Birds and Boat Sheds
This week has been chilly. There has definitely been a sharp scent of winter in the air. I have walked over fields in the dark, feeling molehills crunchy with frost under my feet and the moon has been just full enough to light my way. At home I have been trying to figure out my shop. Some aspects of it feel terribly complex so, for the moment at least, it will probably only operate in the UK. As I write this it is still hidden, but perhaps by the time you read, you will be able to visit.
I did find time to make this wren though…
Latin name Troglodytes, which means ‘cave dweller’. I haven’t seen any in caves, but often spotted them hopping in and out of the dark crevices of a dry stone wall.
I am of course, while absolubtely sticking close to home, continuing my imaginary journey around Britain in the 1720s. Daniel Defoe and I have left Woodbridge and travelled to the small coastal town of Dunwich. He describes it as ‘decayed’. Most places are for him either prospering or decayed. He tells me the town once had fifty churches but now only one remains. The truth is that Dunwich was almost completely destroyed by a storm in 1326. Some have claimed to have heard the drowned church bells ringing beneath the waves.
From there, we go north to Southwold and it is a town Daniel has visited years before, in October. Then he had seen, covering the roof of the church and perched on every building in sight, about a million swallows. He had asked someone what it meant and had been told that they were kept there by an onshore breeze. They were waiting for the wind to change so they could head off to where ever it is that swallows go to in the winter. And it had been true. The wind had swung round to the North West in the night and in the morning, not a single swallow to be found. No one really understood much about bird migration in the early eighteenth century. In fact, I learned that one of Daniel Defoe’s teachers had been the first to write in English about bird migration. His suggestion was that they went to the moon.
Continuing up the coast, I am not really listening to details of the trade at Yarmouth, though it is apparently well known for its manufacture of Red Herrings (which would be kippers to you and me). I am interested in the countryside around the north Norfolk coast. It is a terribly hazardous place for shipping because of the dangers of being blown onto rocks or becoming trapped in the deep bay to the west called The Wash. Here every barn, every pig sty, in fact every single outbuilding and even the fences are built from the plundered wrecks of unfortunate sailing vessels. It’s quite a sight.
From the coast we turn south, back towards London. Through Ely, where the cathedral is so old he is surprised it hasn’t fallen down. In fact, the whole of the Fens are so flooded and hidden in fog that he generally feels quite sorry for the people who have to live there.
We make our way to Cambridge, famous not only for its university but the massive fair that is held near there at the beginning of autumn. It is the biggest and busiest fair in all of Europe. A whole town appears with streets with names like Oyster Row and Cheddars’ Lane. There is even a town square furnished with a pulpit for use on Sundays. It seems there is nothing to be bought that can’t be got at Sturbridge Fair. Farmers come from all over the country to sell their goods, but so do hatters, toymakers, goldsmiths. There are coffee houses and brandy shops. You can meet cloth dealers from Yorkshire and buy wrought iron from Birmingham, stockings from Leicester, knives from Sheffield. It is where Isaac Newton bought the prisms that he used to show how light splits into a spectrum of colours. Wool is sold here in huge quantities, it is transported in pockets. Daniel thinks the name must be a joke because they are so big that a single pocket not only fills a wagon but hangs over the sides. Each weighs at least a ton.
Given that I spend so much time sitting quietly and alone in 2020, I am completely overwhelmed and exhausted by the noise and crowds at the fair. Life in the 1720s has been too fast for me this week and I am almost relieved to be heading back to London, via Epping forest.
