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Friendless Churches Profile picture
@friendschurches
Dec 1, 2021 • 8 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
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A recent tree survey of the churchyard at St Mary's, Hardmead reveals how this small, moated plot just northeast of Milton Keynes reflects the changing landscape of wild and cultivated Britain.
 
Herewith, a #thread for #NationalTreeWeek ...
After the last ice age, the warming climate made this land a welcoming home for yew, elder, holly, elm, and hawthorn. An Irish yew has joined its close cousin at Hardmead in more recent times, along with a Scottish pine.

2/
📸: Kristina D.C. Hoeppner
An ‘avenue’ of Sycamore grow along the path to the church — perhaps grown from saplings or seeds of much older sycamore trees at the rectory. We may think of the sycamore as a native species, but it only arrived on our island from central/eastern Europe in the Tudor period.

3/
Wealthy Tudors also introduced the ornamental cypress into their formal gardens; one of these Tuscan trees grows in front of the church.

4/
We have three mature red horse-chestnuts, which hang heavy with plumes of pink flowers in the spring. This showy species is thought to have been cultivated in Germany in the early 1800s.

5/
Two trees come from the New World: 
 
The Indian bean tree (which isn't Indian and doesn't have beans), is a native of the southeastern United States, which first arrived in the UK in 1726.

6/
And towering above all of the other trees in the churchyard is a Wellingtonia, or 'giant sequoia', which stands 26 metres tall.

7/
This immense and iconic species of redwood only grows naturally in groves on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California.

Our Wellingtonia has quite a tale to tell... and we'll share its story tomorrow...

8/8

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More from @friendschurches

Friendless Churches Profile picture
Oct 24, 2023
Red and yellow and pink and green ... most children can tell you that rainbows contain seven colours, and many of us use 'ROYGBIV' to remember them. But people haven't always seen rainbows this way. Photograph of St Mary's, Tal-y-Llyn, Anglesey by Wynne Jones, with a rainbow in a grey stormy sky. The simple church is lit up with yellow light.
Rubens' 'The Rainbow Landscape' of 1636 was painted just three decades before major new scientific theories about colour and light emerged. The rainbow lights up surrounding clouds with highlights of lemony yellow and blue.

© The Wallace Collection Painting by Rubens: The Rainbow Landscape. A rainbow forms an arc across most of this landscape painting. Below it is a idealised rural harvest scene, with agricultural workers (men and women), cows, and carts with horses at the edge of a stream. From the Wallace Collection (licensed under Creative Commons).
In 1664, Robert Boyle conducted experiments with prisms, and in the 'artificial rain-bow' he produced, he observed five colours: Red, Yellow, Green, Blew and Purple. ... The frontispiece of Boyle's book, 'Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours'
Read 9 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
Sep 23, 2023
The church at Skeffling was built from glacial clutter and recycled masonry in the 1400s. It sits in Holderness. A landscape of mudflats and salt-marshes washed into existence by the North Sea.

Here ‘leaves unnoticed thicken, hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken’. An aerial view of Skeffling, with the church tower peeking out above the trees, surrounded by flat marshes and fields
Those are the words of poet, Philip Larkin. Larkin explored this area after he moved to Hull in 1955 to take up the position of librarian at the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull. He lived there and held that job for thirty years, until his death in 1985.
Of Hull, he wrote "I never thought about Hull until I was here. Having got here, it suits me in many ways. It is a little on the edge of things, I think even its natives would say that. I rather like being on the edge of things.” A view of the salt marshes at Skeffling, with a brooding dark blue sky lit by the sunrise, and a man-made glow on the horizon
Read 5 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
Jun 18, 2023
The next time you're lying in bed counting sheep, you might like to try out the counting system that was used by shepherds In medieval Lincolnshire.

From 1-20, the numbering sequence ran as follows: Yan, Tan, Tethora, Pethera, Pimp, Sethera, Lethera, Hovera, Covera, Dik ... Aerial view of St John the ...
... Yan-a-dik, Tan-a-dik, Tethera-dik, Pethera-dik, Bumfit, Yan-a-bumfit, Tan-a-bumfit, Tethera-bumfit, Pethera-bumfit, Figgit.
If there were more than 20 sheep in the flock, he could note the first 20 when he reached Figgit by putting a pebble in his pocket, and then starting the sequence from Yan again.

(info from 'Alex's Adventures in Numberland' by Alex Bellos)
Read 4 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
Mar 19, 2023
In about 1300, five massive oak legs were pushed into the soil at Boveney to raise a belltower out of the clay tile roof of the 12th-century church. Inside, in the 1800s fielded panelling was installed, hiding those hardworking legs.

#thread
Perfect as that panelling looked, it obscured the most important timbers. Noticing that the bellcote was somewhat slumped, our architect removed some panels, and we found the legs were rotten. Boveney church was *almost* without a leg to stand on.

2/
Many things contributed to the decay-the high water-table of the river-bank church, deathwatch beetle, fruiting bodies… The panelling concealed this until it was almost too late. The words, ‘catastrophic collapse’, were used. Panic set in. The £60,000 repair bill quadrupled.

3/
Read 6 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
Mar 18, 2023
Between 1666 and 1680, the English parliament sought to protect the wool trade, by requiring the dead to be buried in nothing but a shroud of English sheep's wool. Plague victims and the destitute were the only exceptions. A section of a 17th century affidavit shows a wood-cut print
The 'Burying in Woollen Acts' required an Affidavit within 8 days of burial, proving before a JP that the law had been complied with. Those who didn't comply were fined £5, half of which went to the poor. This blog has some terrific examples of affidavits:buff.ly/3YkB33B This signed affidavit from Worcestershire for Burying in Woo
Many wealthy families preferred to simply pay the fine and bury their loved ones in clothing or shrouds of finer materials, such as linen.
Read 6 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
Mar 17, 2023
St Patrick was ripped from his home as a teenager. After six years as a slave in the west of Ireland, he trekked the breadth of the island to get home to Britain. He would become the patron saint of Ireland, yet at the end of his life, he felt he had failed.

#thread Image
Patrick lived in the 5th century. Upon leaving Ireland in his early 20s, he devoted his life to Christ. He returned to Ireland after hearing Vox Hiberionacum – the voice of the Irish – in a dream.

2/ Image
He became the patron saint of Ireland in the 7th century when the embellishment of St Patrick’s story began. Some of the biographers got quite creative, attributing all manner of miracles to the man – from snakes to sprouting staffs.

3/ Image
Read 8 tweets

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