Spring at Parke

In between the rain and approaching cold weather Parke had a spring day feel yesterday – here are a few photographs.

The dominant pine beside the Walled Garden against a blue sky

Across the Parkland with the National Trust’s Bearacleave Woods in the background

The snowdrops in the garden are in flower

I always like to look at the flowers – there aren’t many flowers with green petals

The daffodils getting ready to pop

The laurel is coming into flower too

I also saw some pictures of frogspawn at Lydford Gorge yesterday! See here.

Parke Walled Garden – some old photos

It is less than a decade ago that we started to restore Parke’s Walled Garden – here are a few photographs showing some of that work.

The walls are being ‘repainted’ with lime wash – the garden is still a jungle and the capping wall tins have yet to be replaced

Repairing the main wall

An old photo from the early 1900s – note the glass house and the box hedges around the beds

Major Hole’s gardener

This pit outside the Walled Garden used to house the boiler for the glass house – you can still see some of the pipework

It is good to see the Walled Garden now back in use and we hope that as the years go by and more money becomes available we will be able to restore some of the other older features that were once in the garden.

And finally the sunset over the Walled Garden yesterday evening

Parke’s stableblock roof – repaired for bats and the building

The National Trust and our tenant at Parke, The Dartmoor National Park Authority have recently commissioned work to repair the structural faults in the roof of the stableblock.

The building is a grade 2 listed building and is also home to a large colony of lesser horseshoe bats. As a result we have worked closely with George Bemment a local bat expert and the work has been licensed by Natural England and Teignbridge District Council.

The stable block before the work commenced – scaffolding just going up and the Walled Garden in the background

The scaffolding is put up

 The back of the roof – a number of eaves and beams have been replaced and new ‘felt’ and batons installed

 The front of the stable block with a mix of new and recycled local roof slates

The total UK population of lesser horseshoe bats is about 17,000 individuals of which around 8000 occur in England. They live  in over 170 maternity roosts and around 300 hibernation sites (hibernacula) in south-west England and Wales. Until the early 20th century, the species benefited from abandoned mine workings, but the sealing of old mines is likely to have reduced the population and range. Recent monitoring suggests that populations are increasing, particularly in Wales, with increased densities in wooded areas.

The maternity roost at Parke contains between 200 and 300 animals and therefore is nationally significant.

This work on the roof will ensure the property remains available for this rare species.

A lesser horseshoe bat in typical pose
By Gilles San Martin from Namur, Belgium [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Here is the UK distribution map of lesser horseshoe bats

Today we should be wassailing

As a word wassailing comes from Anglo Saxon and means ‘be in good health’ and is synonymous with Christmas. Wassail is also an ale based drink seasoned with spices and honey.

There are two types of wassailing – home wassailing and orchard wassailing.

Home wassailing involving the singing of carols at people’s houses around Christmas in return for food and drink and is celebrated in such carols as “We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New New” which includes the lines about ‘figgy pudding’ and we won’t go until we get some’ etc.

On the other hand Orchard Wassailing was celebrated on 12th Night – which before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar fell on the 17th January. It involves drinking and singing to the health of the trees. The aim is to ward off evil spirits. There is a Wassail King and Queen to lead a procession and the singing. The Queen then ‘lifts the boughs’ which involves toasting bread soaked in ‘wassail’ as a gift to the tree sprits. A crowd then bangs drums and makes a lot of noise whilst a gun is fired into the tree.

Here are a couple of photos by Mark Lakeman of the wassailing at Parke’s orchard in 2013.

A member of the Grimspound Border Morris Men – ‘making a lot of noise’

Here is the bread soaked in wassail being toasted

Photos from this year’s wassail at Parke should appear in due course on the National Trust Parke Facebook site

Parke in the depth of winter

Just a few simple pictures of Parke in Bovey Tracey today.

The River Bovey running over the medieval weir

I’m surprised that in January there are still some leaves left on this beech tree- can’t have been very windy

These are the seed pods of Old man’s Beard

Teasel heads in silhouette

A Cook’s Book – Stella West-Harling

Stella West Harling, the founder of the Ashburton Cookery School, Dartmoor champion and food guru has just published a new book – A Cook’s Story –  it is a great culinary autobiography. It talks of her life starting off in the Lake District and recounts her journey which culminates in Devon, The Ashburton Cookery School and Home Farm Cafe, sprinkled amongst the story are over 100 recipes and Stella’s views on good food. It is a great book and would make an excellent Christmas present if you are still looking for one. To be honest it is a must have book either way. It is available at lots of local bookshops and of course at Home Farm Cafe.

I first met Stella West-Harling a few years ago when my colleague Gus Fergusson (the now retired Head Ranger for South Dartmoor) introduced me to her and encouraged me to think about discussing whether we might form some type of partnership to bring a cafe to Parke.

At the time I was running Castle Drogo as well as the rest of National Trust Dartmoor and although we really wanted to open a cafe at the rapidly ’emerging’ Parke I couldn’t see how we could find the capacity to set up and run a new cafe. I was already responsible through my teams for cafes at Castle Drogo, Lydford Gorge and Finch Foundry and to be honest my main preoccupations were the Castle Drogo ‘building project’ and creation of new cycle trails at Plymbridge.

So I met up with Stella and Gus to discuss Parke …….. Stella, to be honest is rather formidable and I came away from the meeting thinking she thought I was a bit of a corporate twurp – I had spent most of the meeting spluttering at Stella’s view of the world and in particular the part the National Trust played in it!

Nevertheless I liked her a lot and saw that she had the skills, experience and backing to enable us to jointly achieve what we both wanted – a first class cafe at Parke which people would love and an offer which would drive new visitors to our lovely but then ‘sleeping giant’ property. The rest is now history and it has worked brilliantly – see here.

All the NT staff love Home Farm cafe along with the team who work there and indeed we even had our Christmas lunch there yesterday.

I see at lot of Stella these days as we are both passionate promoters of Dartmoor – a really important job with a lot of work still to do

 

 

Autumn harvest at Parke’s Walled Garden

The year is not over yet in Parke’s Walled Garden. Yesterday the volunteer gardens from Bovey Climate Action were busy harvesting an autumn crop.

Viewing the Walled Garden through the peep hole in the door

Leeks – they will soon be ready

Chard – one of the best colour sets in a vegetable patch

Winter greens on their way to someone’s kitchen

Salad ready for the olive based dressing

 

The avenue at Parke

I love the colour of beech in the autumn and winter before the leaves fall.

Here is the avenue down to Parke House

A Lily Warne poppy and other Dartmoor connections

After their appearance on Countryfile Lily Warne Wool poppies are in great demand! I managed to get one yesterday from our shop at Sexton’s Cottage in Widecombe. By the way – they still have 20 left – well they did yesterday afternoon….

A classic

The wool for these poppies and her other products are made from the wool of Dartmoor Greyfaced sheep which I have written about before – see here. I bought the wool poppy for my partner and by coincidence she visited the Tower of London to see the poppy installation there. I am now very jealous as I really want to see that myself too.

Here is her iPhone picture

Poppy day is all about remembering those who made the ultimate sacrifice along with those who fought and survived and every year at this time I think of two National Trust related people.

This is Major Adrian Drewe – the son of Julius Drewe who built Castle Drogo. Adrian was killed  in 1917 in a mustard gas attack at Ypres. There is a moving room in the Castle (which you can visit) in his memory and it contains many of his possessions.

The other person I think of is Major Willam Hole – who donated his Parke Estate to the National Trust in 1974. Major Hole survived the war but served in the Devon Imperial Yeomanry at Gallipoli, in Egypt and in Palestine during World War 1.

My colleague Fred Hutt – the Ranger at Parke is currently looking for a volunteer to research more into the history of the Hole family at Parke and perhaps even find a photograph of the Major in his uniform! If you would like to help – let me know and I will pass on your details to Fred

Lest we forget

 

 

Moon over Parke

Last night there are a lovely moon above Parke – it wasn’t quite a full moon – that occurs on the 6th November.

The phases of the moon are very important for life on earth – the phase of the moon controls for example the heights of the tides and drives their movement (along with the sun) – high tides co-incide with full moons and the highest tides happen when the moon is closest to the earth – spring tides. You can access a lunar calendar here to see exactly what ‘state’ the moon is in.

Last night as I photographed the moon I could hear redwings flying over with their plaintive calls and close by a tawny owl was hooting. During the day the trees in the photograph above – particularly the large yew tree, are alive with thrushes gorging themselves on the yew berries. There are large numbers of blackbirds, song thrushes and mistle thrushes.

However I have yet to see any fieldfares – our other winter thrush (along with the redwing) which come to Britain for our winter to escape the frozen wastes of the high north. Has anyone seen any fieldfares yet? I expect they are late simply because it has been so mild.