Chapter 25 Natural History - Flora and Fauna of the Parishes

Introduction

In a legend of St Kyneburgha, the saint miraculously escapes three ruffians. She is able to run away along a path strewn with wildflowers, whilst they are caught up in scrub and brambles. In the church named after her, there is a fine banner, embroidered by the late Elsie Sismey. The flowery carpet at the saint’s feet is clearly shown, as are a few bushes to thwart her assailant.

To our modern eyes, a carpet of wildflowers is rare and special. But in Kyneburgha’s time, such displays would have been commonplace. The miracle was not the flowers that grew up in front of her, but the rough brambles that stopped her assailants. It is a measure of how the countryside has changed since Kyneburgha’s days that we are surprised by the wildflowers.

The Benefice is a mixture of different wildlife habitats. To the South is the River Nene with its associated wet meadows. Rising above the valley is the drier land, with fields and pastures on clay or limestone, and then woodlands on the clay, often on the higher ground.

In this chapter we describe the natural history of the Benefice in relation to the historical landscape and particularly the landscape St Kyneburgha might have known. We give examples of the wildlife you can still see. As we can only scratch the surface, there are references to sources of further information at the end of the chapter.

Meadows and pastures

If you wanted to find somewhere with a ‘flowery carpet’ today, the meadows by the Nene would be a good place to Fig 25a. St Kyneburgha Banner. This hangs at the foot of the start. There are records from Domesday of haymaking in tower in Castor Church and is taken in procession on feast the Nene Valley. We know that in 1086 there were 15 acres days. (Photo: J Tovey) of meadows in Castor and 15 acres in Ailsworth too (Appendix 1). Saxon hay meadows would have been very different from most meadows we see now. The meadows were not uniform grass fields, but would have been filled with flowers that grow well in damp soil.

However, you can still see meadows with many of the plant species that were probably there in St Kyneburgha’s day. Down by the Nene at Castor, and on the North side of the railway embankment, there are meadows that look different from the grassland around them. Look there in June and you will see dark crimson heads of great burnet, shocking pink shaggy flowers of ragged robin, fleshy pink spikes of marsh orchids and bright yellow buttercups. Look even closer and you will see that instead of plain rye grass, there are Fig 25b. Great burnet many different grasses, including creeping bent, meadow foxtail and crested dog’s-tail. (Drawing: English Nature) Later in the summer, the air is full of the scent of the creamy flowers of meadowsweet.

255 In 1985 Roger Banks, author and illustrator of Living in a Wild Garden [1] who has painted for the National Trust for Scotland and for many Wildlife Trusts, painted a watercolour he entitled Waternewton Meadow. This was actually of the Castor Flood Meadows and it is reproduced in the colour plate section. This picture captures the floristic richness of these remnants of the once-extensive grasslands that lay along the River Nene.

It would be very wrong to think that the meadows and fields which Kyneburgha knew were a wilderness. This was farming country even in Saxon days. The meadows were grazed by the villagers’ beasts and cut for hay. The flowery carpet that Kyneburgha would have known was not the rare, special and unusual thing it now is: it would have been a normal pasture or meadow. Meadows like these did not survive by themselves: we can enjoy the sight only because of the way in which they have been farmed. Comparisons between Castor Enclosure maps (1898) and today show that only fragments of the flowery grassland now remain [2]. This loss has been due, by and large, to changes in agriculture, particularly in the mid-20th century, especially through the use of fertilisers and pesticides, and the drainage and conversion of pastures to arable land.

There are other sorts of fields where one could imagine a flowery carpet. These are just as rare now as the wetter flowery meadows, for much the same reasons. Climb up from the valley and you get onto the limestone. It is much drier and has a very different flora. At its best, the flowers you can find on the limestone around Peterborough have few rivals.

There is still flowery limestone grassland to the North of the old railway station at Sutton Heath, and also at Ailsworth Heath. The latter was common land which for several hundred years was grazed by sheep and cattle belonging to villagers from Ailsworth. This traditional management allowed numerous grasses and wildflowers to flourish, on ground that has never been chemically sprayed or re-seeded [3]. You can see yellow rock-rose, and purple milk-vetch. In some places, if you look closely, you can see the small green adder’s tongue fern.

Go a little to the North into a neighbouring parish and you can see an even better example. At Barnack Hills and Holes National Nature Reserve, the grassland is a reminder of what the limestone grassland would have been like in St Kyneburgha’s time. Over 300 different species of plants have been found there [4]. The most striking is the pasque flower, so- named because its rich purple flowers with their bright yellow centres open around Easter- tide. Castor Church was built of Barnack stone from those quarries, so the flower must have been familiar to the medieval inhabitants of the Benefice. Indeed, John Clare wrote of pasque flowers growing at Swordy Well, also called Swaddiwell, off King Street, just North of Ailsworth Heath.

Heathlands Fig 25c. Pasque flower (Drawing: English Nature) One habitat that Kyneburgha, and indeed all our predecessors up to the early 20th century would have known well, has almost entirely disappeared from the Benefice, due to 19th century enclosures and 20th century agriculture. We have lost the extensive heathland described by John Morton in the early 18th century and later by John Clare [5]. These heaths stretched Eastwards from Wittering and had their own special plants. Indeed, they were noted for a special type of small sheep particularly associated with this district. All that remains is a solitary clump of heather and some patches of gorse and bracken at Castor Hanglands National Nature Reserve.

Woodlands

We must remember that the landscape around the villages is a working landscape. In some respects it was more of a working landscape in Kyneburgha’s time than it is now. We heat our homes and cook with oil or gas or electricity: our predecessors used wood. Wood was used for tools, for building and for fuel. This wood came from actively-worked woodland. Woods were not the quiet refuges that we sometimes imagine. They were a busy and essential part of the village landscape. But they would not have looked as they do now. The woods would have been more open, with much more frequent coppicing. There would have been tall oaks and ashes, but probably many trees would have been ‘stools’, stumps from which grew the thin poles that the villagers needed for handles and for fuel. There are still thatched cottages in the villages. The thatching spars that hold down the thatch come from woods managed in much the same way as St Kyneburgha would have known. Indeed, as an active Abbess, running the monastery and its lands, perhaps it is not too far fetched to think that Kyneburgha would have had a good knowledge of woodland management.

256 If you want to see pictures of medieval woodland, the charming Flemish book illustrations by Simon Bening, especially that entitled ‘December’ (which is in the British Library), show what it must have looked like.

A study of land-use changes by R V Collier showed that, between 1919 and 1977, the distribution and area of woodland changed very little, although some broadleaved woodland had been replaced by conifers. The main reason for the lack of change was that most of the land of the Soke is crossed by the two large estates of Burghley and Milton. These estates have a long tradition of hunting and game shooting, with the result that the woodland has been retained [6]. The extent of ‘ancient woodland’ (that is, woods for which there is evidence that woodland has existed on the same land since 1600) has been estimated. The map in the colour plates section shows the woods still existing in the Benefice that are ‘ancient’. You can reasonably infer that these areas were probably wooded at Domesday and even in St Kyneburgha’s time. We know from Domesday that Castor had woodland six furlongs long by four furlongs wide and Ailsworth had woodland three furlongs long by two furlongs wide (Appendix 1).

Castor Hanglands

The most famous woodland in the Benefice is Castor Hanglands, which has been managed as a National Nature Reserve for 50 years. It is leased from the Milton Estate and the Forestry Commission, and managed by English Nature. It is one of only about 200 National Nature Reserves in England. It is the Benefice’s wildlife ‘jewel in the crown’. The Reserve includes the woods at Castor Hanglands and the grassland and scrub at Ailsworth Heath [7].

The woodland at Castor Hanglands is a relic of the historic hunting forest of Nassborough. Ancient woodland such as this is especially rich in plant and animal species. The ground flora holds many species indicative of an ancient woodland including wood melick, yellow archangel and ramsons. Just over 50 years ago, before it became a National Nature Reserve, nearly all the large trees were felled for timber. In the Reserve, the native oak, ash, field maple and birch trees have been allowed to re-grow. Amongst them are rarer trees such as wild service, and shrubs like hazel, dogwood and spindle. In spring, the woodland flora includes a colourful mixture of bluebells, wood anemones, primroses, violets, wild strawberries and other plants. Large numbers of fallow deer may be seen in the wood. Browsing by the deer damages growth and kills new tree seedlings. Certain parts of the woodland are now enclosed by electric or plastic fencing, to keep the deer out and allow the shrubs and saplings to survive and form a dense understorey within the woodland. A leaflet giving a fuller description of Castor Hanglands National Nature Reserve is available from English Nature [8].

If you go to Castor Hanglands today, you can see oak, ash and maple, just as there would have been in St Kyneburgha’s time. Indeed, the maple apparently gets its name from the use the Saxons made of it, to turn bowls or ‘mazers’. There would probably have been fencing to protect the young coppice re-growth from deer and the villagers’ stock. The fencing (‘pale’) would also have kept stock in, especially pigs, when they were put in the woodland to feed on acorns in the autumn. Much of the Hanglands survived until relatively recently: it was only in the 20th century that about half was cut down by the Forestry Commission and replaced with Scandinavian conifers. These conifers did not thrive and many are now being Fig 25d. Castor Hanglands NNR: oaks and bluebells along a removed. New woodland and heathland is slowly woodland ride leading to Ailsworth Heath. returning. (Photo: Peter Wakely/English Nature)

257 On the St Kyneburgha banner there is a blue butterfly (perhaps a holly blue?). We can be pretty certain that there were more butterflies around in St Kyneburgha’s day than today. The decline in butterflies in this area has been relatively recent. The Benefice has not been unique in this: it is a national phenomenon. What is perhaps more special is that the butterflies of Castor Hanglands were particularly studied [9]. It is one of the sites which has always been associated with rare butterflies, perhaps because it was close to the butterfly expert Charles Rothschild’s estate at Ashton, near Oundle.

It is pleasing to be able to say that Castor Hanglands has been involved in recovery work for rare butterflies. The black hairstreak, a small dark butterfly with a prominent white spur on its hind-wings, is found in England only on the clayey, wooded ridges that run from Oxfordshire to Lincolnshire. It lives on blackthorn, but seems very fussy in its requirements. The adult butterfly is seen only occasionally on very warm days in June. The caterpillar feeds on blackthorn leaves, and the chrysalis, which is camouflaged to look like a small bird dropping, is hidden on the branches. Work done at Castor Hanglands National Nature Reserve has helped to develop better ways of conserving this species.

The river, streams and ponds

The River Nene meanders across the floodplain, although it has been straightened in places Fig 25e. Black hairstreak to aid navigation. It marks the Southern boundary of the Benefice. There is an oxbow South (Drawing: English Nature) of Castor that, until early in the 20th century, was part of the original course of the river. Yellow water-lilies grow there in profusion. Further upstream, Castor Backwater with its mass of reed beds provides a good feeding ground for many warblers and finches, as well as for coot, moorhen, mallard and tufted duck. Along the River Nene South of Castor and Ailsworth are many willow trees, including ‘cricket bat’ willows. Many of the willows are still pollarded. This is the traditional way of managing willows for the production of small poles used for stakes, baskets and hurdles [10] [11].

By the river you can see many plants that like wet conditions. Many are large and colourful, such as spires of purple loosestrife, golden marsh marigolds and pale pink lady’s smock. There are of course, reeds, rushes and bulrushes, but also less obvious water-plants such as arrowhead, with leaves that live up to its name, and water crowfoots, with feathery submerged leaves and little white flowers that break the surface of the water. Perhaps the most noticeable insects are the blue damselflies, especially the common blue damselfly, the banded demoiselle, with big black spots on its wings, and sometimes the less common red- eyed damselfly.

The English farming landscape used to have far more ponds. These ponds were essential for watering Fig 25g. Arrowhead. cattle. There is a (Drawing English Nature) medieval pond at Fig 25f. Pollard willows: growing by Castor Level Crossing and pollarded regularly by the Nene Park Trust. (Photo: J Tovey)

258 Castor Hanglands and several other ponds have been dug on the Reserve over the years. These ponds provide an ideal habitat for many water-loving plants and insects. Eighteen species of dragonfly have been recorded on the Reserve. In early spring the main pond sees a gathering of several thousand common toads, in order to breed. This striking wildlife spectacle is made all the more remarkable by the way the toads then disperse and disappear, to return the next year.

The ponds at Castor Hanglands hold all three species of newt found in Britain - the smooth, the palmate and the rarer, and larger, great crested newt. The Soke of Peterborough is a stronghold for these rare amphibians, with England’s largest colony of great crested newts to the South at Orton. They have also been found at Oldfield Pond, Fig 25h. Common toad North of Castor. (Drawing: English Nature)

Hedges and arable fields

In this part of England, hedges are often not an ancient or medieval field boundary, but a much more recent division of the fields, although some hedges, particularly those along old tracks, are much older. Even though we lost so many big elms from the hedges in the last quarter of the 20th century, there are still elms surviving, but often as suckering shrubs rather than tall trunks: the Fig 25i. Great crested newt young growth of the elm often escapes the effects of Dutch elm disease. (Drawing: English Nature)

What would the arable fields have looked like? They would have had weeds, but rather than simply poppies, wild oats and black grass as today, there would have been many more different flowers. Until very recently, you could see some examples of these rarer weeds in Normangate field, including round-leaved fluellen. More frequently seen is the field pansy. This species, when crossed with heartsease, is the ancestor of many of the original horticultural pansies [12]. The Benefice is not alone in losing its cornfield weeds: it has happened all over England. These colourful arable weeds thrived, partly because of the inability of our predecessors to sift seed as thoroughly as we do now, but much more Fig 25j. ‘The Dancing Ladies’: This row of elms stood on the edge of Glebe Field so because they did not have the fertilisers running down to Peterborough Road, Castor. They were known as the ‘Dancing and herbicides available to us today. We Ladies’ because their branches lightly touched each other and in the breeze can produce more grain than St appeared to be dancing together. It was a sad day indeed when in the 1980s they Kyneburgha’s villagers would have were felled, having fallen victim to Dutch elm disease. thought possible, but the landscape is (Courtesy David Scott) much less interesting as a result.

John Clare

The poet John Clare wrote lovingly accurate descriptions of the countryside around the Benefice. What is not so well known is that Clare was a very significant recorder of the wildlife around this area in the early 19th century. He made reference to 153 different plants in his writings [13] [14]. It might be assumed that Clare, the ‘peasant poet’, knew all these flowers from childhood and that they were part of the everyday vocabulary of farming folk. But we know that this was not actually so. Clare learnt to identify many flowers from Joseph Henderson, who was the head gardener at Milton Hall in the 1820s. In 1824, Clare writes of receiving a parcel of ferns and flowers from Henderson, including a hart’s- tongue fern ‘growing in a well at Caistor’ (sic) [15].

259 In the Benefice, you can still see many of the flowers referred to in his poems:

Bluebells and field maple at Castor Hanglands:

‘And snugly hiding ‘neath the feather’d brake Full many a Bluebell flower’ (Clare, Village Minstrel 1821)

‘The Maple with its tassel flowers of green That turns to red a stag horn shaped seed’ (Clare, The Maple Tree)

Lady’s smock and yellow water-lilies by the River Nene:

‘An wan-hued Lady-smocks that love to spring ‘Side the swamp margin of some plashy pond’ (Clare, Village Minstrel 1821)

‘While Water-lilies in their glories come And spread green isles beautifully round their home’ (Clare, MS poems) [16].

However, Clare is perhaps better known for his laments over the loss of wild flowers and wild places caused by the Enclosures and agricultural developments. He wrote of the destruction of pasque flowers:

‘I coud almost fancy that this blue anemone sprang from the blood or dust of the romans for it haunts the roman bank in this neighborhood and is found nowhere else it grows on the roman bank agen swordy well & did grow in great plenty but the plough that destroyer of wildflowers has rooted it out of its long inherited dwelling’ [17].

It is not at all unlikely that it formerly grew on the ‘roman banks’ at Castor. The loss of the pasque flower could stand as a symbol for the impoverishment of our flora since Kyneburgha settled here.

Birds

On the St Kyneburgha banner there are no birds. We know that there are some birds that Kyneburgha would not have seen. In Upton you can see little owls perkily sitting on a willow. Little owls were only introduced into England in the 19th century. Indeed they were referred to as ‘Lilford owls’, after the estate further up the Nene valley, where they were introduced to England. However, we can be sure that there would have been many more species of birds to be seen in Kyneburgha’s day, and indeed in the 19th century when Clare wrote about wildlife in and around the Benefice.

As an Anglo-Saxon princess, Kyneburgha would have known about falconry and probably owned hawks for hunting. Down by the river there would have been herons - no doubt abundant but probably also hunted using falconry. We still have grey herons - there is a Fig 25k. Little owl large heronry on the Milton Estate and you can see these striking birds flapping slowly and (Drawing: English Nature) powerfully over the villages. The Milton heronry was probably founded in 1819 and reportedly was once the largest in England [18].

In most years nightingale, whitethroat, garden warbler, grasshopper warbler, long-eared owls and many other bird species breed at Castor Hanglands. Our predecessors would have heard the sweet sounds of the nightingale and the skylark far more than we can do today. They would also even have heard the much less musical rasping of the corncrake. This bird is now extinct in England but hopefully will be re-introduced in Cambridgeshire. The churring of the nightjar was probably a familiar sound over Ailsworth Heath. We know that nightjars were still heard in Clare’s day. He wrote that they were found on ‘a wild heath, called Emmingsales (Edmonds Sale, part of Castor Hanglands National Nature Reserve) & I believe that is the only spot which they visit’. He described their call as a Fig 25l. Grey heron ‘novel and pleasing sound’ and then explained how to imitate it [19]. (Drawing: English Nature) Clare also noted the fieldfares and redwings that still frequent the Peterborough area in

260 winter. He described the fieldfares that ‘come in large flocks and strip the awe (hawthorn) bushes as they proceed onward in their march…They are speckled like the thrush and make a busy chinnying as they flye’. In contrast the redwing is simply noted as ‘smaller than the field fare and flyes silent’ [20].

The large and striking red kite would have been seen often, scavenging on carrion. In John Clare’s day, the red kite appears not to have been infrequent. He writes: ‘The old hen leads her flickering chicks abroad Oft scuttling ‘neath her wings to see the Kite Hang wavering o’er them in the spring’s blue light’

By the time Druce published his Flora of Northamptonshire in 1930 [21], he referred to the kite as ‘one of our rarest birds’, and thereafter it became extinct in England until its re-introduction by English Nature in the 1990s. One of the most encouraging things to record about the Benefice’s natural history is that in 2003, a red kite was seen over Castor School by pupils and teachers. At a time when we see wild places under threat and even the commoner displays of roadside flowers, such as cow parsley, are being replaced by close-mown, suburban-style verges, the red kite is a sign

Fig 25m. Map of Castor Hanglands NNR. (Drawing English Nature)

261 that wildlife can recover. More information

You can find out more about the wildlife around the Benefice by looking at the various recording schemes, many of which make information available on the Internet [22] [23]. Information on the special wildlife sites, including the three Sites of Special Scientific Interest (Castor Flood Meadows, Castor Hanglands and Sutton Heath & Bog) can be found on English Nature’s Website [24].

You can visit Castor Hanglands: there is open public access to the National Nature Reserve.

Acknowledgements Chris Gardiner, David Denman and Marc Turner of English Nature for help and expert advice.

Emily and John Finnie Emily and John Finnie live in Castor with their son William. Emily first moved to the village in 1992 and John joined her when they married in 1996. Both have a long-standing interest in wildlife, especially wildflowers.

Notes 1. Roger Banks, Living in a Wild Garden, The Windmill Press, 1980. 2. R V Collier, The Status and decline of butterflies on Castor Hanglands NNR, Nature Conservancy Council CST Notes Number 8, 1978. 3. English Nature, Castor Hanglands National Nature Reserve, NNR leaflet. 4. English Nature, Barnack Hills and Holes National Nature Reserve, NNR leaflet. 5. G C Druce, The Flora of Northamptonshire, Arbroath: T Buncle and Co, 1930, p lxi. 6. R V Collier. 7. P Marren, England’s National Nature Reserves, Poyser Natural History, 1994, p221. 8. English Nature, Castor Hanglands National Nature Reserve. 9. R V Collier. 10. Peterborough City Council Community Programme, Country Walks Around Peterborough, City Planning Department. 11. Nene Way Guide, Nene Park Peterborough. 12. R Mabey, Flora Britannica, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996, p129. 13. G C Druce, p xci. 14. F H Perring, John Clare and Northamptonshire Plant Records, Arbroath, 1955. 15. M Grainger (Editor), The Natural History Prose Writings of John Clare, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983, p 207. 16. G C Druce, pp xcvii, xcix, c, cxiii. 17. M Grainger, p 61. 18. E M Nicholson, British Birds, 22:285. 19. M Grainger, p 33. 20. Ibid, p 134. 21. G C Druce, p xcii. 22. The Postcode Plants Database, www.nhm.ac.uk. 23. National Biodiversity Network Website, www.nbn.org.uk. 24. English Nature Website,www.english-nature.org.uk.

General Reference A Colston and F H Perring, The Nature of Northamptonshire, Barracuda Books Limited, 1989. A Colston, C Gerrard, M Jackson, L Moore and C Tero, Northamptonshire’s Red Data Book species to watch in the county, The Wildlife Trust for Northamptonshire, 1996. G Gent, R Wilson et al, The Flora of Northamptonshire and the Soke of Peterborough, Robert Wilson, 1995.

262