Change

I’ve been returning (when I can) to a practically invisible agricultural feature in the landscape. ‘Pits (dis)’ are extraordinary in their prominence on local OS maps – I’ve noted, astonishingly,  ten of these things in one square mile close to home. They are evidence of the excavation of chalk used to apply as fetilizer to fields and as an acidity regulator before modern farming practices made this process redundant. Quite often they feature as strange wooded outcrops in the middle of ploughed fields, especially noticable in winter.

I decided to return to this particular one (OS ref: 465 528) repeatedly over a period of two years documenting seasonal and climatic change from one viewpoint.

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Winterbourne

 

 

This post comes part-way through a long term project broadly related to fields – places which reflect our connection with the countryside and industrial food production.

Fields have a pschological hold on us collectively and individually in relation to national identity and our own personal experiences of nature. In truth, fields are a representation of nature and the countryside – a symbolic shorthand with which we have become habituated and a pseudo-space outside the control of the home. Fields provide a false premise of what nature should look like and images mask the true significance of these zones of industrialisation. Fields are as artificial as any comparable industrialised space, and the lack of visible biodiversity is only one aspect of that function. Indeed, few places, in my experience, exhibit such an astonishing lack of plant and animal multi-culture as a modern field.

Above are 12 views taken from the same position along the river Winterbourne in Wiltshire, UK, which periodically rises and retreats according to the underlying water table.