Squeezing the Limen

Countryside Column for 17 May 2013 under headline:

Shrinking river was ideal incentive for smugglers

I very nearly toppled out of a dinghy the other day.  And given the trouble Myrtle had scrabbling up the muddy bank after retrieving a stick, I might have been in the water for some time.

It was the river Limen, and my alter ego, 18^th century smuggler Gabriel Tomkins, complete with tricorn hat, sword and pistol, was at Newenden for a publicity shoot. It’s for a forthcoming Smuggler Tales event onboard the boat that chugs passengers up to Bodiam or down towards Rye.

Alert readers may be expostulating that the river there, separating Kent from East Sussex, is not the Limen but the Rother.  And so it is now. But up until about 1600 it was known by its Latin name.   And a very different river it was too.  Not the narrow ditch-like stream with stepped high banks of today,  but a vastly wide,  tidal waterway that was the artery of the Weald.

Its importance dates from a thousand years before the Romans, when the Belgae arrived from the Rhineland in search of industrial opportunity.  For them the Limen was the only route into the dark interior of the Wealden forest. They were seeking a strange mineral - iron ore - and they found it in abundance in the local sedimentary rock. They also found quantities of the two other requisites for smelting iron – clay for the kiln and wood for the charcoal to fire it.

Tony Cardwell’s excellent history “Limen” shows that extensive iron working in and around the valley continued right into the 18^th century.  Then, with the river silting up and the forest denuded, hammer mills at places like Wadhurst, Hawkhurst and, finally, Robertsbridge closed for good.

That contributed to the serious unemployment already created by the shifting river landlocking ports like Smallhythe and Rye. With the government levying swingeing import taxes on tea and tobacco and brandy, opportunity knocked for smugglers like Tomkins with his Mayfield and Hawkhurst gangs.

They would likely have used the Limen/Rother to move their tubs inland, while redundant watermen at Rye and Winchelsea would have leapt at the chance to earn the odd florin or crown helping bring the smuggled goods ashore.

Viewing the emasculated Rother today from an unstable rowing boat it’s hard to  imagine the mighty Limen spread out across the whole valley with a multitude of craft servicing our own local iron industry.

Read previous columns at: kentcountrymatters.blogspot.co.uk

Giving the lie to localism?

Courier Countryside Column for 21 June 2013 under headline:

Post office shake-up may spell end for village shops

The future of our village shop hangs in the balance. The current owners want to sell up, but finding someone new to take over has proved problematic. Part of the difficulty is down to a major reorganisation of sub-post offices which will have far-reaching implications for dozens of villages in the south east and in the country at large.

Currently the postal part is a separate entity within a village store. The postmaster - often the shopkeeper - is paid a retainer plus a percentage of sales. This can typically amount to some £10,000 a year. Hardly enough for a post office to survive entirely separately, but an important additional income for a small shop.

Now, however, Post Office Ltd is embarked on a massive restructuring known as Network Transformation.  Over the next two years 2000 sub-post offices will become ‘Locals’. The separate ‘fortress’ position will disappear and transactions will take place over the counter, alongside shop sales. The Local will be stripped of many roles, including handling international parcels and domestic ones over 20kg.  The ability to pay bills manually will go, as will passport, car tax and DVLA services. And, most importantly, the retainer paid to the shopkeeper will also disappear.

Quite apart from the potential inconvenience for customers of mixing post office transactions with shop sales at busy times, it seems likely that the reduction in revenue could be the nail in the coffin of many rural stores. Post Office Ltd argue that the loss of retainer could be made up from increased sales as the new Local will be open whenever the shop is, including possibly evenings and weekends. Shopkeepers I know say there’s no demand for longer opening hours in small villages and they wouldn’t be economic.

As a boy I had the choice of a dedicated post office plus three village shops. Recently our parish council, reluctantly, supported plans for the last but one of those to change to residential.  

Everyone agrees the sole remaining shop forms an important part of the community and is vital for the elderly and people without cars. But it’s already touch and go whether it will survive. Without the post office revenue, its chances could be further diminished. Perhaps central government should start to see small rural post offices as an indispensible social resource rather than purely profit centres.

www.kentcountrymatters.blogspot.co.uk

The field before the festival

See www.solparty.org.uk

Kentish Chainsaw Massacre

Courier Countryside Column for June 7^th.

Under title:  Chainsaw Whine was least of my worries

It was the chainsaws shattering the Sunday morning peace that alerted us.

We were holding our annual tennis tournament and around 30 people were sitting in the sun awaiting their turn on court. And the infuriating whine just went on and on…

Eventually I rose to remonstrate.  And got a terrible shock. I’d known an ancient apple orchard was hidden behind a high hedge opposite.  I’d even thought how sad to leave these superb trees unpruned, but was consoled by the wonderful wildlife habitat they provided.

Now they were not just pruning, or even pollarding. It looked like they were massacring the entire orchard. Two teams with chainsaws and tractors were systematically felling tree after tree.

The contractors turned out to be perfectly reasonable about the noise and agreed to postpone work until a weekday. So peace was restored and tennis resumed. But surely, I thought, you can’t just destroy a whole orchard of 40 or 50 year-old full standard apple trees?  You’d need a licence wouldn’t you?  I mean I grow a few willows commercially - Salix Alba Caeruleas.  And even though they are planted specifically to make cricket bats you still have to have a license to fell them.

The Forestry Commission’s website is clear: “You normally need permission from us to fell growing trees.” But a little later: “felling carried out without a licence is an offence unless covered by an exemption.” And of course you’ve guessed it - fruit trees in garden or orchard are exempt.

But why?  It’s crazy. All conservation and wildlife organisations agree that traditional orchards are vital havens of biodiversity, yet we’ve lost more than 60% of them in the past five decades. Community orchards like the one I’m involved with are desperately trying to stem the tide. But elsewhere we fail utterly to protect what we have left.

Perhaps, I thought, the council’s Tree Officer would be able to slap a Preservation Order on them?  It’s not that straightforward with commercial orchards, he told me. Fruit trees are exempt from TPOs.  A farmer has to be allowed to profit from his land. He’d look into it but was doubtful.

So by the time you read this another important part of our rural heritage will likely be gone. To add insult to injury, as they were exterminated, the trees were resplendent in full spring blossom.