Here is an extract from the lyrical “Walking in the Shadow of Childhood” (Part I) by Sean Hogan. You can read the rest of his article in volume 9.1 (2000).
In this piece he writes about the ‘View’, which is beautifully captured in this wonderful photograph taken by Nick Wittering.
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The View at Dawn
As I write this piece it is 1st May 2000 — this will be my 30th summer here and it is those pictures of summer which are the most vivid. From my workroom window I look out over ‘the View’. For those unfamiliar with Thriplow’s geography, `the View’ is the meadow to the east end of Middle Street adjoining Barenton’s Manor. As a child I remember it being owned by Geoffrey Vinter, a man who seemed ancient to my young eyes, and is now owned by the Braithwaite family. It was here roughly 23 years ago that I watched, engrossed on a cold November afternoon, Mr Vinter’s grandson, Christopher Melesi, plant two svelte ash saplings which are now stout young trees, marking for me in a very profound way, the passage of time.
Here too I was laid on my back in the soporific heat of my fourth East Anglian summer, to smell the musky rye and cocksfoot grass which grows here, and through my juvenile eyes I traced a fleeting swallow through a cerulean sky. I still feel a sense of diminutive stature when standing at the top end of the ‘View’ looking towards Chishill and the Barkway Hills beneath such an immensity of sky. But that is not why I have drawn your attention to the ‘View’, it is the six mature trees which grow within, especially one of them, an ancient, monumental, fan-shaped sycamore, whose weathered bark reads like Braille and is steeped in our childhoods. This tree has lingered in my conscience for 30 years; every day I have looked over to it. As a scuff-kneed child, roaming in a nomadic posse which fluctuated seasonally, our chiefs being Christopher Speak, (the editor’s son), Angus Crawford, (now a presenter on Radio 4), and Jason McGinty with his brother Tom and the Smith lads, this tree became the focal point of our aimless wanderings. We would crowd into its crown of branches, perch for a while and come home covered in green lichen, much to the annoyance of our parents. Many a dusk was spent listening to Cambridgeshire’s breath whisper and ripple its canopy and sway its branches to the ever present accompaniment of the blackbird. If we felt daring enough we would all straddle along one of its branches, like sailors, our legs dangling like wet washing, all much to the irritation of Geoffrey Vinter who often chastened us for climbing his trees! This was of course, like water off a duck’s back to us!
This is a tree of fermenting childhood dreams; in the winter those branches form an intricate filigree, for only the moon to climb, and in the brilliance of summer, beneath its dappled shade it is still a tree of therapeutic nuances, but in adulthood, I find there’s something eerily symbolic in the fact that, that very same branch has withered and died, as if adult cynicism has broken the spell.
The ‘View’ with its sheep trails and petrified ash, its trees immersed in an autumn mist, conjured up notions of ghost stories and tales of witches and demons. In our prepubescent minds folklore was made on the spot and lasted a night, but nothing lasts forever and naivety drifted in those last years of childhood as secondary school beckoned. Increasingly we would shamble off to the chalk pits, now entitled ‘Nature Reserve’, to be rowdy and to secretly smoke and drink what was then smuggled exotic brews. Then there came a short period when the Girl Guides camped in the ‘View’ this was open season to us and our ever expanding tribe would go round letting tents down, providing us with instantaneous puerile laughs, until the day one of our number was caught.