“There in a wood ...”
A new piggery has appeared in the grounds of a school on one
of our regular walks along the valley.
Myrtle seems uninterested in either the grunting or the smell. But I rather like the porcine scene
especially now I understand their impact on the cultural landscape of the area.
At a fascinating recent talk Matt, from the High Weald AONB,
demonstrated how the landscape we see today results as much from mankind as
from geology.
And what gave rise to my village and many others around here
was, apparently, pigs!
It seems that Anglo-Saxon settlers imported the practice
of ‘transhumance’ which, I learned, is
the seasonal herding of stock from one area to another. And since their stock
was mainly pigs, they created swine pastures in woodland clearings – known as
‘dens’. Hence Benenden and Rolvenden
and all the others.
So now, as Myrtle and I ramble through our remaining parcels
of ancient woodland, I imagine up ahead an immigrant Jute girl from fifteen
hundred or so years ago. She’s herding
her swine through the trees along the path which, a little later, is to become
the B2086. And she stops overnight in the clearing which will, before long, form
our village green. But her way of life
is threatened. The dens are being
settled. The surrounding woods will soon
be enclosed by the lord of the manor or ‘assarted’ (cleared) as the countryside
we recognise today begins to be created.
By the time of the Doomsday survey the process is almost over and the
medieval field pattern firmly established.
Then it’s sheep that come to graze the fields and bring wealth.
Just look at the magnificent parish church in Cranbrook to see how much wealth!
But so concerned are the authorities about foreign competition to the local cloth
trade (itself established by immigrant Flemish weavers), that the export of
wool is banned or heavily restricted.
And that gives rise to the practice of Owling – the illegal export or
smuggling of wool from beaches around Camber and Rye. And then it occurs to someone to use the same
boat that’s taking the wool to France, to bring back tobacco or brandy or tea
and sell it ‘un-taxed’ in Britain. But that’s another tale.
So the next time you gaze upon a humble pig, just think of
the contribution its ancestors have made to our history and landscape …
First Published in Courier Countryside
Column Friday 8th March under headline: “How the pigs shaped our rural landscape…”
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