May 2012 - Village Voices

Butterflies and gravestones
One thousand years ago, Hollesley was a tiny haven on a marshfringed
inlet of the sea. Its few inhabitants lived in a cluster of
small homesteads and cottages around the church, and what
we call Fox Hill and Church Farm. All Saints Church dates
from the 15th century, but those early Hollesley people knew a
far older church on the same site that was recorded by the Normans
in their Domesday Survey of 1086.
No village shop for the earliest residents! They were self-sufficient,
and what they didn’t make, grow or barter they took from nature. They
were surrounded by wild animals, birds, plants and edible fungi:
wildlife in the 11th century was a daily fact of life - a natural
bounty eagerly utilised by people at every opportunity. Sea kale
from the beaches, parasol mushrooms from the woodlands, hares
from the arable lands, duck eggs from the marshes, and much more.
Without doubt, if your next meal in hard times depends upon knowing
what is growing where; what birds or animals regularly turn up at certain
Parasol
mushroom
times of the year, or which wild plant to use to get rid of your terrible bellyache, you
become pretty competent in finding things to meet your needs.
Frog
Those people were resilient and resourceful – how
else could a working man live to the age of 40?
They lived with nature, and they needed its
supply of food, fur, skins, eggs and meat. With
wildlife on all sides around the hamlet, they had to
fight it when their crops and gardens were threatened.
Their churchyard, then as now, was a place of
worship, for spiritual contemplation, for
christenings, marriage, and for burial. It was a
haven of human peace, special and set apart from
their lives of toil.
From a medieval landscape where a small population of people used wildlife to help them
survive, we have reached a point where people shop at Hollesley Village Shopper, and are
more caring for wildlife than at any time in our history. That wild birds, flowers, insects
and animals are simultaneously at their lowest-ever ebb explains the rapid growth of the
conservation organisations. In their jargon, we are losing biodiversity at an alarming rate,
and we are all the poorer as a result. It’s the familiar pressures from modern farming
methods, herbicides, an increasing population, pollution, and the demands on every
village and town for more houses and roads. Austerity Suffolk will endure slashed funding
for conservation budgets for years to come, whilst climate change is arguably seen as the
greatest potential threat to wildlife and to us.
Page 10 May 2012
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