A walk in Shakespeare country.

A.W.U.K.

A.W.U.K.

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Sep 27, 2002
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A walk starting and ending in the village of Aston Cantlow.

This is the church, where William Shakespeare's parents, John Shakespeare and Mary Arden almost certainly got married. Next door is the King's Head where the wedding feast was probably held.
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Looking back towards Aston Cantlow: The darker green lines in the turf pointing towards the church are the furrows of medieval ridge and furrow. The ridges are about 18" high still, and about 5 yards wide. Each ridge represents 1/4 of a day's ploughing with an ox team, approximately. These ridges, originally formed in Anglo-Saxon times, probably haven't been ploughed since the black death devastated the population in 1349.
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An old dew pond. This is actually on top of a slight rise in the ground!
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This stile takes us down to a lane.
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And this bridle gate takes into the field opposite, where the path goes towards Withycombe Wood.
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In Withycombe Wood: The bluebells are pushing their way out!
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This kissing gate takes us out of Withycombe wood onto the path to Walcote:
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The path to Walcote.
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Looking back towards Withycombe Wood.
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Walcote: The name could mean the old house or the Briton's house.
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Walcote.
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The hamlet of Walcote lies in the scattered parish of Haselor: This is the ancient parish church of Haselor which tops a small hill a few hundred yards away. This position, and the circular shape of the churchyard, indicate that the church was built on a pre-Christian centre of worship.
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A 13th century grave in the churchyard.
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Snowdrops in the circular churchyard. The houses in the distance are in the village of Great Alne I think.
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The simple common-rafter roofs of the church look very early, perhaps as early as 1200. This is the south aisle.
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The land to the left of this iron fence post is an abandoned railway. The post itself is made from I K Brunel-designed Great Western bridge rail. Bridge rail had been phased out by the 1890's.
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A house in the village of Great Alne:
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The tiny church at Great Alne.
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The church here has, unusually, retained it's musician's gallery in which the church band would have played before the general introduction of church organs. Thomas Hardy's novel "Under the Greenwood Tree" describes the end of such a church band.
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Further on: This crumbling bridge carries a track over the course of the abandoned railway, about half a mile east of Great alne.
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From here, it is only another half mile or so back to Aston Cantlow.

Thanks for looking!
 
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Very cool and thanks for sharing these great pictures!
I really like how there are gates everywhere to cross different properties.
 
AWUK- beautiful countryside, lovely pics, & the historical commentary is great! I don't see too many stiles or "kissing gates" in the central US.

I've always wondered how big/small a "wood" has to be to get classified as such... as opposed to a forest. Is there a certain size stand or type of trees or topography that's implied by that term in the UK?
 
Lol, I had a SAK in my pocket but I think you've all seen one before.

chopchop, my understanding is that a wood is an area of trees deliberately planted with the intention of felling them when mature. Though nowadays, with imported timber providing a lot of competition, many woods have been left to go wild. A wood can be as small as an acre or two.
A coppice is like a wood but the timber is felled young, say 30 years, and new stems are allowed to grow from the stump which are cut in their turn. Normally there is a rotation through the coppice with a few trees cut each year.
Originally the word "forest" meant land set aside for the king to hunt on, whether wooded or not, though nowadays it seems to be applied to natural woodland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing
 
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I'm sorry, no peek at the British countryside is allowed in Wilderness and Survival Skills without a picture of Sherwood Forest. Knives aren't necessary, but a good English longbow would be nice. :grumpy:
 
A.W.U.K. said:
Lol, I had a SAK in my pocket but I think you've all seen one before.

chopchop, my understanding is that a wood is an area of trees deliberately planted with the intention of felling them when mature. Though nowadays, with imported timber providing a lot of competition, many woods have been left to go wild. A wood can be as small as an acre or two.
A coppice is like a wood but the timber is felled young, say 30 years, and new stems are allowed to grow from the stump which are cut in their turn. Normally there is a rotation through the coppice with a few trees cut each year.
Originally the word "forest" meant land set aside for the king to hunt on, whether wooded or not, though nowadays it seems to be applied to natural woodland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing
Click to expand...

thanks! now I know what a coppice gate is as well... bonus literary points
 
awesome pics... thanks for sharing..:thumbup: i need to get to England one of these days...:)
 
A good walk in the woods, fields, and history thrown in - what's not to like?

Some day I'll have to make my way over there. All of my ancestors (except for 2 lines) came from the UK, but that was centuries ago. The 2 that did not were a young French lad who was shipwrecked off Cape Cod around 1680 (his brother was the captain, he snuck aboard, and his parents did not know where their son went until a couple of years later), and the second was William of Normandy, who I am sure you recognize (although I guess you could say that line also was from the UK, as it was centuries before my ancestor left England).
 
Very interesting!

With all those references in the pictures to the 13th and 14th centuries, I wonder if any of my ancestors were there.

Don - For a minute I had to wonder what second line you were talking about besides Crapo - but I forgot to consider William the Conqueror as non-UK.
 
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