The village where I live “is an old, old, place…” (Aurthur Mee, 1936, In A Guide to St Marys Church and the History of Litton, by Christopher Booker 2019). Centred on the 14th century church, itself replacing one far older, bounded by ancient Oak, Ash and Yew, encircled by the Mendip hills and the river; the Domesday Book records three watermills powered by the fast flowing Chew, Litton being Anglo Saxon for ‘a settlement by a torrent’. Traces of medieval ridge and furrow fields to the east; holloways tracing ancient routes, hewn deep into the ground. It is a landscape which gives tangible expression to Ingold’s ‘dwelling perspective’ whereby “the landscape is constituted as an enduring record of and testimony to- the lives and works of past generations who have dwelt within it, and in so doing, have left something of themselves” (Ingold the temporality of landscape prologue)
Hollowmarsh
A walk to Hollowmarsh. I am fascinated by this small area of land which runs from the northern edge of Litton along the valley floor.
I had thought that the field systems were recent, maybe imposed since enclosure. They are actually far older, evidence of a medieval ridge and furrow system which divided the land into regular parcels in order to dole out strips equally.
Along the boundary of one of the fields the oak trees and hazel has been cut back. The oaks are gnarled and ancient.
