Dear Readers, I have lived in the London Borough of Barnet for nearly fifteen years, but yesterday I realised that I’d never been to the Barnet Museum. Located in Chipping Barnet (closest station: High Barnet) this is an extraordinary collection of ‘stuff’ that has been donated and found over the years. Unlike many museums, this is run entirely by volunteers, and what a cheery, informative and knowledgeable lot they are! The building (which used to be the Brewmaster’s house for the local brewery) is absolutely stuffed to the gunnels with everything from cannonballs from the Battle of Barnet (1471) through WWI and WW2 paraphernalia, from Pearly King and Queen outfits to the Barnet Ventilator. Here are just a few of my personal highlights.

The Battle of Barnet was part of the Wars of the Roses, and no one is quite sure where it was actually fought. There’s a Battle of Barnet guided walk pretty much every year, so I shall gird my loins and go along next time.

Upstairs there’s a sign for the Barnet Horse Fair ( no dogs or chickens  for sale). At one point (1834 to be precise), this was the UK’s largest cattle market, with over 40,000 animals for sale. These days it’s still a fair, but features carousels and helter-skelters rather than  livestock. And incidentally, for anyone interested in Cockney rhyming slang, ‘Barnet Fair’ = hair (these days usually shortened to ‘Barnet’.

And how about this sign? My mother and grandmother were evacuated to Slough during WWII. Having not seen a single bomb in Stratford, East London, an incendiary device landed outside their place of refuge on the first night that they were there. They were back in London by the end of the week.

Below is a model of the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, which had the longest straight corridor in Britain  when it was built – it would apparently take a visitor two hours to walk from one end to the other. 2,500 unfortunate people were ‘housed’ here when it opened in 1850. It was finally closed in 1989 when someone had the bright idea of ‘Care in the Community’. Amongst its patients were Adam Ant and the author Jenny Diski, and Lindsay Anderson’s film  ‘Britannia Hospital’ featured the exterior of the building. Nowadays the building is ‘Princess Park Manor’ and has been converted into luxury flats.

A model of Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum

The building in 2017 (Photo By Philafrenzy – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60289604)

More cheerfully, here are some examples of the Barnet Ventilator. You’ll note that it appears to have saved the life of the young Elizabeth Taylor – she became ill with pneumonia when filming ‘Cleopatra’ with Richard Burton in Pinewood Studios. She was rushed to Barnet Hospital, and was apparently intubated for three days. The machine was so new that the hospital had four of them made ready in case one of them broke down. Taylor recovered, and the rest of the filming was done in the sunnier climes of Italy and Spain.

And how about this? I had a desk identical to this when I was at primary school (Park  Primary in Newham). One of us used to be the ink monitor, and their job was to keep the inkwells topped up. And this was in 1965 lest you think  I’m the longest-lived Victorian in the world.

There are some interesting artifacts from both world wars. From WWI, there are examples of the medals that were sent to the bereaved parents or wives of soldiers who had been killed, along with a letter commemorating them.

From the Second World War, there are maps of the bomb damage around High Barnet. It seems like a lot of bombs for what was a pretty leafy suburb at the time, but there was a railway, and I imagine that no pilot wanted to return to Germany without dropping their full complement of explosives.

There were gas masks that you could put your baby into…

And ‘Micky Mouse’ and ‘Donald Duck’ gas masks for children. My mother remembers skipping off to Park school (yes, the same one that I went to) with her gas mask in a little bag. She also remembers being in the underground cloakroom with the teachers and all the other children while a bombing raid was going on, singing endless verses of ‘Ten Green Bottles’. How parents sent their children off to school every day, not knowing if they would ever see them again, and how the teachers held their nerve is worthy of some consideration, I think.

On a much more cheer note, this is a Victorian Overmantel – I’ve been looking for one to go above my fireplace for the past fifteen years, so if anyone notices one, give me a shout!

And finally, here are the costumes of the Pearly King and Queen of Barnet. I’ve written about Pearly Kings and Queens before (in particular Henry Croft, the first ‘Pearly King’ who is buried in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery). In Barnet, the Pearly King was Jack Hammond, with his wife and daughter being the Pearly Queen and Pearly Princess. The horseshoes on the costumes refer to Barnet Horse Fair (as described above), Each of the pearl buttons was sewed on by hand, and the Pearly King costume weighs in at 32lbs.

So, it was well worth jumping on the 263 bus to Barnet to see the Museum, and I was so impressed by the sheer amount of local history here, and by the sheer enthusiasm of the volunteers. There are events on regularly at the Museum, and if you’re a North Londoner I can heartily recommend a visit. We don’t have to go into central London to learn about our community and our history.

You can read all about Barnet Museum here.

Pigeons at Bunhill Fields in the City of London

Dear Readers, I was reading an interesting article in The Guardian today, and thought I’d find out what you think (and share some of my thoughts). It appears that scientists are working very hard to find a way of persuading various ‘pest’ and ‘invasive’ species, from feral pigeons to grey squirrels to wild boar, to ingest contraceptives in order to control their numbers. This is the ‘holy grail’ of control methods, but it remains to be seen how practical or effective it will be, and also whether there will be unintentional side effects.

Some species of animal, such as the grey squirrel, have become an intrinsic part of the wildlife of the UK, but they are associated with the decline of the red squirrel and blamed for £37m worth of damage to timber through bark stripping. A study, that proposes using contraceptives in hazelnut spread, is aiming to find a more humane way of reducing the number of squirrels than trapping or shooting. One problem has been finding a hopper that can only be opened by grey squirrels, so that it could be used in areas where both red and grey squirrels are present. In spite of the headline for The Guardian article, no contraceptives have yet been used in the field, while research  continues to see which levels of the medication would be safest and most effective.

The University of York is hosting the first ever workshop on Wildlife Fertility Control, looking at not just the issue of contraceptives for squirrels, but also for pigeons, parakeets, rats, wild boar and deer. Contraceptives have been used with wild boar in Europe, but at the moment it involves delivering the drug by injection – clearly, an oral contraceptive would be cheaper and less dangerous for humans and animals. Contraception has also been used on elephants in the Kruger National Park in South Africa.

However, I have questions. First up, there is a clear correlation between pigeon numbers and the amount of food available to them – reduce the food, and you get less pigeons. It seems as if better litter bins and less waste food would bring down the number of birds over time, without having to resort to feeding them ‘the pill’. This is probably also the case with a number of other species. Shouldn’t we simply be a bit tidier and less messy?

More worrying, for me, is the potential impact on not only the animals who ingest the contraceptive, but also on the animals that feed on them. What if a peregrine falcon eats a pigeon who has been treated with ‘the pill’, or an owl picks off a rat who has been similarly treated? Of course, the use of poisonous chemicals to kill ‘pest’ animals, particularly rodents, also has a terrible effect on their predators, but the cumulative effect of eating prey animals laced with contraceptive may also have an effect on the breeding potential of some of our rarest birds of prey.

And finally, the effect of human urine that contains the residue from the contraceptive pill and ends up in our rivers has been shown to have a feminising effect on the fish who swim there.

As with so many things, we’ve made a massive mess by moving animals from one place to another, and providing the conditions that have resulted in some animals proliferating without any natural controls. Using a contraceptive is one way to try to sort things out, but it will undoubtedly have side-effects, both predicted and otherwise. It will be interesting to see if any of these research projects actually result in reducing the numbers of the targeted species, or if nature will, as usual, find a way around human controls.

What do you think, Readers?

Dear Readers, as you might remember I HAVE RETIRED (not sure if I mentioned that before 🙂 ) but my husband is still slaving away doing about 55 hours a week, so every lunch we try to get out for a walk around the County Roads here in East Finchley. And do you know, there’s always something to see? Today, for example, this little tabby cat was absolutely fascinated by something lurking under the paving stone. A mouse? Or just the sound of the water running? Who knows, but puss wasn’t responding to any of my usual enticements, so on we went…

Someone has planted some lovely spotted loosestrife. There is in fact a yellow loosestrife bee that feeds on this and similar species, so I shall be paying close attention just in case.

How much do I love ivy-leaved toadflax? Enough to take this portrait of this single plant. I love the way that it takes advantage of any old wall.

And then, on Hertford Road, there is the most magnificent tumbling, cascading pink rose. What a beauty.

And in a tree pit just up the road, there’s some purple toadflax, another favourite with bumblebees.

And then there’s this tree fern. The man from the house next door said that this garden put his to shame, though actually I think his garden was more nature-friendly. How we always love to apologise for our gardens/houses/etc, when actually they’re perfectly fine and dandy! Anyhow, it appears that the tree fern is a very fast grower. I love the way that the leaves unfurl (the ‘bud’ is known as a crozier), and the fractal thing that goes on, with the big leaf containing lots of identical smaller leaves.

There are some of these deep purple species geraniums – Mum and Dad used to have them at the bungalow in Milborne St Andrew, and they always make me smile. They were Dad’s pride and joy (along with the roses). I should point out that Mum always asked the man who came to help with the garden if he would mow around the daisies, and bless him, he always did.

There seems to be a fine crop of miniature sedum roofs to hide the fine collection of wheelie bins that each house now has – at least two, and sometimes three of them. It’s another habitat, for sure, though I wonder if we couldn’t think of other things to plant too – maybe a few wildflowers would add to the biodiversity? They are a great improvement on a row of bins, though (which is what I currently have).

And so, a twenty minute hike provides all sorts of things to look at and think about. And my husband is so energised that he’s rushed off to buy another flat white coffee to support the local economy. It’s always worth getting outside your front door if you can, even for a few minutes.

Dear Readers, at first glance you might, like me, think that this tree, growing next to the Euston Road, was a Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum). But think again! This is an Indian Horse Chestnut (Aesculus indica).  If you look at the flowers, you’ll see that they are rather more widely spaced on the central stem, and have a distinct pink glow, compared to the creamy colour of the ‘candles’ on an ‘ordinary’ Horse Chestnut.

Flowers of ‘ordinary’ horse chestnut

Plus, the  leaves on an Indian Horse Chestnut are very long and slender compared to those of a standard Horse Chestnut.

Indian Horse Chestnut

Another way to tell the Indian Horse Chestnut is that it’s flowering now – a standard Horse Chestnut’s flowers are well finished by now, even in a wet and chilly spring like the one that we’ve just had. And you might well see this tree on a street near you soon, as it has much greater resistance to the various leaf-miners and fungi that are playing havoc with the standard Horse Chestnut. A few other horse chestnuts also have good resistance (so far) to the insect and fungal attacks – first, the Red Horse Chestnut, which is a cross between the standard Horse Chestnut and the American Red Buckeye (Aesculus pavia). There’s a splendid one in East Finchley Cemetery. I used to call this the Spanish Chestnut, but apparently not. 

Flowers of the Red Horse Chestnut

And then, according to Paul Wood’s book ‘London Street Trees’, you might also see the Yellow Buckeye (Aesculus flava), which is a smaller tree with yellow flowers.

Flowers of the Yellow Buckeye (Aesculus flava) Photo A. Barra, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Judging by the bumblebees around the Indian Horse Chestnut this afternoon it’s likely that all of these trees are a good source of late spring/early summer nectar for pollinators. Plus, they are so attractive, to my eyes at least. I’m looking forward to the variety of street trees increasing over coming years, to meet the challenges of climate change. It will be interesting to see what we end up with here in East Finchley.

Dear Readers, during a walk through Coldfall Wood in East Finchley today I noticed that in  a fenced-off area close to the stream, there are several clumps of common figwort. What a joy it is to see this compacted area, completely free of any vegetation only a year ago, restoring itself as the seeds in the seedbank germinate (see photo below). I can’t wait for some photos to show how the plants have come on since June.

This is a plant that it’s easy to overlook, but the flowers are extremely interesting, and there aren’t that many chocolate brown blooms out there so it has a lot of novelty value. And in the USA, native figworts used to be planted specifically for their copious nectar, as a food for honeybees. A beekeeper called James A. Simpson wrote a book on apiculture called ‘The ABC of Bee Culture’ in 1888, and in it, talking about figwort, he states:

“This is a queer tall weed that grows in fields and woods, and it bears little cups full of honey. It has produced so much honey under cultivation on our honey farm during the past two years that I am much inclined to place it at the head of the list of honey plants.”

No wonder there were so many bees (mostly bumbles) visiting the plants in Coldfall Wood! You can read more at the Honeybee Suite website here.

And now, on to my original figwort post. It’s always so good to rediscover an old friend.

Flowers of Common Figwort (Scrophularia nodosa) (Photo One – credit below)

Dear Readers, what a quiet and inoffensive plant Figwort is! I have it growing in my pond, but I first spotted it at East Finchley Station, growing alongside a drainage ditch where there was also lots of horsetail. It certainly attracts the bees, even when not in full bloom – the flowers seem perfectly bumblebee adapted.

Herbalists thought that the plants  resembled a human throat, and so they were used medicinally for tonsillitis and all kinds of ailments related to this part of the body. In particular the plant was used to treat scrofula, a form of tuberculosis that led to enlargement of the neck (hence the plant’s genus name). Long term readers might remember the Doctrine of Signatures, a belief that a plant would indicate what it was useful for by its shape, colour or scent, as if a ‘clue’ had been planted by God when the Garden of Eden was created.

Figwort is in the same family as the Buddleia and Great Mullein (the Scrophulariaceae), though you’d be hard put to notice any obvious similarities. If we’re looking at just the figworts there are over 200 species spread across the Northern Hemisphere, and telling them apart can be somewhat challenging. Are the plants in my pond Common Figwort or Water Figwort (Scrofularia auriculata) for example? I hope the latter, because otherwise I’ve been drenching my plants rather more than they’d like.

Rose chafer on young common/water figwort

Figworts are eaten by the caterpillars of the Mullein moth, and I would be very delighted to see one.

Caterpillar of the Mullein Moth (Curcullia verbasci) (Photo Two)

The caterpillars of the Six-striped Rustic moth (Xestia sexstrigata) also feed on figworts. The adult is subtly beautiful.

Six-striped Rustic (Photo Three)

The jury is out concerning the plant’s edibility by humans, however. It’s said to have a foetid smell (I haven’t noticed any such problems with my plants), but in addition to the medicinal uses mentioned above, the plant has been used as an antihelmentic, which means that it’s poisonous to intestinal worms at the very least. In Mrs Grieves ‘A Modern Herbal’, she mentions that the root was used to feed the populace during  the 13 month Siege of Rochelle, but that the taste is so appalling that it would only ever be considered a famine food.

Mrs Grieve also mentions that Common Figwort was considered a lucky herb in both Ireland and Wales (where it was known as Deilen Ddu (‘good leaf’). The Medieval herbalist Gerard says that people used to wear the plant around their necks to keep themselves in good health. Furthermore, the plant was a treatment for rabies (hydrophobia), the patient being required to take:

‘every morning while fasting a slice of bread and butter on which the powdered knots of the roots had been spread and eating it up with two tumblers of fresh spring water. Then let the patient be well clad in woollen garments and made to take a long, fast walk until in a profuse perspiration, the treatment being continued for seven days.’

And finally, a poem. This is by John Lindley, who was the poet laureate for Cheshire in 2004, and it’s inspired by the Sandstone Ridge in that county. It is about a very specific place, but it is so full of hope that I thought I’d share today. We could all do with some inspiration, I’m sure.

Stone by Stepping Stone (John Lindley)

From ‘landfill’ to ‘lapwing’
requires more than a dip in the alphabet,
more than just a leap of faith
yet it begins
and it begins not letter by letter
but hedge by fattening hedge.

It begins as small as a bird table
and grows as wide as a field, as long as a ridge.
It begins amongst foxgloves and figwort,
in a morning of meadowsweet
and though no wild boar witness it
it is noted by hairstreak and peregrine,
by badger and owl.

It begins stone by stepping stone
and who would have thought such stones
could be engineered and sown?
Who would have thought
they could be dreamt, mapped and moulded
into more than fancy, more than symbol?

Still, it begins. From Frodsham to Bulkeley Hill.
From corridor to green corridor
a land found and refashioned
reclaims itself and swells until each corridor
is no longer measured by the wing span of a hawk
but by the circumference of its flight.

Born of a glacial shift –
a sandstone ridge,
red raw with promise,
skirts hill fort and castle.
A raven hunches like age
against the gathering mist.

Put an ear to the earth,
hear a seed splitting with new life.
Cast an eye to the hills,
see elms able again to stretch and touch fingers.
Woodland and heathland –
all are a heartland
and it is a heart that beats from Beacon Hill
to Bickerton and beyond.

It is a heart thought still,
jumpstarted by other hearts:
by landlord and farmer,
by owner and tenant,
by craftsman and labourer,
by the you and me we call a community.

It is a heart that drums
in the small frame of newt,
the slick casing of otter,
the sensual hide of deer
and grows louder,
like the echo of those lost skylarks
who went with the grassland
but now sing of recovery, sing of return.

Photo Credits

Photo One © Copyright Derek Harper and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Photo Two by By Bobr267 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61678532

Photo Three by Ben Sale from UK, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Hollyhock on the unadopted road

Dear Readers, it’s always nice to rediscover places that are familiar to you, but not to the person that you’re walking with. Today, I took a walk along the unadopted road that leads to Cherry Tree Wood here in East Finchley with my friend S. I remember my joy when I first came across this strange little path, that leads between the garden ends of two blocks of housing. It’s a bit straggly and random, but then so am I, so I love the mixture of domesticated and wild that the plants represent. At one point, there is a stately hollyhock just getting ready to come into flower, next to a magnificent fennel plant.

Someone has strewn some wildflower seeds, so there are poppies and ox-eye daisies…

But there are also the wilder sisters of these plants. There’s nipplewort aplenty…

The little shaggy wigs of herb bennet…

and the red leaves of herb robert blazing away behind the grass.

But this is a bit of a mystery. S had a look on iNaturalist, and we both think that it’s probably rosy garlic (Allium roseum) – this is a new plant to me, but is apparently an introduced plant, usually found on sandy or rocky ground. So, what it’s doing here is anyone’s guess, but then such are the joys of the unadopted road. The leaves didn’t seem to have any garlicky smell, but apparently the bulb is enough to deter squirrels and deer, so it must be pretty pungent. You’d almost think that the little red objects were berries, but in fact they’re bulbils, already to go.

And of course, we couldn’t leave the unadopted road without taking a turn around Cherry Tree Wood, in particular to have a look at what I think is the finest wild service tree in Barnet. It grows right next to the splendid café, and I think it will be covered in berries this year.

And finally, a quick look at the completed mosaic on the wall of the women’s toilet. Made by Debora Singer, it shows many of the key plants and animals that live in Cherry Tree Wood, including parakeets, yellow flag iris (in the wetland area beside the tennis courts), a red admiral butterfly and the splendid Archer from East Finchley station. It’s gorgeous, and although some urchins have covered the plaster beneath the mosaic in black graffiti, the mosaic itself is untouched, so thanks for that, at least.

There is a lot of good work going on in Cherry Tree Wood – I noticed a fenced-off area to protect the wood anemones, and a bug hotel (‘Bugingham Palace’). All in all, we are so lucky to have so many pockets of ancient woodland and other green spaces so close to where we live. And what could be nicer than exploring them with someone else who is a bit of a plant enthusiast! Well, maybe getting home before the rain started was an additional bonus.

Dear Readers, usually it’s the starlings who are the juvenile delinquents on our road here in East Finchley, but this year has been a great year for house sparrows, and goodness knows they could do with some luck, as their numbers have been going down and down over the past fifty years, for reasons that are still not clear.  Anyhow, I was delighted to see them zipping about in both the front and back gardens. Has anyone else noticed how fast they are for such small birds? They can disappear into a hedge or tangle of honeysuckle faster than any other bird I know – sometimes I almost expect them to rebound straight back out again.

Anyhow, this gang seems to consist of several pairs of parents plus their hungry offspring, who follow the adults about as if attached by a length of elastic. Occasionally they’ll wait in the undergrowth waiting for food to arrive, usually with one eye on the sky.

Sometimes the adults take a sneaky breather, like this adult male, parked up beside a young starling. Usually I’m mobbed with fledgling starlings, but it’s been very quiet this year, I suspect because the wet spring led to a mismatch between the emergence of insects and the breeding of the starlings (who need invertebrate food for their youngsters).

Eventually the young sparrows start to peck tentatively at the plants around them while they wait for the adults to arrive. The one below was definitely looking for caterpillars or something similar when s/he wasn’t watching the sky.

I’ve been watching the little flock zipping around at the front of the house too – they often perch in the buddleia, which is having a tough year this year, but which is fortuitously home to all manner of small bugs.

And so, although house sparrows are the quintessential ‘little brown jobs’, I have thoroughly enjoyed watching their breeding success this year. And, as sparrows rarely travel more than a mile from the place that they were born, maybe the fledglings of these birds will visit next year.

I haven’t yet worked out where they’re breeding – certainly not in my sparrow ‘terrace’ which has been a resounding failure so far – but there are a number of dense hedges at the corner of the road, and some houses have little gaps in their Victorian eaves that the sparrows can use. House sparrows aren’t called Passer domesticus for nothing – they aren’t found very far away from human habitation, and they seem to rely on our kindess for housing, and our gardens for food. Fingers crossed that their numbers will soon be going up again. London wouldn’t be the same without its ‘cockney sparrers’.

Dear Readers, it’s been less than 24 hours since I finished my exam, and already I have signed up for my module for next year – it looks as it it will be seriously science-y (as opposed to ‘multidisciplinary’) so I am getting in the swing of it by doing a bit of citizen science this weekend. Yay!

The Natural History Museum, in collaboration with Natural England and several other bodies, is doing research into the biodiversity in urban ponds in London, Bristol, Cambridge, Plymouth, Manchester and Newcastle, and they’ve offered anyone with a pond, however small, in those cities to contribute to a survey that they’re running. The project is now closed for this year, but my pack arrived last week, and it’s very full of syringes and sampling bags and various ways to check pH, water ‘hardness’, nitrate content and phosphorous content. Most excitingly, though, the water that I sample will be tested for eDNA.

A pond skater approaching a water snail in a rather menacing fashion.

eDNA (otherwise known as environmental DNA) is the genetic material found in water, soil, or the air. It includes the DNA from bacteria and other microorganisms, but also trace DNA from larger animals that live in, or visit, the pond. When the water sample is analysed and combined with results from other London ponds, it should give an overall idea of what’s living in the capital. It will be interesting to see how London ponds compare with those in other regions, and I’m hoping that they might also look at things like the overall communities of organisms in a pond.

The great thing about eDNA is that it can find tiny organisms, ones that are difficult to identify (especially when two species look very similar) and, even if the organism isn’t present when the sample is done it will indicate that it was present at some point. In this way it’s a bit like a scent lingering after the cause of it has gone, and gives us a picture of the pond inhabitants over time.

Smooth newt in the pond!

The Natural History Museum will also freeze some of the samples, for analysis in the future – in this way we can compare ponds over time, to see the ebb and flow of species.

Garden ponds have become vitally important sources of biodiversity, especially as so many country ponds have disappeared or degraded, and as many gardens have been turned into patios or car parking spaces. I won’t get the results of my sampling back until spring 2025, but I am really looking forward to taking part. Hopefully neither my husband nor I will end up falling into the pond, but if we do it will all add to the comedy value. I’ll keep you posted.