Gorse fairies
Cicely Mary Barker (1895-1973), "Gorse Fairies".
"When gorse is out of blossom,"
(Its prickles bare of gold)
"Then kissing's out of fashion,"
Said country-folk of old . . .
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The reference to "kissing's out of fashion" is of course a joke, since one of the most extraordinary things about a great area of gorse (such as would once have been seen everywhere on Wandsworth Common) is that there will always be bright yellow flowers in view, whatever the season (including winter). In short, gorse is never "out of blossom", so lovers can relax.
I'd love to say CMB was a local artist, but all I can claim is that, since she was born and lived most of her life in Croydon, she must have crossed Wandsworth Common on the train whenever she came up to Town.
[For further info. see e.g. Wikipedia: Cicely Mary Barker.
An enjoyable, well-illustrated online intro. to her work is The Collector: Cicely Mary Barker: An Enchanting World of Flower Fairies and Magic.]
Furze etymology
From Middle English firse, furs, from Old English fyrs ("furze, gorse, bramble"), from Old English fyres ("furze"), related to Old English fyr ("fire"); otherwise of unknown origin.
[Wiktionary: Furze.]
Furze is doubly linked with fire - both a source and a physical representation. Elizabeth Barratt Browning in Lessons from the Gorse https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/lessons-gorse of the traditional rights "commoners" had was the right of "turbary" and "estovers" . . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbary Wimbledon Common in the eighteenth century witnessed one of the most beautiful episodes in the life of a great man, when Linnaeus, a Scandinavian by birth, and the greatest botanist of any age, saw here for the first time the wild gorse in full bloom, saw, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning eloquently expresses it in ' Aurora Leigh ' ' Every common bush afire with God.' and in an ectacsy of delight knelt and thanked the Almighty for the good and glorious sight. It was a botanical effect of color which the flora of his native land did not vouchsafe him. "Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God,
AElizabeth Barrett Browning must be writing about gorse in her poem Aurora Leigh, "Earth's crammed with heaven,/ And every common bush afire with God".
[ADD BIT ABOUT Linnaeus.]
Thomas Hardy and gorse
He'd already written Return of the Native, but did Hardy come here because of the gorse? NB they stayed the night before they moved to the corner of Brodrick and what is now called Trinity Road on Bolingbroke Grove, which at that time (before the area was purged of its furze and flattened for sports fields)
https://www.historyofwandsworthcommon.org/chronicles/03/03-2022.html#boundsThe suburban by-streets already looked rideable; but they were false prophets: the main roads were very different. For example, the surface between the west end of Nightingale Lane and the top of Burntwood Lane was fit only for fancy cycling — in and out among a thousand lakes a yard wide and three inches deep. These should either have been stocked with gold-fish and aquatic plants or drained, but some time had been allowed [35] to pass without either course being adopted.
It may be that all the draining forces of the neighbourhood had been directed to emptying the ornamental pond on Wandsworth Common. Empty it was, and the sodden bed did not improve the look of the common — flat by nature, flatter by recent art.
The gorse was in bloom amidst a patchwork of turf, gravel, and puddle. Terriers raced about or trifled. A flock of starlings bathed together in a puddle until scared by the dogs.
https://www.historyofwandsworthcommon.org/chronicles/03/03-2022.html#bounds
Furzey on Endymion Porter's map
The Wandsworth Common Act, 1871
8. It shall not be lawful for any unauthorised person in anywise to injure, damage, or destroy any turf, gorse, furze, heather, fern, grass, timber or other trees, shrubs, brushwood, or other plants upon the Common, or any part thereof, or to dig upon, or in, or to break up or disturb the surface of the Common, or any part thereof, of any gravel or sand-pit thereon, or to light any fire upon the Common.
Such regulations are ironic, really, since this is exactly what many people said the LCC was doing exactly these things when they "parkified" the Common - flattened, fenced, and the greater part turned over to sport.
When the Metropolitan Board of Works took aver in 1887/8, they were even more explicit, with a rule against:
,p>Re[orted i theLondon Evening Standard - Tuesday 16 August 1887
10. Lighting any fire, burning or doing any act which might anise any timber, wood, brushwood, gorse, furze, fern, earth, paper, rubbish, or other substance to be burned on the Common, or sorting rags or matter of like nature, or minding any chair or other aviicle, " or causing a litter on the Common.
London Evening Standard - Tuesday 16 August 1887 1887-08-16-MBW-rules-and-regs-for-WC-LondonEveningStandard-16aug1887-1024.jpg
Mending any chair?
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Vandalism in the Parks.
LONDON takes a legitimate pride in its parks and open spaces, but the habit of fencing off certain portions of the common land is developing into a nuisance.
I believe I am right in saying that when the parks were taken over by the L.C.C. the Act of Parliament laid it down that no part of the land intended for the public was to be enclosed.
To the annoyance of thousands of people in south-west London sections of the parks and commons have been fenced in to such an extent that it is only possible to walk on the footpaths.
Wandsworth Common is one of the chief sufferers. Not only have large portions of the Common been fenced round, but the natural beauties have been laid waste. Lovely gorse bushes have been destroyed and trees cut down.
Protests have been raised against this vandalism on the part of the L.C.C.
[BNA: Link]
In March 1850 news reaches Lincolnshire of a great furze fire on Wandsworth Common . . .
Lincolnshire Chronicle — Friday 1 March 1850
The furze on Wandsworth Common, to the extent of three quarters of a mile, have been destroyed by fire.
BNA: Link
It was already old news. The Gloucestershire Chronicle had mentioned the story a week earlier (Saturday 23 February 1850), drawing attention to the fire as a popular spectacle:
The furze on Wandsworth Common was set on fire on Monday night, and hundreds of people flocked out of London, thinking that a dreadful fire was raging amongst some house property.
BNA: Link.
Looking around for more information, I came across an article stating that the fire had been set by two young men whose fathers were building the new Wandsworth Prison:
Daily News (London) — Monday 4 March 1850
FIRING THE FURZE ON WANDSWORTH COMMON.
Thomas Candar, aged 17, and John Baker, aged 15, the sons of foremen on the works at the New Prison, were brought up from Horsemonger-lane Gaol, to which prison they had been committed on Monday last, on a charge of setting fire to the furze on Wandsworth Common.
The article continued:
The prisoners' friends had applied to bail them, but were refused, the offence charged against them being felony and transportable.
What?! The young men are denied bail because setting fire to furze was a "transportable" offence?
Transportation of criminals to New South Wales had ceased in 1840 but it continued in Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania, and only started in Western Australia in 1850, the year of the fire, when British Government authorised its conversion from a free settlement to a penal colony. (The last transportees sent to WA arrived in January 1868.)
[Interestingly, John Buckmaster's first proper job after he graduated from the teachers' training school in Battersea was working with juvenile offenders in the reformatory attached to Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight. These "Parkhurst Boys" were awaiting transportation - typically to Western Australia, where before 1850 they were designated as "apprentices", not prisoners,
PB: Even before Western Australia was designated a penal colony, early colonists benefited from these "Parkhurst Boys". Between 1842 and 1849, they were assigned to masters under the guise of apprenticeship — "the gift of cheap labour to the colonial bourgeoisie" (Andrew Gill, Convict assignment in Western Australia: the Parkhurst 'apprentices' 1842-1851, Hesperian Press, 2016).
JCB was sacked after corresponding with Charles Dickens about the appalling conditions in which the boys were kept. See A Village Politician, Ch.13.]
Anyway, let's get back to Wandsworth Common:
On Mr. Beadon [the police magistrate] taking his seat, Mr. W. Nottidge, a county magistrate, and Mr. Wilson, two of the lessees of the common, intimated their desire of withdrawing from the prosecution.
They supposed that the prisoners were connected with others who had caused a number of incendiary fires on the previous Monday night, but they had since ascertained it was not so, that the boys' parents were respectable, and they were inclined to think it only a boyish freak.
Mr. Beadon said he had certainly intended to have committed the prisoners for trial, presuming it would be shown they were connected with other fires. He was glad to [?dand] it was not so; and they were indebted to those gentlemen for not pressing the case.
After some further remarks, the magistrate ?? the parents must enter into sureties on behalf of the boys to keep the peace for twelve months'
Hmm, there's a lot to disentangle here.
We have come across these local dignitaries — William Nottidge (who lived at The Elms, at the top of Allfarthing Lane) and William Wilson ("Black Sea House", who owned Price's Candle Works) — in previous Chronicles.
We are told that they initiated the prosecution of the boys because they were "lessees" of the Common. The traditional mechanisms of control by local "commoners" in the "court leat" with the active involvement of the Lord of the Manor, Earl Spencer, and his agents having virtually ceased, Nottidge and Wilson (along with a few others) were renting the Common in order to have legal powers to regulate the Common. This pattern of control by lessees was well-established on Clapham Common, but lasted only a few years at Wandsworth.
But we learn that Nottidge and Wilson are now withdrawing the charge because they have learnt that the boys' parents "were respectable, and they were inclined to think it only a boyish freak", — not to be confused with other, clearly malevolent, actors "who had caused a number of incendiary fires on the previous Monday night"?
So what does it mean when they refer to series of fires, and make a distinction between these ______________
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Who was involved, and why had the fires been set?
Morning Advertiser — Wednesday 20 February 1850.
Firing of the Furze on Wandsworth, Tooting, and Streatham Commons.
On Sunday evening sen'night [seven days and nights i.e. this week] the furze was set on fire at the north-west corner of Wandsworth common, which consumed some 150 square yards before the flames were extinguished. It was presumed at the time that the occurrence was a purely accidental one, and no further notice was taken by the authorities who lease the common.
On Monday night, however, an alarm was raised that another fire had broken out near the same spot. A large body of the V division [i.e. Wandsworth's police] were soon in attendance, and being plentifully supplied with poles by the residents of the surrounding mansions, succeeded in a short time in subduing this fire, but scarcely had their labours ceased than, at a quarter of a mile off, another fire was seen raging.
Here the police, and many labouring men, greatly to their credit, went and extinguished this and several distinct but contiguous fires; their labours had not concluded till after nine o'clock, when the hemisphere became again brilliantly illuminated, and it was soon ascertained that another conflagration had broken out almost close to the Clapham-common station [this was next to the Battersea Rise railway bridge].
This fire proved more difficult in respect to its extinguishment than any of the others and several of the police got their hands severely scorched and blistered, and their clothes damaged.
It was now imagined that this spirit of incendiarism had ceased, at least for the night, when between ten and eleven o'clock, simultaneous conflagrations broke out at Tooting and Streatham Commons, and although a large body of the P division [Camberwell area] rendered their assistance, the quantity of furze destroyed on both these Commons was immense.
It may be almost needless to say that the numerous highly respectable families resident on the verges of these Commons, have been, and continue to be, in a most serious state of alarm.
Various causes are assigned for this unusual, but most outrageous, kind of proceeding, which it would not be prudent at the present time to further divulge, but there is little doubt that the matter, ere long, will be the subject of magisterial inquiry.
[BNA: Link.]
What intriguing final sentences:
"highly respectable families . . . in a most serious state of alarm . . . causes . . . which it would would not be prudent to divulge . . . ere long . . . the subject of magisterial enquiry".
What's this alluding to?
We should not discount the wider social context at this time. In 1848, revolutionary uprisings took place throughout Europe, heralded by the publication (in London) of Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto. The Great Famine in Ireland accompanied by increase in incendiarism, with arson attacks on landlords' property by starving landless an peasants and beleaguered tenant-farmers?
In England, the most intense period of rick-burning (by "Captain Swing") and machine-breaking ("General Ludd") was largely over, but still a vivid memory.
In London, also in 1848, a massive Chartist demonstration took place on nearby Kennington Common. Although Chartism may have been in decline as a mass movement, there were still pockets of support — including an active "female Charter Association" in Wandsworth organised by Amelia Waters and Jane Dolling.
["Does anybody know anything more about this group, or want to research it further?. I wrote a few notes about Chartism in our area November 2022's Chronicles, including a report of "An Old Chartist's Funeral" in Battersea Cemetery in 1891.]
But I also wonder whether the furze-burning was chiefly motivated by a more local and specific concern — the accelerating pace of encroachments, division and enclosure of the Common.
We need only think of the two new railway lines being gouged through the Common (with two more lines threatened), the new prison (and the enclosure of the area in front of it, now Neal's Nursery and the Prison Banks), the 20 acres sold by Earl Spencer to build the St James's Industrial School, land for the Freemason's School for Girls, the enclosure for Reverend Craig's giant telescope, and so on.
In 1848, 21 acres of Common had been sold to Henry McKellar of Wandsworth Lodge — the entire triangle bounded by today's Trinity Road, St James's Drive and Bellevue Road. A few years later he added a further 12 acres on the other side of Trinity Road.
"McKellar's Triangle" (pink) and adjacent land (green) acquired by Henry McKellar in the 1840s and 1850s as it appeared on an OS map of 1874. The blue area shows Wandsworth Lodge, his substantial house and garden.
Notice St James's Industrial School (right), on what is now St James's Drive, and the new railway line to Crystal Palace. All areas had recently been part of an undivided, unenclosed Common.
(Click on image to enlarge)
The same area (more or less) on Milne's map of 1800. Wandsworth Lodge is the pink area in the south.
(Click on image to enlarge)
In 1849 Oswald Parsons, a local bricklayer, found himself in court charged with having "unlawfully and maliciously committed damage and injury to and upon a certain dead wooden fence, the property of Mr. William [Edward?] Herring." Herring lived in Ivy House, on the corner of St John's Hill and today's Vardens Road.
There may have been others before him, but Oswald Parsons is the first fence-breaker/stout defender of Wandsworth Common whose name has come down to us today.
Is it perhaps significant that the earlier, more troubling furze-fires were set in the north-west of the Common, where Herring lived?
(This is the same area, "Plough Green", which became the epicentre of riotous opposition to enclosure in 1870. This culminated in the 1871 Wandsworth Common Act, preserving it for "".
With luck, I'll be discussing this in more detail next month.
South London Chronicle — Saturday 13 March 1869
More police to control "Loose women and bullies" on the Common
More Police for Wandsworth-common
The clerk was instructed to prepare memorial to the Chief Commissioner of Police, asking for additional police supervision on Wandsworth common, for the purpose if possible of removing the people of loose character who harbour there.
Mr. Costeker said the common was covered with loose women, who were accompanied by bullies to protect them, and aid them in insulting people going across. He had succeeded in driving them away from his corner *, and hoped the board would do what they could to drive them away altogether.
The clerk observed that the board were about to take stops to ascertain who had the control of the supervision of Wandsworth common, and this end would, as a member had observed, be furthered by the memorial.
* John Costeker was responsible for enclosing parts of Plough Green and adding them to the garden of his house on St John's Hill. Some of the most heated events that led to the saving of the Common concerned his attempts to block paths. The South London PressJ accused Costeker of exaggerating the problem of "loose people" so that he could portray his encroachments as "public spirited" and "in the public interest" (2 October 1869).
John Coskeker's "corner" of the former Plough Green
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Here is the last mention of furze-burning for now, from 1919, only a few years after the photograph that started these ruminations off. It is highly suggestive because of what it reveals about the attitudes of many local residents to the changes to the Common being wrought by the London County Council.
"The Council's liking is for a bare and open plain, and its policy for years past has been to destroy every semblance of rurality that it can set its workmen on . . . "
South Western Star — Friday 4 July 1919
Evening papers have recently informed the world that great expanses of furze and undergrowth have been destroyed on Wandsworth Common and elsewhere. With regard to elsewhere, the information may be accurate enough, but for a long time Wandsworth Common has not possessed may great expanses of furze. The County Council sees to that.
The Council's liking is for a bare and open plain, and its policy for years past has been to destroy every semblance of rurality that it can set its workmen on. Wandsworth Common has not suffered to the extent that Clapham has.
On a lighter note, the folk names of a number of once-common birds refer to their association with furze, for example "Gorsechat" (Stonechat or Whinchat), and "Furzeling" (Dartford Warbler).
Whinchat, Stonechat and Spotted Flycatcher, from Henry Leonard Meyer, Illustrations of British Birds., vol. 1, 1837. Meyer (d.1864) is buried in Battersea Cemetery.
Meyer writes of the Dartford warbler: "The nest of this species is usually found among the largest and tallest furze bushes, where they are closely matted with brambles, and difficult of access, and can seldom be discovered, except when the birds are building, or in the act of carrying in food to their young. "
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Recently planted gorse near North Side, photo by Lewis More O'Ferrall (thanks, Lewis!)
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It is very good indeed to see gorse/furze being planted by volunteers from the Friends of Wandsworth Common. For the last century, this most beautiful and useful plant has been progressively almost eradicated — only a few clumps remain on the Scope, and some by the lake.
It wasn't always like this. Here is a map of the centre of the Common in 1868 (click for a close-up):
(Click on image to see a detail)
And here is a (colourised) postcard of the Common near Spencer Park, taken around 1910:
(Click on image to enlarge)
Furze fires were quite frequent on the Scope when I was young. Gorse burns extraordinarily fiercely, so the bush and its surroundings are normally burnt to the ground, but it quickly grows back again. This must have been true for many centuries all over the Common. But by the 1950s there was very little remaining other than on the Scope, and this too was swiftly denuded.
Did the gorse disappear because it was actively grubbed up, or because it was out-competed by new tree growth?
I vaguely recall the explanation that the dense bushes had to be destroyed because they were a public danger — that they concealed all kinds of crime and anti-social behaviour. I don't know if this is true but certainly furze is often mentioned in newspaper reports of, for example, child molestation. (I'll be taking this up sometime in the future.)