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The Library

23
May
Watercolour of pale hawthorn butter wrapped in muslin and tied with string, partly cut into rounds, beside hawthorn blossom, a lemon and a pinch of salt.

Hawthorn Butter: The May Blossom in the Kitchen

Hawthorn blossom, the country child's hedge snack, folded into butter with lemon zest. Dorothy Hartley called the flower by its old name: May.
3 min read
23
May
Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) carpeting a beech wood floor in May: whorls of six to eight narrow leaves and clusters of small white four-petalled flowers.

Sweet Woodruff: The Woodland Plant That Smells of Hay

Sweet woodruff smells of nothing until dried. The coumarin in the leaves brings hay, vanilla, and almond. Maibowle is built around it.
3 min read
23
May
Watercolour of an enclosure-era hawthorn hedge in full white May blossom, running dead straight across a Hertfordshire arable field, a low chalk ridge in the distance.

The Enclosure Hedge: Reading the Hawthorn Lines Across England

Most English hedges were planted in parliament: hawthorn whips run straight across the parish by Enclosure Commissioners between 1773 and 1882.
3 min read
23
May
Tissington well dressing on Ascension Day: a wooden board taller than a person set behind a low stone village well, a biblical scene of a haloed figure built petal by petal in wet clay.

Tissington Well-Dressing: Six Wells, Six Days, Ascension Day in Derbyshire

On Ascension Day, the Derbyshire village of Tissington dresses its six wells with biblical scenes built petal by petal on wet clay boards.
2 min read
23
May
Two honey and lemon possets in pressed glass coupes on a stone windowsill with a halved lemon, ceramic honey bowl and dipper, thyme sprigs, and a silver spoon.

Lemon Posset: The Cream-Set Pudding and Its Older Hot Form

A posset began as hot milk curdled with wine or ale and prescribed for everything. Hannah Glasse's 1740s lemon version is its survivor.
4 min read
23
May
The Jack-in-the-Green at Hastings: a tall foliage figure with green-painted face, flower crown and cascading rainbow ribbons, with a green-tunic'd drummer and woman crowned in flowers.

Jack-in-the-Green: The May Day Figure Walked Through the Parish

A figure covered in greenery walked the parish on May Day. The custom survives at Hastings, Knutsford, and a handful of other towns.
4 min read
23
May
A Norman round arch with chevron moulding in a small flint church, looking through toward the nave with wooden pews, a flagstone floor, and a leaded window at the far end.

The Norman Round Arch: A Thousand-Year Marker in Your Village Church

The round arch comes centuries before the pointed one. A Norman or Saxon arch tells you the building has thousand-year foundations.
3 min read
23
May
Wood sorrel growing at the base of a moss-covered tree root in dappled woodland shade, with heart-shaped leaves in groups of three and small white flowers with pink veining just open.

Salt of Sorrel: Wood Sorrel and the Iron-Mould Stain

Wood sorrel, sold from the seventeenth century as sal acetosella, lifts iron-mould stains from linen by chemistry that needs sunlight to finish.
4 min read
23
May
A common swift in flight banks over a slate village rooftop at dusk, its long sickle-shaped wings extended, pale throat patch visible, with a distant second swift in the pink sky.

The Swift: Britain's Most Precise Spring Migrant

The swift crosses the English coast in early May. Gilbert White's Selborne records still benchmark a population now down by half.
5 min read
23
May
Teenagers in white dresses and shirts wearing lily-of-the-valley crowns dance hand in hand down a crowd-lined street between stone buildings, the road climbing the hill ahead.

The Helston Furry Dance

On 8 May the principal dancers of Helston's Furry Dance walk through private houses, kitchens, and gardens to a single tune.
4 min read