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The Library

23
May
A small round of fresh white sheep's cheese on a dark slate, broken open to show its soft interior, with a stack of oatcakes and a wooden honey-dipper alongside.

English Sheep Milk Cheese: The Upland Summer Farms and the Modern Survivors

Sheep were milked in the Welsh hafod and Scottish shielings into the twentieth century. English sheep-milk cheese survives as Slipcote and Berkswell.
4 min read
23
May
Cowslips (Primula veris) in flower on an ancient meadow in May, with a green-winged orchid (Anacamptis morio) among them, viewed from ground level through long grass.

Cowslip: The Lost Meadow Flower and the Wine That Drained It

Cowslip (Primula veris) once grew in every English meadow. Lost to ploughing, fertiliser and the demand for the flower-pip in cowslip wine.
3 min read
23
May
Elder umbel in cream lace against a scrubbed kitchen board, jar of cordial syrup in the corner, morning light from the left.

The Elderflower Window: The Three Weeks That Shape the Still-Room Year

Elderflower carries the still-room year. The umbels hold their scent for about three weeks once they open, the work of cordial, vinegar and wine.
4 min read
23
May
The Nitch Ladies on the green outside Salisbury Cathedral: four women in nineteenth-century fieldworker dress with bundles of hazel and oak twigs balanced on their heads.

The Grovely Forest Rights of Wishford Magna: Oak Apple Day on the Cathedral Green

The Wiltshire village of Great Wishford walks to Salisbury before dawn on 29 May to defend a forest right confirmed in 1603 and held since 1292.
4 min read
23
May
Watercolour view of St Mary's, Reed: a small Saxon church with a stocky flint tower, long-and-short quoin work, terracotta tiled nave and weathered headstones.

Saxon Long-and-Short Work: Dating an English Church Before 1066

Tall vertical stones alternating with broad horizontals at the corners of a tower mark Saxon work, pre-1066. Earls Barton is the classic example.
3 min read
23
May
Watercolour still life. A cream bowl of pale green gooseberry and elderflower fool on weathered wood, with green gooseberries, an elderflower head, and a fork on a linen napkin alongside.

Green Gooseberries: The Cooking Fruit of Late May

Hard, sour, the size of a marble. The green gooseberry is a cooking fruit, not a fresh one. Eliza Acton 1845 set the standard farmhouse method.
3 min read
23
May
Watercolour botanical study of wall pennywort on a West Country stone wall. Two colonies of round cupped leaves emerge from a mortar joint, with one slender flower spike and a fern frond.

Wall Pennywort: The Plant of the Old Stone Walls

Wall pennywort, the small fleshy plant of old stone walls. Children called it penny-pie; the doctrine of signatures named it navelwort.
3 min read
23
May
Watercolour of lowland acid heath at ground level. Blue milkwort, white heath bedstraw, rust-red sheep’s sorrel and yellow tormentil in short turf, gorse in yellow flush behind, low horizon.

Lowland Acid Grassland in May: What to Find at Ground Level

Lowland acid grassland is the closest thing to England before the plough. Milkwort, sheep's sorrel, and heath bedstraw at ground level.
3 min read
23
May
Watercolour of the Castleton Garland King on a grey shire horse. The rider in a red coat is hidden from chest up inside a floral cone of red, blue and white flowers on a wooden frame.

Castleton Garland Day: The Garland King Rides Blind Through the Village

On 29 May the Garland King rides through Castleton invisible from the waist up, a beehive of flowers on his shoulders. The custom dates to 1749.
3 min read
23
May
Watercolour of a nightingale perched on a hedge twig, beak open in song, among white blossom and cow parsley against a soft green wash.

The Nightingale in Britain: Migration, Decline, and the Sound of May

Two thousand miles from West Africa to southern England, the nightingale sings on still May nights. Its UK population is down ninety per cent.
3 min read