It’s been all about Field Surveying this week. I spent a fair amount of time in the studio researching what and how I might record my first official visits and also getting as much information from internet searching as possible about each site. Mostly there isn’t much, which I guess shouldn’t surprise me. Most of the places aren’t even really places at all (that is, of course why I’m looking at them), they are clumps of trees, overgrown areas of wasteland, the disregarded edges that blend into the background of everyday life. But there was some stuff, mainly on Norton Common – that is a place of course, a nature reserve and a place indeed worthy of friends (Friends of Norton Common) to preserve and promote. So, I’m wondering now is it an Edgeland at all? Sitting right in the centre of Letchworth, it is definitely a different kind of site to the others I’m considering, but although it’s managed, tended to, tidied and valued as a special site of Letchworth I’m sure it cannot help but provide a hiding place for the outsiders too. Although its main pathways are beautifully mowed, open and signposted, enter into any number of the little desire pathways and you’re entering a definite kind of wilderness, isolated, dark and hidden.
So I managed three site visits this week. One more thorough site survey and two just popping by to see what’s there. The more thorough visit was to The Boffy. This place is a constant fascination to me and this visit only added further to the alluring obscurity of it. It’s about a 15 minute walk from the back of the Grange Estate, a hill separates it from the town, therefore it sits silently out of view. Even in view you can’t really see it. It is just trees by a field. However it contains all sorts of strange features. It is marked on the OS map ‘Norton Well’ and there is a Well; a pool of water and a trickle that winds its way in to the Pix Brook (that actually comes from Norton Common). It’s hard work getting to the Well though. From my childhood days I do not recall it being half as overgrown and such a fight to get close to. I fought my way through fallen branches, found myself caught and scratched by brambles and nearly lost a leg down a series of enormous rabbit holes! The Well is surrounded by an incredibly steep bank and for fear I would never get out again, I resigned myself to perching on a tree root and observing from the top. (I’m sure no one has ventured down there for many years). The rest of The Boffy however, for it is a huge place overall, is littered with all kinds of ‘evidence‘ and artefacts, some mundane and some much more puzzling.
I attempted to draw a basic map of the layout. This was a task indeed, as moving through it is incredibly disorientating. Not only am I having to wind my way through the thick undergrowth, I am also having to stay steady on very uneven terrain. It has definite areas though and each has quite distinctive characteristics: a flat, cathedral like canopy of trees, ordered in very clear rows; then the more ‘bushy’ places that open out into small clearings; further on from this is the thick stinging nettles and then the steep sided banks of the Well. I didn’t look much at the detail of the things I found and am just noting where the most active areas are. For now I want to focus on the place and how I might even start to uncover its secrets.
After about 2 hours at The Boffy, I left feeling pretty exhausted and, well rather grubby to tell you the truth. Today I find myself nursing a multitude of insect bites, stings and scratches and am seriously wondering how on earth I am going to survive all these places, that’s without even mentioning the weirdos that might be lurking there!
