I’ve still got some spaces on my next workshop – join me! It’s a one-off for 2 hours. Friendly, no pressure and lots of opportunities to think, talk and write at your own pace in a supportive environment. I’ve always found this time of year to be a perfect time for getting projects going, germinating those thought seeds stored from the dark Winter months… message me for more info or email (address in the pic below)
My new chapbook, Sward {skin of the earth}, published by Sampson Low Ltd, is available for purchase here
£3.85 incl UK p+p
Sward represents my walks up and down the central reservation of the A240, Kingston Road, from the Tolworth Roundabout to the border of Surrey, where the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames meets the Borough of Epsom and Ewell.
Inspired by Richard Jefferies, the prolific Victorian nature writer, author and walker, whose seminal work Nature Near London contains essays about his walks and observations of Tolworth and the surrounding areas.
Jefferies lived in Tolworth for several years, and last year Alison Fure and myself, as part of our Tolworth Treasure and the Hogsmill Hum project took between 30-40 people on a walk in Richard Jefferies’ Footsteps, aided and abetted by our friend Ben Henderson who very kindly agreed to play the part of Jefferies on the day, and did so with great aplomb, providing us with a sprinkle of magic for our journey.
The walk, which took place on a hot and sunny May Bank Holiday in 2018, was recorded for a show on Radio 4, ‘The Art of Now: Women Who Walk’, celebrating women walking artists, and we were delighted to be involved in this.
This is my last walking and writing on Tolworth for now, although there may be a couple of essays lurking. My family has lived here for generations, since my grandparents came over from Wexford, Ireland during the second world war, and I have spent the last few years walking and writing and thinking and trying to engage other people in the treasures that exist nearby, before they are lost.
Alison and I documented our walks for Tolworth Treasure and the Hogsmill Hum, and were glad to meet lots of lovely local folk and make new friends, and we continue to walk, write, celebrate and try to conserve the nature on our doorsteps.
This year I decided to focus on a small patch of nature, a long, thin one, in the middle of the A240 – a narrow but important nature corridor, with grasses, 20-odd mature trees and lots of wild flowers. I named the project Sward after Richard Jefferies’ use of the word in his writing.
Last year this slim but vital patch of nature was placed under threat of being concreted over from one end to the other, as the proposed Tolworth Area Plan wished to see this an extension of the Tolworth Greenway – green stripy concrete.
This central reservation, which helps pollinators and other fauna find their way across the busy road from one green space to the other (Kingston University Playing Fields and Tolworth Court Farm Fields respectively) must be kept and properly managed. It also does an important job of mitigating air pollution – and providing beauty – something we mustn’t overlook!
I was glad that many objections to this part of the plan were received and it has been dropped, but I worry it will happen anyway in increments, as Tfl will be extending the ‘greenway’ to Tolworth Station. Although at the moment this does not mean the loss of all the grassy and floriferous ‘sward’ I have been walking up and down for the last six months – and seeing all my life, it still could be in the near future…
Below are two of the poems I wrote specially for and read on Alison Fure’s Walk with Jane Soundwalk with the Museum of Walking back in September.
There is another soundwalk taking place on Saturday 19th October from 10.30am. It is FREE but please book via the Walk with Jane website. See Alison’s blog for a guest post about the walk from Alison Whybrow.
Alison Fure is leading a Soundwalk as part of her Walks with Jane project, in conjunction with The Museum of Walking, through the Cambridge Estate in Kingston Upon Thames, this Saturday evening, 7th September, 2019.
From the Museum of Walking website event page:
This Soundwalk will explore the wildlife and human ecology on this large estate with 230 trees.
We will listen to the web of life from replayed recordings of bird song, talking heads and listen to bats in real time (bat detection equipment provided).
This event is free but booking is essential – Call +44 (0) 7867507086
I am currently writing elegies / eulogies for the trees on the estate and will be reading these brand new, site specific poems on the night. Please join us…
Meaning “sod, turf” developed from the notion of the “skin” of the earth (compare Old Norse grassvörðr, Danish grønsvær “greensward”).
Walking the central reservation of the A240 Kingston Road, from Tolworth Roundabout to the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames boundary with the Borough of Epsom and Ewell.
The project is called ‘Sward’ after reading Richard Jefferies’ works, and seeing his frequent use of it. I am walking while considering Jefferies’ writing, his prolific walking of the local area. I am also doing this in the context of the present threat of development to the precious and unique green spaces nearby – and possibly to part of the central reservation itself.
At the wooden bridge, beside
the washing-willow,
under frayed dare-devil
rope-swing, we small-fry gather;
splash-paddle in the sun-filled
slipstream, our expectant
jam jars perched ready on banks
for contents of day-glo
nets on bamboo poles,
skim-dunked, dipped into laughing
sparkle, we seek out elusive
piscine lurkers, shoal-darters,
minnow-school pretty-carpers,
spike-backed silver-bellied
sticklebacks, shimmer and shift
in ever-changing shallow-shadows.
We graft all afternoon, rewarded
by encounters with small wildness,
iridescent scale inspection
through jars held up to the light.
A busy day meeting our fishy friends,
our neighbours of the water;
we send them back before barefoot-flapping,
wet and toasted, up the hill home.
Hogsmill Tiddlers was originally published as one of the poems on my now sold-out Over the Fields map, back in September 2015. It has since been published in The Countryman magazine and is also used in teaching materials for the Open University’s MA in Creative Writing.
I have just pinned Hogsmill Tiddlers to another map, showing the location of the poem, on the Places of Poetry web site. This is an AHRC and Arts Council funded project which “aims to use creative writing to prompt reflection on national and cultural identities in England and Wales, celebrating the diversity, heritage
and personalities of place.”
We still cross the bridge nearly every day on our walks ‘Over the Fields’. Five generations of Furlongs and counting…
It is the Urban Tree Festival this weekend – celebrating London’s amazing Urban Forest. While we celebrate our wonderful leafy friends this weekend, I am also commemorating the significant number of trees that are being destroyed at an unprecedented rate at the moment in the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames. This is not something I want to write about but I made a commitment to focus on climate change in my writing (most of my writing is about that anyway) and so I begin here… we must value and protect our trees! #climateemergency
In the mundane modern
semi-detached suburbs
slippers, gravel, teatime tables
GCSE revision
the Moon guides me home
welcomes me to this season
with its golden corona
moonflower harvest sky
The Moon ~O~
I speed down the A3 toward
Tolworth
Tower
follow the curve of the road
there it is again on the right
above the cleared MAFF site
behind the bowling alley
The Moon ~O~
The Moon is over the fields
Giving it the full Samuel Palmer
Richard Jefferies is walking out
late to see the moonlit silver
gold of the harvest under this
crystal studded Prussian blue sky
almost cold and glowing
The Moon ~O~
I want to stop the car and see the fields
in this Autumn moonlight
but life like a kite pulls me on
a different journey
I hope darkness prevails in the fields
so I can see them like this next year
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge, about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s.”
On the Grasshopper and Cricket, John Keats
In the midst of the summer heatwave and haze, we had another Tolworth Treasure and the Hogsmill Hum walk in one of the most ancient and beautiful places at the heart of Tolworth.
Well, we thought it would be blazing hot but in the end it was raincoats and brollies weather. A welcome respite from the sultry shimmer of the weeks preceding, and not so wet that we couldn’t wander gently, and stop for a poem or two. Proper British Summer Time drizzle. So, where is this special place in the heart of suburban Tolworth?
It is part of an ancient drove road, in the middle of Tolworth Court Farm Fields, hidden behind hedgerow on the A240. A beautiful wild, nature reserve, which until the 1980s had been farmed for a 1000 years at least, and is mentioned in the Domesday book.
Drove roads were the network of roads used over the centuries to move live stock up and down and across the countryside, all over the UK. There are traces of them everywhere, and where the drove has disappeared in its original rural form, it may be identified by names, including ‘Lane’, ‘Drift’, ‘Ox’, ‘Way’ and many other lexical giveaways.
T
here are certainly lots of them in this area. On my Over the Fields poetry map is ‘Sheephouse Way’ – a road characterised for its large number of blocks of flats these days, but which is shown with the same name on maps which are 500 years old of the local area, and which I was lucky to see at the St John the Baptist Old Malden Heritage Day, when I was doing my research at the time.
Drove roads avoided toll roads, and were a direct and safe route through the countryside for the drovers who could be taking large flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, or even large numbers of geese or turkeys to market. The largest and most famous of these markets being Smithfields Market in London.
They were wide, as much as 20 metres, and usually hedged on both sides, containing the valuable stock, and also helping to keep the animals safe and stopping them from getting infected by other possibly diseased animals living in farms en route.
How sweet I roamed from field to field
And tasted all the summer’s pride.
William Blake
Lots have been paved over, but there is a part of ancient drove in the fields in Tolworth which is grass underfoot, with its double hedge intact, and it is a magical place. And this is where we ended up reading poems, in the drizzle and the green, surrounded by hedges already heavy with blackberries and elderberries, interrupted only by an occasional enthusiastic dog plus owner, not used to seeing a large gathering of people reading and chatting in this in-between-space-between-places. Perfect.
I had hoped to sing John Barleycorn, as we were walking just after Lammas, but my voice was croaky, so I read the words to the old song instead. Alison read the John Clare poem Insects, and Elizabeth read a poem My Orcha’d in Lindèn Lea written by Dorset writer and poet William Barnes (1801-1886)
I also read some Keats and Blake and, not forgetting, some Richard Jefferies.
I had also brought with me a beautiful corn dolly, made by the Wheatweaver, but was worried about it getting damaged during the walk / weather, so I left it for our after-walk chat and write at Court Farm Cafe afterwards- it is exquisitely beautiful, and so good to know that someone is keeping these ancient skills alive.
With enclosure, modernisation, the rail network and then the roads, the droves fell into disuse, farming methods changed and the old songs, traditions and seasonal customs faded… it is good to remember we still rely on the land for food, and that the sun (especially this year!) and rain are still intrinsic to what we eventually put on our plates.
Although this land is no longer farmed, it is a nature reserve, with bats, rare butterflies, deer and beautiful wild flowers, including pepper saxifrage, as well as some of the oldest trees in the borough.
Alison, who has been walking this way for many years, as part of her job as an ecologist and bat expert, has a deep knowledge and passion for this place. I have learned a lot from her and am so glad we have been able to go on these walks together.
People who joined us for the walk, who didn’t already know and love Tolworth Court Farm Fields, were amazed at how easy it was to enter, and how beautiful and special it is.
For me it is a jewel in the crown of Tolworth’s Treasures, alongside Six Acre Meadow, where Millais was inspired to paint his Ophelia, Tate Britian’s most popular painting.
Six Acre Meadow also falls within the Tolworth Area Plan – and today, the 16th September 2018, is the last day that you can have your say on what you think about it.
Click the link here for more information and to fill out the consultation form. Have your say!
The latest in our series of Tolworth Treasure and the Hogsmill Hum walks is a walk across Tolworth Court Farm Fields, our local nature reserve.
We will meet at the white bridge over the Hogsmill / Bonesgate Stream at 11am and take you on a journey through the ancient fields of Tolworth Court Farm, which date back to Domesday and beyond!
We will walk down the drovers’ road, and stop for a while to enjoy this beautiful space. If you would like to bring a poem or story to share about Tolworth or to celebrate the summer and the first harvest please do!
Accompanied children are welcome to this family-friendly walk.
Parents are responsible for supervising children throughout the walk and we recommend you bring water / sunscreen / a hat in case the weather is still scorching hot!
Please be aware that as we are hoping to show you as much wildlife as possible we can’t allow dogs on the walk.
Come and discover this gem of Tolworth Treasure
And it is FREE!
Trains: Tolworth Station and walk (approx 10 mins) 406 bus from Surbiton / Kingston / Epsom etc…bus stop nearby
Disclaimer: walks undertaken at participants’ own risk & responsibility. Please contact re. accessibility / mobility.
More info and contact via www.facebook.com/tolworthtreasure or email words@lucyfurlong.com / alison.fure@blueyonder.co.uk
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