A grand Day Out

The village of  Laxton in Nottingham is unique in England, because it retains a lot of the pre-enclosure, medieval open field system.  Our day out there was completely fascinating, and the best thing I’ve done for ages. It didn't start that well, because I had offered to drive a car load and was so pleased with myself for being early, that I drove off without one of my passengers. I don't know when I might have realised - perhaps not until we got to Laxton, who knows - but luckily another passenger noticed someone missing before we'd got too far. All a bit shaming. 

One of the fields - you can see the strips

Looking across to another of the open fields.

The farms are all along the main street of the village, all with the buildings that they once needed to operate. Each has its own threshing barn, which of course isn’t required nowadays. The system may be medieval, but the farmers are able to adopt modern methods, which was a relief to us visitors, because having seen a threshing flail, none of us could imagine the strength and stamina required to thresh a crop of wheat in that way.

A typical range of farm buildings

A  threshing barn. The door height is to allow the wind to blow through.

Each farmer has strips of land in each of the three enormous unenclosed fields. The idea is that good and poor land is shared out evenly, but of course it means that it isn’t really an economic way of farming nowadays, even though the strips have been amalgamated, and are a lot wider than they were in the seventeenth century.

 At the end of the seventeenth century the landlord had the most amazing and fascinating map of the village and its lands drawn. It isn't simply a map - there are all sorts of delightful tiny scenes depicted - haymaking, hawking, horses romping around in the field - it's really more like an aerial view of the estate, with all its activities. It’s now in the Bodleian, but there is a copy in the church.  The church in itself was more than worth a visit, and there is an excellent motte and bailey, and super views.

Because the open fields have survived, so has the manorial court, with its system of stewards and bailiffs, field foremen and jurors, who all cooperate in maintaining the way of life – because it is much more than a farming system; the way the land is used means that there are all sorts of cultural practices which go along with the with it. I think it should be a World Heritage Site, as it certainly falls into UNESCO’s category of a “Cultural Landscape”;  but I think UNESCO aren’t really interested  in European / developed nation sites now. They are trying to register sites in much less developed and visited nations, which is probably the right thing to do. However,  Laxton could certainly do with support in maintaining the land use system and cultural practices which date from the Domesday  Book.

We were all hugely impressed by our guide’s knowledge and commitment to the system – and although we  didn’t meet others of the farmers, it’s clear that they all must feel similarly, because it’s hardly a convenient system nowadays, and it isn’t possible to make a living from farming alone – everyone must have other strings to their bow. So apart from farming, our guide, Stuart, has horses at livery and does some blacksmithing.  

There are grants to be had from Natural England, as the fallow field has been used to encourage ground nesting birds, and the “sykes” (pronounced “sicks”) have never ever been ploughed, so attract grants as ancient meadowland.

The green lane between the church and the motte and bailey.

 But the rules are changing, to bring them into line with the whole E.C., and the Laxton farmers will lose a lot of income. Why the rules can’t be bent, considering what a special case this is, goodness only knows. You’d hardly think giving them some special consideration would destroy the whole European plan – after all, as I said, it’s unique in England. Maybe in Europe.

This is the link to Stuart’s site.

http://www.laxtonnotts.org.uk/

Just to make the day out perfect, Stuart’s mum and sister provided copious amounts of delicious food. I don’t wish to mention any names, but some people had all three puddings, and then in the afternoon, scones and both sorts of cake.  I have to give the rhubarb, orange and ginger crumble a special mention as the best I have ever tasted.  I can’t urge you too strongly to visit – it really is a grand day out. 

Ferrybridge Power Station C

A dedicated reader of this blog (always supposing I have any such) may remember that I planned to take a photo of Ferrybridge Power Station, because in my mind, it’s a kind of “welcome home” sight – once you’ve passed Ferrybridge, you’re in the North. I’m not sure what Sheffield inhabitants would make of this, because it they’re south of it. Also, I’m perfectly aware that any feeling of homecoming is ridiculous, since I stopped living in the north (as defined by Ferrybridge) when I was eighteen. More than two thirds of my life so far has not been lived in the north, so why it still figures as “home” in my mind, goodness only knows. But there you are. Nothing logical about it.

Also, Ferrybridge is pretty impressive. But every time we’ve been up or down to the north east since a made the undertaking to take a photo, the weather has been appalling. Rain, snow, and fog, once so thick that we couldn’t see any vestige of the cooling towers. Frankly, that day, it was just stupid of us to be travelling at all.

So today, we were making our monthly trip to the north east and it wasn’t actually raining or snowing. You couldn’t call it a nice day, but I’m getting desperate. So with much help from Phil’s map reading skills, we turned off the A1 and got some photos. Here you are:

From the Aire and Calder Navigation

As a bonus, here is the original Ferrybridge, dating from 1797, and the toll house. I think I remember driving across the original bridge when it was notorious for traffic jams. That went on for years and years. Now one swoops through, hardly noticing the river. You can't really miss the power station, though.

Legacies

There’s been two items of news that have really got me cross recently. One was the Pope’s resignation, or abdication, or whatever you should call it, and then the election of the new Pope.  Luckily, the election was pretty quick, because I was losing all patience with having the white smoke / black smoke palaver explained to me, as though I was stupid. Mind you, Chuka Umunna doesn’t seem to have listened. He thought the black smoke thing was some sort of racist comment, God help us. It’s hard, as you get older, not to get cross with having obvious stuff explained in words of one syllable, and I have to try to remember that once, I needed it explaining. Mind you, I should think I was about ten, not thirty five years old.

The other thing that annoyed me about the election was that it seems utterly irrelevant. Catholics, in England anyway, just seem to ignore the Pope’s teaching on contraception etc. Quite right too, but it does make the whole shebang pointless if members of the church ignore their leader’s pronouncements.  And another thing that makes the whole thing pointless is the way the church has dealt with the numerous child abuse scandals. 

Someone I know tried to defend the Catholic Church, on the grounds that all organisations close ranks and cover up when there is a scandal. But what on earth is the point of the Catholic Church, if it can’t deal with a sex abuse scandal better than, say, British Airways, could?

Also, I must admit to being prejudiced. When I visited the Vatican Museums, the thing that went through my mind over and over, was "I'm sure this isn't what Jesus had in mind!"

Then I’ve got really cross with the press coverage of the Thatcher’s death celebrations. If you notice, all those out on the street “celebrating” are far too young to know anything about it. You had to live through the years before Thatcher to have any idea why she did as she did, and why she is still a heroine to many people.

I remember the three day weeks, the endless power cuts, the bread shortage, the toilet paper shortage, the incredibly poor quality of practically anything manufactured in Britain. There was a “joke”, which was that if you had a reasonably reliable car, it must have been manufactured on a Wednesday. On Mondays, the joke went, workers were overhung and couldn’t be bothered, and on Friday all they cared about was leaving work early, so only cars made on a Wednesday had any chance of being O.K.

I remember the British Steel workers clocking on and then clearing off home for a sleep. They threatened to strike when management tried to get them to wear safety gear. Years after they all lost their jobs, I met a chap who used to work in the steel plant. It turned out that he had been out of work for years. When I said I was sorry, he answered “Oh, don’t be. We asked for it.” 

If you don’t believe me, watch old TV – Not the Nine O’ Clock News, and the dead printer, fastened to the radiator so he still couldn’t be sacked. Or even The Good Life, where the gardener refuses to read a note because he’s a manual worker. They’re exaggerated, of course, but they were only funny because the situation was recognisable.

I worked for the Inner London Education Authority briefly, and I impressed it upon my husband that no child of ours could possibly attend any of its schools. That’s why we moved out of London, and why I can’t really respect Ken Livingston, although I do think he did well as Mayor of London, eventually.

Now none of this is to say that I support Thatcher’s policies in general. For example, I really wish she’d put the money from the North Sea and the sell offs into more modern infrastructure, and I wish she’d thought of planning ahead and improving education. There are practically no jobs for the thick but strong that allow you to support a family, in the way that labouring in the ship yards or mines did, so a better educated work force is vital. But don’t blame Thatcher for the decline of manufacturing. That’s globalisation, and the fact that most of what we had was rubbish. 

It’s much too early to come to any balanced conclusion about Mrs Thatcher’s premiership, or her legacy. But we should try to keep a more open mind than so many commentators.