Dressed in wellies with a hoe nestled in the crook of his arm, Audrey’s Moss Man had started to fade. Sitting in a deckchair he was made out of moss and grass divots taken from Cricket Malharbie churchyard. He was huddled forward amongst the gravestones. His beard was made of weeds and had turned to the colour of parcel paper. His chicken wire skeleton was starting to show through at the knees.
Audrey, the church warden here for 35 years, explained how he would normally get re-dressed every year as one of the centrepieces of this Somerset village’s flower festival to raise money for the church. Yet this year, due to the pandemic, he’d been neglected. ‘We’ve had so little rain, he’s not looking his best.’
The Moss Man was sitting among long grass and various flowers. They had been allowed to take root in the churchyard, in order to return it to a wildflower meadow. Bright grasses had been allowed to grow up around the base of the locally quarried Hamstone gravestones. The flowers nodded their heads in the breeze. She pointed each one out to me in turn. ‘Cuckoo Flowers or Lady’s Smock as some call them, Red Robins and Forget-Me-Nots.’
I had come to do a walk in some of Somerset’s most untouched landscape where I could still feel echoes from its feudal past.
Cricket Malharbie lies just South of the market town of Ilminster in South Somerset. It is in a small area of wilderness which seems a world away from the queues of caravans and holidaymakers that appear every Summer just a few miles away on the A303.
Cricket Malharbie itself has a population of approximately 80 and Knowle St Giles is only a few more. The lanes wiggle their way through the green of the countryside bordered by thick hedges. In Knowle on one stretch of the road there are as many farms as there are houses.
At the entrance to Knowle I park my car next to a wonderfully full chestnut tree with its upright blossoms already showing their whiteness. In May it must be my favourite tree in England. On a triangle at the Westerly approach to the village is a rough hewn lump of Hamstone with bright yellow lichens and dying daffodils at its base. The sides have been flattened at a right angle to each other. On the left reads Cricket Malharbie with an arrow to the left. The right has Knowle St Giles carved into it with an arrow to the right. On top is simply the date 2000.
Opposite this rough signage is the flint wall of another dairy farm. 3 grey milk urns are lined up next to each other next to the jaunty red of a post box attached to the wall.
I turn off a lane towards the diminutive Knowle church (towerless and now converted into a house). A large Mercedes is parked in its driveway. A small orchard lies opposite. I wonder how many years it has been there. Hundreds, I expect. Apple orchards would have been two a penny here in medieval times. Bordering it is a straight line of poplar trees only half dressed in their early Spring attire.
Opposite the church is Cricket Court where the Pitt family lived for more than 400 years. Many of them are buried in lead-lined coffins placed on shelves in the family crypt. The original Cricket Court is mentioned in The Domesday Book.
Audrey is typical of many people that I’ve met in Somerset: friendly and chatty. She offers me a little tour of the church (like all churches, Covid restrictions have demanded its doors be locked).
The air is cool and dark after the early Summer brightness of the meadow and graveyard. She shows me the crypt for the Pitts and the small pews which have sat unused.
She tells me about the dwindling congregations. ‘There’ll be no one to come here in 10 years’, she says with certainty.
As I leave, I have the strange feeling that I have just witnessed one of those moments in time; the feeling that I have seen something which will never quite be the same again.
The Slow Walker 