Subjective Geographies @ Woodbury Salterton

Priscilla Trenchard and Patrick Dillon

With special thanks to:

The villagers who took part in this survey, the children and staff at Woodbury Salterton C of E Primary School, and members of the Woodbury Salterton Women’s Institute. Debbie Jung who provided the scarecrow distribution map.

Thanks also to Philippe Planel and Emma Rouse, Wyvern Heritage and Landscape Consultancy. This project was funded and supported by the East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and English Heritage.

All OS Mapping provided with the assistance of the East Devon AONB Partnership © Crown Copyright and database rights 2013 Ordnance Survey 100023746

Contents

Introduction 4

Subjective geographies 4

Woodbury Salterton 6

What we did 8

What we found 9

Community engagement 9

Mapping memory, visitor, word and colour associations and favourite walks 10

Colour association pictograms 15

Overview of mapping of all groups 16

Photographic surveys 16

Reflections on the process 19

Conclusions 20

Where next? 21

Introduction

The parishes of Woodbury and Branscombe are taking part in a pilot of the Historic Environment Action Plan (HEAP) scheme under the auspices of the East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) Partnership, funded by English Heritage and in conjunction with Wyvern Heritage and Landscape Consultancy. The scheme is concerned with identifying and exploring important heritage features in the landscape and creating a strategic, community-based action plan.

As part of this scheme, Woodbury Salterton held two ‘mapping workshops’, in May and October 2014. The format in each was similar: between 15 and 20 people attended and worked with historic maps of the village - a map of the Manor from 1796, the 1839 Tithe map, and the 1880 Ordnance Survey map. The maps were reproduced at a similar scale and compared with the current Ordnance Survey map. The survival or disappearance of certain landscape features – buildings, woods, orchards, field boundaries - was plotted on the current map. The work in Woodbury Salterton is part of the action plan for the whole of the Woodbury parish.

At both mapping workshops the participants were mainly people who had lived in the village for between five and twenty years. They had a deep commitment to the village but knew very little about its history. One of the most valuable aspects of both workshops was the end of session discussions when outcomes of the mapping were reviewed relative to the history of the landscape. In the first workshop, when members of the Woodbury Local History Society were present, there was a particularly rich discussion about historical influences on the landscape. Several participants said the new knowledge they gained was for them the most valuable part of the workshop.

With so much more mobility nowadays, and people moving around in pursuit of their careers, it is commonplace to find villagers who are interested in, and committed to, their surroundings but have little historical understanding of them. This is especially so with villages like Woodbury Salterton which are within the commuting catchment of a fast expanding town or city. This begs some questions: what aspects of the village do residents value and which parts of the village fabric do they engage with? How do these aspects of present day engagement relate to the history of the village? To address these questions, a small extension project on ‘subjective geographies’ was conducted in Woodbury Salterton in the autumn of 2014.

Subjective Geographies

The investigation on subjective geographies in Woodbury Salterton was conducted within a cultural ecological framework. The framework recognises that people engage with their surroundings both ‘formally’, within national and local legislative and organisational structures, and ‘informally’ through their day-to-day activities.

The history of a village is derived mainly from documentary records (typically associated with legislative and organisational structures) and the ‘imprint’ on the landscape left by the activities of people (e.g. their buildings, artefacts, forms of land use, working practices etc.). We construct plausible stories around these records and imprints, formalised, tidied-up accounts of what was and what might have been, i.e. local history.

Very little of the detail of the day-to-day activities of people, the messiness of their lives, survives in the historical record. ‘Subjective geographies’ is a branch of cultural ecology that deals with an aspect of the day-to-day activities of people: the places they feel some attachment to and the ‘meanings’ that these places hold for them. People’s subjective engagement with the places in which they live and work has become a vibrant area of study since the pioneering work in the 1980s of the environmental charity Common Ground who devised ‘rules for local distinctiveness’ (figure 1). In the

4 words of Common Ground: “Everywhere means something to someone. You don’t have to own it, or even see it every day, for a place and its stories to be important to you.”

Fight for authenticity and integrity. Value the common place. Our cultural landscapes are our ordinary history and everyday nature intertwined. Change things for the better, not for the sake of it. Let the character of the people and place express itself. Defend detail. Respond to the local and the vernacular. Local dialect should be spoken, heard and seen. Enhance the natural features - rivers and brooks, hills and valleys, woods and heaths. We need enchantment, clear streams as well as clean water, in our daily lives. Take the place's fingerprint. Think and talk about places and people. Get to know your ghosts. The hidden and unseen stories and legends are as important as the visible. Don't fossilize places. History is a continuing process, not just the past. Celebrate time, place and the seasons with feats and festivals. All of our surroundings are important to someone. Places carry meaning in their associations and symbolisms. Keep the fruit, vegetable and local produce markets open and alive. Names carry reasonances and secrets. Respect local names and add new ones with care. Let nature in. Encourage the plants that want to grow in your locality. Champion the ordinary and everyday. Get to know your place intimately. Search out particularity and patina. Help add new layers of interest. Reveal the geology. Use the brick and stone of the locality. Reinforce the colour, patterns, craftsmanship and work of the place. Remember the depth of people's attachment to places. Reveal the past. Decay is an important process. Don't tidy things up so much that the layers of history and reclamation by nature are obliterated. Let continuity show. Every place has its own distinctiveness dimensions. Slowdown. Wisdom comes through walking, talking and listening. Don't let the signs of the times destroy the power of the place.

Figure 1 Common Ground rules for local distinctiveness (abridged)

Engagement with places, of the type implied by the Common Ground rules, comes from peoples’ ‘lived experiences’, their day-to-day activities in their surroundings. In the longer term, the day-today activities of many people in particular places means that these places accrue some sort of collective significance; there are reasons why they are significant (see the Common Ground ‘rules’) and these reasons may be expressed as ‘collective understandings’ (figure 2).

Figure 2 Relationship between people’s attachments to places and the collective meanings they generate

Subjective geographies interact with local histories. The two are complementary not mutually exclusive. This is the foundation for the HEAP extension project described here, to map the subjective geographies of some of the residents of Woodbury Salterton.

Woodbury Salterton

Woodbury Salterton is part of the civil parish of Woodbury in East Devon. It is located between the eastern boundary of the AONB and the Exe Estuary (figure 3). Exeter is six miles to the west, the Exmouth-Budleigh Salterton section of the Jurassic Coast is four miles to the south, and Woodbury Common and the Pebblebeds heathlands are close by to the east. In the 2011 census, Woodbury Salterton had a population of 593. It is substantially rural with scattered settlements and a residential core concentrated along Village Road and the cul-de-sacs branching off it. There is a church, school, village hall and pub (The Diggers Rest) but no shop or Post Office (figure 4). There are large industrial estates to the north of the village.

Woodbury Salterton

Figure 3 Location map: Woodbury Salterton

There has been earlier work on subjective geographies in Woodbury (although it was not labelled as such at the time). Common Ground has long promoted parish maps, which can be made by anyone, in any way, with any material. Typically, parish maps pick out features or record practices that have some significance within a community. In 1994, a Parish Map was made for Woodbury by Pippa Thompson to commemorate the centenary of parish councils (figure 5). The hand drawn map is annotated with historical information and illustrated with paintings of topographical and natural historical interest.

School Church Digger’s Rest Village Hall

Children’s Play Area

Book Exchange

Figures 4 & 5 Google Earth image annotated with public facilities (above) and section of parish map (below)

What we did

The new work on subjective geographies required methods that could be easily applied to groups of people. Previous work by one of us with young people has shown that memories and word and colour associations are good ways of finding out how they engage with and value their surroundings. Getting people to take photographs during their day-to-day activities in the village is another good way into subjective geographies. We also reviewed how people engaged with two recent community projects in the village: a ‘scarecrow’ event and the ‘book exchange’ housed in the former telephone box. In bringing all this information together, we looked for different ways of presenting it visually so that new representations could sit alongside conventional representations in ways that invite the reader to give fresh thought to how people engage with their surroundings.

‘Subjective Geographies @ Woodbury Salterton’ thus involved conducting workshops and surveys with individuals and groups to collect information on physical movements and subjective engagements with the village environment.

In the workshops, participants were given A3 maps of the village and asked to do the following:

 Mark on the map a place they would take a visitor; give three word associations and one colour association with the place.  Mark on the map a place that holds a memory; give three word associations and one colour association with the memory place. (They were not asked to write the memory itself).  Mark on the map a favourite walk.

Workshops were conducted with the following groups:

 Participants in the second HEAP mapping workshop in Woodbury Salterton.  Members of the Women’s Institute  Children at the school who are resident in the village.  Children at the school who are not resident in the village.

Photographic surveys were conducted with:

 Horse riders  Dog walkers  Leisure walkers  Cyclists

We gave disposable cameras to members of these special interest groups and asked them to record typical journeys through the village. In the cases of the horse riders and dog walkers we asked for ‘animal-level’ views of the journeys.

The ‘scarecrow’ event was held in July 2014 to raise money for the church. Members of households were asked to make scarecrows and display them in their front gardens. A ‘scarecrow trail’ around the village was devised. The event was advertised widely and villagers and visitors were invited to walk round the trail and vote for their favourite scarecrow. An associated ‘village fete’ was held on the day the scarecrows were judged. For the subjective geographies project information was collected on the distribution of the scarecrows and the themes represented in their construction.

The book exchange was established in 2013 in the redundant red telephone box. It is a thriving initiative and a social site in the village. For subjective geographies, a disposable camera was placed in the book exchange and visitors were invited to take images associated with their visits.

The idea with all of the surveys was to get a collective sense of the subjective geographies of the village rather than looking at the particularities of individual responses. All information has been collected and reported anonymously or with notification of intent or appropriate permissions.

What we found

Community engagement

The scarecrow event provides a good baseline for the level of community engagement within the village. Forty-nine households made and displayed a scarecrow. The distribution across the residential part of the village was fairly uniform (figure 6) and represents a cross-section of age groups and occupational groups, new-comers and established residents. Figure 7 shows a selection of scarecrows. Some individuals chose to represent their occupation in the design of the scarecrow. Sporting and leisure interests were the dominant themes.

Figure 6 Woodbury Salterton scarecrow trail Scarecrows from outlying houses in the village were exhibited in the churchyard

Figure 7 A selection of scarecrows

The scarecrow event indicates willingness for widespread community involvement within the village, a pattern that is seen also in street parties which are held occasionally. The last street party was in 2012 to commemorate the Jubilee.

Mapping memory, visitor, word and colour associations and favourite walks

This work was conducted with four groups: Participants in the second HEAP mapping workshop; members of the Women’s Institute; children at the school who are resident in the village; children at the school who are not resident in the village.

Mapping workshop participants

Fourteen participants took part. These are people who have lived in the village for between 3 and 50 years with a mean of 18 years. Six of them would take a visitor to the village pub. The rest chose scenic places like Woodbury Common or vantage points with good views (figure 8). This group’s memory places were widely distributed through the village and were mainly scenic places or places that held some personal significance to the individuals (figure 9). These choices are reflected in the word associations: there are many more words associated with memory places than visitor places: ‘freedom’, ‘family’ and words associated with the countryside are dominant in the memory places; ‘food’ is a prevalent association in both categories (figure 10). The favourite walks of this group range widely across the village with a concentration in two circular walks: (i) Village Road-Brown’s Farm-Bridge Farm-Dog Lane; and (ii) the wider circle taking in Coombe Garth and Hogsbrook, with some walking as far as Woodbury Common (figure 11). Note that each person’s chosen walk is plotted individually on the map, so the thickness of the red lines is proportional to the number of people who walked that route.

The Diggers Rest x 6 Good views x 3 The Common x 2 Grindle Brook The wildlife area

To the Common Mapping workshop participants ‘visitor places’

Figures 8 (above) and 9 (below) Mapping workshop participants: places they would take a visitor and memory places

To the Common Mapping workshop participants ‘memory places’

Mapping workshop participants Mapping workshop participants Word associations for ‘visitor places’ Word associations for ‘memory places’

Figure 10 Mapping workshop participants: word associations for visitor (left) and memory (right)

Figure 11 Mapping workshop participants: favourite walks

Women’s Institute

Twelve members of the Women’s Institute took part. These are women who have lived in the village between 2 and 41 years with a mean of 21 years. The pattern of responses from this group is similar to the mapping workshop participants. The village pub was a popular place to take visitors, followed by scenic places and the church (figure 12). Memory places were mainly scenic sites widely distributed through the village (figure 13). There are many more words associated with memory places than visitor places: ‘walking’ and ‘food’ were prevalent in the visitor category, and the ‘church’ and the ‘street party’ in the memory category (figure 14). The favourite walks of this group are also similar to those of the mapping workshop participants but take in a wider geographical range (figure 15).

The Diggers Rest x 4 Church x 2

To the Common Women’s Institute ‘visitor places’

Figures 12 (above) and 13 (below) Women’s Institute: places they would take a visitor and memory places

To the Common Women’s Institute ‘memory places’

Women’s Institute Women’s Institute Word associations for ‘visitor places’ Word associations for ‘memory places’

Figure 14 Women’s Institute: word associations for visitor (left) and memory (right)

Figure 15 Women’s Institute: favourite walks

School children resident in the village

Fifteen school children resident in the village took part. More children would take a visitor to the village pub (5), than the church (2) or the school (1)! One of the caravan parks was mentioned by three children as a place to take a visitor. Only one child would take a visitor to a countryside location, perhaps reflecting the lack of access for children nowadays (figure 16). For many of the children their memory place was their home; for five of them it was the school or the village hall where a pre-school is held (figure 17). ‘Fun’ and words associated with happiness were dominant in the children’s associations with both visitor and memory places (figure 18). The favourite walks of this group are mainly centred on journeys to and from school and include the routes taken by parents as they drive their children to school, e.g. along the busy road that links Woodbury with the main Exeter-Sidmouth Road (figure 19). Many of these routes are not suitable for walking, rather they reflect journeys with which the children are familiar. These findings point to the restricted access to the countryside experiences by children today, most of their journeys being taken in cars.

To the Common Children resident in the village ‘visitor places’

Figures 16 & 17 School children who are resident in the village: places they would take a visitor (above) and memory places (below)

To the Common Children resident in the village ‘memory places’

School children living in the village School children living in the village Word associations for ‘visitor places’ Word associations for ‘memory places’

Figure 18 School children who are resident in the village: word associations for visitor (left) and memory (right)

Figure 19 School children who are resident in the village: favourite walks

Colour association pictograms

Colour associations have been consolidated for all groups (figure 20) as the patterns that emerge from this type of information become more significant the larger the size of the group.

Colour associations with ‘visitor places’ Colour associations with ‘memory places’

Figure 20 Colour pictograms consolidated

The pictograms show the incidence of colours associated with ‘visitor places’ (left) and ‘memory places’ (right). The range of colours is greater for places where visitors are taken than for memory places. Green is prominent in both pictograms. The blues and greys are associated mostly with school children: these are the colours of their school uniform.

Overview of mapping of all groups

Responses to the mapping exercise were collected from 20 children at the school who are not resident in the village. This information has not been used in the analysis as it adds very little that is locally meaningful. However, the willingness of the children to participate in the survey is both acknowledged and appreciated as is the support of the staff at the school.

The numbers in each of the three main groups are too small for detailed comparisons of similarities and differences but some trends are evident:

 Memories become more important with age. Adults make more word associations with memory places than visitor places; for children it is the other way round.  The core of the village is typically associated with the ‘warmth’ of red, the surrounding countryside with green. Yellow is an intermediate colour, both in terms of the spectrum and associations with place.  Colour associations seem to be heavily influenced by life experiences. Whereas adults associate red and green with, for example, the warmth of the pub and the colour of the countryside, children used blues and greys more prominently – the colours associated with their time at school.  There is a wider geographical spread of the favourite walks of the adult groups compared with the children, again probably influenced by life experiences: children’s walks are typically influenced by journeys to and from school and where they have been driven in cars.  There may be a gender effect in terms of word associations with places to take visitors: ‘walking’ dominates the associations for the Women’s Institute group; words associated with the pub dominate in the mixed gender mapping workshop group.

All of these trends are predictable, but it is interesting to have them confirmed and it opens up possibilities for further areas of detailed study.

Photographic surveys

The photographic surveys yielded interesting and useable material but are a little disappointing because of: (i) the variable reliability of the disposable cameras (see below); (ii) the difficulty experienced by some participants in getting the obscure angle required (e.g. the dog’s eye view of the walk!); and (iii) our failure to think through in advance the permissions required when people appear in photographs (see below) . Photomontages are given in figures 21-24.

Figures 21 & 22 Photomontages: horse rider (above) and dog walker (below)

Figures 23 & 24 Photomontages: leisure walker (above) and cyclist (below)

Despite the technical problems, the photomontages provide thought provoking visual perspectives on the village from the points of view of special interest groups. The routes largely conform to the well-used walks depicted in the maps above. Horse riders and cyclists have wider geographical ranges. Dogs are as much interested in the sensory landscape as the visual and the ‘dogs-eye’ view of the village provides an amusing aside. In all cases the act of photographing the walk caused the participants to reflect on what is valued and why.

We left a camera in a box in the book exchange with a note explaining what we were doing (figure 25). We had expected photographs of views out from the book exchange to the village and images of books in the exchange. Instead we got mainly portrait images of the people visiting the exchange. As we are unclear about the legal position regarding permissions required to reproduce images of people we have not included these in the report.

Figure 25 The Book Exchange

Reflections on the process

The purpose of this section is to offer a critique of the method so that it might be refined if it is to be used elsewhere.

Adult groups find the subjective mapping exercises much more challenging than children. The reasons are several: (i) expectations - they are not used to dealing with subjective information and expect to be working with ‘factual’ matters; (ii) related to the subjectivity, many people think there should be ‘correct’ answers and feel that they are being ‘tested’ to find them (some of the participants said that it reminded them of difficulties at school!); (iii) a few people have genuine difficulties in working with maps. Giving clear written instructions is important but not sufficient: participants need to be talked through the different parts of the exercise and given support at each stage. The whole process needs to be ‘managed’: giving out maps and written instructions and asking people to work through unaided inevitable yields partially completed returns.

We sourced disposable cameras from two suppliers and both were of variable quality. Often the cameras did not wind on, sometimes images were over or under exposed, and in all cases we never obtained a complete sequence. This was the most disappointing aspect of the project. The reasons for using disposable cameras were: (i) to put everybody on an even footing so that the novice had the same resources as the professional photographer; and (ii) to provide resources so that participants were not required to incur costs. On reflection this was a mistake and it would have been better to ask everybody to use their own cameras and reimburse them for printing or processing costs.

Consideration needs to be given early on to the legal position regarding images of people. Written permissions may be required if the images are to be reproduced in a publication or displayed publically.

Conclusions

Here we return to the questions around which the survey was framed:

 What aspects of the village do residents value?  Which parts of the village fabric do they engage with?  How do these aspects of present day engagement relate to the history of the village?

It is often said that Woodbury Salterton is a ribbon village, a village without a prominent centre, without a ‘heart’. The maps of ‘visitor places’ show clearly that this is not so: the pub, the church, the school and the village hall, all within a few hundred metres of each other, form a discernible core, identified by majorities in each survey group and across age groups. These are the established public facilities in that they are long standing parts of the village. More recent public facilities, such as the children’s play area and the book exchange, although well used, had minimal presence on the maps. It seems that they have not yet entered the collective consciousness of the village.

There is a wide distribution across the village of favourite walks. Most of the extant footpaths are walked by someone. The quieter lanes are also important. Village Road shows up prominently, mainly because it is route from the residential core of the village into the surrounding countryside. But Village Road is increasingly compromised by traffic and this was mentioned in passing by several of the participants.

The visitor and memory places show a wide distribution across the village. The core public facilities are again prominent but so too are specific places in the surrounding countryside. The latter are represented by single dots on the maps indicating that these places are highly specific to the individuals concerned. To reiterate what was said earlier: Everywhere means something to someone. You don’t have to own it, or even see it every day, for a place and its stories to be important to you.

In the past the countryside was a busy place, farming and the crafts that supported it were labour intensive, most of the able bodied people in the village were in some way involved in agricultural production. Now the fields are largely empty, it is leisure walkers who keep open the footpaths and sanctify the special places.

The memory places show no obvious connections with landscape features of ‘formal’ historic importance. One interpretation of this is that favoured places are ephemeral in that they no longer have discernible continuity from generation to generation. This in turn may be a reflection of the mobility of people nowadays; families tend not to stay long enough for intergenerational traditions to develop around special places and practices as once they did. Moreover, in recent generations there may have been a break with longer term historical continuity: stories associated with

20 agricultural and craft practices for example. However, there is another way of looking at the outcomes: the memory places recorded in the project could be seen as part of an ever changing layer of ‘informal’ history, parts of which will fade with time, while other parts are absorbed into local tradition. The memory places could thus be taken as a starting point for further investigations along the lines suggested below in the ‘where next’ section.

Historic landscape features like orchards, field boundaries and buildings can be traced from one map to another as concrete landscape features. For sure, there may be uncertainties and ambiguities, for example about whether a building depicted was a dwelling or a farm outbuilding, but the presence of the mark on the map represents a record of human engagement with the landscape. Subjective geographies seldom leave such records: they are ephemeral and fluid, changing from person to person, generation to generation. As was discussed in the introduction, subjective geographies are reflections of people’s moment-to-moment, day-to-day, un-formalised interactions with their surroundings. This begs questions about how one assigns ‘value’ to these elements of the environment.

Where next?

This was a pilot project, as much about exploring possibilities and approaches as producing a finished product. In a formal sense, this report marks ‘closure’ of the project. However, the project has yielded a large number of maps and charts. The visual impact of these resources is best appreciated by viewing them full scale so an exhibition is planned for one of the public spaces in the village, probably the Village Hall, but other venues are possible. There will also be a presentation at the East Devon AONB Historic Landscape Conference in April 2015.

With subjective geographies each ending is also a beginning. Here are two ways in which this project might be taken forward:

1. We did not collect information on village ‘narratives’, local stories that are handed on or modified from generation to generation, but the activities described above stimulated a lot of anecdotal discussion amongst participants. The outcomes of this project could be used as a means of uncovering the stories behind the stories. Some possibilities: (i) a consolidated map of memory places could be displayed as an interactive exhibit and villagers ask to annotate it, possibly revealing stories where subjective geographies interface with embryonic folklore or with recorded local history. We had an example of this at a mapping workshops when one participant told a cautionary tale about an ancestor, a woodsman, who laid his coat on the ground and was subsequently hit by a falling tree when he went to retrieve it; (ii) the annotations on Pippa Thompson’s parish map (figure 5) recording local history and traditions could be used a stimulus for recall. How many of the older residents remember the detail? How has it been passed on, if at all, to newcomers? What new information can be added to the original annotations? (iii) questions derived from the Common Ground rules for local distinctiveness, given in figure 1, could be used as stimuli to get people to embellish their memory places, perhaps in small group story telling sessions in, for example, the school or the Women’s Institute. 2. There is scope for alternative forms of visual representation. Earlier generations of artists took pains to reproduce the landscape as near to ‘photographic reality’ as their talents allowed. Nowadays, artists are at the forefront of representing subjective interactions. Abstractions of reality offer different perspectives on the landscape, ask different questions of it. Installations engage with the drama of events and with change. There is growing interest in what all of our senses tell us – soundscapes and smellscapes, the tactile experiences of being as well as the visual. All offer new possibilities. Figure 26 shows a mock-

up of a semi-abstract approach taken with some of the material from this project. It displays abstracted representations of colour associations alongside maps, images and word associations. The concentric circles represent colour choices made by the school children; each circle is a colour choice. The size of the circle is of no significance. Representing colour choices this way shows how the choices relate to location, with a concentration of blues and greys (the school colours) near the school and diversification of choice of colour in moving into other areas of the village. The arts offer endless possibilities for representing information and offering interpretations.

Figure 26 Experimenting with representation

Subjective Geographies @ Woodbury Salterton

2015