Some musings and meetings from the 4 weeks I'm spending in Somerset in spring and summer 2008
Archive:
Today I finally knuckled down to some (dress) making, something I have a love / hate relationship with ever since the hell-and-back 10 day lock-in when Nina and I had to make our Tudor costumes for our last film. Let's draw a veil over just how long it took to get even the basics right for 1578 - well, all I can say is you try and design a fitted bodice without darts or lycra....
So - back to Exmoor National Dress - this lovely print on canvas donated to the project by Exmoor painter Maurice Bishop appeared simply as an Elvis-style cape at Dunster Show but I thought I'd better explore other treatments, so attempted my first bit of smocking with it this afternoon...
I think it's rather too stiff but nevertheless it's an interesting effect...
Themes : costume, Exmoor, smocking
We had a great time at the annual Dunster Show on Friday, the sun shone, the animals got rosettes and Harald and I got lots of good feedback on our projects. Harald displayed two painted tea towels and offered free portraits on apples, whilst I put some of the artefacts collected during my costume research, onto a mannequin and hoped for the best ;-)
Thanks to all who supported the stand, and especially Chris Miles of Porlock for her loan of a lovely hand-made smock! Some pictures here.
Nearly since my arrival on Exmoor people of all ages had been saying 'Have you heard of Dean Thomas?' when I mentioned the Exmoor National Dress idea.
Dean is a young fashion designer originally from Dulverton, who made a name for himself at his recent St Martin's degree show, with a collection of superb (and I found out, all his own handiwork) tailoring, based around the theme of Exmoor 'cultural icon' Lorna Doone and using many local materials.
The Collection is on show this week in the town's Guildhall, and the opening night was mobbed, though I managed to get close enough to the pieces to realise that here was a guy who knew his stuff - there's loads of exquisite details that refer to English historic dress, but also a contemporary slant with neon paint and some quite radical cutting.
The next morning I returned to meet Dean there with the hope of talking him into getting involved in my project. His lovely parents were helping clear up the empty wine bottles whilst we chatted, so watch this space to see where we might be able to take it.....
Themes : costume, Exmoor, Dean Thomas, fashion
I'm feeling very pleased that so far - touch wood - everyone I talk to about my Exmoor National Dress project has been helpful and interested. If only all projects were like this.
Peg at the great Allerford Rural Life Museum is orginally a Londoner and now chair of the museum, which is one of those eccentric places where the labels are often bigger than the exhibit. In the Victorian school room part of the museum she drew out the basics of smocking on a bit of paper, making it sound as easy as pie, and promised to keep her ear to the ground for me. It reminded me of a Readers Digest book I hope my mum still owns, which as a child I perused on rainy days for the sheer wonderment of the smocking and plaiting instructions.
Maybe now it might seem as easy as Peg promises.
As an aside, I now realise that as a child of the 70's I was surrounded by the 'folk revival' and Victoriana ephemera of that decade, pamphlets on corn dolly-making, tie-dying projects in Jackie magazine, The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. My parents were not remotely into this stuff but still it was pervasive at the time, and as a ludicrously resourceful child (and in the West Coast of Scotland, with many rainy afternoons on my hands) I got up to all sorts trying to make vegetable dyes, sew ragdolls and press flowers.
Themes : Exmoor, rural life, smocking, Allerford, Purlock
I’m quite worried about meeting Maurice Bishop. With his massively successful Exmoor galleries groaning with affordably priced local landscape paintings and prints, I expect him to be a rapier-sharp businessman, fiercely protective of his product and disinterested in other artists like me, trying to talk him into fancy conceptual projects. Carol assures me he’s known to be approachable and really rather nice, but it doesn’t reassure me that asking him to give me a few of his prints to cut and stitch them – won’t offend.
Lynemouth is not what I’m used to on Exmoor. An undeniably lovely old-fashioned seaside village reached via a deeply carved road (seaside thatch, I’ve never seen that before), there are suddenly hoardes of tourists ambling about with icecreams. I ask where Maurice’s studio is at one of the attractions, a model railway layout. The layout has an impressive innovation (I know a thing or two about railway modelling but that’s another story) in its chimneys excuding an ectoplasm made of Christmas tree ‘angel hair’ tufts.
Anyhow, the attendant answers as if I have just asked a Londoner ‘Excuse me, you wouldn’t happen to know if I’m in the right city for Buckingham Palace?’. Apparently you can’t miss the studio. I realise that contrary to my expectations, Maurice isn’t hidden away in a clifftop studio but is on the main drag amidst the fish and chip shops. When I arrive he’s actually working on a new canvas in his gallery window. Actually in the window, for all to see.
Five minutes later I’m walking away from the studio with a ‘shop-soiled’ canvas under my arm to try out. Apparently a duck had flown into his gallery, landed in the blue paint on his palette and proceeded to daub all the nearby prints.
Themes : landscape painting
On my first day back in Exmoor, the Archers Omnibus distracts me enough to have me haring off down one road in precisely the opposite direction than intended. A bonus is that I glimpse a ‘Cherries for sale’ sign, and having just heard a radio show championing this most fleeting of summer fruits I decide to pay the farm a call. The place is delightful in an Enid Blyton-esque way, well-kept orchards of apples and cherries and barnfuls of traditional fruit boxes. Living as I do on an inhospitable (to fruit, that is) windswept northern mountain, I brimmed over with envy at all this bounty and sunshine. I entered the deserted ‘shop’ barn to find a disappointing sign ‘Due to the weather, no cherries until Monday’. On sale there were two punnets of plums and some very rudimentary plastic bottles of home-made scrumpy. I realised I had only notes in my purse, but quashed my slight irritation at the lack of the promised fruit and the inevitable overspend ahead. Looking around more carefully, I found there were unpriced punnets of split cherries abandoned on the scales. I tasted one, they were very sweet, but clearly not intended for sale.
I put together a bag of items that I thought would cost about a tenner (including the split cherries) and left the owner a note by his till.
As I left he appeared at the shop door, and regaled me with a long story of the year’s disasterous cherry crop – good for nothing but schnapps now; the greed of the supermarkets and the impossibility of attracting pickers, with all the health & safety regulations.
“Give me a call when you want to buy the place off me” was his parting shot.
Don’t tempt me, I thought.
Themes : orchard
Staghunting with hounds still occurs in Exmoor, and the Devon & Somerset Staghounds live in a large complex near the village of Exford, a perfect cream tea stopover.
Before refeshments, I swung by the kennels in my hire car, and after an initial wave of howls and barks, the hounds returned to silence as I knocked on various doors around the building.
No-one was in - I'll try again on my next visit.
One of the highlights of my last visit to Exmoor was visiting Will, who looks after the hounds of the Minehead Harriers based in Wootton Courtenay.
Will was generous with his time and knowledge.
I was surprised by how the economics of the hunt works - basically what are fundamentally voluntary donations from riders at each 'meet' finance the whole caboodle, augmented by the payments farmers make to the hunt for providing the much needed 'flesh round' services. It's impressive.Right by his house, Will spent the morning expertly butchering discarded livestock from local farms to feed the hounds. The premises were given to the hunt by the fabulous-sounding 'Miss Lillo Lumb', but beyond the idyllic exterior is a grim but neccessary service absolutely integral to the fabric of Exmoor farming.
At one point a local horse breeder dropped by to deliver the carcasses of twin foals who had died in birth. He was full of sadness, one was a beautiful colour that he had been breeding towards for years.
See here for an interesting oral history archive about Exmoor hunting
Posted 2008/05/01 21:43 by Karen : 0 comments : leave a commentThemes : hunting Exmoor livestock
Scooped out of the boundary of Exmoor National Park is the lovely old-fashioned seaside town of Minehead, and along its promenade sits a Butlins holiday camp.
Like many Britons these places are enduringly associated for me with a 1950’s kind of what my parents would call rather ‘common’ - harmless all-inclusive fun. I am suprised but pleased that they survive into the 21st century, but I had literally no idea what to expect as a daytrip visitor. I certainly didn’t expect the frankly massive ticket prices displayed in the entrance pavilion. They seemed high considering that from my viewpoint the windswept funfair wasn’t ‘on’ and a Burger King sign was visible.
I hastily introduced ourselves as just visiting artists wanting to have a look about. Once I had assured them we didnt want to film anything, we were waived in, though not without a slight sense of surveyance.
The main space was a vast canvas tent structure accommodating many highstreet shops and eating places. The roof was impressively engineered and satisfyingly referenced the joyful ‘big top’ / camping references of early Butlins.
Children and young familes quietly and politely queued at the Burger King, they smiled at us as we walked around, calm pervaded what had promised at first glance to be my idea of hell.
It transpired we had walked in to a vast Christian conference filling the entire camp, and as today was ‘changeover day’ our slightly bewildered appearance raised no suspicion. The ‘trade stalls’ exhibited everything from Christian banking services to Evangelical rock schools, no hard sell of course as their occupants believed they were preaching to the converted. I discovered that 80’s diva Yazz had transformed into a hip Christian songstress.
Beyond this pleasure dome were the facilties and accommodation for the ‘campers’. I tried to pick up my email but found the wifi was not free.
Eclectic architecture akin to low-rise student housing sat within neat garden spaces. A small sub-Corbusier Modernist pavilion turned out to be a very recent addition, built as a marketing suite for the camp’s proudest achievement – a upmarket timeshare apartment block built in convincing art deco style. An enthusiastic young salesman appreciated our appreciation of the camp’s classier aspirations.
The crowds thinned out as we walked along the oldest accommodation blocks, endearing 50’s bunglalows with deep eaves, being cleaned by East Europeans. To my satisfaction, we noticed through their low windows that some of the Christians had left their beds unmade.
Abruptly, at the end of one of these avenues, stood a small but substantial white-washed chapel of the style one could see in a small Eastern European village. Pan-tiled roof, small bell-tower, checkered floor tiles. We hesitantly entered. Inside, a small table with a photograph of a young woman, but no campers.
We return to the Cutcombe Cattle Market to find out what we can about the business of livestock in Exmoor, choosing what we hope to be a quiet morning. Though the auctioneer we had watched in awe that week was out of the office, a Mr Rook makes time for us to speak across his vast and well-worn desk. As wide as he is tall, elderly but in fine fettle, his accent is thick as he summarises the past and future of the market. Part of the site is to be sold off to finance a shiny new market which meets the copious new regulations better than the current tin shed. On the sold land a number of affordable local houses plus a few more expensive ‘open market’ homes will be built. Mr Rook hunts in his spare time, and works - at 80 years old – to get himself out of the house. He appreciates the benefits of the market’s website but cannot use a PC. His well-used dictaphone sits on the desk, its contents waiting to go to the secretary for typing up.
Later that morning in Dulverton we visit a very well-presented but rather too worthy archive of oral history, photographs and some old film transferred to a dud DVD which only plays the one about the ‘Great Freeze”. This means I have to miss out on the alluring film of a wartime parade also offered on the screen menu.
Over at a PC there is a database of the oral history archive – which proudly states “Last update 21/08/2005”. I muse on how oddly - and disappointingly - banal these archives can be, transferable between any aging rural population in the countryside. “Mother was a great cook, father was harsh....”; “We never bought a vegetable”; “People never locked their doors”. And I say that as someone who adores social history.
I decide to idly browse the contributors by name. There are no more than about fifty presented.
Mr (Tom) Rook takes my eye and I find a comprehensive summary of the entire life story of the man whose office I had just been in at the Cattle Market.
Themes : farming, oral history, Facebook, Exmoor, Somerset
The deep local hedgebanks (as they call them in the visitor literature) have an odd, fortified quality about them. On closer inspection I see many are in fact ancient walls of stacked, flat stone now submerged beneath rich vegetation and turf. The surface reminds me of the ‘flowery mead’ seen in medieval woodcuts and tapestries – each leaf distinct in its vernal opulence, a translucent gem-like green. There are delectable nettles, primroses in yellow and purple and all the bruise-like shades in between, butterbur, cow parsley, wild garlic.
Some of these ‘walls’ are even topped with hedgerow plants - a kind of double decker boundary – and these in turn have grown dense, only to be recently ‘laid’ (cut and flattened at their bases), adding a final utilitarian capping.
Our B & B landlady is bleary-eyed from lambing all night with her unmaternal Exmoor Longhorn ewes. Several have died and left orphans whose nocturnal bleats I can hear as I type, even at 10pm. She will need to hand-rear them, bringing them into the warm farmhouse kitchen, out of the unseasonally frosty April night. She and her husband have some air-dried hams hanging from the barn beams. I tell them of our own home curing attempts, some of which had ended horrifically with maggots. We discuss salt and dampness and I admire the 1940’s wardrobe they have converted into a smokehouse.
The local quadbike dealership is the most successful in the UK. Rob pays his staff what are considered staggeringly high wages locally. He makes selling the bikes sound like a piece of cake. On the way out I notice a bike without its familiar ‘shell’, being quietly tended. Its loving owner is working in front of a framed UK championship poster of three anonymous quadbikers, each wearing a helmet and a number. Number two is a heavily sponsored Honda ‘pro’ biker, but number one is the biker here in the showroom.
In the tiny Cutcombe church a Nigel Mansell autobiography remains unsold on the book stand. Their preserves are £1 a jar.
Themes : Somerset, livestock, hedgerows
