Tuesday, September 30, 2008

The decorative flowers are particularly fine ...

Another remarkable vignette from PWD: he wonders whether this was 1983 or 1984, Chris Phillpotts thinks it's earlier, probably 1981, and so do Iain Ferris and I after some discussion last night. The colour of the Westbury Homes hut is particularly startling. L to R: Sylvie Pendry, Terry Courtney, Rowena Dutton, Bernie Dawson, Richard Savage with live beagle mask, Steve Vaughan, Ros Cleal, me in the doorway, Chris Phillpotts, Mike Webb, Dave Southwood, Jane Dineen, Graham Byron O'Hare, John Boden (kneeling), Mike Taylor and Corky Gregory. Good effort by a number my correspondents to manage to identify all parties except the beagle which Phil suggests was called Spot! Dr Phillpotts says his beard does not look like his own and appears to have been stuck on. Update: Steve & Joanne say: "Definitely 1981. This is the "Yellow Peril" as it was known, and the step up to the door was actually cemented in to the bedrock. No scheduled monument consent gained in advance, I'll bet."

Laura de la Hoyde writes "This brings back ancient memories for me: I was 3 at the time, I'm Richard Savage's daughter, and over my childhood spent many happy hours hanging round annoying people (many of them in this picture!) at Ullenwood and on site. Happy memories..."

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Sunday, September 28, 2008

The Government Officials could have lived on nettle soup ...

 

 
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© English Heritage.NMR I am again indebted to English Heritage National Monuments Record for permission to reproduce these photographs of the Ullenwood bunker exterior taken in July 1999 by Michael Hesketh-Roberts as part of the RCHME/EH "Cold War Project" which are both captioned "This Sub-Regional Government HQ was formerly an anti-aircraft operations room".

Clearly if the background radiation wasn't too bad the rations could have been supplemented with some nettle soup. Doubtless someone will point out that young nettletops are best and these look a trifle advanced by July.

From Bernard Dawson: line gang removing rocks from the ditch, cutting AXV, 1979

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Another splendid shot, this time of the team removing large bits of rock from the bottom of the ditch on the outer side of the rampart in 1979. Bernie Dawson sent the photo and Dr Phillpotts identified far more people than Bernie and I did: L to R on the baulk: Malcolm White, ?, ?, Ken Collier, ?, Julie Fissenden, ?, ?, Paul Noakes, ?, ?, Julian Parker. In the ditch: Terry Courtney, ?, ?, Elsa Charlot, Gill Drury, ?, ?, Zoya Spivakovska, Mark Spivakovsky (in hat), ?, Dmitri, ?, Pete, ?, Penny Locke, ?, Training (blue top at right), Mike Taylor in the background.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Fancy a walk at Crickley on Sunday 23 November?

Just thought I'd mention a forthcoming Crickley event from the National Trust: The Cotswold Grazing Project in Action has organised a walk around Crickley Hill Country Park with the Grazing Manager "to examine the effect of controlled grazing by the National Trust's herd of Belted Galloway cattle on this area of limestone grassland." Booking not needed but the contact number given on the NT site is 01452 810058. Suitable for Groups; assistance dogs only are welcome; children welcome but must be accompanied by an adult. Meet at Crickley Hill top car park, outside the Visitor Centre. 23 November 10am – 12 noon. Adult £3. Wear stout walking shoes and wrap up warmly. Grazing Animals Project

A different aerial perspective...

 


© English Heritage.NMR (Wingham Collection) Harold Wingham's fine views continue: this time from the south looking north. The Iron Age rampart and the quarries are easier to see than the Neolithic bank.
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The Site of Special Scientific Interest angle ...

Crickley Hill & Barrow Wake comprise an SSSI. The English Nature link is here: Crickley Hill And Barrow Wake. Here may be found the SSSI citation, operations requiring the consent of English Nature, English Nature's views about the management of the site and its condition which is generally good, you'll be pleased to hear.

I have delved around the web and inserted links to pages about the species mentioned in the citation so you can see what they look like for identification purposes. The citation reads as follows:

"The site lies on the Cotswold scarp south of Cheltenham. A range of habitats characteristic of the Cotswold limestone are represented, including species rich grassland, scrub and semi-natural woodland, together with nationally important rock exposures.

Biology: Several types of grassland occur, from short fescue
Festuca dominated swards, to lightly grazed and tall ungrazed tor-grass Brachypodium pinnatum and upright brome Bromus erectus grassland. The species rich turf contains many calcicole (lime-loving) herbs such as small scabious Scabiosa columbaria, clustered bellflower Campanula glomerata and chalk milkwort Polygala calcarea. Several orchids occur, including early-purple orchid Orchis mascula and bee orchid Ophrys apifera with the notable musk orchid Herminium monorchis locally frequent. Viper's-bugloss Echium vulgare is abundant in places, associated with open grassland and bare limestone. The diversity of the vegetation contributes to a rich and varied invertebrate fauna.

Butterflies include the chalkhill blue
Lysandra coridon, green hairstreak Callophrys rubi, marsh fritillary Eurodryas aurinia and Duke of Burgundy fritillary Hamearis lucina. Also recorded is the notable cistus forester moth Adscita geryon and the very local snail Abida secale. Scattered and dense scrub occurs over several parts of the site. Species include hawthorn Crataegus monogyna, hazel Corylus avellana, elder Sambucus nigra, wayfaring-tree Viburnum lantana and gorse Ulex europaeus.

The site includes the Scrubbs, an area of woodland dominated by mature beech, with abundant regeneration of beech
Fagus sylvatica and ash Fraxinus excelsior. Hazel coppice occurs to the west of the wood, elsewhere the understorey is sparse. The ground flora includes dog's mercury Mercurialis perennis, sanicle Sanicula europaea, woodruff Galium odoratum and the notable wood barley Hordelymus europaeus. The wood is partly fringed by mixed scrub grading into open grassland, providing a valuable 'edge habitat' for birds and invertebrates.

North of the Scrubbs is a strip of woodland with old beech pollards, a remnant of the former Short Wood. This supports several local and notable beetles which are associated with dead wood. Four species of beetle occur which are recorded from nowhere else in the County, including the nationally rare
Ptenidium Gressneri [it's no 6 on the plate. Ed.].

Geology: The rock exposures along the southern slopes of Crickley Hill make up a key Jurassic
locality showing a major section in the Lower Inferior Oolite. This shows extensive exposures of Lower and Middle Jurassic rocks, from the Upper Lias through the Lower Inferior Oolite. It exhibits the best sections in the Cotswolds in the Pea Grit and the overlying Coral Bed. The lowest portion of the sequence is one of the very few to show the basal Scissum Beds overlying the Lias."

Bailing out a watery Long Mound: Professor Dixon writes ...

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PWD has sent the above shot of the east end of the Long Mound being bailed out in, he thinks, about 1978.  Is that Roberts Roberts in the white boiler suit? I can spot Bernard Dawson right in the middle of the picture at the back. There are 22 people in the bucket gang which would have got the job done quickly. Here's a similar scene posted last month, but from 1980: Dawson photos

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

The hangar and Lofty's house at Ullenwood

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© English Heritage.NMR.

I am again indebted to English Heritage National Monuments Record for permission to reproduce photographs of Ullenwood. These were taken in July 1999 by Michael Hesketh-Roberts as part of a survey by RCHME/EH of the defence installations built in Britain between 1946 and 1989. July 1999, "Cold War project". This photo is described as "Accommodation huts at the south-east side of site. This anti-aircraft operations room was subsequently a Sub-Regional Government HQ."

Crickley aficionados would say it shows the hangar, the bunker and the back of Lofty's house which was directly behind the end of the mess or dining hall. According to Wikipedia: "The word hangar comes from a northern French dialect, and means "cattle pen."

JP says there used to be a mortuary trolley that he thinks probably was found in the hangar which was handy for transporting hut components and such-like from winter storage to the flat-bed truck for transport up to site at the beginning of the season.

My memory of the hangar ends with me briefly in casualty at Cheltenham General to be patched up after injuring the top of my left thumb while struggling to open the rusted door to get at the kit we needed.

Features 4201 4220 & 4266 from 1980

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Posthole of the week: and a very well defined one at that. Still trying to piece together upon exactly which cutting this was. Given it's definitely 1980 season it must be just on the National Trust side probably O7 or thereabout but I'm really only guessing. 

Monday, September 22, 2008

Ever wanted to see round the Ullenwood bunker?

BBC Gloucestershire will oblige: Bunker panorama (needs Java to work!)

Checking the turf at the end of the 1980 season ...

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Left to right, JP (almost invisible at the left hand edge, but I assure you he's there), PWD, Richard Savage and Dave Southwood: you can see the care with which at the end of the season we replaced the turf. This was also the cutting which we surrounded with cow wire to minimise the occurrence of cowpats. (More on cowpats here) (JP tells me I'm wrong about this - he says it was pig wire - he's sitting next to me as I post this, having come to stay before a British Numismatic Society meeting).  What I recall is that one night as he and I were setting up the wire, I switched on the current without realising that John's beard was touching the wire. The charming noises that came from Mr Parry can readily be imagined by all those who know him.  (For those of you unfamiliar with cow or pig wire, you attach it to a 12 volt battery to give the cows a thrill.)  He has just confessed to me that he also remembers a morning when he got his beard caught on the wire as he leaned over to switch it off - much to Phil's amusement.  Once we can forgive John, but twice begins to make me wonder ...

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Motkin & Ferris by the wire ...


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Different evenings in 1979: Randel Motkin contemplates escape whilst a long-haired straw- chewing Ferris looks wryly at the camera. This was taken just outside Dorm 4.

17 April 2004 just before 3 o'clock No 2 ...




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And here's the second minute.  As PWD once said to me: "One can never tire of that view." Don't think it gets better than this. I was even lucky with the cloud formations!

17 April 2004 just before 3 o'clock ...




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Sometimes you're just lucky with the weather: I have some dear friends in Byford in Herefordshire whom I often visit, usually by a route that takes me past the Air Balloon roundabout. I can rarely resist a diversion up to the Hill. This set of photos and those in the next post were taken in one magical two minute spell. Here's the first minute ...

Saturday, September 20, 2008

An historical uncertainty from the Ferris archive ...

"In reply to Crickley Hill Man's elsan-based brain teaser I can only reply 'I'm not sure.' Exposure to the blue chemicals in my formative years may in fact have addled my brain. The Elsan Song was also performed on the Institute of Archaeology's West Heath Common training dig in 1974 or 1975 but whether it arrived there via Crickley or at Crickley via West Heath I don't know. You may recall that there was an Institute student contingent at Crickley from roughly 1974-1978 (at various times myself, Jeff Beech, John Boden, Simon Mercer, Louisa Gidney, Robert Roberts and Sara Roberts) who also had another fine musical number sung to the tune of 'Four and Twenty Virgins'-'Four and twenty diggers came down from Gordon Square and when the dig was over they wondered who'd been there' etc. It was from this comic meisterwerk that the lines of 'sniffer Boden he was there and he was getting paid for brandishing his Pentax and leaning on his spade', already quoted on your blog, originated."

Sqn Ldr Wingham does another flypast ...

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© English Heritage.NMR (Wingham Collection). Again approaching from the west, the quarry pits on the National Trust side show up exceptionally well as do the footpaths inside the Iron Age rampart on the left hand side of the picture. Photograph from between 1951 and 1963. Interesting to compare this shot with the one posted yesterday Wingham Collection No 1 : in the first shot you can scarcely see the quarry pits but you can see the Long Mound and in this shot it's the other way about which just shows how much difference angle of approach and light make for aerial photographs.

Another trip to the Elsans ...

Penny Hart writes:

"I seem to remember the song which went with them:

"Beans for breakfast, beans for tea
Makes my work more hard for me
If you could see what I could see
When I'm cleaning Elsans"

Also the episode of Anna's trowel, not removed from back pocket when a visit was paid - sliding effortlessly into the depths. Gallons of Elsan blue made no difference to the "marinated quality"..

Penny is quite right and I must add the first lines

"When I go Elsan-cleaning to earn an honest bob,
For a dirty digger it's a scintillating job -
Beans for breakfast ... etc"

This ditty was chanted to the tune of "When I'm cleaning windows". I don't recall who thought it up, though Dr Ferris may be able to help with that conundrum. I can hear in my mind's ear Flt. Lt. Southwood singing it which comes as no surprise.

'Twas I that retrieved Miss Collinge's trowel from its fate: I did indeed disinfect it with much Elsan blue before chivalrously returning it to her: its patina of blue was never going to wash off... 

Friday, September 19, 2008

Ah, yes, the Elsans ...

No account of the first ten years of the excavation would be complete without a note on the Elsans. Providing lavatory facilities on top of the Cotswold scarp where you're a mile from running water was always a challenge. It was not until about 1979 or 1980 (update: the latter) that the current building by the car parks that contains the modern lavatories and the display room was built. To get the water up the hill involved laying the pipes and putting in a pumping station halfway up the approach road to boost the water to the top. It took a long time before the Council thought it worthwhile making that doubtless considerable investment.

Before that time, all water had to be transported: one of the chores PWD unfailingly did was the water run. Water was needed for 3 main purposes: drinking, (both cold and in tea or coffee), washing the excavation finds, and washing hands after going to the loo. Bear in mind that the excavation season was the middle of summer and the weather was often hot: more than 100 thirsty diggers, quite a number of whom on any day were engaged in hard physical work, could get through a considerable volume of water. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon several 5 gallon jerrycans would be filled with fresh water at Ullenwood and taken up to site.

The loos themselves consisted of a pair of chemical toilets which were quite basic: cream-painted circular metal drums with a plastic seat attached and an inner metal can with a handle round the rim. These were housed in rectangular 3' x 3' x 7' high tents with poles at all 4 corners and guy ropes. There was always an art to finding a spot on the top of the hill where you could get the pegs far enough into the ground to hold the tents securely. The door flaps were secured by three sets of tapes one could tie in a bow. The loos were primed with Elsan Blue fluid which overpowered the worst of the smell. Good to see they're still in business:
Elsan



For several seasons one of my periodic duties was emptying the Elsans. We used to dig, with pick axe and shovels, a large hole: I remember at least once Mike Webb and I digging the pit together: I caught myself on the front of the left shin with the pick axe when it bounced off the rock. Brought tears to the eyes and doubtless the odd oath was uttered! I used particularly to favour that area of the quarries outside the rampart that is now the picnic area. Little do the day trippers know what lies buried under their feet as they enjoy their lunches...

Life at Ullenwood 2: Dr Ferris writes ...

Like Crickley Hill Man, I thought I would also set down some memories of living at Ullenwood while digging at Crickley. Certainly the camp was very much as remembered by Crickley Hill Man even in the earlier seasons-I first dug at Crickley in either 1971 or 1972. There was also a private house, next to the mess hall and kitchen, lived in by Lofty, the exiled Hungarian coach driver for Swanbrook Coaches and Mrs Lofty his wife, whose real name we never knew. Beyond this was a large tarmacked area known, for obvious reasons, as the football pitch, and to the side of that a few Nissen huts dubbed 'the married quarters'. The most curiously monickered buildings were The Ablutions, the washrooms and toilets, but I cannot recall if there was a sign on the doors designating them this way or if the name originally came from Richard Savage.
The mess hall or dining room was the hub of the camp, with book readers and letter writers spilling out of the mess hall to sit on the steps in the better evening weather. Dinner served at 7 o'clock was always somewhat of a stampede, though there were always inevitably seconds available. I cannot recall a season when the food wasn't really good, though those diggers who on a couple of mornings had their breakfasts cooked by John Boden and myself in order to give the hard-pressed cooks a sleep-in may beg to differ.

In those pre-mobile phone days Ullenwood was amazingly quiet and restful, generally until after the Air Balloon had shut. There was no TV and record players or cassette decks only tended to be brought out on party nights-on two or three Wednesday nights every season. I do remember though many of us being gripped by certain dramatic news stories listened to on transistor radios whenever we could, these being the fall of Saigon in 1973 and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.

After dinner, if we weren't on chores, we would go the Air Balloon or attend one of the evening lectures and then race down to the Air Balloon for last orders. I particularly remember Richard Savage's marvellous lectures on the Irish sagas which had a huge influence on me. Kenneth Jackson's Celtic Miscellany, recommended by Richard, is still a favourite book of mine.
Getting back from the Air Balloon could either be by the simple direct route or on some evenings it would involve walking up Crickley Hill and along the scarp through the woods. In the dark this could be quite time-consuming, particularly when we stopped off to sit on top of one of the barrows near the top of Greenway Lane to drink cider take-outs- Gold Label, GL -and tell ghost stories.

For a couple of seasons I was a member of the terribly-named Below Average White Band whose regular drink-fuelled late night performances of improvised 'sound sculptures' on 'found' instruments such as an old piano frame, a kettle with a rubber hosepipe attached and some biscuit tins and empty cider bottles gave GBH of the earhole to many more sober diggers back in the mess hall. Other members of the band included Chris Philpotts and John Boden but I cannot remember who else might have performed with this sadly not-missed floating collective of troubadours. Update: definitive history from Dr Phillpotts now posted here. About 20 people "performed" one way and another over the years.


Crickley Hill before the digging started



© English Heritage.NMR (Wingham Collection)

English Heritage have very kindly granted me permission to reproduce the above image of Crickley from the air taken by Harold Wingham who "served in the RAF and was an important practitioner of aerial photography for archaeology. The collection of 2,000 negatives covers the South-West of England for the period 1951-63." There are many beautiful photographs in the collection which can be searched here: NMR Viewfinder

The Iron Age rampart and the Neolithic bank and the Long Mound all show up beautifully. I cannot see any sign of the fence that now separates the National Trust land from the County Council land so that must have been erected later.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Life at Ullenwood 1

The seasons were usually about 6 weeks. There were often 100+ people in any given week with people often doing a 2-week stint and then going. Some diehards stayed for longer and some the whole season. There was usually a crew that would arrive a day or two early to give Ullenwood a clean and help set up on the top of the Hill. There were huts and shelters erect, tools to clean and maintain.

Think about the logistics of accommodating 100+ dirty diggers.  During my time at Crickley (which was for parts or all of the season between 1976 and 1982 with occasional weekend visits thereafter) dormitories. 1 & 2 were for men and 3 & 4 for women. When the numbers exceeded the capacity of the dorms there was another building opposite the dining room that was sometimes opened up and commissioned with camp beds to cope with the overflow of humanity.

The iron bedsteads probably dated from WWII and were still pretty robust. I fear the straw- filled mattresses were of similar vintage and had a musty smell. I can remember beating them at the beginning of at least one season to try and perk them up a bit if not clean them.  I also have a faint memory of flea powder being applied but cannot myself remember being bitten.

Some people could not stand the dormitories and so brought their own tents which gave some privacy and relieved the strain upon the dorms.  I was puzzling over what the grass marks were in the attached photos and then realised they were the groundsheet prints of tents. The bunker is in the background, before anyone was supposed to know what it was.


Friday, September 12, 2008

Crickley Hill - the Hillfort Defences - update

Professor Dixon writes ...

"I still have about 60 copies of Hillfort Defences @ £17.50 + postage (real bargain, 1994 prices)."

And in these straitened times when public sector workers are being told to take 2% and like it (even though we all know that inflation in the real world is running at closer to 8% if not more) the opportunity to snap up this historic item as such a price is not to be sniffed at: if you would like one please, let me know and I'll pass on your request to PWD.



(Philip Dixon & Others, 1994 ISBN: 0-900572-84-1)

Forthcoming delicacies on the Crickley blog ...

I'm in gentle negotiation with English Heritage National Monuments Record to obtain a licence to reproduce some photos to which they own the copyright: there's a set of photos of Crickley Hill from the air in the 1950s and 1960s before any digging took place and also a set of both the interior and the exterior of Ullenwood. I hope I'll be granted the necessary permissions in the not too distant future so watch this space.

1980: Racing ahead of the JCB ...

Robert Roberts contemplates one last bit of frantic cat-bashing to reveal some final puzzling detail as the JCB (not, as I originally wrote, the dumper truck) begins the backfilling at the end of the 1980 season. Work was usually at a pretty good pace but it became quite frenetic for a few days as we had a lot to finish off and no possibility of extending the season by an extra day or two.


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A day or two earlier, all hands to the cuttings to finish it off. PWD on the left & Flight Lieutenant Southwood by his bucket looking towards a line of diggers, with Rowena Dutton below the theodolite tripod, ending with JP on the right. Digging, cleaning, planning and photography all at once. Anyone help with who else is in this one?

Saturday, September 6, 2008

More from 1979 ...

Jenny Harris, Julian Parker and Marion Barter at the Dorm 4 party in a more sedate phase of the evening, not during the bit where 30 people tried to fit onto one bed. Photographer suspected to be Dr Phillpotts.

Bottom: Dave Southwood one fine sunny evening outside the dining room/kitchen block: rather suspect it was the same evening as the party.

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Thursday, September 4, 2008

Cowpats and turfing irons ...


During the 1980 season we were digging mostly on the National Trust part of the site. There was a herd of cattle grazing the National Trust land. For part of the season we removed the post and wire fence that divided the County Council land from the National Trust land, rolling it back into place at night. We also secured the cuttings last thing at night with an electric fence.

This was for three reasons: first, we did not want the cattle to hurt themselves by falling down half- dug features; second we did not want the cuttings and the stratigraphy to be damaged by the cattle; and third, cowpats aren't the pleasantest items and ruin the photos.

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley, / An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy.":

True for diggers who set up cow-wire too.

Most nights the electric fence performed according to plan but on the odd night the cows just carried on walking and invaded the cuttings. They managed, as far as I can recall, to avoid the postholes and didn't kick the cuttings to pieces. Inevitably, however they did leave their calling cards. Large stinky wet heaps everywhere.

One morning John Boden and I took it upon ourselves to clear the cuttings of fresh cowpats: we had to hand the perfect tools - turfing spades, or as JP would call them turfing irons. You will see from the photograph below just how well fitted to the task of lifting a cowpat a turfing spade would be.


John and I set to work: there were quite a few cowpats. After a while we must have got bored and decided to have a competition to see how far we could hurl a fresh cowpat with the aid of a turfing iron. I evolved a technique a little like a hammer thrower. I discovered that if you span round once or twice, with the cowpat on the end of the turfing iron before release, a satisfyingly long trajectory was the result. The competition continued a few minutes.

We were taking a bit of a run up, spinning and then hurling the cowpats off the side of the scarp on the north side of the hill towards Cold Slad. The Cotwold Way path runs along that side of the hill: I got a very large, very wet, very smelly cowpat right up into the air and was admiring its flight north just as a man walking his dog along the path emerged from invisibility behind a blackthorn bush. There was nothing I could do: a vision of horror crossed my mind as the trajectory of the cowpat and the man's face appeared to be on a perfect collision course. I was incredibly lucky. How it missed him I will never know: it seemed to pass his nose at a range of only 6 inches or so. He never missed a step nor glanced in my direction so I've no idea if he ever realised what an unpleasant fate he had just avoided. But the thought of it still makes my blood run cold.