Category: Farmland

Broad Cut

There are plans to build 4 million homes on the green belt according to today’s Telegraph.

‘Sandstone causeway north west of Junction 39. Hawthorns and ash tree 8th March 1983.’

There’s a triangle of countryside at Broad Cut Farm, Calder Grove, near Wakefield, that has survived between to the river and the M1 where there’s a now plan to build a hundred of those homes plus 10 manufacturing units..

Google Maps 2024

The causey stone public footpath in my 1983 drawing was originally a colliery tram road, where horse-drawn trucks were taken to Hollin Hall Coal Staith just downstream from Broad Cut Lower Lock. There’s a row of six ‘Old Limekilns’ next to them.


1854 six-inch Ordnance Survey map, made available by the National Library of Scotland

The small building at ‘Th’ Owlet Lathe’ in the top right corner of the map was a dovecote.

I perched on the southbound side of motorway embankment in 1983 to draw it:

Room for 260 pairs of pigeons

A ruinous dovecote stans close to the motorway embankment at Owlet Laithes, just north of junction 39. It is built of handmade bricks on a ssandstone base which acted as a damp-course. The roof is of large Yorkshire stone (andstone) flags held on to a rough-hewn timber framework by wooden pegs.”

Unfortunately this old building disappeared within a few years of me drawing it.

Link

Broadcut Against Development BAD Facebook Group

Hill Country

landscape

Another colourised dip into the envelope of my negatives from 1964 and this one is a mystery. As I develop the other photographs I’ll get a better clue to the locations that I visited during that year. I still have a Letts’ Schoolboy’s Diary from that year which should give me some clues.

Rainshadow

Rainshadow
OS 10 inch rainfall map, 1881-1915, Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland, maps.nls.uk

You wouldn’t think it this morning but we live in a rainshadow area. This OS Rainfall Map from 1915 records over 60 inches average rainfall on the crest of the Pennines above Holmfirth and less than half that amount, around 24 inches down in Wakefield just 18 miles away.

So that’s about 5 feet of rain per year on the moors, 2 feet in Wakefield and getting on for 3 feet in between around Emley, where we’re heading this morning.

Thorncliffe

A rainy day proved a good opportunity to catch up with my Wild Yorkshire nature diary for The Dalesman but a trip to the Thorncliffe Farm Shop at Emley, gave us the excuse to see the outside world.

I drew these sycamores, almost devoid of leaves now, from the cafe.

Thorncliffe

I put the Chicken Superheroes artwork this morning but there were some familiar looking characters in the farm shop cafe . . .

chicken draft excluder
It’s those Chickens again . . .
(It’s a draft excluder, would go well with any chicken-themed interior design scheme)

Saltholme Pools

Salttholme Pools
Cattle grazing at Saltholme Pools drawn from the comfort of the two-story hide.

On Wednesday morning the farmer was moving the cattle that graze the marshes at RSPB Saltholme from Paddy’s Pool over to the Saltholme Pools.

The bull at Saltholme

Scottish Blackface

sheep in the Hope Valley

Beginner’s class for Border Collies, Low Hill, Hope Valley, Peak District. Two farmers are releasing the sheep in groups of four.

“How do you make sure that each group of sheep are consistent?”

“You don’t – that’s the point of it.”

“These four look well behaved?”

“Just wait until they get out there! They’ve come down from across the border: Scottish Blackface.”

High Summer

Ebor Way

It’s a perfect midsummer’s day for our walk from Wetherby alongside the River Wharfe, past Flint Mill Grange to Thorp Arch but we appreciate the shade of the Sustrans route along the old railway on the return leg.

wayside birds

Each bird has its favoured habitat. The song post for the yellowhammer in open farmland is on a phone line in contrast the blackcap makes a call that sounds like pebbles clacking together from the foliage of a tree in a deep, shady railway cutting. The warbler (willow?) prospects elegantly in the shrubs of a burgeoning hedgerow while the red kite swoops through parkland as we reach Thorp Arch.

Horse Box

horse box

Even George Clarke would struggle to restore this battered old horse box as an Amazing Space.

I drew it with a dip pen with a Clan Glengarry Pen nib, which has a rounded end, so you can draw it across the paper in any direction. It’s De Atramentis Archive Ink, which dries a lot quicker than regular Indian. I used a Chinese brush for the solid areas, which I dragged across the cartridge paper to give a suitably grungy tone.

The Farmer and his Pig

farmer and pig

These two could have auditioned for the latest series of All Creatures Great and Small but they’re appearing in one of the folksy fables in Yes it is. I like the pig – just need him to tilt his head on one side as he listens to the tale – but for the farmer I need his expression to be flummoxed rather than irate.

ball and kite

Although Yes it is has a retro children’s story setting, it deals with themes that are all too contemporary, like the loneliness and isolation – in this case the loneliness of this green ball. The fact that the author has specified the colour makes me tempted to go for a spot colour, perhaps backed up with blocks of neutral grey, to hint at the style of children’s book illustration in the 1950s and early 60s; I’m thinking of Dr Suess and Gene Zion’s Harry the Dirty Dog, illustrated by Margaret Bloy Graham.

ball and window

Margaret Bloy Graham uses a textured line which reminds me of conte crayon with a soft watercolour or gouache wash. With this in mind, I tried bamboo pen, to try and deliberately simplify the line (left) and dip pen (above) but inevitably, as I use it every day, I’m more relaxed drawing with a fountain pen, as in the farmer and his pig drawing, which was drawn in De Atramentis Document Ink with my Lamy Vista with an EF nib. That gives me more of the energy that I’m after, but without getting the particular vintage graphic look that I had in mind.