We stood on the north end of the Stiperstones and stared into Wales. Fifty miles away, every ridge of Cader Idris showed up. Near at hand Mr Harris’s class from Bishop’s Castle Primary walked fearlessly by groups of Highland and Galloway cattle, who graze these moors to conserve the habitat.
We met with Clive Dean from Shropshire Wildlife Trust, who showed us conservation skills in the form of taking down self-seeded young birches using bowsaws and loppers. If they were all left to grow, the damp grassland would be crowded out under shade. Brook Vessons is a strange, atmospheric woodland that was once a settlement that grew up with the Snailbeach mining industry. Working people built ‘one-night-houses’ here, and took on smallholdings to supplement their small incomes. It was finally abandoned by the mid 20th century, when the lead-mining industry declined, but remnants of fields and cottage walls remain.
The children worked highly efficiently sawing and lopping and by lunchtime we could see we’d had an impact. Then picnic lunch under an ancient Rowan tree, grown broad and far older than usual as a result of its century of lopping and coppicing during the times that people lived here.
After lunch we walked through the kitchens of collapsed cottages to find a double hedge line of old trees. Here the children worked in pairs to create Poem Notes for a particular tree. It was exciting to read the seeds of poems to come. Then we continued for a short way to find the last remaining ruin above ground. There’s just a gable end and chimney left – perhaps this really was a one-night-house, built overnight so a fire could be lit in the hearth in the morning, and smoke be seen coming out of the chimney. If you managed this, the landlord allowed you to build the rest of it and become part of the community.
We talked about the people who lived here, the children who ran about these lanes and in and out of the little houses, the people who worked so hard here. Then the 21st century children sat down opposite the one-night-house and wrote.
In Woods We Forget Things 