Revaluing the Wasteland

T. S. Eliot gave the wasteland a bad name. But then he did begin his famous poem with the words:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Some cruelty! And he doesn't even mention the bluebells.

Yes, yes, I know he had a sort of spiritual wasteland in mind, where humankind had strayed off the path of learning Greek and revelling in high culture. His pessimistic view might have been tempered somewhat if he had strayed off his own path of intellectual endeavour and found his way into the highways and byways of the real Wilderness.

I have a soft spot for Eliot, though. Something about the cadence of his writing rather than the recondite content. And not unconnected to the fact that one of my first boyfriends caught me with a short bit of his verse involving a rose-garden - no doubt the wildest sort of place Eliot himself ever strayed into.

But I digress. What I meant to share with you was the vast range of uses that peasants once put wastelands to. This was before the days of the National Trust, when non-agricultural land was available for foraging rather than recreation. The study by J. M. Neeson called Commoners indicates just how much they were able to provide. Obviously there was grazing and the possibility to gather firewood and other materials that were used for fires — furze (gorse) and bracken (fern). Commoners also took hazel loppings to make hurdles for penning sheep, and fern was also used for animal bedding and, once burnt, its ash was used to make soap. In addition:

'Reed was plentiful and valued most as thatch for roofs and also to cover the stacks, ricks and clamps for all kinds of crops and vegetables. Rushes — bulrushes — were equally plentiful, waterproof, and woven into baskets, mats, hats, chair seats and toys. . . they were also good for bedding, as a netting in the plastering of walls, and wrapping for soft milk cheeses. They made cheap, bright rushlights too' (Neeson, 1989: 166).

The list of foraging crops, especially nuts, berries and fungi is equally long, and as varied as were the possibilities for salad crops and herbs that could be gathered. It is clear from these accounts that the commoning lifestyle offered two other characteristics crucial to a bioregional approach to provisioning: seasonality and shared experience.

The dismantling of the commons was disastrous for commoners but crucial for the growth of the industrial market system, which they were required to staff. Neeson’s account makes clear the link between the ending of subsistence and the population explosion which Malthus and other political economists later bemoaned. She also chronicles how the move from commoner to labourer undermined the resilience and self-reliance of British citizens. Tweet

Home-grown Hats

Most of us can trace our families back to the generation that left the land. In my case this was my grandmother's parents, both of whom lived in the small Devon town of Ivybridge. I'm proud to say that various bits of the family still make their living in Devon and from rural trades.

I have always been most proud of my second cousin who is a thatcher. At a recent family event I discovered that he has now become a teacher but another cousin has, inspired by his example, taken up the thatching trade. My practical limitations give me immense respect for people who actually have a craft and so I was full of interest. This was somewhat diminished when he told me that the thatch he uses on the cottages of Devonshire is actually grown in China.

Here is what William Cobbett has to say on a similar subject (in this case Leghorn bonnets) in his Cottage Economy (written in 1820-21):

'The practice of making hats and bonnets, and other things, of straw, is perhaps of a very ancient date. . . In this country the manufacture was, only a few years ago very flourishing; but it has now greatly declined, and has left in poverty and misery those whom it once well fed and clothed.


The cause of this change has been, the importation of the straw hats and bonnets from Italy, greatly superior, in durability and beauty, to those made in England. . . It seems odd that nobody should have set to work to find out how the Italians came by this fine straw. The importation of these Italisn articles was chiefly from the port of LEGHORN, and therefore the bonnets imported were called Leghorn Bonnets.

The straw manufacturers in this country seem to have made no effort to resist this invasion from Leghorn. And, which is very curious, the Leghorn straw has now begun to be imported, and to be plated in this country. So that we had hands to plat as well as the Italians. All that we wanted was the same kind of straw that the Italians had: and it is truly wonderful that these importations from Leghorn should have gone on increasing year after year, and our domestic manufacture dwindling away at a like pace, without there having been any inquiry relative to the way which the Italians got their straw! . . . There really seems to have been an opinion that England couldnot more produce this straw than it could produce sugar-cane.' Tweet