Birthday day out - visiting Hellens Manor, Much Marcle - part 1 (with all the photos!)

The approach to Hellens Manor, with beautiful Pear trees, some swathed in huge bunches of Mistletoe, which is common in the county.

More pear trees in what had once, I assume, been an orchard - perhaps a Perry Pear orchard for Perry making - Perry is the equivalent of cider, only made with pears rather than apples. A really good perry (and I have tasted one at Ludlow Food Festival) is like champagne. Do not think that the fizzy bubblegum water currently masquerading as the cheaper varieties of "Pear Cider" (yeesh!) in supermarkets is even remotely related to Perry - or even Pears!

There were some lovely mounds of Forget-me-Knots growing in cracks in the paving stones.

A grass walkway with Aubretia highlights, extends across the middle of the formal gardens.

Out in the wooded margin to the main garden, we found this funny little willow elephant. Nearby were two small topiary elephants, just growing into their shape.

This is a lovely view of the house which shows its dimensions and its official approach. The grand doorway had once been, I believe, an entrance to the courtyard, and once farmcarts would have delivered fodder and supplies to what is now the inner courtyard.


Above and below, now the dovecote, this building, with its extremely low doorway, was once used as a gaol where prisoners, having been found guilty at the Courtroom within the house, spent their last night before facing death by hanging to the East front of the house. Many a Welshman met his end thus - just to be found on the Manorial lands if you were from the wrong side of the Border, meant certain death. Hellens is situated on the Welsh Marches and the border has fluctuated either side of it in past centuries. According to the booklet we bought at the house, in 1282 Ely Walwyn (one of the family) was involved in the capture and killing of Llewelyn, the last Prince of Wales.



We began our guided tour in the inner courtyard. Very little of the original Norman building remains above ground. You can just see a couple of courses of sandstone at the bottom of the tower and adjacent walls. This I think is all that is left of the original house.

The land around the village of what is called Much Marcle today was, at the time when Earl Harold Godwinson was Lord of it (1057 onwards) was known as Merkelan. You may be more familiar with Hardolf Godwinson than you think, as he was Britain's King Harold, who died at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. William the Conqueror then generously gave Merkelan to his standard bearer, Walter de Lacey. In due course, the de Balun family (from France) were Lords of the Manor from 1096 and those courses of sandstone date from that period.

Hellens was name from Walter de Helyon, whose wooden effigy (below) lies in Much Marcle church, just a few hundred yards from the house.






The inner courtyard showing a blocked up window and behind the chimney is a blocked up doorway - where the farm traffic once entered the yard.


Up in the attics, this room is apparently occupied if the geraniums in the window are anything to go by.

This is where visitors pay for their tour and I thought was a lovely building in itself. It had a wonderful atmosphere inside and an intriguing little staircase of just a few steps leading to a tiny door. I SO wanted to open it! The room has several paintings and some wonderful driving bridles which looked as if they had been associated with the horses that may have pulled the grand carriage in the photograph 3 down.


The interior of the cider barn, with implements still used each autumn, I am glad to say. The barn was fragrant with paper-wrapped apples in wooden boxes.

Cider making information below. Double click and all the photos should enlarge.

Part II with more of the history of the house and family, and a discussion about its ghosts . . . will appear shortly.

Birthday day out - a little taster

Just a little taster of my lovely day out to celebrate my birthday last week. We went into England, as usual, and visited a fantastic ancient house called Hellens at Much Marcle in Herefordshire. We met up with my dear friend Jude and explored the house together.

I shall be back later on to write this up properly, but we have the car loaded for another boot sale this morning and are already desperately late to leave (neither of us feeling tickety-boo this morning).

R.I.P. Lucky

In memory of Lucky, who died last night, aged about 19 or so. She came into our lives about 1996 or 7, though we had seen her about the area for a couple of years before that, living rough. She even brought us a kitten which she left in our shed, but it was probably found by a scavenger as it disappeared after a few days of us putting food down for it. We would see her in the woods below the house, a little long haired black cat with half a tail, surviving by catching mice, voles, rabbits and even squirrels (she was fast!)

Then she turned up one winter (December is the usual month for desperate cats to seek out habitation and help) in the top of the yard, by the gooseberry bushes, half-starved. I put food out for her and she was very grateful. I can remember telling her that there was a price attached, she had to let me stroke her. I can remember she was not at all impressed! Then after a couple of weeks she suddenly pushed her little head up into my hand and began to purr. I knew she was "my" cat then. Within a month she was tame and a house cat, and in the spring presented us with three kittens. We rehomed one, and kept two (Lucy and Fluff) who are now 14 or 15. We have all cats neutered, so there were no more kittens born here after that (Banshee is another story).

Lucky was always a feisty little thing and not averse to swiping your leg if you weren't quick enough with the grub! Until recent years she always kept up the hunting too. She always had a taste for wild food. Even last week, when Jarvis brought home a dead baby rabbit, she found the body (I'd put it outside) and began to eat it and when I told her that her teeth would give way, and tried to take it off her, she growled like anything and managed to get her head high enough (she was always short in the leg department) to drag it off to a flower bed, where she had a little feast until deciding that perhaps even baby rabbit was a bit difficult for geriatric cats.

This week she stopped eating. She had been having lots of little meal for the last year or so. She got progressively more frail and then refused her heart pills - the same pills she always queued up for because they were put in butter, and she loved butter. She had some pleasant afternoons asleep in the sunshine in the garden and asked to sleep on the sofa in the living room at night. We knew she was failing, yesterday, but as it was my birthday outing, and T was going home today, we left D in charge and decided that we would take her to the vet today to have her pts though I hoped she would just go to sleep in the sunshine and never wake up. When we got back last night she was nowhere to be seen, so I followed my gut feeling and went straight to her, and found her cwtched up in a corner of one of Next Door's empty cow pens. She was as light as a feather, and her breathing laboured. She spent her last evening next to me on the sofa, being stroked occasionally so, so gently, and we kissed her good night one last time and told her how much we loved her. I prayed that she would die in the night, and she did. She lived life by her own terms, always.

Now she is buried beside Tippy and Gypsy. We have lost 3 cats in 4 months, and that has been hard.

Night-night, little black cat without a miaow . . . We'll never forget you.

The other side of the river

As this is my birthday week, I am lucky to have our eldest daughter staying until Friday, although our middle daughter was only able to make a flying visit because of work commitments. This was the start of the walk that T and I took yesterday. It made a refreshing change not to be walking on the lane, and to see the river from a totally different angle. The first stretch means clambering over the rocks. This will often be totally under water after heavy rains.


This is what we have always called the Pebble Beach (because it is one). When my three were younger we would come here and skim the flat stones of which it is composed. Over the winter months, with higher water levels and fierce torrents, fresh stones are deposited, after millennia of being worn down by the waters.

Above and below: a venerable old oak, stag-headed now, has become home to ferns and fungi alike, and supports any number of insects, beetles, and birds.


The most civilized bit of path. Elsewhere it is a real scramble, and you have to negotiate Fishermens' wooden bridges across deep clefts in the bedrock, or fallen trees spanning ditto, ducking under electric fences which go right to the river's edge, and hugging mossy trees to get through a gap.

Above and below: the rapids by the Mill. It makes a change to have a different perspective of them.

We had a lot of rain on Monday and it has washed mud and slurry from fields into the river, hence the spume.
It's a long time since I opened one of my Fungi books, but I think this is a variety of Birch Boletus growing on a fallen tree.

Big clumps of what I think are Hemlock Water Dropwort grow happily where a small streamlet makes its way to the river.

This greened bedrock is the normal river bank.

The first leaves are just coming out here. It is cooler in the river valley, so they are delayed a little, and the nights are still pretty chilly.


In places there are huge boulders in the bedrock which still jut out above the water and are places beloved of the water birds, especially the Dippers, who will bounce up and down on them.




The view downstream. We turned around here as it was starting to get boggy underfoot on the stream bank, as the alder carr woodland came right to the river's edge. Years ago I went further on and found a place amongst the Bluebells where the Otters had been playing. Scampering round on a loop and then sliding down a muddy bit into the river. one of the few areas along the bank they could do that as it's mostly bedrock.

Bluebells and birthdays

I couldn't resist that new header. The first bluebells are out here, and they are one of my favourite wild flowers, especially en masse. As it's my birthday today (a scary big bad round number involving a 6 and an 0. . .) I am about to indulge myself with doing some baking - I just fancy a cake - probably carrot, as I have a lot of those to hand. I have had some lovely cards and presents - and I found two lovely old cottage prints (Sylvester Stannard, a Bedfordshire artist 1870 - 1951) at the car boot sale yesterday and they came home with us. I will pop up some photos later.



The only thing missing is . . . chocolate. I can just taste it and we only have my husband's 81% stuff in the house. YUK! I fancy some Munchies so will indulge when we go out later to collect our offspring from various points in the Carmarthenshire landscape.

A lovely day for a walk

Hooray - the first Bluebells!



After yesterday's gales and bitter temperatures (gosh, that wind-chill factor), today improved as the hours went by and warmed up considerably and so after lunch I set out to walk to a neighbour's, trusty camera in hand. It was uphill after going down ours, but I surprised myself and managed it without puffing too much and only stopping once. On the way home there was a much steeper hill to be negotiated, but again I managed it only stopping once. WHAT a difference after last year, when I could barely make it up the stairs without stopping for lack of puff.

One of the many banks of Ramsons (Wild Garlic) along the lanes hereabouts. I can never resist crushing a leaf as I pass, and the garlic smell takes me back to a walk in the Purbecks (Dorset) over 30 years ago when a friend and I sat in a patch of Ramsons and couldn't work out why everywhere stank of garlic!!!

A bank of beautiful Violets. Can you imagine how the countryside must have looked in Shakespeare's time, knowing how much has been lost since? Think of the cornfields, and the hedgerows. Makes me sigh and wish to travel back in time.

My neighbour's geese on and around the pond. If I had been quicker, I might have photographed the Heron which took off as we rounded the corner of the barn.

Ned has heard someone down by the river.

This is the Maternity Ward . . . The ladies in waiting are mostly Lleyn sheep, some of them Lleyn x Suffolks.

What appears to be a fluffy toy is the latest arrival . . .

An experienced mum with her twins.

Most of the babies were only a day or so old.

A corner of the nursery with recently-lambed ewes.

One of the level bits of lane - it's not all hills! Just feels like it sometimes : )

The view across the valley.

This field was higher than my eye level so I had to stand on tippy-toe to get this sheepy picture.

The lane behind me, walking homewards . . .

This green and pleasant land . . .

Lord Percy Percy: I've done it, my Lord! I've discovered how to turn things into gold! Pure gold!
Blackadder: You have? Show me!
Lord Percy Percy: [takes lid off melting pot, and Baldrick, Percy and Blackadder are bathed in a green glow] Behold!
Blackadder: Percy... it's green.
Lord Percy Percy: Yes, my Lord!
Blackadder: Now, look, Percy, I don't mean to be pedantic or anything, but the color of gold... is gold. That's why it's called gold. What YOU have discovered, if it has a name, is some... Green.
Lord Percy Percy: [removes lump of Green from pot] Oh, Edmund... can it be true? That I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest Green?
Lord Percy Percy: Yes indeed, Percy, except that it's not really a nugget but more of a splat.
Blackadder: Yes, my Lord. A splat today, but tomorrow, who knows, or dares to dream...


Many of you will remember that sketch from Blackadder (which we've always enjoyed in this household.) Anyway, I have been reminded of it this week driving to and from town as the Green Fairy has waved her magical green wand along the sides of the A40 and miraculously bushes and trees have been brushed with green, from Hawthorn (always the earliest) and Hazel, to Elder and Honeysuckle and the tiniest tips of the Blackthorn amongst the starry white flowers. Half way up the hill on the far side of the valley is a statuesque and graceful Chestnut tree, already decked with leaves and poking out small candles of flowers, and the Sycamores are rushing to compete.

The hedgerow banks are a riot of early colour from Celendines, Cuckoo Pint, Windflowers, Ladies Smock, wild Daffodils, Primroses, Violets, Dogs Mercury, and with the big broad leaves of Ramsons (Wild Garlic) bursting through and covering swathes of ground yards round.

The last few winters have been difficult ones for us here, and it is with increasing joy that I welcome the following Spring.


I have cheated a wee bit with the photos - the middle one was taken 3 days ago. The river ones a couple of weeks more into April last year. You get the idea though. A lump of Green!