A stroll down memory lane, Part 2
Thu 16 Apr, 2009, 20:06 pm
So on I walked, past the marshy ground between the playing fields and on towards the lake. It is a small but picturesque lake, almost perfectly round and contained within a raised mound of higher ground that surrounds it, walking up towards it from the fields the impression is of a small volcano cone filled with water.
Approaching the pool
It is completely surrounded by trees and bushes with open spaces inter dispersed around the rim where the anglers sit and fish, I stopped to take a couple of photographs and noticed that I was being watched by a couple of people, one man about forty years of age, with a mouth full of gold teeth and a pair of very heavy silver rings piercing each of his ears. The other looked to be around thirty years old and had a friendly look about him. “Just taking a couple of snaps of the pool, I used to fish here as a lad” I said. It turned out that the older man was the water bailiff and we had a long chat about how the fishing used to be in this area.
The Angler's Pool
The conversation moved on to the name of another pool hidden deep in some woods about a mile or so further on. I had mentioned that it was on my route for today’s walk, it has an unusual name, which is ‘Blood Pool’ and this prompted the younger man to say that it was given the name due to the fact that ‘gypsies’ used to drown their unwanted dogs in the pool. I asked the one who was the bailiff if there were any fish in that particular pool and he said there were not. “Have you ever visited the pool in early summer?” I asked. He said he had and I asked him if he ever saw the broad leaved water weeds that completely covered the water at that time of the year. “If you see them when they first appear the edges are all curled up and show the red undersides” I said and that is why it is called ‘Blood Pool’. They both became more interested in my explanation, “then why are there no fish in the pool” the young one asked. I then explained that the water that ran into the pool from the surrounding area was heavily saturated with iron oxide polluted water, still seeping out from long abandoned shallow coal mining operations. This together with the dying and decomposing weed during the winter months, deprived the pool of Oxygen, hence the lack of fish, I decided it was fast becoming a day of identifying long lost water sources.
I continued around the pool in a clockwise direction and picked up the remnants of the sunken cow lane as it swept in from my left and I joined it like a car joining a motorway.
The 'Cow Lane'
They say it is possible to judge the age of an ancient hedgerow by the variation of the trees and shrubs that comprise it’s make up. The rough rule is one species for every one hundred years, so I started to count, Oak, Beech, Sycamore, Hawthorn, Holly, Black-Thorn, Chestnut, Elder and more. I knew that this area had a Roman connection and that the farms had once been linked together by this sunken track.
Continuing down the lane, soon the Bluebells will be in flower on each side of the lane.
Early signs of a good show
I had read somewhere that it was popular with the Romans due to there being nine natural springs in the area. Here we go again! Springs and water sources! I started to think back to my childhood and see if maybe I could identify where these springs would have been. So far I have identified three, one that I mentioned earlier.
I identified one of the others by recalling a local name for one end of the sunken cow lane; it was ‘Pump Hollow’ it all made sense now, a name from my childhood gave me the location of what would have been the village pump! Most likely tapping one of the nine springs. The other came to mind when I remembered a plot of land that my father used to rent from a local farmer. He kept chickens and had a vegetable garden there. I would go down and dip a bucket into a small reed encircled hole in the ground to water the chickens and the vegetable plot, eureka! This must have also been one of the springs. That farmer tried on many occasions to sell the plot of land to my father for what today would have been a small amount of money. But he had a young family to bring up and was not particularly well paid, so he never took him up on the offer. Half a century later, there now stands a well established housing estate on the farmers field and the only access to it is through the plot of land where I used to water the chickens. It must have become a very valuable piece of land, I am reminded of Topol in 'Fidler on the roof' and start to whistle "If I were a rich man"
you sussed me out 
