The Old Butcher's Shop & a Hotch Potch of Stiles

This enormous, split ash tree is around 150 years old.   The ash tree was known as the healing tree, and folk lore used to have it that if a naked child was passed through a split trunk of an ash tree, in a ritual, they would be healed of rickets or a broken limb.

In Anglo-Saxon times ash wood was used for making spears and shield handles.   More recent use is for furniture, walking sticks, sports equipment and aircraft wings on the De Havilland Mosquito which flew in WWII.

I like the way this mighty tree completely dwarfs everything around it, making Arnold, the fencing and the beehives look tiny.  Quite amazing to think of the things which have come and gone while this tree has been standing there.

The brick wall which you can see on the left side of the first photograph belong to these buildings.  They were once an important part of the village, for this was where the village butcher would ply his trade.   This was the preparation area - live animals came in, were dispatched and prepared for sale in the shop next door.

John, one of our wonderful village elders, who lives in the house across the way, gave me a tour of it one day.   When he and Hazel bought the place, way back in the '70's I believe it still had the hooks, hoists and pulley systems, as well as the copper for boiling, hams, etc.

I am vegetarian, but even so, because it was an important bit of village life and history, I still find it fascinating.

These buildings are gradually subsiding bricks are snapping, timbers slipping and I cannot imagine them standing for many more years, I felt it was important to record their existence, their history.

My feet led me on through the meadow and beyond the fish ponds, almost to Thistle Alley, where I encountered this collection of old posts and wire...a disused stile.  Nature is doing her best to reclaim it.

Nettles and elder, brambles and hawthorn are all doing their best to beautify it.

Can anything make barbed wire beautiful?

Here is another kind of a stile - a well-maintained, but infrequently used one,   in a quiet glade.



The wood has turned green because of all the rain we had been enduring.

Climb up over the stile and you are rewarded with a beautiful sight....

A  tranquil place, no traffic, just peace and beauty.


I am happy to be linking in with Jan n'Jer's Friday Fences.
Lots of links to interesting fences can be found on their blog.