Caring for Landscapes at Flatford

How do you protect an iconic landscape? Landscapes in general cannot be listed or scheduled in the same way as built structures, and they can change rapidly as trees and plants grow and new features appear.   Caring for landscapes is therefore a challenge, yet they can be just as rich in meaning and significance as any building or monument.

 

View on the River Stour

Flatford in Suffolk is perhaps one of the most iconic landscapes in the world, despite (or perhaps because of) being such an intimate, local place. Here, John Constable learned his craft as a painter, and it is to this familiar corner of the Essex/Suffolk border that he returned again and again, even as he made his name in the metropolitan art world of the early nineteenth century.

 

Flatford Bridge Cottage

Constable was born in East Bergholt in1776, the second son of a wealthy local merchant, miller and farmer, whose fortune had enabled him to build a substantial mansion two years earlier. Flatford Mill was at the centre of Constable’s father’s business activities, and was therefore a place of business, trade and labour.

 

The Hay Wain (minus cart)

The beauty of the landscape in this part of Suffolk inspired in Constable a detailed, picturesque mode of painting that is now regarded as the very epitome of the English landscape painting tradition. His works line the walls of the National Gallery, Tate, V&A and other great galleries. So well known is Constable’s art, in fact, that this whole area of Suffolk takes his name – we call it ‘Constable Country’.

                        

Power lines crossing Constable Country - the cut in the trees now encourages nightingales

Flatford has a place in our national culture that far exceeds its local, domestic register. It has been visited by organised groups of tourists since at least the 1890s, eager to seek out the place that inspired the artist. As Stephen Daniels has observed, Constable Country has on many occasions served as a metaphorical index of the health of our relationships – with the countryside or indeed with the nation at large.

 

Kitchen garden at Valley Farm

Managing the different views and vantage points at Flatford is an interesting challenge. It is possible to take a tour with one of the excellent National Trust volunteer guides to compare prints of Constable’s paintings with the view of the real thing. More or less, the views remain similar. This is a direct result of the efforts that have been taken to protect this corner of Suffolk, now an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, by a wide range of organisations: the National Trust, the RSPB, the Field Studies Council, the River Stour Trust, the AONB and the County Council among them.

 

Where Constable's father built and maintained boats

At the same time, many of the views are now overgrown by comparison with the way Constable depicted them. Work is at hand to produce tree management plans, and to contemplate the potential removal of trees in order better to be faithful to the scenes that Constable depicted.

 

Signage (old school)

Icons are prone to being manipulated by others. Over the years, Constable’s most famous works have been re-used in a variety of contexts, from biscuit tins to anti-nuclear statements. One satirical treatment of Constable’s most famous work, the Hay-wain, was used to highlight the proliferation of signage appearing in the countryside in the 1920s.

 

A 1920s cartoon about signs in the countryside (after Constable's The Hay Wain)

I was pleased to see the rather stylish new National Trust signage now in place at Flatford on a recent visit. But the growth of signs today, as with that of trees, is being carefully managed to avoid unnecessary intrusion upon the landscape – even if this means, for now, just one fingerpost to direct visitors to the loos.

Stylish new signage

Orford’s mysteries: littoral drift meets literary drift

Suffolk is currently marketing itself as ‘The Curious County’ – quite right too, for the place is full of the most mysterious corners. Orford is one of these: a delightful coastal village where nothing is quite as it seems.

 

Pagoda at Orford Ness

This year sees the twentieth anniversary of the National Trust taking on responsibility for Orford Ness (in 1993), and the centenary of its being taken over by the War Office (in 1913). The 6-mile shingle spit – known as an island to locals, and not without some measure of accuracy – runs from just below Aldeburgh in the north to a position level with the hamlet of Shingle Street in the south (itself the location of various reported wartime mysteries).

 

Orford Ness: both a natural and military landscape

The Ness is a geological marvel that rivals anything elsewhere in the UK. It is separated from the mainland by the river Alde, and is a unique example of the effects of longshore or littoral drift. The distinctive ridge-and-furrow patterning on the spit is one of the consequences of this natural phenomenon, formed by the interaction between tidal patterns and the fine-grained shingle.

...which means the lighthouse's days are now numbered

An ever-changing coastline at Orford Ness...

But while its natural history alone makes Orford Ness a site of immense fascination, its military uses from 1913 onwards have added more recent layers of intrigue. In World War One Orford Ness was used as an airbase by the Royal Flying Corps. In the 1920s and 30s it was deployed for experiments in radio communications and the development of radar. After the Second World War, it was used as an atomic weapons testing facility, specifically to test the performance of different elements of weapons systems in a variety of environmental conditions. It also continued to be used for radio communications, through the installation of Cobra Mist.

 

Bringing the property to life, MOD-style

There is so much to uncover about Orford Ness that a single visit is not enough. Give yourself a day, and book yourself onto a tour by one of the National Trust rangers there. The stories you will hear will be scarcely believable, and you may find yourself, like me, acquiring a copy of Paddy Heazell’s Most Secret: The Hidden History of Orford Ness to find out more.

 

Orford Ness: access now permitted thanks to National Trust

I made another discovery on a recent visit to Orford. Out of curiosity I popped into the parish church, and found a nice little exhibition about the premiere of Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde there in 1958. Noye’s Fludde is a musical setting of a medieval mystery play based on the story of Noah’s ark. Britten wrote the piece specifically for young voices and for performance in a community setting like a church. He filled the score with strange percussion effects (to bring to life the sounds of shipbuilding, and the flood) and the performance involved children dressed as animals and the construction of the ark itself.

 

Benjamin Britten, autograph-signing for panda, fox and bear (Orford, 1958)

The premiere was a ‘curiously moving spiritual and musical experience’ wrote the Sunday Times’ reviewer in 1958, disturbing the ‘sleepy village of Orford near the Suffolk coast’. It’s a nice juxtaposition, in Britten’s centenary year, therefore to contrast his experimentation with medieval mystery plays in the Church with the secret atomic experiments taking place just a short distance (and ferry ride) away. A case of littoral drift meets literary drift? (If you catch my drift.)

Wicken Fen: 'haunt of much wild life'

 The National Trust has been involved at Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire for almost as long as we’ve been in existence. At a meeting of the General Committee, held on 26 April 1899, Mr Goss reported on the importance of the wetland site – ‘it was the haunt of much wild life and of the rare swallow tailed butterfly’. 
 

Minutes of National Trust Committee April 1899 on Wicken Fen

The following year, two acres were purchased through the generosity of Charles Rothschild among others, giving the Trust its first ever nature reserve. Acquisitions like this helped to meet the purposes of the organisation, as set out in the 1907 Act of Parliament, which included the preservation of the ‘natural aspect features and animal and plant life’ on Trust-held land.

Wicken fen, with one of our boardwalks

A century after our first acquisition at Wicken we launched a vision for transforming the landscape in the longer term. For the next 100 years, we are committed to acquiring further landholdings around Wicken, in order to return them to something like the original wetland landscape that would have been more common here before the fields were drained for agriculture.

Grazing pony

It is a bold vision, conceived on a wide scale and for the long term, in the expectation that it will dramatically enhance the diversity of animal and plant life already found at Wicken as well as provide fantastic outdoors experiences.

Lord Fairhaven rescued this pump

When I visited this week I found that much has already been achieved. Land has been taken in and allowed to return to wetland. The management of this land is largely carried out by herds of wild konik ponies and hardy highland cattle, roaming free across the open expanses and able to withstand the temperatures and weather conditions on the fens.

Wild horses take us here

The landscape is being opened up for access too. A cycle path now connects Wicken with nearby Anglesey Abbey. Cycles are available to hire, and cycle hoops dotted around nearby villages help to connect up the landscape as a whole – a nice touch. The new bridge at Burwell is an attractive feature in the landscape which also helps to connect up land across the lode.

The exciting thing about Wicken is… we don’t know what is going to happen next! It is a genuine experiment, and we wait to see what will happen as a result of these subtle but important changes to the landscape. So far the results have been spectacular with thousands of over-wintering wild fowl using the site. Clouds of Wigeon and Mallard as well as waders and Coots now all use the site.

The view from Burwell Bridge - wetlands to the right, agricultural land to the left

In the week when our new DG was in the news for her comments on wind turbines in the landscape, it was also good to see Wicken’s own wind turbines on display. Near the visitor reception there is one of the original wind pumps, rescued and moved here by Lord Fairhaven (who gave us nearby Anglesey). Further beyond is a more modern version, a new wind pump funded by the Environment Agency, which helps to keep the fen wet and calcareous by moving around water from the lodes.

One pump...

... or two?

 I also learned some more new words: ‘slubbered’ (dredging the mud from the lodes, or water courses), ‘drove’ (rectangular blocks of sedge, harvested in rotation), and my favourite ‘dockey’ (lunch - because fen workers had their wages docked if they took a lunch break). More fen words can be seen here.

Anglesey’s Secrets

Anglesey Abbey is well known for its winter garden. It is one of the few gardens in the country that comes into its own at this time of the year. The garden, laid out in the 1970s on land that was formerly a mere belt of trees, takes visitors on a twisting serpentine path.

 Every turn reveals a new colour or fragrance – it’s a multi-sensory experience, artfully curated by Anglesey’s talented team of gardeners led by Richard Todd. The finale of the path is a forest of silver birches– a fittingly breathtaking end to a magical garden experience.

The garden post-dates the era of Huttleston, 1^st Lord Fairhaven, who died in 1966 and bequeathed the house and grounds to the National Trust. But it continues to convey the aesthetic attention to detail that characterised his residency of the house – where visitors were encouraged not to enter the library before 6.30pm, so as not to leave unnecessary indents in the carefully brushed carpet.

Fairhaven was the son of Urban Broughton MP, who also purchased Runnymede in Surrey in order to save it for the nation. Magna Carta and the famous meadow where it was agreed are remembered in the collections on show at Anglesey – a reminder of the symbolic importance that the document held for Anglo-American families in particular.

On a visit to Anglesey this week, I discovered a new word – galathophile. It refers to collectors of snowdrops, which are having a particularly good season at Anglesey this year. I had not realised quite how varied snowdrops were until my visit. Richard explained to me that there are 20 species of the bulb, but that through cross-pollination there are very many more hybrids and variants. Some of these are indigenous to Anglesey. Specimens are kept in secret dells in the garden, off the visitor route and away from the predations of any wandering galanthophile. Some bulbs apparently change hands for significant amounts of money – but you need to know what you are looking for.

Another quirky secret was this window, in the library – with graffiti left by various members of another family with close links to the Fairhavens. 

The Queen Was Here

North Norfolk Coast: crucible of ecology

There’s something very special about the East Anglian coast. It’s not just that there’s so much of it, a great bulging arc encircling Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex from the Wash to the Thames estuary. For those who live on or near the coast, it is a constant feature of daily life, defining the mood and character of places.

Wide open spaces at Brancaster

Jules Pretty celebrates the ‘luminous’ quality of this coastline, referring to the ever-changing but ever-dominant influence of the light here on the eastern edge of England. Another writer who has been inspired by this coast is the poet Kevin Crossley-Holland:

“I only guess where marsh

finishes and sky begins,

each grows out of the other.”

No-one living here misunderstands the power of the sea, and its mysterious, unpredictable ways. This year we remember the tragic floods of 1953, when so many people lost their lives to a North Sea storm surge that overwhelmed defences all around the coast.

Forty years earlier, a century ago, some very interesting things were happening on the North Norfolk coast. In 1912 Blakeney Point was acquired by the National Trust. Its acquisition was championed by Professor F W Oliver of University College London, who was drawn to the 12-mile shingle spit for its unique flora and fauna.

Prof FW Oliver of UCL - later a member of NT's Council

The lifeboat house at the end of the point is currently undergoing serious restoration work, to ensure we have wind- and water-tight accommodation for our seasonal staff and volunteers, and a place for walkers and nature enthusiasts to shelter and rest. It’s a fantastic example of our approach to looking after a historically, culturally and architecturally important building but at the same time; invest in it as a modern resource.

The Lifeboat House, undergoing restoration Feb 2013

Solar Panels for the Lifeboat House

The North Norfolk coastline was a crucible for the early years of ecological science. Oliver brought many of the leading scientific figures to join him here on field studies expeditions. I was delighted to discover, when I visited property manager John Sizer at our Blakeney office, that a certain ‘Mr Hunter’ had accompanied Oliver on one such visit in July 1912. He stayed on Blakeney Point in a tent, and joined the professor in studying the distribution ‘of each species of plant with esp. reference … to the plants of shingle & sand.”. I assume this was Sir Robert Hunter, the first Chairman of the National Trust, surveying the Trust’s soon-to-be-acquired property (our 49^th). He would have been 68 at the time!

Early Field Studies camp at Blakeney Point. Was Robert Hunter in that tent?

I learned a great deal from my visit, about the infinite complexities of the relationships on the coast. Here in North Norfolk, especially at Brancaster, there is a strong culture of common rights, with 19 different rights registered under the Commons Act, such as the right to pick the local-growing samphire. (Coincidentally, Robert Hunter was the country’s leading expert on common rights and devoted a whole chapter in his 1897 book on the subject to the rights ‘Of Foreshore and Cliff’.)

Crown and state have strong interests too, with different ownership and regulatory regimes operating over the intertidal zone. This is a rapidly developing field – witness the current consultation on marine conservation zones – and makes life interesting for those, like John, who live and work here on the coast, having to hold these relationships in careful balance.

I was also struck by the sheer popularity of this stretch of coast. John reckons that 140,000 people visit Brancaster beach each year. That’s more visitors than most Trust properties get. It’s a huge challenge – keeping everything clean and tidy, providing car parks and loos to go along with the views. But also a huge opportunity for the Trust to show what we are here for, looking after our most special places and landscapes.

Our teams work tirelessly to strike this balance between access and conservation.  It’s something we do well, and something we must constantly keep under review. We know that these places need people and people need these places so encouraging a harmony for mutual benefit  is our main aim. I think we do it pretty well - Sir Robert, who was a strong advocate for both, would be proud of us!

Spirits of Place at Sutton Hoo

Perhaps we had offended the king. We were stood on top of burial mound 1 at Sutton Hoo when a rain cloud suddenly blew in from off the coast and drenched us. That'll teach me to clamber over scheduled monuments with such enthusiasm (and also not to wear the right clothes for the outdoors).

 

The view from Mound 1

I was visiting Sutton Hoo in the company of Martin, property manager, finding out about what makes this such a special place. Luckily soon after the rain started falling we spotted Les and a team of volunteers in the woods, all heading for a wooden shepherd’s hut to take shelter. We were invited in while the squall died down.

Les's Shepherd's Hut at Sutton Hoo

Sutton Hoo is a fascinating place. But what is it? The wooden posts on arrival declare it to be a royal landscape, a burial ground of an Anglo-Saxon warlord (in around AD625). But it is also the scene of one of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century.

The story of archaeologist Basil Brown and his investigations under the patronage of the landowner, Mrs Edith Pretty, is well known to many. Brown was supplanted halfway through the investigations in the summer of 1939 by a team of archaeologists from Cambridge University under Charles Phillips. The story is entertainingly retold in John Preston’s novel, The Dig­  - well worth a read.

Basil looks on while Charles Phillips' team carry on the dig in 1939

So much at Sutton Hoo oscillates between the real and the recreated, the old and the new, the past and the present. The visitor centre was opened around 11 years ago, and contains fascinating original pieces from the archaeological work that has gone on at the site. The rest is very high quality facsimile – swords, helmets and other metalwork.

The real thing: a sword taken from a burial at Sutton Hoo

Nearby Tranmer House, now open to the public, is just over a hundred years old and was built originally as a hunting lodge. From it, the burial mounds are directly visible. It is possible to imagine that the finds came to the dining room here after they were removed from the mounds in 1939. Martin has started thinking about how best to present the house, the visitor centre and the mounds themselves as a whole, working with a fantastically committed and welcoming team.

Sutton Hoo Visitor Centre: our new walk-through recreation of the ship burial

It was great to hear of the work underway to restore the view from Mrs Pretty’s sitting room, unimpeded by power lines. I loved seeing her binoculars on display and thinking of her gazing out here, before and during the archaeological investigations.

Mrs Pretty's binoculars, with Mound 2 in the distance

Mrs Pretty was a keen spiritualist, and it was said that she had seen spectral figures on the mounds, including a man on a white horse. Perhaps the binoculars have special powers, like those in the ghost story – helping to bring Sutton Hoo’s spirits of place to life.

A visit to Houghton Mill

 A mill has stood on the river Ouse at Houghton since at least 969. That was the year Ramsey Abbey was granted the right to put up a mill, and demand that local farmers use it for making flour. It continued in use as a mill until 1929, when commercial operations came to an end. But the local people loved it so much as a landmark and picturesque spot that they came together to save it from disappearing. The building was, for many years, a youth hostel, albeit, from 1939, in the ownership of the National Trust.

Houghton Mill, January 2013

In 1998 substantial new investment was made in the site thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund. A new mill wheel was added, and additional land and buildings purchased. Houghton Mill now welcomes many thousands of visitors each year, who come to see a working water mill in operation as well as enjoy the open meadows and river banks nearby.

The mill wheel, added as part of an HLF-funded Millennium project

When I visited this week, I had the great pleasure of being able to turn the handle that opened the sluice gate and started the mill wheel turning. It was a magical experience. I could physically feel the power of the water rushing through, adding resistance to the handle’s turn and starting to shake the timbers of the building. Flour soon started pouring out, and Steve, visitor services manager, explained how the different settings produced different grades of flour.

Steve at Houghton, showing me how the mill works

Sandy, a volunteer who works at the site, also showed me the secondary motor and mill stone that has been installed. This is a back-up, to ensure that flour can still be ground on days when the water levels prevent the main wheel from being used.  As Phil, ops manager, knows all too well, visitors to the mill above all want to see it in action.

My visit made me reflect on how our approach to industrial heritage differs from our attitudes to other sorts of heritage. A mill is a mill, regardless of the age of its individual components. The main building at Houghton today dates from the second half of the 18^th century, with plenty of later additions.

Houghton, as shown on an early OS map

The team shared lots of conservation dilemmas with me: how to differentiate (or not) new woodwork from the existing timbers, how to manage visitor flows in some very tight and compact spaces. But the idea of installing new mill stones feels inherently right, even if those mill stones are not ‘original’. (Actually the new stones are French burr stones, manufactured by Kay & Hilton in Liverpool in 1859.)

I suppose Houghton Mill is therefore the Trust’s own version of Trigger’s Broom: how many times can you change the handle and head of a broom before it ceases to be the same broom? (Philosophers apparently refer to this as Theseus’ Paradox, after a story retold by Plutarch, so it’s not exactly a new conundrum.)

Anyway, the visit also reminded me of the power of bringing places to life. The mill really is a mill, producing flour from the natural power of the river’s flow. Phil and his team know that bringing Houghton to life means keeping the mill working. What’s more, I was delighted to be given a bag of Houghton flour, which I was able to take home as a memento. I am pleased to say it became some very tasty bread the next day.

Before

After

I cheated and used a breadmaking machine. But it’s still bread, as Trigger (or Plutarch) might have pointed out.