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The Library

22
May
Cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) in full white flower on an English lane verge in May, showing the hollow ridged bright green stems and finely divided leaves.

Cow parsley and hemlock – telling them apart on a May verge

Two waist-high white umbellifers flower on the same May verge. One is harmless cow parsley; the other is hemlock, which will kill you in a small enough dose.
4 min read
22
May
A vicar in black cassock leads two churchwardens carrying long willow wands and three small boys with shorter wands, past a weathered moss-covered boundary stone on a field path.

Beating of the Bounds – walking the English parish boundary

Before printed maps, the parish boundary lived in collective memory. On Rogation Days the procession walked it, and at the boundary stones a boy was bumped against the stone rather than the wand.
4 min read
22
May
Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) in full yellow-green flower along the verges of a narrow Norfolk coastal lane in late April, with a line of sea in the middle distance.

Alexanders – the Lenten pot-herb of the coastal lane

Smyrnium olusatrum, once in every Lenten kitchen and now barely known – the umbellifer that tastes of celery, parsley, and asparagus.
4 min read
22
May
Sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata) in full white flower against the shaded north side of a weathered cottage garden wall, with moss, lichen, and trailing ivy at the foot.

Sweet cicely – the cottage garden’s sugar saver

Myrrhis odorata, fern-leaved and aniseed-scented – the cottage garden's sugar saver before sugar was cheap, and still useful in the still-room.
3 min read
22
May
Highland cattle being driven between two bonfires on open moorland at dusk, with figures of parishioners watching from a low slope behind the fires.

Beltane – the cross-quarter day that opens summer

On May eve in the Highlands, into the 1840s, cattle were driven between two fires onto summer ground. Beltane is the cross-quarter day that opens the warm half of the year.
4 min read
21
May
Watercolour of a Hertfordshire field at dusk. A thin waxing crescent moon hangs upper-left against a peach-to-blue twilight sky. A blossoming hawthorn hedgerow runs across the lower frame.

The Waxing Moon

This week: a man on a horse buried in flowers, riding blind through a Derbyshire village; the small flowers on ground nobody got round to improving; a green gooseberry fool; and the Saxon corner stones of a thousand-year-old church. The hedges are loud with hawthorn.
13 min read
14
May
The Hawthorn Veil

The Hawthorn Veil

This week: the well-dressing at Tissington, the hedge as a parliamentary decision, sweet woodruff and Maibowle, and a meadow at ground level. It is the strangest week of the year for the hedges, and the trees on the Wallington Road are solid white from a hundred yards off.
12 min read
07
May
The Returning Swift

The Returning Swift

This week: a dance that runs through the kitchens of Helston, what those screaming parties tell you about the weather, wood sorrel in a Restoration salad, and a Norman arch as a thousand-year clue. The swifts came back on Monday, and the summer arrived with them.
12 min read
30
Apr
The May Eve

The May Eve

This week: Padstow drumming and the snap of a wooden jaw on May Day morning, the household sprint before Beltane, sweet cicely as the kitchen's first sweetener, and a field path walked into the dusk. The light is holding longer as May approaches.
13 min read
28
Apr
English still-room: copper alembic still, mortar and pestle, bottles for Melissa Water and Lavender Spirit, brass scales, open handwritten receipt book, dried herbs above stoneware.

The English still-room

The still-room was the working pharmacy of the English country house from the medieval period to the early twentieth century. What it produced.
3 min read