Historical links

All was fairly quiet on a late afternoon walk at Castor Hanglands - though it was wonderful to hear the plaintive calls of a pair of Red Kites, clearly prospecting for a nesting site, and the insistent barking of a buck Muntjac deer. 

A small herd of Belted Galloways were grazing Ailsworth Heath, and have done a good job of controlling the rank grasses, no doubt helped by the dry weather and cold conditions, that have suppressed growth. A few years ago this abandoned horse-drawn hay-rake was overgrown with long grass and scrub, but today it was completely clear and I was able to see the maker's mark, Blackstone & Co. of Stamford.

In the autumn, KP and I led a WalkShop at the Blackstones Sports and Social Centre - I hadn't previously made the link to one of the town's important engineering companies. Back home I researched its history and found that the hay rake must have been made in the early part of the twentieth century, before a series of mergers. I also hadn't realised that Pete's Grandad worked at its successor,  Mirrlees Blackstone who built diesel engines. This company, which was formed in 1969, finally closed in 2000.

I spent some time looking at the lichens growing on the rusty iron. The most frequent was Physica adscendens, which usually grows on tree branches. Some of this had been parasitised by an orange-coloured lichenicolous fungus appropriately named Erythricium aurantiacum, which I'd never seen before.