Letters to the Editor - September 2011

I was interested in The Way we Were in the May issue about rationing in wartime.

I remember my mother every week putting two tablespoons of sugar into a sweet jar to save for jam making.

Being farmers we farmed better than many. We had eggs but you had to register to get extra food for the hens and a certain number of eggs had to go to the packing station.

In the same way all our surplus milk had to be collected by Hornby’s Dairy. Normally all our milk would be sold in the village. We had a small glass butter churn in which we were able to make a little bit of butter sometimes.

Cheese and tea were a worry. Although we could get extra rations for harvest, it was never enough. Luckily an uncle with relatives, who were cheese makers, sometimes brought us a nice bit of cheddar and the odd rabbit.

One of our customers was the grocer and, when he had his allocat­ion of foods of ration, he would let my mother know. She would go and have tea and later go into the shop and spend her ‘points’, as they were called on, say, golden syrup and tinned fruit.

I have never seen any mention of a shortage of oil-lamp glasses. It was a real worry the glass would crack and break.

“Turn that lamp down” was a cry often heard.
I still have my Phillips School Atlas all charred on the corner by the candle I had to use for my homework when the glass had broken.

The coal situation was also difficult. Often it was of poor quality and it took ages to heat the copper. Of course we needed a lot of hot water to wash the dairy utensils.

We were of course lucky that we had plenty of vegetables, plums and apples. The family who came to stay with us at night away from the Bristol Blitz had to queue for many things including potatoes after the war had ended.

Ann Stacey, Midhurst

I was interested in the article in the May issue ‘Sun, moon, stars’ by Frances Green about the village of Garway, Herefordshire.

The latter part related to Garway Hill which is described as a small insignificant feature. As seen from the village it may not seem very notice­able as the summit is over two miles (3 km) away and partly obscured by the nearer rising ground. From other directions it is a prominent landmark, and eastwards across England there is nowhere higher south of the Malverns.

Gloucester Cathedral is mentioned but this is hidden behind May Hill and cannot be seen. Just to the left of May Hill and further away, much of Cheltenham is visible with prominent buildings and church spires seen with binoculars and the Cotswolds in the background.

More to the left the tower of Tewkes­bury Abbey is seen, and beyond this on a good day Broadway Tower can be detected on the skyline.

Left again is Bredon Hill then the Malverns, and far to the north-east the Clent Hills are seen.

Hereford Cathedral is easily seen and far beyond are the Shropshire Hills, extending towards Wales with the summit of Corndon Hill in Montgomeryshire just visible.

To the north-west are the Radnor­shire Hills, and to the west are the nearer Black Mountains, the higher tops being in Breconshire.

South-westwards are the well-known Sugar Loaf, Skirrid and Blovenge in Monmouthshire, and
the nearby Graig Hill just across the Monnow Valley.

Newport and Cardiff are mention­ed and, while the low hills of the Newport suburbs are seen, Cardiff is not visible.

Much further away the Brendon and Quantock hills of Somerset are seen as a blue/grey line and, nearer, the Somerset coastal headland of Worlebury is quite prominent in good conditions, with a glimpse of Sand Bay, the colour varying with the state of the tide.

The high wooded ridge of South Monmouthshire stretches eastwards and, whilst the top of the Mendip ridge can be seen beyond, there is nothing else, and neither of the Severn bridges can be seen.

To the south-east the South Cotswold edge becomes visible beyond the Forest of Dean, and in good conditions the monuments to General Somerset and William Tynedale can both be detected.

R G Cooke, Hereford

The article ‘Exploring the Keen of Hamar’ in the July issue stirred some happy memories.
It sent me hunting for the log of my 1990 holiday. Three friends and I spent the week of 15th-22nd June in Shetland on a wildlife holiday organised by Caledonian Wildlife. The leader for the latter half of the holiday was ‘Mr Shetland’ himself, Bobby Tulloch.

On Tuesday 19th June we caught the ferry from Yell to Unst and then headed north. The first stop was to see the last snowy owl born on Unst (1976). She was fourteen years old and all alone, my only sighting of a wild snowy owl.

My friend and I have a particular interest in wild flowers so asked Bobby if we could go to the Keen of Hamar. He agreed to take only those in the party who were really keen on botany (most were birders). This was because of the fragile nature of the habitat.

Walking carefully, we managed to see kidney vetch, mountain everlasting, northern rock-cress
and Edmonston’s chickweed.

In my log I have the latter as Shetland mouse-ear chickweed (Cerastium arcticum Edmonstonii), and northern rock-cress as Cardaminopsis petraea not Arabis petraea. In the intervening twenty-one years, terminology has changed due to advances in botanical taxonomy.

This was only a brief visit but one that has stayed in my mind ever since. Shetland is a very special place.

In the same issue the article about lapwings, particularly the poems about them, stirred even older memories of a book which I still have (and still re-read) called The Blue Feather Club by Elisabeth Alldridge and published in 1940. One of the characters in the book, a girl aged thirteen, was inspired by the flight of lapwings to write:
Lapwings wheel on a startled flight
Up from a field that’s earthy brown,
Into a sky that’s sunset bright,
Over a field of peachy light,
Where everything’s upside down

My interest in natural history goes back a long way and has given me a lifetime of pleasure — not to mention new friends and pastimes new.

Mrs Betty Needham, Derbyshire

Dorothy Dyett of New Zealand (Letters, July) is right saying that the photograph of a hay meadow in the May issue shows creeping buttercups rather than meadow buttercups and that there seem to be a few meadow grasses and flowers.

In the 1970s I had two fields of good meadow hay, and the hay bales of a rich herbal mix were plentiful and sweet smelling.

After the contractor had cut the grass in August and turned it and baled it, my father and I took the bales off the field using a ladder tied to his waist. The fields were on a steep incline so I pushed the bales on the ladder whilst my father pulled the ladder. We then stacked them and covered them ready for sale at three shillings a bale. I later raked the fields of loose hay and another haystack was built. This we used for bedding for our ducks and geese.

Farm animals grazed the fields from the 1980s onwards. A decade ago Worcestershire County Council did offer me a small grant to keep the fields in good condition, but I had to decline. The Wildlife Trust listed the meadows, and made a note of all the flowers and fungi in the meadows.

Unfortunately due to ill-health I needed a lot of labour which I couldn’t afford. It was hard work cutting back hedges and dragging the brash off the fields. Weeds crept around the boundaries and nettles were pulled, brambles chopped off, and docks chopped off or dug up.

In recent years chickweed, clevers and creeping buttercups also crept in under overhanging hedges. The moles and rabbits have played a merry dance. The red fox and buzzards weren’t controlling the rabbit population much.

In autumn I will sow a herbal mix of grasses to cover all the bare patches made by moles and rabbits.

The grasses are suffering whilst the flowers have spread. This June there was an abundance of common orchids, bird’s-foot trefoil, rattle, tormentil and red clover. In spring the fields were covered in bluebells, wood anemonies, cowslips, primroses and bugle. Unless more damage is done the harebells, black knapweed and scabias will appear. Large ant hills have appeared which are common to ancient meadows.

Butterflies flitter about on sunny days, although these have declined, but I have recorded quite a few brown argus, orange-tipped, and some small blues and fritillaries.

H Woolridge, Worcs