Ancient Ash

This morning I spent an inspirational couple of hours exploring the eastern end of Westings Meadow with KP who has been researching its history. 

It was a morning full of discoveries including a row of thirty-five veteran White Willow, gnarled and craggy, along the course of the Car Dyke; an enormous Ash on the bank of the South Drain, and a set of Elms with branches zig-zagging into the sky above. 

We walked the edge of a couple of fields that would have been part of the site, looking out for stones and treasure. The area of the former Westings Meadow  is underlain by Oxford Clay, but has superficial deposits over most of it, including River Terrace deposits and alluvium. In one short section we found several lumps of ironstone conglomerate, some prettily coloured lumps of gravel and two water-worn stones, one of oolitic limestone and one of a metamorphic material that would have originated much further west. 

While we walked, Skylarks sang high above us, while in the hedges Yellowhammers and Wrens were singing and courting. We even saw a couple of Grey Wagtails along the Maxey Cut. 

We spent some time taking in the landscape, letting our imaginations picture it as it once would have been, awash with flower-rich grassland cut for hay in midsummer and then grazed with cattle through the autumn - a valuable resource for all the neighbouring villages.