Midsummer murders

BEFORE: Bluebells on Midsummer Hill

Last April I took some photographs of the magnificent bluebell woods on Midsummer Hill, an iron age hillfort in the southern stretch of the Malvern Hills. These magnificent old woods of mixed native trees are one of the best sites I know for the uniquely English phenomenon of "bluebell carpets", as the mature and unspoilt woods provide a perfect habitat for the flowers to thrive. The magical sensation of these glowing undulations of blue has to be experienced to be believed – to be surrounded by an ocean of azure (and occasionally white) wild blossoms with the spring sun rippling through the new leaves was one of the most moving things I experienced in 2011. Little did I realise at the time that it would be the last time the bluebells would flower in the Midsummer woods.

AFTER: Is this really how you "conserve" a Scheduled Ancient Monument? Tyre-track damage all over the 2,400-year-old ramparts. (Photo by Creda's Hill)

Why anybody would condone such an act of vandalism is difficult to fathom, but there are of course reasons why this devastation is considered appropriate, even "necessary". Midsummer Hill is in the care of the Malvern Hills Conservators, a publicly funded body whose job is to conserve the Malvern Hills (yes, there's a clue in the name). Inevitably there are conflicts of interest in their work. Midsummer Hill is a scheduled ancient monument, the entire top of the hill being occupied by a large iron age hillfort, and it's important that the archaeological integrity of the site be maintained. Parts of the ancient ramparts are wooded to varying degrees, and there are concerns that tree roots may be damaging or disturbing the ground beneath the earthworks. The site is also a designated SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) and so consideration has to be given to the rare birds, butterflies and wildflowers which thrive in the very special Malvern habitat. The Conservators have explained that the work to clear "scrub" from the site has been approved in consultation with various respected bodies such as the National Trust and English Heritage and is considered necessary.

Another reason they want to do this work is to improve visibility of the hillfort and increase the amount of open grassland for the public to enjoy. And the clearance is supposedly limited to scrub. "The most valuable trees for wildlife including beech, hawthorns and field maples are being left."

Well something has gone horribly wrong. Mature trees, including the distinctive twisty "faery" hawthorns and large ash trees of more than three feet diameter have been felled. The bluebell woods have been slashed and burned. The hillside is pocked with scorched patches. The ancient ramparts, in the interests of being protected from "tree-root damage", have been rutted and churned up with tyre-tracks from the heavy equipment used by the contractors.

April 2011

February 2012
(photo by Creda's Hill)

It's hard to know exactly what is happening here. The felling work has been contracted to a commercial firm, who are making a godawful mess. Whether they are doing so within the terms of their contract or whether they are taking shameful liberties is not clear. Either way, the responsibility lies with the Malvern Hills Conservators to ensure that the work is being carried out properly and sensitively.

There also appears to be a discrepancy between what was authorised and what is actually happening. The damage already covers an area substantially beyond the planned limits.

Map of Midsummer Hillfort. The areas outlined in blue show the areas of proposed "scrub clearance". The area marked in orange shows the current extent of the damage. (Map from the Save the Malvern Hills from the 'Conservators' campaign page.)

Anyone who has visited Midsummer Hill will be in no doubt that it's a very special place. The size of the hillfort is enormous, and it's a split-level job, so large you can't really see it all in one go (with or without the trees). The upper part sits on the crest of the Malvern ridge where its rocky backbone pokes through the thin, grassless soil, and the wind blasts unstoppably. If you can manage to stand up in it you can get a spectacular panoramic view across the fields of Worcestershire and the green undulations of Herefordshire, as well as along the rippling spine of the Malverns. The lower section of the hillfort, a short way down the wooded slopes, is a beautiful greensward burgeoning with tiny flowers. It features a curious and unidentified "pillow mound", which looks like a long barrow but probably isn't. The fort in its heyday (about 390 BC) supported a very large community, who lived in wattle and daub houses and had a very self-contained village within the revetted double-ramparts. A spring which still flows through the bluebell woods provided them with a plentiful supply of water.

The lower section of the hillfort. To the right of the walking couple is the mysterious pillow mound.

Today the fort is an important nature reserve where wildflowers, birds and rare butterflies make every walk here an absolute delight at any time of the year.

Native British bluebells, Hyacinthoides non-scripta, growing within the ramparts of Midsummer Hill.

So much for the archaeological and wildlife treasures. Midsummer Hill is also a place where the veil is thin and resonant with ancient spirits. No pagan soul could fail to be enthralled by the dance of Oak and Ash and Thorn through the tappetting woods, and those who are attuned to Faery will find the gates here are wide open.

No doubt within a season or two the damaged land will be green once again and wildflowers (albeit not bluebells) will spring up on the ramparts, providing food plants for butterflies and joy for passing humans. But none of that excuses the horrible devastation of such a precious and dearly loved woodland or the insensitive and clumsy way the work has been carried out. For those of us who consider Midsummer Hill to be a special and sacred place, the loss of the magical woods is an irreparable scar.

Please help local people and other friends of the Malverns to fight back against these ravages, even if only by helping to share and support their Facebook page. It's not too late to stop other parts of the hill from being desecrated.

My thanks to Creda's Hill for making their photographs of the devastation available on a Creative Commons licence.

Wyche Cutting

Topical weathervane on the bus shelter at the Wyche Cutting, Malvern.

The Wyche is a notch or cleft on the crown of the Malvern Hills, straddling the border between Worcestershire and Herefordshire. It can be seen from miles away as a cleft in the long line of undulations and it marks an important crossing point. It's one of only two places where you can drive over the top of the Malverns rather than having to go all the way round the perimeter, although it is steep and bendy and something of a white knuckle ride in an ancient 1.0 litre VW Polo.

The pass over the hills as it appears today owes a fair bit to the Victorian road-improvers, and some of the tumps and bumps are the remains of spoil heaps from their digging endeavours. But the Wyche pass is ancient – known to have been in use in prehistoric times and to have formed part of a neolithic trade route, used amongst other things for the transportation of salt from Droitwich to South Wales. A small village occupies the high ground on either side of the hill, and a village green bounded by the intriguingly named Fossil Bank.

A special feature of the Malvern hills is the proliferation of roadside springs, spouts and wells – some drinkable, some dry – some sacred, some rancid. The Wyche Cutting has several, bringing together the symbolism of a cleft in the hills with a water-bearing cleft in the earth. They come in a variety of forms but are often at their most interesting on 1st May, when they are "dressed" with flowers and flags as part of a revival tradition.

The Wyche Spring (below) bears the distinction, apparently, of being the highest well on the Malvern ridge – a moot point really, as the flow has been shut off for some twenty years, possibly amid concerns of pollution. The spout is totally dry and in this Beltane well-dressing a twist of blue cellophane has been used to recreate the tumbling waters. The spring that feeds (or used to feed) this roadside water spout rises beside a cottage at the edge of the Wyche Cutting and reaches it through a pipe under the road. Unlike most of the springs and wells on the Malverns, which consist of rainwater squeezed through geological faults, the Wyche Spring is from a true underground watercourse, an Archaean spring.

Here be the Willow Spring (below), only a few yards down the road on the other side, with its May Day dressing. The well doesn't look very much but it's one of the genuinely ancient Malvern springs. The water originally poured straight out of a cleft in the rock beside a willow tree, a proper sacred spring of the kind that opens into the underworld, for those that know how to look. The water was once fast-flowing, so much so that it was something of a hazard in winter, when the gushing abundance flowed over the road and froze into a sheet of solid ice – which is no joke on this stretch of road with its steep slope. An engraving of 1855 shows a very rustic scene with a willow tree growing out over the road at an angle and the waters pouring from the top of a boulder at the roadside. Although still rural, the scene is quite different today. For one thing, the flow is reduced to a piddly little dribble, enough to cultivate a small crop of moss but not much use for anything else.

This is because the spring was damaged during WW2 by a bomb which landed close to it, and has not flowed properly since. Malvern springs are extremely sensitive to disturbance and it's not unusual for them to stop flowing properly if the ground around them is interfered with. The waters pass through layers of impervious pre-Cambrian rock whose alignments are very precise. The springs consist of rainwater which soaks into the hills and is filtered through minutely fine fissures in the rock, so tightly pressed together that even minerals and bacteria are unable to pass through the gaps, resulting in a water which is incredibly pure and essentially has nothing in it. It's a very delicate balance and if the rocks take a thumping the fissures can become so tight the waters can't get through them any more.

The Willow Spring was reconstructed in 1946 following the bomb damage, and set into a little stone enclosure. Its pootling trickle falls into a stone basin and into the earth through a simple soakaway under the ground. Because of this lack of proper drainage, it was decided during recent restoration not to undertake further work to improve the flow of the spring, for fear of causing icy overflow on the winter road. And so a dribble it remains. The willow tree is gone. So is the magic. Whether it's because of the bomb damage or whether it's just me, I can't sense any of the inner dynamics I would normally expect to find at a sacred well of such provenance.

Down below the road on the steep slope of the hillside is a place where the real magic flows. You won't find it named or signposted, but you might find it if you follow the sound of chuckling water.

Nature's well-dressing: Beltane flowers deck an abandoned spring.

A small stream emerges from a mossy spout in the side of the hill and splashes into the pebble-gulley it's traced out for itself. The spout is most likely the outflow from the abandoned spring which formerly served the Royal Malvern Well Spa, long vanished, crumbled under ivy, its presence deleted. The flow from this spring is much greater than that of the two roadside wells round the corner, but its opening is hidden. It lies to the side of a footpath below the road and in its lushness it can only be found by listening to the tumbling of its water through the stones and weeds. Nobody "dresses" this spring at Beltane, but it dresses itself in the colours of the wild weeds and garden escapes. A radiant sky-blue trickles down its far side from a clump of forget-me-nots, a domestic cultivar gone feral and rejoicing in the marshy soil, fronded with fern and eyes of herb robert, green nettles and dusky watermint, tangles of buttercups and golden saxifrage. In the wooded shade of the footpath another garden escape, tissue-fine Iceland poppies, catch the shafts of the sun in translucent crêpe, a flaming orange.

As the spring makes its way down the hill so the footpath follows in parallel, down a dappled corridor to a wooden stile where the bluebell woods meet an open green, giving way to a break in the trees where blue takes over. In the wood shade it's the royal earth blue, the saturated colour of pendular bells, and in the sunlit grass it's an astral faery light, radiant blue on a green wave.

And so the path opens out into a meadow, where a solitary oak tree roots into the ancestral pitch and ancient memories flame the grass.

 The Wyche oak, hub of the meadow.

Sources:
Aquae Malvernensis: The Springs and Fountains of the Malvern Hills by Cora Weaver and Bruce Osborne (private publication, 1994)
The website of the Malvern Spa Association