Three sentinels

This is the valley, right on the western edge of BBOWT's Dancersend Nature Reserve, that I have christened "the cradle of nature conservation". It was where two large Rothschild estates met back in the mid 1800s, that stretching SW from Tring Park into the Dancer's End Valley and the other extending through beech woods from Halton House to Aston Hill, Chivery and the highest point in the Chilterns.

This was were the young Walter Rothschild and his younger brother Charles developed their love of nature, especially entomology, around the 1870s. Walter (2nd Lord Rothschild) went on to form the largest zoological collection in the world at Tring. Charles became an eminent entomologist and, realising the countryside he loved was being transformed by mechanised farming, quarrying and drainage schemes, invented the concept of nature conservation and founded the Wildlife Trusts movement. His daughter, Miriam Rothschild, was a self-taught scientist and activist who continued her father's work and was involved in establishing Dancersend Reserve in 1939 in memory of her father.

Miriam told me that her father and uncle took her to this valley when she was just 4 or 5 years old and she helped them collect Marsh Fritillary butterflies. I only realised today that these old beech trees, survivors of an old hedge line, are like three sentinals keeping watch over this very special place - Walter on the left and Charles and Miriam connected on the right. To me they are a natural memorial, but it's gradually dawning on me that I need to do something about a proper memorial in this place.