lives young people lead these days."
I loved the Manchester bands, The Buzzcocks and The Fall in particular, and spent much time there. Paradoxically, as the decade turned, I moved south to work at The Photographer’s Gallery, in Southampton, which transmuted into the John Hansard. This, then, was a beginning.
> From: bjay
> Sent: Thursday July 29, 2002 12:13 PM
> To: geoffb
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 6
Selected Contents of Piddlehinton Village Noticeboard
LOST
African Grey Parrot
in Piddlehinton area
23rd May
Minutes of the meeting of
Piddle Valley Parish Council
held Tuesday 30th April
with list of Council Members
Advertisement for
West Dorset District Council Area Forum
“Come & have your say”
Advertisement for
Dorset Police Community Support Unit
who will be visiting Piddlehinton Stores
with dates and times
{Please call and meet the staff
who are trained to deal with any Police matter
and give advice on any other subject relating
to other official bodies and organisations}
Details of Piddlehinton Jubilee Day
Sunday June 2nd
Afternoon Picnic on Millenium Green
followed by Treasure Hunt and
Evening barbeque & 50’s Fancy Dress Disco
at the Village Hall.
A leaflet for
Dorset Storytelling Circle
“Stories bring with them
the gift of magic”
> From: bjay
> Sent: Wednesday July 31, 2002 3.28 AM
> To: muir.hewitt
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 7
Just prior to her Golden Jubilee in 1887, Queen Victoria requested a private performance of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show at Earls Court. This was her first appearance in a public venue for 26 years.
Ten years later, Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee. Her Jubilee message was transmitted by telegraph to every corner of the Empire. ‘From my heart I thank my beloved people. May God bless them’ went out to the largest Empire in history; 11 million square miles (91 times the size of Great Britain) and 372 million subjects – virtually a quarter of the world population.
The Diamond Jubilee procession itself, was a huge Imperial Festival. Consisting of 50,000 troops, it contained Hussars from Canada, cavalry from New South Wales, camel troops from Bikaner, police from Hong Kong and British Guiana, Indian Lancers and Dyak head-hunters from North Borneo, among many many others. In two columns they converged on St. Pauls, where the Queen waited in a dress of black moire with panels of pigeon grey, embroidered with silver roses, shamrocks and thistles, a bonnet of ostrich feathers, and a pure white silk parasol.
Mark Twain wrote of the spectacle: “I was not dreaming of so stunning a show. All the nations seemed to be filing by. They all seemed to be represented. It was a sort of allegorical suggestion of the Last Day, and some who live to see that day will probably recall this one if they are not too much disturbed in mind at the time.”
Meanwhile, troops from the 1st Battalion Dorset Regiment, as part of a punitive expeditionary force of some 34000 men, were fighting on the Peshawar-Kohat border and in the mountain passes of Afghanistan against the local tribesmen.
In this Jubilee year, how much have we changed?
Der Speigel describes the present Queen as “a nondescript 76 year old little housewife”. Jan Morris, a chronicler of the Empire, tells us that “it will be a decorous, decent celebration, as befits a decorous and decent second-class power”. John Lydon, the scourge of the last Jubilee, is reduced to an appearance on Very Graham Norton (a late night chat show on Channel 4) where he offers his as-to-be-expected views on the Monarchy - of the German tourist married to Greek waiter variety. He is them asked to join in with a game which features a woman with strangely bendy legs, a woman who can move her eyeballs independently of one another, and a man who can burp very loudly. Cue applause.
Over hill and dale it seems a thoroughly quieter mundane Jubilee, for less confident times. The fabric of a nation, once seemingly unassailable, is frayed and inexorably unpicked.
In the valley of the Piddle, in the field opposite the Manor House, the new High Sheriff of Dorset leaps up onto a trunk of a felled tree, raises a simple toast to Her Majesty the Queen. The venison is in demand, the liquid refreshments run low, the bonfire is piled high. An old naval flare is let off, it’s brief magenta incandescence drifting westward in the dusk.
> From: bjay
> Sent: Monday August 12, 2002 5:51 PM
> To: Samantha Hellawell
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 8
Monica Frances Quigley
You are about to embark on an adventure. You are the last to leave home. Of eight sons and daughters.
You take the early train from Birr to Roscrea and the connection for fair Dublin city. Now following the familiar route of thousands of your countryfolk, you board the local service to Dun Laoghaire in time for the 3pm ferry, the Queen Maude, and the crossing to Holyhead where you take the sleeper train to Kings Cross. As the coast of Ireland falls behind, as the waves glint green and grey below you, perhaps you think of the old proverb, Tá lán mara eileins an fhairge… there is another tide in the sea.
Your application to Dorset General County Hospital, to be a student nurse, has been accepted. You have a fine reference from Mr. Clarke of Street, in Somerset, whose shoe business you have dealt with courteously and efficiently for several years. Your sister Carmel, two years your senior, a midwife, has been in England since August 1939. She thinks that you do not have the temperament to be a nurse.
In the smoky dawn light, as the capital of the Empire wearily stirs, the devastation of the war years is shockingly apparent to you. You quickly make your way to Wimbledon, where your sister Gladys and her husband Tim live. During the war, their public house, The Stag, was demolished by a stray Luftwaffe bomb, and they were evacuated to Sherborne in Dorset.
They concur with the opinion voiced by the English foreman at Birr Shoe Factory; that your destination, the County town of Dorchester, is not unlike Birr and that it will suit you very well indeed. And so, in Spring 1946, you arrive at Dorchester South Station for the first time, making your way slowly past the police station and the brewery, with the old market in front of you and the ancient roman amphitheatre away to your left, down towards the Walks which gird the town.
This place will remain your home, and those Walks will be walked many times.
> From: bjay
> Date: Sunday October 6, 2002 19:04 PM
> To: harmony
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 9
Green
There are a hundred shades of green in the Piddle Valley. The sky itself looks like water mixed with grass cuttings, a green grey farrago at the horizon.
These greens pass by:
Sage. Holly. Dollar bill. Meadow grass. Ivy on a telephone pole. Pea soup. Greenfly on the windscreen. A John Deere tractor. Runner bean. Hedgerow. Bramble. Moss on a thatched roof. Nettle. Mould. Elm. Chainlink fence. Rush. Moist. Road sign. Spring onion. Bottle glass. Pond. Wellington boots.
Leaf cells contain the green colouring matter we call chlorophyll which reacts to the energy of the sun, turning carbon dioxide and water into food, releasing oxygen in the process. This green life blood of the planet.
Consider the leaf to be a laboratory, incubating this green colouring matter to manufacture starch from carbon dioxide and water and making sugars like glucose. No surprise there is a traditional belief in the magical properties of plants and flowers. For example, fern spores gathered at midnight on the Eve of the Feast of St. John the Baptist are said to make a person invisible.
A person turning green is not considered to be a good thing, though the Green Man – often found on the façade of medieval churches - is an ancient symbol of a protector of nature. One of his forerunners is the Green God Pan. He also appears as the Islamic saint Al-Chadir, who guides nomads through the desert to water.
Colours are associated with the seven main chakras of the body. Green is linked to our heart centre, representing peace. In Ancient Egypt, green symbolised life, growth and rebirth. It is considered to be a healing colour, with calming passifying effect. Thus the artist Wassily Kandinsky called it the colour of the bourgeoisie.
In the Middle Ages green was considered to be the colour of love, but the Christian church subverted the notion of fertility and any association of free sexuality, and portrayed the devil in a green suit. Demons were percieved to have green skins and green eyes.
Green was the favourite colour of the Prophet Mohammed. The holy flag of Islam is green embroidered with gold.
The Irish refer to their country as the Emerald isle, and emeralds are thought to avert evil and bring good fortune.
We speak of a green and pleasant land, though in some sense this is often in the past tense. Edward Thomas, a poet and writer on country matters (before he was killed by a shell blast in Flanders in 1917), despaired of overpopulation, industrialisation and pollution. The familiar green was disappearing.
He wrote:
“Every inch of soil was covered with bricks, stones, cement, asphalte, iron-work, granite blocks. Not a tree or blade of grass was allowed to appear anywhere but in the graveyards, and even there the earth was planted almost entirely with tombstones. They were afraid of leaving any space unguarded lest Nature should show a regret, a curse. Or a warning.”
> From: bjay
> Date: Thursday November 14, 2002 23:27PM
> To: Narinder Gill
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 10
Normal Service Will Shortly Be Resumed
I haven’t had much chance to visit the Piddle, except in a virtual sense. I have spent some time in other unlikely places, recently Warsaw, but find myself pondering the same issues.
At my place of work, we’re planning a project with the Institute for Polish Culture, Warsaw University and the Centre for Contemporary Art: it is here, in workshops at Ujazdowski Castle that resonances of the Piddle Valley emerge. We will be working next year in Suprasl, a small town of around 5000 people on the eastern borders. And this project, with local residents, with theatre workers, community artists, cultural animators and architects, will explore the concept of home, consider fundamental questions about who we are and where we live, examine our sense of place and the traditional way of life in the Polish countryside.
The winter snows are deep here, but not as they used to be. The water table is dropping. There is a real sense of the climate changing. Here there are bison instead of deer, and the river bears the same name as the town. As in England, there are questions of local, regional and national identity, the growing suburbanisation of the countryside, farming in crisis, the global economies shaping our futures.
We talk about an old Polish word, czuwanie – this does not translate easily. It refers almost to a state of mind, of vigilance, of heightened awareness, of wakefulness, being careful to look at something from several angles at once, being both responsive to and responsible for the things that surround us.
Poland has about 40 million people, half of whom live in rural areas. There are strong ties to the land, in a way that people remember what the English countryside was for. But change is here. Around one in four Poles is employed on the land – with around 2 million farms - yet agriculture only accounts for 5% of Poland’s earnings. Polish farmers have seen their income drop by nearly 20% in the last five years. Unemployment nationally is nearly 20%.
While I’m sitting in a late night bar near the new University Library building on Dobra, this conversation ebbs and flows on one side, and on the other side there is Kasha, who is described to me as the Queen of Feminist Hip-Hop in Poland. On the plane home, in an English newspaper I came across this comment from an EMI Executive:
“A generation of non-black rappers from broken down cities that resemble Detroit, from Warsaw to Marseilles, have been lifted by Eminem’s success. They are determined to prove that rap will eclipse rock’n’roll, as rock stole the thunder of jazz, and they are hungry and coming. We just have to market them properly.”
As the world decreases to a single marketplace, how deeply we may need
this czuwanie.
> From: bjay
> Date: Tuesday December 24, 2002 16:40:PM
> To: antony murray
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 11
As the year ends…
A little over twelve months ago, on the winter solstice, I began my journey along the Piddle Valley - retracing, recalling and renewing this old acquaintance.
And in the process, all the while I have been making new images (2.86 gigabytes worth to date), chronicling thoughts and perceptions, assembling words scratched in notebooks and on laptops, rediscovering the land and its people.
What will I do with all this material? This is yet to be revealed.
Often times, I dream projects – this method of visioning works particularly well for me. In the meantime, it will be archived, organised, collaged and reassembled: a form will arise from the content.
One Resolution for the New Year – to send out the backlog of emails I have semi-prepared!! Until then, a Merry Xmas to you all.
> From: bjay
> Date: Sunday January 5, 2003 19.39PM
> To: lia yau
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 12
In the very first hour of 2003, driving down the Piddle Valley through a heavy rainstorm, the short journey has become seemingly endless, transforming from the familiar into one of those magical routes where the road seems to literally go on and on. A soaked twilight zone where the headlamps of the car cutting through the wet air reveals almost nothing, mist blurring hedgerows frozen momentarily on the back of the retina, flooded sections of road, water surging past.
There are no other lights visible, distances are impossible to judge, the rain is sleeting down, the road dips and lifts. There is a hazy notion that the car itself is immobile and it is the darkness outside that is moving and fluid, a film spooling past the windscreens.
In this murkiness, all colour been scrubbed away, and in its absence the road, the land and the sky merge together. I feel tiny and imagine myself being inside a bottle pitching under tempestuous surf. There is no-one else on the road. Time could have stopped, the world have ceased to exist. Frames of former moments lived in this place flicker past: lying in the river meadows looking up at the stars, or skipping flat stones onto the sea, watching the snow slide from a roof, a kiss, a smile, a glance…
This sensation is not fuelled by any drugs or alcohol, it is simply the lateness of the hour, the deprivation of any notion of scale or distance, and the quieting of the mind.
Finally, as we approach Dorchester, this meditative trance is undone, and what is left is a desire to feel the ground firmly beneath my feet, and I resolve at first light to walk the bounds of the old town, and follow a well worn path.
> From: bjay
> Date: Tuesday January 14, 2003 18:54PM
> To: Leo.Stable
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 13
New Years Day 9am
Much of this project has been based on serendipity - simply going with the flow, allowing myself to be immersed in ideas, at first drowning in them, then guiding them like irrigation, a trickle, a torrent. There are theories, some posited by Jung and more recently by the biologist Rupert Sheldrake, that there are unseen fields of energy carrying information, which exert influence on the pattern or form of the world. The human brain acts as a radio receiver and taps into this ideas space.
When I first walked down the Piddle Valley, so many years ago, I hadn’t heard of Richard Long or artists like him, but I picked up on this approach to engaging with a landscape, and on time, place and experience. Recently I discovered that, in 1975, a year before I first hiked the valley, Long made a six day walk over all the roads, lanes, and double-tracks inside a six mile circle centred on the Giant of Cerne Abbas. This walk took him through Piddletrenthide and up to Alton Pancras and Plush. Did some residue of this walk linger on?
As 2003 began, I decided that the first action of the year would be to make a walk along the old boundaries of Dorchester, a route made familiar by my Auntie Mon - who religiously walked her dogs each day along this particular circuit for as long as I can remember. A small wiry woman, she favoured the smaller animal – poodles, scotch terriers - tiny alert creatures. Leaving her house, (‘Modreeny’ in Kings Road) she would turn up to Fordington Green, past what she called The Hangmans Stone, a depression in it worn smooth by children like me standing and playing on it over generations, towards the South Walks.
These Walks - originally planted in the 18th century with lime, sycamore and more recently chestnut - follow the line of the old Roman wall, enclosing three sides of the town. A river walk demarcates the fourth side, where the water meadows have kept the town from spreading to the north and north east. As I walk, I realise these bounds are a mirror image of elsewhere, a tracing of the edges of her birthplace in Ireland - perhaps this daily walk breached the thin barrier between memory and consciousness?
Here today, rain buffeted at Icen Way, where stands an Elizabeth Frink sculpture (commemorating the Dorchester Martyrs, and which marks the site of the 16th/17th century town gallows), I follow the path edging Salisbury Fields, a green space along the eastern perimeter, down past the Georgian and Victorian villas and terraces.
The only people out so early, and in this awful weather, are accompanied by their dogs. They look at me oddly, or perhaps they sense these ghost mutts that walk with me.
I walk slowly, due to a knee that requires surgery, and estimate that this was the average pace of these small pooches from the past; so it seems satisfactory, despite the drenching rain. (I first had an operation on this knee in Dorset County Hospital, where my Auntie nursed, not long after my first journeys along the Piddle, surely coincidence, surely not connected to rigorous tramping over flint and chalk hills?)
I pass San Telmo fish’n’chip shop and cross the B3150 by The White Hart, at the bottom of High Street East, where the river runs under the road and races back towards the other arm of the Frome at Fordington. Here the riverside walk begins, with ugly newer houses on either side, perilously close to the rising waters.
The river here runs in an artificially constructed channel, with Frome Terrace to the left, allotments and a nature reserve to the right, and beyond that flooded fields. The rain lets up long enough for me to pause and read the helpful signage about the Old Mill Stream supplied Dorchester Heritage Committee. I don’t expect to see water voles or moorhens today. Instead, there is a yellow digger claimed by the undergrowth, rusting and sinking lopsided into the soggy ground.
At this point, the river curves round old sluice gates, and a rise upon which is built the prison and beyond that the County Council offices. I turn west, away from the river, past the Cottage where the town hangman dwelt, at the bottom of the rise (called a cliff by Hardy) and walk towards the Grove, where the road from Yeovil enters the town running in the line of the old Roman defensive ditch. I stay on what was the rampart, skirting the council offices and library, up to the Top ’o’ Town, the High Street to the left and the Bridport Road and the Military Keep to my right. I pass the only actual remaining piece of Roman wall, heading down deserted West Walks, with the borough gardens on one side and the old County Hospital, converted to luxury apartments, on the other.
The hospital ward where my Auntie worked was built in bungalow style, with neat verandahs outside each room overlooking a small garden. This has long gone and is now a car park – though most of the original trees still remain in place, along with a small tennis court. I turn along the line of Bowling Alley Walk, and pass by a wide red wooden door in the wall; this gives access to the car park, and once was the back door to the ward.
At the bottom of Trinity and South Street and the 1921 Cenotaph, I finally rejoin the line of the South Walks and here for me the promenade ends. The small dogs trot on, dissolving into the rain. The chestnut trees are creaking overhead and I recall the box full of conkers - picked in this place - that would arrive, as seasonal a marker as the Rupert Bear Annuals that came each Christmas, always postmarked Dorchester, The County of Dorset…
> From: bjay
> Date: Wednesday March 5, 2003 20:39PM
> To: Heather Peak
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 14
Memento Mori
A newsletter arrives in the post from the National Trust, which features an archeologist at Corfe Castle in Dorset. On a clear day, on the highest point of the Piddle Valley, I don’t believe you can see those majestic ruins.
The archeologist writes:
“Archeologists are like detectives who discover how a people lived in the past. To do this they dig for clues, look at maps and photos taken from the air, examine old writing and look at the tell-tale shapes of the land – that’s just the start.”
Reading this, I began thinking about what clues I had missed from my documentation of the valley. Of course, personal circumstance and preference, time, distance, availability, foreknowledge, all played their part in what was recorded and what was not. If photographs provide some kind of testament, then how might we consider what was not photographed. What story does this absence tell?”
To record something was once thought to authenticate its very existence. Susan Sontag, in her book On Photography (first published in 1977) talks of how “a photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence.” Remember that the image gatherer imposes their own standard or vision – they are never simply neutral, and the images or the omission of them are equally significant interpretations.
These are just some things you will find no evidence of in my documentation of the Piddle Valley:
A meeting of the Piddle Valley Parish Council.
The Over Sixties Club all day visit to Exbury Garden.
A working farm, though farmers were sited at social events and in the far distance on tractors.
All Saints Church Summer Fete, with line dancing, a novelty dog show, Punch & Judy and a marquee full of beautiful flowers, vegetables of enormous size and homemade produce to set the mouth watering.
An Open Morning at Piddle Valley First School, with demonstrations of country dancing, drama, art, music and Powerpoint.
Piddletrenthide Football Club or a Cricket Match.
Sheep. The Valley was once noted for its flocks of Dorset Downs and Dorset Horns. I was told that this was the first year that there were no sheep, but later I was told that sheep were indeed to be grazing below of Muston.
Deer. Though I have seen several speeding away. Once, walking with the dog along Little Puddle Bottom, one came hurtling out the field and with one mighty leap cleared the fence boundary and rise to disappear into the woods.
The Mobile Police Van.
The Ancient Monuments Officer.
A Local Hunt. Though I did pass by a dozen empty trailers and 4 x 4 vehicles up on the road by Hill Dairy, with a solitary man, hardily swathed against the weather, peering over the hedge with binoculars, I saw little else on this dark storm tossed day.
> From: bjay
> Date: Friday March 21, 2003 14:10PM
> To: judith
> Subject: The Piddle Valley 15
The Hidden Piddle
H.J Massingham, when walking the chalk downlands of Dorset in the Thirties, wrote of enchanted ground, areas of former habitation marked by barrows, ponds, boundary ditches, pits and lynchets. “It seems to be,” he wrote, “the land of the living dead.”
Evidence that I was here, that I existed. Markings. Traces. A slight raised impression, shadows under the earth visible from the air. Stripping back the layers of history to perceive the living breathing everyday existence.
I myself am not in the habit of communing with spirits of the dead, though - on occasion – in my dreams I converse with people who are no longer of this particular world. Some I know well, others are of passing acquaintance.
Two recent dreamscapes make me wonder about the idea of spirit guides.
In one dream I was wandering through a large house, a social gathering in progress. Looking out of the windows, into the garden, I could tell it was a warm spring afternoon. Sometimes it is like waking up suddenly (into the dream place) with a shake of the head,trying to orientate myself, asking without audible words… Where am I? What is this place? How did I get here? Perhaps that is the later recollection of the dream stirring within the brain, reconfiguring the scene.
In this place, in one room, I came across my Auntie Mon, sitting on a sofa with two other people. She wore a dark blue woolen dress, one piece, knee length with short sleeves. A silver brooch was pinned near the left collar bone. Her hair was not yet grey, remaining a deep black, tightly curled. She wore smart black slip on shoes. So this was – in terms of defining time - perhaps the late Sixties. In her hand she held a glass of Whiskey Mac – what else! – a combination of Bells whiskey (usually) and Stones Ginger Wine. The family tipple of choice. At least in England.
I was pleased to see her. I sat on the edge of the sofa. She was as sociable as ever, always the life and soul of any party. Finally, she looked me in the eye and asked me when I was going to knuckle down and finish the Piddle Valley project. She stared at me. Was that a familiar twinkle in her eye?
You don’t have forever, she said.
In another dream, I was walking with my Mom’s overweight Labrador dog, Lucky, along an ancient path in the Piddle Valley. It was the height of summer. My dead Father was walking behind me. This did not in any way seem unusual. He loved Dorset and it seemed quite reasonable to me that he would wish to spend the afterlife here. We passed by some old ruined cottages, where an old woman used to live. She had been the village nurse and midwife, as had her Mother before her, though never had any formal training. I’d photographed her in 1977, her still strong hands proudly holding her invitation to the Diamond Jubilee Celebration of Queen Victoria. My Father said he saw her out and about now and again. He remarked that she remembered my visit to take photographs. She was, apparently, disappointed by the parlous state of her home. It was indeed ruinous. Paint blistered from cracked windowframes, the rendering parted from the outer wall and crumbling to dust, the thatch rotting and imploding, her kitchen garden - her personal apothecary - uncared for, overgrown with sharp brambles.
My Father talked about how this cottage, back then, so reminded him of places in Birr, my Mother’s home town in Ireland. Hard packed earth, quarry tiled floors, a blackened cooking range, a fire always going in the hearth, part of the building almost entirely given over to cats and chickens.
We walked on down the lane, and we were talking about how this dog, Lucky, had arrived unannounced one evening, near my daughters 11th birthday.
- We’re going out.
- Where to?
- We’ve got to pick up a dog.
- What dog?
- It’s for Katy, for her birthday.
- What dog?
- A three month old labrador.
- You’re getting her a dog?!?
- I thought she’d like a pet.
- Where’s it going to live exactly?
- Well. Some of the time with me, and some of the time with Katy…
- And does her Mom know about this?
- No, it’s a surprise…
- It certainly will be. And does her Grandmom know about this?
- Not yet. But she won’t mind.
Katy’s birthday dog lived with her Grandfather, a device of flesh and blood - I am sure – to maintain a connection between him and my daughter, as she moved from her childhood to more independent teenage years. My Father was not, as I remember, given to open displays of affection. He was highly sociable to others, less so I feel with his wife and son.
It was curious then, over the years, to watch him with my daughter, so overt with his love and devotion. I wondered sometimes if I felt some sense of jealously – my Mother telling me he was never like this with me as a child, yet I never recall him being in any way unkind. I think it was like observing a natural (and beautiful) phenomena at work, over which I had no influence. He was like a new person unleashed.
We walked down the lane, hedgerows on either side of us, the dog scurrying about, sniffing her and there, pissing on a gatepost or a patch of flattened grass, all these thoughts hanging in the air like dandelion seeds. Somehow, in the act of walking together with the dog and – ‘shooting the breeze’ as the Americans would say. I felt a great sense of affection between us.
We came to the end of this particular lane. My Father had fallen a few paces behind.
I can’t go any further, he said.
I knew that away to the left was All Saints Church, where springs rise to feed the Piddle river, in front of me a rutted track and beyond that the main road. I looked back and he was no longer to be seen. His dog, though, stood alert and stared resolutely into the distance, focusing on something beyond my current understanding.
