Country diary: Signs of when this ghost river was alive
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Version 0 of 1. Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex: Standing in a surprise bog, I spot water mint and pinch-plant, reminders of this vale’s marshy past Between the village I live in, which is built along a low sandstone ridge, and where the land rises again to form the chalk scarp of the South Downs, there is a lowland vale. It is a damp region of rough grazing and ancient woods, of mist and shoe-stealing mud. Often I cross it in a hurry, heading south to Wolstonbury Hill, a nearby summit giving views to Brighton and the Channel. Today I’ve barely left the village when I reach a splashy halt. As the slope relaxes into flatness, water pools around my boots. It appears a stream once oozed through this area, now pasture, and I’m standing in its former course. To either side of me an old streambed is visible, a waterlogged depression snaking through the grass. The actual stream now occupies a steep-sided channel hidden in the trees. Like all the waterways that drain west from here to the River Adur, it has been much dredged and straightened. In the past few centuries, advances in engineering, along with incentives for drainage and agricultural improvement, have all but eliminated winding streams and their small but significant floodplains from England’s catchments. Yet with wetter weather, water returns to its old haunts. Last winter there was so much rain that these long-emptied meanders became unmissable. This year looks set to be the same. Once I notice the stream’s ghost, the whole zone feels haunted by lost ecologies. Clumps of rushes and water mint evoke its marshier past – a time when snipes probably wintered here, when lapwings looped and cried. In one damp spot I find a thick stand of Persicaria maculosa, which has a number of localised nicknames such as pinch-plant and pinch-weed, for the dark mark like a thumb-print’s bruise on its leaves. Botanical lore links this blemish to a different vernacular name: “useless”. According to the story, the devil plucked a leaf of the herb, mistaking it for water-pepper – a spicy lookalike and cousin. Tasting it, he was disappointed by the lack of fire. “Useless,” he spat. Personally, I find this weedy annual quite handy for lifting the spirits on a grey October day. It blooms late. Each stem is tipped with a bobbly lollipop cluster of pink flowers. To refresh the senses, I place a leaf in my mouth. It’s just as the Elizabethan herbalist John Gerard described it: “a little sour smack upon the tongue”. Country diary is on Twitter/X at @gdncountrydiary Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount |