staffordshirebred

Harvesting blackcurrants.

Some fruits have (understandably) demonstrated a dislike of 2012’s see-saw weather: Hot dry early spring, followed by weeks of cold and wet – but the blackcurrant evidently is not one of them, and we have a good crop this year.  The apples are putting on a reasonable weight of their versatile fruit.  The greengage and plums are relatively new trees in this garden.  It was, I suppose, good of them to yield enough for a few pots of jam last summer.  There are no visible fruits on them this time.  They can please themselves whether they do or die, as I have no emotional attachment to them – which is not, however, the case with my blackcurrant bushes.

Our family have always grown their own food.  Our garden at home in Aldridge, albeit fairly small and  suburban always had a superbly productive fruit and vegetable patch.  At my father’s childhood home, a rural smallholding at Footherly, near Shenstone, achieving near self sufficiency was an economic necessity, but also a source of great delight and satisfaction.  Tall rows of raspberries and fat bushes of blackcurrants grew near the well in the section of garden not far from the back door.  Grandad would gather some ripe fruit in a handle-less tea-cup, dredge it with sugar, and place it for a few minutes in the “slow” oven of his diminutive black cast iron range before passing it into my eager little hands during many a Sunday morning visit in the 1960s.  The fragrance and taste of the first fruit from my garden, warmed by summer sun, takes me straight back to those moments.

Twenty years ago I had a couple of “Ben Something” variety of blackcurrants in what was then my newly acquired kitchen garden.   One day my dad and my husband came home with some knobbly old roots of blackcurrant bushes to add to the row.  They had scrambled into the overgrown garden adjacent to the now sadly derelict Keepers Cottage, Footherly and wrested from its tangled depths some real treasures for me in the form of some of the plants my grandad had cultivated there for decades, and  I set them in the row with the others.

So, it’s Kings Bromley Village Show tomorrow, and I have picked, hulled and brewed the blackberry crop into jars of jam to grace the WI stall. It’s traditional you know!

I saved a few of the truly giant fruit from the vintage bushes just in case I found time to enter them into the show.  The deadline has passed now, but here is their image preserved for your delectation, just to prove how magnificent they were.  July will, I hope, come around again next year.

“Prize” currants which won’t get to show their mettle.

A lot of the most modern cultivars are “Ben” this that and the other, as are other soft fruit varieties. but I wonder whether I have got a “Black Naples” here.

A new variety in Victorian times, I understand, prized for the glorious size of its currants and illustrated and mentioned in my 1920s two-volume edition of “The Fruit Growers Guide”…but not in subsequent manuals of wartime and post war epochs. I consult  Raymond Bush,  a straight talking horticulturalist with one of those gardeners’ names ( I give you Bob Flowerdew). He does not mention Black Naples in his “Fruit Growing Outdoors” of 1952, but according to him, I am lucky to get such a good crop from such an old plant.  He admonishes:

 “Far too many of the country’s currant bushes are useless cumberers of the earth.  Some consist of a few scrawny shoots springing from a gnarled stem.  Others show the change of leaf-shape and veining known as “nettle-head”, ..while it is is uncommon to find an elderly bush in many private gardens which is not infested with big-bud mite and so deprived of most of its fruitful possibilities.”

Oh, OK, Raymond! Blackcurrants are also disparaged in the earlier book as being of limited use as a dessert fruit, but following the discovery of the importance of vitamins in diet, they were found to be the richest natural source of vitamin C, and became greatly valued during wartime, especially when citrus fruit was unavailable.  A generation became so familiar with the delicious tang of blackcurrant sufficiently sweetened to be palatable and its nutritional content preserved, that “Ribena” is with us still.  Blackcurrant jam was always my favourite.  And doesn’t everyone compete for that elusive black fruit pastille?

“The Fruit Growers’ Guide” by Horace J Wright, FRHS.

Was Black Naples a notorious martyr to “Big Bud” disease, I wonder?  Was there some attribute which made it unsuitable for commercial use? Why “Black Naples” at all, as the currant is a natively a Northern European plant, and hence heedless of our capricious summer weather? The “Victorian Kitchen Garden” book of the 1980s TV series which introduced my most favourite ever reality TV star, Harry Dodson, has it that “Black Naples” is just another (more romantic) name for “Baldwin”.

A little more about old varieties of blackcurrants from the blackcurrant foundation, which may answer my questions: 

“The mainstay of the blackcurrant industry for many years was the variety `Baldwin’. Of unknown origin, `Baldwin’ is thought to be over 150 years old, and whilst generally outclassed now in terms of agronomic performance, it is still grown on a reduced scale today. `Baldwin’ has a mild flavour, and reasonable levels of vitamin C, but it is very susceptible to many foliar diseases, including mildew, and the flowers are extremely sensitive to damage by spring frosts. There are several other very old varieties that can still be found in small quantities today, including `Lee’s Prolific’ (from 1860), `Boskoop Giant’ (1880) and `Wellington XXX’ (1913).”

The monks of the Wat Mahathat, Kings Bromley, and their guests, are entertained by traditional Thai dancing.

It is described as enjoying the perfect location for its purpose: a serene and beautiful, if unremarkable, rural environment, yet with excellent transport links to rest of the country and beyond.  The small Staffordshire settlement of Kings Bromley is the unlikely home of an important Thai Buddhist Temple.

Dr Phramaha Laowa Panyarsiri, newly bestowed with the title of Phrapanyabuddhiwithet.

The temple now has a new name, the Wat Mahathat, in honour of the temple in Bangkok where the Abbot, Dr Phramaha Laaowa Panyarsiri, first studied.  His is a remarkable story.  Born into an extremely poor family on the North-East of Thailand, he arrived as a missionary in the UK knowing little English, but gained an M.A.  from the S.A.O.S., London University, a doctorate in Theology from Birmingham University,and has been the friendly, wise, and much loved leader of this religious community for some years.

Yesterday, the monks  hosted a colourful ceremony and festival to commemorate this, and four other causes for celebration: the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth; the 80th birthday of Queen Sirikit of Thailand; the 2600th anniversary of the enlightenment of the Buddha; and the bestowal of a title in the personal gift of the Thai King to the Abbot.  Thrilling traditional dancing, and speeches from dignitaries of various sorts, entertained some gloriously attired members of the Thai community who had come from far and wide for the event, along with some local guests.  A fabulous banquet of delicious Thai food, presented exquisitely, ensured that no-one went hungry. When the invitation was read out at the Kings Bromley WI committee meeting, my big paw went up straight away to volunteer to attend!

My treasured Buddha was a present in my teens.

Back at school in Aldridge in the 1970s, a shambling, russet bearded master, (nickname of Synagogue Sam) taught a syllabus that included a cursory glance at world faiths in what was then called “Religious Studies”.  That was my first intriguing introduction to the “Four Noble Truths” the “Eightfold Path” and the concept of Karma.

Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire, Mr. Humphrey David Sneyd Scott-Moncrieff, saying a few very well chosen words.

Yesterday, the Buddhists who addressed us spoke of human fellowship, respect for others and their beliefs, and praised the example of faith and devotion to duty set by both the venerable queens whose life-size portraits crowned the stage. Gifts were exchanged, and a dozen flower arrangements ceremonially set down, to the tunes of “Land of Hope and Glory”, (twice), the melodious Thai National Anthem, and “God Save the Queen” – including that awkward second verse.  A representative of the Hindu religion found it easy to pay respect to the common ground between his faith and theirs, and the words of the Anglican priest, the Welsh Methodist, and even the Irish Catholic woman spoke in a similar vein.  The Imams very emphatic formal statement of his Moslem faith, a precursor to a few short words about the need for the world to be responsible and “disciplined” at this time more than any other, was discomfitingly at odds with the ethos of the day. I saw a Rabbi earlier in the proceedings.  He wasn’t even present at speech time. I came away with my warm feelings for both Buddhism and anglophone Christianity intact..

Eastfields House, was built as a Victorian gentleman’s residence. Along with the old vicarage, and Kings Bromley Hall, (demolished between the wars), it was one of the largest domestic buildings in the village, and, no doubt, enjoyed as a comfortable and elegant home, or an essential source of employment, by its former occupants.  Emphasised by constant repetition was the gratitude felt by the Thai people who spoke, of the hospitality shown to them by the United Kingdom as a country and Kings Bromley in particular.  Eastfields House is appreciated, loved, and well used to the benefit of all. Classes in English are held to learn about the Buddhist faith and the art of meditation.

Eastfields House. Image from the Temple’s website at http://www.watthaiuk.com

Orgreave Hall, North Elevation. May 2012
I adore the swan-neck pediment – like eyebrows wearing a sardonic expression!

Wet trouser bottoms through the knee high winter wheat at 7.00 a.m., perusing Orgreave on a lovely May morning.

I give the present occupant of Orgreave Hall a gold star for replanting some missing lime saplings at the end of the magnificent avenues of couple-of-hundred-year-old trees leading to the interesting period house they own. Re-enclosing the Orangery on the South Front was also a praiseworthy effort.  However, if bolder, I would have ventured a “See me” in the margin before the historic earth work which was the Ha-Ha bordering the gardens on its North elevation had been completely obliterated by an ugly bank of earth and weeds.

As it is, there’s another black mark in my little book against the names of the chance custodians of an important element in my immediate environment.

Ed-Ward Ward is oblivious to the travesty of the back-filled Ha-Ha.
Yew planted initially, but Leyland Cypress in the foreground.

Why fill in the Ha-Ha I would like to ask?  To what end?  For privacy, a hedge has already been planted – a tautology of boundaries, but still…..Topping off the garden perimeter with English Yew is aesthetically permissible (Although, as one suspects, ponies should later be desired, it is unwise) – but to continue the evergreen hedge with a line of Cupressus Leylandii is a sin in my moral universe.

Deep breath,  and remind myself of the fate of nearby Kings Bromley Manor, and a score of other minor stately homes of Staffordshire, which were demolished all too recently due to lack of interest at best, and the cumulative effects of the Politics of Envy at worst. At least Orgreave Hall, with its jolly, perfectly symmetrical, Queen Anne facades without,  and its much older history now well concealed within, still exists for us to enjoy. Older residents of the hamlet can remember the superfluous-to-requirements two wings of the building coming down in the 1950s.  This was after Colonel Harrison’s family, inhabiting the Hall with a veritable “Downton Abbey” cast of retainers according to the 1911 census, had migrated to their other local homestead just over the river at Wychnor (retaining our cottage as a home for their gamekeeper).  It could so easily have been the whole lot, lying in a dusty heap behind the fancy iron gates.

Orgreave Hall, South Elevation, December 2010