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| | | From Shetland to the Scilly Isles, Open Country travels the UK in search of the stories, the people and the wildlife that make our countryside such a vibrant place. Each week we visit a new area to hear how local people are growing the crops, protecting the environment, maintaining the traditions and cooking the food that makes their corner of rural Britain unique.
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Somerset Levels
The Somerset Levels are a large area of wetland running between the Quantock and Mendip hills. Controlled by a series of dykes and pumping stations the modern day levels are an agriculturally rich and diverse place but it wasn't always such an hospitable landscape. For ancient peoples the disadvantages of living in a marginal land frequently flooded was outweighed by its plentiful supply of food. Fish, eels and the migrant birdlife provided a substantial harvest but there was another crop growing abundantly in the wetlands that had also been exploited by the natives for thousands of years - willow.
The willow that grew naturally in such a wet land has been harvested and used for a myriad of things. Basket weaving, walls in iron age houses, as hurdles to shore up disintegrating riverbanks and willow was even used to construct a walkway across the flooded land, a catwalk that linked the small settlements that were scattered across the water. The past and future of the Somerset Levels are inextricably linked to willow, they are woven together in a loving embrace.
Somerset Levels and Moors
Local Heritage initiative
Reg Hector's family have been farming and planting willow for three generations. His grandfather introduced him to willow and he has been gathering in the harvest, now grown commercially, from the age of 12. Reg takes Richard to one of his willow fields he planted 30 years ago, he tells Richard of his life as a willow cutter and how he used to navigate the levels in his boat using the light in the church window as a homing beacon.
Michael Hubbard has been making baskets for 22 years. He squats on a carpet in his shed and using tools that have changed little in hundreds of years, manipulates the willow into various shapes. He adores his job and says that the willow almost asks to be made into a basket, he loves the smell and feel of the fresh willow every morning but most of all he loves taking a raw material and creating something from it, a basket ,a practical object that will be used and appreciated for decades.
Artist Kate Lynch moved to Somerset from London years ago. She had lived until recently in a part of the county outside the Levels and although only 15 miles away from her present house she feels it was a completely different world. Kate makes her living from painting landscapes but in her old house the practicalities of the countryside left her cold. She felt no inclination to engage with the working world of the land that surrounded her, it had affected her painting which she felt had become "hollow". She tells Richard that the scale of farming and size of fields held no interest for her but moving to the Levels had opened up a whole new world. She freely admits to a feeling of previously "walking around with her eyes shut" and that the experience of meeting and painting the people of the levels has changed her life. Where once she saw an interesting view set almost apart from human interference she
now sees the hand of man and the people that created the landscape are ever present in her painting. She has produced a book illustrated with her paintings of the life of the willow workers she met on the levels.
Kate Lynch info
Ellen and Michael Musgrove are the latest Musgroves in a family firm that goes back generations. Michael chose to join his father Les in the willow business 20 years ago but Ellen is a more recent convert having married into willows but she too has been bitten by the bug and now wouldn't change her world for anything. Les, sadly died recently but Michael and Ellen will carry on and hope at least one of their two young children will join the business. She tells Richard of the willow life and how it almost consumes her life and Michael explains the sheer hard work that goes into growing and preparing willows.
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