Blog

This wonderful publication has been produced to acknowledge and celebrate Bungay’s wildlife and the life and love of Jasmine, sister and wild-life enthusiast who sadly died in 2012. Jasmine’s brothers Chris and Terry Reeve, both residents of Bungay, led the nature walk for around Bungay’s local footpaths and countryside. Keen to show us the natural environment as if through the eyes of their sister.

First stop at Bungay castle where a small wild flower garden has been planted in memory of Jasmine. In this mid-September morning, no flowers were in bloom, but the plant list showed it would be full of colour and insect life in early summer. Chris read the poem The Song of the White Jasmine Fairy by Cicely Mary Barker.

In the heat of summer days

With sunshine all ablaze,

Here, here are cool green bowers,

Starry with Jasmine flowers;

Sweet-scented, like a dream

Of Fairyland they seem.

And when the long hot day

At length has worn away,

And twilight deepens, till

The darkness comes – then, still,

The glimmering Jasmine white

Gives fragrance to the night.

Our group of 20 walked through the water meadows on a footpath along the side of the river Waveney between Bungay and Earsham. We stopped frequently on the way to examine points of interest in nature that Jasmine had enjoyed in her lifetime: willow trees grown for making cricket bats; common alder trees that like their roots in water; common fleabane in flower; playing grandmother jump-out-of-bed by pinching the base of flowering convolvulus with its brilliant white, trumpet shaped flower.

As we approached Earsham besides a field, a herd of huge beautiful cows began to walk besides us, as if accompanying us. We learned from their owner, farmer and photographer Frances Crickmore, that this herd had been imported from France when they decided to diversify their farming products to include cheese. This particular breed is known for their rich milk, and from it the Crickmore’s developed the now famous Bigot Brie cheese. The cows followed us along the footpath until we crossed over the river via a wooden bridge. Here we were joined by Frances Crickmore who introduced herself, told us about the farm and the land around us. She told us we could purchase the cheese in its signature circular wood box from a vending machine by the farm.

At the end of the walk we thanked Chris and Terry for an interesting and enjoyable afternoon. We had all learned about their sister and shared her love of this area.

Ann Follows

September 2021

To say that Cupiss Letterpress is a hidden treasure of Diss is a bit of a cliche but true nonetheless, and all the more so because it’s closing down after nine years shy of two centuries in business.

As part of our Two Rivers Book festival, we were offered free guided tours for the day. John Harding, who’s worked there since leaving school and 55 years later about to retire, was our host. The imposing mechanical printing machines contrasted with dusty Victorian decor and piles of print paraphernalia, an historic assemblage of past logs and equipment most of which with unrecognisable functions.

Inside the workshop, sited at the top of a track in the middle of Diss, John welcomed us and explained that the original business, established in 1830, wasn’t printing but for mixing and distributing a home-made medicinal horse “digestive”. The original recipe, in popular demand throughout the 20th century, was invented by the first Mr Cupiss. He needed to print labels for the dispensing bottles, and rather than find a supplier, he purchased his own printing press. As the demand for his horse digestive declined, so the print works grew and became a locally significant printing business.

This bell jar trophy, is a stone passed by a horse in the early 1900s having successfully been treated with
Mr Cupiss’s horse medicine. Next to it a complete set of the Suffolk horse society’s stud books dating back to 1885, each one hand wrapped and ready. As with the demand for the horse medicine, the stud logs have also declined as machinery replaced working horses. And today the digital revolution has replaced the need for the mechanical print business.

For me the overwhelming sense of a living history and indeed my learning on the day, was in the huge array of fonts and lettering. Tray upon tray, both beautiful and functional, the variety of fonts made from wood and lead were immaculately if chaotically stored. The wood ones hand carved, some acting as 3D ‘shadow’ had a fascinating appearance. The ‘upper case’ trays being capitals and the ‘lower case’ trays being, well, lower case. Another commonly used term originating in the printing business is ‘form’ which is the frame that holds individual letters in place ready for print.

John gave me the opportunity to run a pre-set form through the 19th century printing press, which involved inking up and rolling under the press using nothing but cogs and levers.

The first electrical press, purchased in 1950, stood next in line to the 1830s mechanical press. Behind these, in a rough back extension, were a couple of computer screens and digital printer which have replaced the entire works. Cupiss of Diss is both a working museum and modern print shop. The old printing presses are used by artists and for specialist print work. Now it is on the market for sale, it will be interesting to see whether it remains in Diss or is split up and re-located to new owners elsewhere. I left the hour-long guided tour feeling I’d just been part of something really unique and unlikely ever to be repeated; an unexpected delight of W&BA’s 2021 Two Rivers book festival.

Ann Follows

October 2021

The night before November strong winds and heavy rain blew remnants of summer away.  Cherries and maple were late turning colour but now their leaves have been whisked away, pirouetting across the garden. Oaks and elms stoically remain green-leaved but almost all our ash trees dropped their leaves in one day.   November is a month of winds and rain, or fogs and frosts, ushered in by the festival of Samhain. But we can no longer be sure of our seasons as the warming globe creates more unstable weather patterns.

November usually marks a turning in, preparing for hard times ahead, a time of harvesting, storing. Everything seems to be busy – the squirrel running down the path towards me, sugar beet clamped in its jaws; the screech of the jays as they raid the oak tree; blackbirds stripping fruits from rowan and rose; the rat invading the compost bin; the last butterfly, a Red Admiral, sipping sugar from a patch of blackberries and hedgehogs pulling leaves and grass into a safe winter house.

Other wildlife is on the move. Young foxes turned from their earths to find their own territories; tawny owl young dispersing, and the barn owl hunting along farm ditches at dusk. Once the winds turn north-easterly the winter migrants begin to arrive. Scandinavian thrushes, late this year; geese flying in to coastal marshes; starlings gathering with resident birds in nightly murmurations.

November’s full moon, the woodcock moon, brings these strange long nosed, woodland waders across the North Sea from Siberia. According to fable the goldcrests arrive too, the woodcock’s pilot. It is a time for gathering and for contemplation. But this year, it is hard not to think more globally as the COP 26 conference  starts in Glasgow. We think about the changing world and our part in it. Do arts and culture have a role. Can we do more with our creativity?

As November inches into winter, the conference brings a call for action to reduce global warming. The website for the UN Climate Change Conference UK 2021 supports the need for cultural and community action.

Culture — from arts to heritage — can help catalyse a step-change in the global ambition for climate resilience.  Rooting resilience measures in existing community action, culture, heritage and knowledge …. helps assure more effective and durable outcomes.

Several organisations are promoting the involvement of artists: see climateheritage.org and cultureatcop.com. You can raise your voice above the wind and sing with a global song – Enough is enough – see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz8ex7Mnjb4

As wind whipped the trees here into a frenzy, I thought back to the 2007 storm – our national outpouring of grief  at the loss of so many trees. Several friends had young children at the time. They remember listening to the wind as they gave a night feed, or slept blissfully through it as a child spent its first night sleeping. Those children are getting married this year. A reminder of how cycles and seasons turn. We look back and remember the noise, the fear, the sadness and the rush to clear up. 15 million trees lost in one night of destruction.

Since then, we have let trees disappear, slowly, one by one, making way for railways, roads, houses.  Perhaps as leaves fall we should celebrate the trees, draw their profiles, photograph them, weave words round them. The night before November strong winds and heavy rain blew remnants of summer away.