Warren Lodge

I ended the last post feeling like the only human in the world. To continue the theme of aloneness (as distinct from loneliness, an affliction I don't have - currently, at least - despite living in the middle of nowhere, far from friends) we are going to visit the warrener's world...

In Much Ado About Nothing (1598), Shakespeare has Benedick describe his friend Claudio's mood as being "as melancholy as a lodge in a warren." In the late nineteenth century illustrated edition of Shakespeare's plays that the husband found in some boxes of books he won at auction in Bury St Edmunds this phrase is explained thus:

"A 'lodge' was a small building or shed , erected in rabbit-warrens or fields that required watching during the season, and was abandoned afterwards; so that a 'lodge' early became a type of dreariness or desolation."

Close to the Pink Pig Farm, nestled in part of Thetford Forest, is just such a melancholy lodge, perched on top of a hill, isolated and drear. Except that this lodge is a much grander construction than usual. It was built as a permanent home for the local warrener in 1640, not long after Shakespeare wrote his play.
 
Yesterday I approached the lodge accompanied by Sniff, climbing a long constantly rising path flanked by tall pine trees banked with swathes of browning bracken, touched into gleams of gold by the rays of the sun.

Some six hundred years ago, when the lodge was first occupied, much of this forest would still have been heathland, the perfect sandy habitat for thousands of rabbits. Warreners were rabbit-catchers and lived alone in the middle of Rabbitland, enabling them to simply fling open their front door and be surrounded by their quarry. Thousands of rabbits were slaughtered monthly and carted across England to London or York or Canterbury to satisfy the growing appetites of those swelling metropolises - meat for the table, fur for the back.

After a while tall pine trees give way to gorse bushes, still bearing some yellow flowers in late October, and the landscape opens out, with sandy pits on either side of the path. It is here, in these odd lunar depressions, that an extremely rare plant lives - the Breckland Mugwort. Once found at only one site in the whole of Britain, somewhere here in the Brecks (our Pink Pig Farm is firmly in the Brecks, of which more later), the Forestry Commission and the friends of Thetford Forest are busy trying to propagate Breckland Mugwort in more places - including here in warrener's world. I couldn't spot any today but did, I think, see some during the Summer...

Towards the top of the hill the land flattens out and becomes bare of vegetation. It's easy to imagine any Watership Down moment you care to think of (and, infuriatingly, Bright Eyes starts running through my mind, Art Garfunkel's fey tenor attempting to pull at my heartstrings. The only actual sounds are those made by the wind and the distant traffic on the A11 to Norwich.)

The lodge has been renovated on the outside but remains derelict inside with an old metal bedframe in one corner and some rotting pieces of wood strewn across the floor. The windows have all been bricked up but it is not hard to see that, in its heyday, it would have commanded quite a view. From the upper floor of the warren, the rabbit-catcher could look down onto the forest and see his rivals in rabbit-catching, goshawks and sparrowhawks, circling and swooping above the trees. Indeed, Helen Macdonald of recent H is for Hawk fame, came here to Thetford Forest to train her goshawk - she talks about the Brecks quite a lot in the book - and there is a wild population in evidence which, thrillingly, I do see on most visits. On a sign near to the Lodge, newly minted, there is an illustration of how the warrener might have lived...

There is also, on the same sign, the Shakespeare quote given above but they have Benedict talking about Cassio's mood. Now, I don't purport to be an expert in Shakespeare, but it doesn't take more than a quick glance at the list of dramatis personae of Much Ado, coming straight after the rather magnificent illustrated title page in my edition (note the mustachioed gentleman resolutely ignoring the swooning ladies), to realise that there is no-one called Cassio in Much Ado About Nothing. Nope. No-one. Nowhere. Put 'Cassio Shakespeare' into Google and you find him - as a gentleman soldier in Othello...

Never trust a sign.

Walking back past the other sign about Breckland Mugwort and the Mugwort depressions (obviously all totally made up) I notice that, despite the fact that it is almost November, there are still quite a few flowers in evidence. Cob nuts spatter the ground and colourful leaves whirl through the air. Red deer, roe deer and muntjac are all here, but remain invisible, hidden in the dappled depths of the forest. Once more there is no-one in evidence. Not a single other human being. I'm startled by the sudden darting of a squirrel and, mildly spooked, Sniff and I clamber back into the car and head for the Pink Pig Farm and home.

Postscript

If anyone feels the need to know more about rabbits, warreners and their special significance for East Anglia in the past, I've found a paper on-line called The Rabbit and the Medieval East Anglian Economy by one Mark Bailey. His abstract is this:

The rabbit was a rare beast in medieval England, and much sought after for both its meat
and its fur. This investigation plots the early history of commercial rabbiting in East Anglia,
and its transition from a low output concern to a growth industry in the later Middle Ages.
The development of the rabbit-warren into a highly lucrative source of income is explained in
terms of the changing economic and social conditions after the Black Death, and the more
intensive management of warrens by landlords. The occupational spin-offs from rabbiting,
and the social implications of poaching in a region where resistance to the feudal order was
endemic, are also explored. Final consideration is given to the economic impact of the rabbit
on areas of poor soil, and its ability to compensate for their inherent disadvantages in grain
production.

Sometimes, but only sometimes, I love the internet.

Heaths

There are two heaths a short drive from the Pink Pig Farm, both of which have been protected and are now classified as nature reserves – Cavenham Heath and Warren Hill. Both are closed during the Spring and Summer months so that Stone Curlews (Burhinus oedicnemus) can nest undisturbed by man and unmolested by their dogs. As these odd-looking yellow-eyed birds nest on the ground and are masters of disguise, these safety precautions prevent us from treading on them and their cleverly hidden chicks. Unfortunately, I have yet to see a Stone Curlew. Only this weekend we stared excitedly at a bird for quite a while until it metamorphosed into a log. I do see birders lugging large telescopic lenses around and suppose that if I latched onto one of them I might be led expertly to the bird itself. Now, however, it is the time of year when gates are thrown open to the hoi polloi once more and Sniff (my faithful hound) and I can bound across open spaces with glee. Subsequently, there’s no hope of seeing a Stone Curlew because they’ve all buggered off to Africa and will now be flapping their weary way somewhere over Southern Europe.

Sniff and I gambolled across Warren Hill today with gay abandon. The air smelt of burnt toast, an aroma borne through the mist hanging about the horizon. Flocks of crows passed noisily overhead, sounding like over-excited school-children on a trip to town. The crows are gathering in ever-greater numbers all over Suffolk, readying themselves for some great Winter conference or other.

A phenomenon in great abundance on the heath is the mushroom. Giant ones, fairy-tale red ones, star-shaped ones, sinister black ones, mushrooms are everywhere. The earth star looks particularly interesting – it belongs to an order of gasterocarpic basidiomycetes which are related to Cantharellales, and therefore boasts a series of extraordinarily complicated and unpronounceable scientific names. No wonder some botanist insisted on earth star as the common name – something that says what it is on the tin, as it were. Earth stars look like mush-flowers. Their ‘petals’ open up in moist conditions (such as we’re finding at the moment during these Autumn mornings) and enables the mushroom to germinate. Growing close to the ground, they cannot compete in magnificence to their neighbours on the heath, some of which today stood almost two feet tall (the first one pictured below).

The arrival of mushrooms coincides with the disappearance of butterflies, none of which are in evidence any more. I did spot two dragonflies chasing each other through the toasty air but they too will soon hibernate. One insect however was determined to uphold the promise borne by the sign at the entrance to Warren Hill, that this is ‘a wide open space alive with insects’:

Warren Hill is certainly wide and open and decidedly empty of other folk. The cattle that were grazing earlier in the year have also been moved on, the result being that Sniff and I had the whole of the Hill to ourselves. No doubt thousands of rabbits appeared the second our backs were turned but for a while I did have the strangest feeling that I was the only human left on earth.

Why the Pink Pig Farm?

Our house in F________ (in keeping with nineteenth-century novelistic traditions established by Thackeray and Trollope, the exact location shall remain a secret) was once a pig farm. In evidence, it has been pointed out to us that in the back study, a room tucked behind a large inglenook fireplace in the oldest part of the house, the stone floor (original) slopes sharply downwards at both sides of the room. Back in the day, this strange feature eased the flow of pig’s blood dripping steadily from carcases hung from black hooks embedded in the ceiling ( still extant - although the only thing hanging from them these days is a cheap plastic British flag Daniel was given when he became a British citizen some years ago now. As F______ is in a borough where UKIP have a strong presence this is probably not a good idea; but the room isn’t overlooked except by squirrels, the odd kestrel, the occasional muntjac or roe deer and our chickens). The pig butchering part of the house dates back to 1540 – an inconceivably long time ago to my mind, especially if you consider what else was happening then – Henry VIII was busy marrying and divorcing (Anne of Cleves) and marrying again (Catherine Howard) whilst taking time out to execute Thomas Cromwell; Europe was suffering a drought during which both the Rhine and the Seine dried up; the ideas of Copernicus were published for the first time by Georg Rheticus in Danzig and, disturbingly, the earth, therefore, could no longer be considered the centre of the Universe…

Our house is also undeniably pink. Suffolk pink, in fact. According to country lore the colour was first created using dried pigs blood – oh, centuries ago. But the more mundane truth is that Suffolk pink only really became popular in the early twentieth century as a concept for brightening up villages in a county where most of the buildings are made of lathe and plaster rather than brick. The local builder who was replacing some rotten French doors for us the other day told me that the top foot or so of our building is made of reeds and plaster whereas the rest is lathe and plaster. So at some point the roof was raised (Raise High The Roofbeams, Carpenter!).

So – pink and a pig farm. The Pink Pig Farm. Welcome!