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Birds’ Marsh, Chippenham: An Unfinished Story
Birds’ Marsh has been dear to the hearts of generations of
people local to the Chippenham area of Wiltshire. Situated to the
north of the town, Birds’ Marsh lies between the old parishes
of Hardenhuish to the south, Langley Burrell to the east and Kington
Langley to the north. It has a woodland at its heart in which an
ordinary rural family once lived of whom I happen to be a descendent.
At first sight it may appear to be an unremarkable place. It boasts
no mighty waterfalls over which sapphire waters cascade into emerald
pools. It does not of course conceal the last viable colony of
mountain gorillas, nor is it, so far as we know, the habitat of
a rare herb that can provide the medicine to cure all human ills.
It is not the largest or even the most beautiful wood in the West
Country, being neither a pristine natural wilderness nor a carefully
tended paradise. Birds’ Marsh is mostly a quiet and unofficial
kind of place, far from being a ‘must see’ heritage
destination on package-tour itineraries of the ‘real’ England.
But for all its ordinariness Birds’ Marsh is an extraordinary
and special place, steeped in history, teeming with wildlife and
full of stories. It should be cherished for possessing a local
distinctiveness of a kind that can only evolve over centuries.
It is a damp woodland, boggy as we would expect of a place called ‘The
Marsh’, and often dark, though there are green rides through
the thickets and gaps in the canopy allow for sunlight to break
in and awaken the bright colours of the glades as it would illuminate
a stained glass window. Underfoot is a rich leaf mold, dark and
succulent as a mature christmas pudding, packed tight with good
nutrients to sustain the life above and below.
It is this rich tilth that has supported the flora and fauna of
Birds’ Marsh Wood and the surrounding pasture and hedgerows
since time immemorial, and in turn the livelihood of the woodlanders
who dwelled there. This is the unfinished story of the history
of Birds’ Marsh, its residents, its natural history and its
literary associations through Francis Kilvert and the Tanners.
However tiny the seed of a small project it sprouts and grows;
however apparently limited the subject it has the propensity to
expand. J. R. R. Tolkien wrote a short story called ‘Leaf
by Niggle’ about an obsessed artist who could never complete
his painting of a tree because there was always some further detail
to add. Tolkien loved old English woodlands, especially Puzzle
Wood in his native Oxfordshire, and I expect he would have enjoyed
Birds’ Marsh too. Like any woodland, Birds’ Marsh Wood
doesn’t really end at its fringes where its trees thin out
and the open countryside takes over. Like Niggle’s painting,
the subject is not discrete or static. The full story of Birds’ Marsh
is made up of an infinite number of chapters of forgotten history,
countless personal memories and an ever changing environment.
Ecology informs us that everything is connected. Birds’ Marsh
is shaped by the ecological interchanges with the surrounding area
and the comings and goings of local people who enter it. Now the
area around ‘The Marsh’ is under threat from a housing
consortium proposing to built up to 850 housing units over its
fields and hedgerows. Even if the trees in the wood are not directly
felled at this time, the character and diversity of the woodland
would be destroyed. This development is not necessary or inevitable
and four similar proposals have already been turned down in recent
years. Birds’ Marsh has many friends. In this book I shall
try to explain why.
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