Spring Forwards

Whilst scoping our second Kettering Light Walk and looking for a place to plant some living willow  we came across The Green Patch Community Allotments run by Groundwork a wonderful growing resource in the heart of the community. We approached Lucy Darby, who said they had received a commemorative bench, and that a willow half bower would work perfectly with the bench adding some gentle shade. We had planned to plant the willows as the culmination of our next walk, but the walk had to be postponed and we had already collected the willow. To grow willow from unrooted cuttings or whips, the willow should be cut and planted after leaf fall and before leaf bud - usually during December, January and February. We decided it was best to go ahead with the planting.

Nigel helped us dig a channel for the whips

We began by setting in the uprights, pushing the longest sturdiest whips about 6 inches into the ground vertically to make the main structure. It took quite a lot of effort as the ground was still compacted and quite dry due to the lack of rain we have had in February.

Tying in the front of the arch. 

Once the diagonal whips were in position we began to weave them into shape. The interwoven diagonals are for strength to create an open lattice interlinked  feature, the tension of the willow should generally hold the structure together.

We then replaced the clumps of soil and turf, then tried out the Bower for size!

Winter Aconites seen on our walk

Getting ready for some more Guerilla Gardening

We were so glad to have been out in the fresh air planting that when we were next together in our studios we began preparing a new batch of seed bombs to take on our Finedon Light Walk. The clay had gone hard and was about to be thrown away when Carole salvaged the bags and reconstituted them in a bucket of water. It was still quite tough to excavate from the bucket but we had more than enough for our purposes! 

Clay and wild flower seeds

shaped with cookie cutters.

Carole has been popping back to The Green Patch 

at regular intervals to check on our willow's progress.

Nigel has been keeping The Bower well watered,

paving slabs have been placed under the bench and 

there is a mulch of bark chips around the whips.

 Vertical whips sprouting fresh growth  from the top

Diagonally planted whips sprouting along the 

full length giving a denser growth to the structure

We ordered our willow from here 

Willows Nursery Walgrave 

Northampton  NN6  9QA 

Just the Ticket

When we first started thinking about Undiscovered Networks we took an Away day to the London Transport Museum and were both struck by the the huge variety of tickets and travel tokens. The ticket above exhorts the traveller to buy Bryant and May matches to support local workers and to enable the company to "pay £1,000 a week more in wages". We didn't take note of the date of the ticket above but it seems ironic as in 1888 the first recorded strike was staged by the Match-girls working at the Bryant and May factory and prompted the women's rights activist Annie Besant to write a paper "White Slavery in London" in The Link on 23rd of June 1888.

A selection of tickets and travel tokens

An early Bus Conductors's ticket dispenser

We decided that our tickets should reflect the format of current rail tickets which have two distinctive bands of colour at the top and bottom of the front face. These were hand printed and stamped with the Miles & Dacombe header and footer and each ticket was stamped with a different selection of images.

The tickets will be dispensed from a specially constructed shoulder bag with almost transparent pockets in front and a larger pocket, lined with a Liberty map fabric, which will contain the postcards for travellers' responses.

Five tickets, five questions

10 different postcards with images from

Whatstandwell, Cromford and Langwith Whaley Thorns

awaiting our first Ticket exchange!

Coincidences

Thinking about Jo’s image of the child on the station platform made me remember some journeys from my own childhood. My family emigrated to Western Australia on the £10 ticket, we lived in a place called Kelmscott and for the first few years my brother and I travelled to school in Gosnells by train. There was a walk from our house to the station, then a brief train ride and a short walk to school. I can’t remember much about the journey, or what the train was like, I have no image of either station in my head. What I do remember was that every day, whilst waiting for the train our Mum would read to us. I loved getting lost in stories and I expect that’s why I can remember so little about the built environment, I was wandering around in my imagination and not paying too much attention to the outside world. If I strain my memory I can just feel the dry morning heat on my cheeks, catch a whiff of railway carriage and recall the ache of being torn away from the book of the moment.

These memories prompted a spot of Googling to see what the station had been like. The old Kelmscott Station, which opened in 1889, had been replaced, in 2008, by a modern, state of the art station. You can see both the old and the new by following this link

I did get a slight tingle on seeing the new Kelmscott station building, as its’ outer structure is very like the new building that houses the swimming pool in Corby.

Photo by Andrew Rushton

Corby Swimming Pool under construction 2009.

Kelmscott Station under construction

The second shiver of coincidence came when doing research into some tangential family histories, looking through public records, at patterns of work and the moves made from countryside to cities. I discovered that in 1911, a distant relative, 17 year old William Miles was living with aunt Hannah Sophia Staples & uncle Charles Staples at 12 Becher St, Derby (the original house no longer exists). Peartree Station (Peartree and Normanton as it was known) opened in 1839, the Victorian / Edwardian housing stock in the area was built to cater for the growing industrialworkforce, employed by the chemical industries, Rolls Royce and the railways in Derby.

William was employed as Railway Clerk Hotel, I assume this means he was employed in a railway hotel. His uncle Charles and cousin Albert were railway clerks working either at Derby Station, 22 minutes walk away or Peartree Station, 12 walk minutes away. As our project is still in the planning stage I can’t do too much digging around about Peartree Station, which is one of the names on the line from Corby that appealed to me, but I quite like this invisible line radiating out from the past into the present.

In the meantime here is an image connected with both Kelmscott and the research mentioned above – a piece called “Three Sails, Many Voyages”, digital images printed on silk, currently on display as part of Out Yer Tree’s exhibition of outdoor contemporary art in the grounds of Coombe Abbey Country Park (Brinklow Road, Binley, Nr Coventry CV3 2AB) from 28th August – 17th September 2010. There is a free walk and talk event on Saturday the 28th of August where the artists involved will discuss their work and answer any questions the public may have. The walk and talk will leave from the visitor’s centre at 2pm.

Maps may edit out ........