| Changing the Scenery Thursday, 18th September 2003
A Natural History
What's hit is history, what's missed is mystery I'm afraid that was literally true; we have a few of teh early annual reports from our Society, Wakefield Naturalists', and there are reports of otters being 'obtained' (shot presumably) and brought to the meetings. Our up-to-date high tec naturalist has a different approach: Leave only footprints The Roof at the Redbrick
The Leeds to Manchester line, constructed
in the mid-19th century, runs on an embankment just behind this
mill.
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I'm
clearing out old timber and chipboard in the garage - pieces I've
recycled but never got around to using - when I come across this;
a folding screen of (recycled) harboard panels, 6ft x 7ft with a
woodland scene quickly painted on it for a display our naturalists'
society mounted at the Wakefield Flower Show in the 1980s. A shop
mannequin dressed in anorak and bobble hat, carrying a bat detector
and wearing binoculars represented the modern naturalist while a
tweedy Victorian naturalist in his stuffed-bird filled study opposite
represented her counterpart of a century earlier.
The
slogan of the Victorian field naturalist:
We
load the woodland scene and the timber the back of the car, take
it to the refuse disposal point at Shaw Cross and then head to the
Kestrels
have nested at the mill, just above the café, for a number
of years, but that's a pigeon in my sketch. The older building (left)
is of local sandstone with a slate (presumably Welsh slate) roof.
That's an indication that the building (or at least the repair of
its roof) dates from a time when the developing railway network
allowed for the transport of this lighter alternative to local flagstones.
