It has been nine months since I wrote a blog. You see, my father died nine months ago. It’s been hard to focus. I’ve been lurching from project to conference paper, from workshop to talks while trying to make sense of this humbling event. I knew Dad was unwell. He knew he was unwell. But […]

Okey Hole. You may know it better as Wookey Hole, a village on the edge of the Mendip Hills, famous for its caves. Long ago it was known for its otherworldly nature. Today it’s one of Somerset’s main tourist attractions.

This is a blog about how a18th century map, a 7th century abbess and folklore collection on the 19th century may hold clues about an old processional route across the South Shropshire hills.

High on a cliff stands a lone statue of a saint. He stares north over a bay where a dark stack rises out of the sea. It is actually a tooth of a giant. The saint was Carannog, son of Coran. The giant was called Bica.

A hot day in August. I am thinking. I am sitting high upon the Hill with my dog, Dan. Dragonflies and swifts dart over bracken. The gorse is snapping and cracking in the heat.

A black poplar tree stands beside a little stream in the Shropshire village of Aston-on-Clun. Amongst its boughs bright flags are fluttering in the breeze. Today is Arbor Day, an old tree-dressing tradition when the flags are renewed and the community celebrates their tree. How this tradition came about and for how long is open […]

And let us do it with no show of fear No, with no more than if we heard England were busied with a Whitsun morris dance Henry V II. iv. Shakespeare c 1599

By late March the weather was warmer and spring made herself known at Moon Brook Cottage, accompanied by cries of goshawks, chiffchaffs, skylarks and the promise of cookoo. Celandines, or star-flowers, cheered up the woods and moon-flowers, more commonly known today as wood anemones, graced the shadows and verges. It was then I was approached […]

“That vivid present of theirs, how faint it grows! The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memorized glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow’s past.” Mary Webb, (Precious Bane, 1924)

‘Forget not the Feasts that belong to the Plough’*

You can read all my previous blog posts on my old website https://myblog.moonbrookcottagehandspun.co.uk/