Wednesday 9th June 1999. From the top of Common Hill, opposite Bagpath, overlooking Ozleworth Bottom, I can see down the verdant valley, the stream in spate after all the rain, bubbling between the sheepwalked banks. A buzzard is quartering the woodland edge, and as I climbed the steep meadow to the hilltop a green woodpecker called in the valley’s crook. The incessant call of a willow warbler wafts across from the left, over towards the area where the Old Thorn grew. It is marked on the O.S. map, and an elm close by it as if they were special, but I haven’t found them yet. There are scrub oaks and crabapple trees running along the scarp, just under the hilltop, but no thorn ( and no elm after the devastation of Dutch elm disease).
The day is idyllic – high fluffy cloud, not densely congregated, riding in an azure sky. The sun is extemely hot, but there is a cooling breeze from the North: All in all, a perfect June day, after the storms of the last week raging their thunder and lightning along the Cotswolds.
It is an ancient meadow on the hill, full of clovers, hawksbeard, eggs and bacon and daisies. A tractor is cutting for hay on the opposite side of the valley, over towards Scrubbett’s farm. Sheep yell hoarsely and the inevitable plane traverses the sky, but otherwise it is a peaceful tranquil place.
Ozleworth House is large and prosperous. Its farm appears well-managed (environmentally, so I read on the notice) and looks like a model farm – well laid out vistas interspersed with tennis courts and walled gardens. A fishpond lies near the bridle path and numerous carp flow in endless patterns through the waterlily beds. A beautiful water garden has been created below the pond – well worth a long look.
I’ve now wandered all over the hill-edge, round the top of the fenced wood on the valley curve and down to the stream’s side. There are hawthorns aplenty, nothing special; some tall ashs and a mature field maple, 45 feet high. Some nice beeches in the woodside, but no elm, and no old thorn that I can discern. It must have died. Perhaps it was a fairy thorn, special since Celtic days which the folk used to adorn with bits of rag and charm messages. Who knows? It’s gone into the past – just a memory on a map.
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