Kingston Stroll #2: History Pt.1 | MegaLeaved BurBearer
This is the 2nd of a 10-cache series which takes you from the heart of the village through the fields and along the farm lanes of the Swanborough area immediately to the east. The 3.5km circuit can be completed in under 2 hours allowing for necessary cache and optional short bird-watching, photographic and refreshment stops en route.
The cache, a camo-taped preform tube, is hidden at the location of this kissing gate which seems to have been made especially for the skinny people!
Approach: cross over the main road opposite the end of The Street, locate the start of a narrow footpath passage at N 50 51.452 W 0 01.225 and follow this to the cache location.
History Pt.1: Kingston is mentioned in the Domesday Book and its past has shaped and continues to shape the borders and boundaries of its layout. The lands that surround it today were originally organised from before the Norman Conquest in 1066 in three great open fields known as ‘laines’ which were divided into strips and managed by different owners who changed through the years. The outlines of those fields can still be made out in the landscape today. Coupled with the pasture land on the Downs above and the meadows in the valley of the River Ouse at the other end of the parish, they represent the basis on which the villagers’ livelihood and security depended through the centuries and the backdrop to their daily lives.
The village farms and houses lay along The Street, the core of the village. It was from there that farmworkers walked to work in the village fields or those of the neighbouring settlements at Swanborough and Iford. It is also the location of the village church - the early C14 St Pancras Church.
That rhythm of agricultural life under changing land ownerships continued from Saxon times (8th-11th century) right through to the beginning of the Victorian period (1837-1901). It was then that the village began to see significant physical change with the old open field system abandoned with the Enclosure Act of 1833 and new forms of consolidated ownership and management of the lands in the village.
Near to the cache location in the hedgerow you will see the unmistakebale huge leaves of the lesser (little or common) burdock (Arctium minus) aka louse-bur, button-bur, cuckoo-button or wild rhubarb. This very common biennial plant is native to Europe, but has become introduced elsewhere such as Australia, North and South America.
It likes to grow on waste ground, meadow edges, gardens, roadsides, alongside footpaths, woodland edges and around the edges of most farm fields.
It produces purple flowers in its 2nd year of growth, from July-October. After the flower head dries, the hooked outer bracts will attach to humans and animals to transport the entire seedhead (bur). In fact, in 10 years from 1948 George de Mestral, a Swiss inventor, created Velcro after walking his dog and noticing the ‘burs’ from the plant to his dog.
It is large and bushy growing up to 1.8m tall with multiple branches. The flowers resemble thistles, but the plant is distinguished by its extremely large (up to 50 cm) leaves, short pedicles, and hooked bracts. It grows an extremely deep taproot, up to 30cm long.
Another common and very similar burdock found throughout the UK is the Greater Burdock, (Arctium lappa). However its leaves are more lanceolate or triangular leaves and coarsely toothed, and it has rounder, somewhat larger flowers (on long stalks) which can be up to 40mm diameter and do not extend significantly beyond the surrounding bracts.
Leaf and flower stalks (<1 year) can be eaten raw or cooked. Similar aged roots are edible - boiled with a change of water - and taste a bit like a cross between sweet chestnut and parsnip.
Medicinal uses: dried root from 1st year plants was considered one of the best blood purifiers and also to treat skin diseases, especially eczema. Leaves are used as a poultice and for an infusion.
The renowned English botanist, herbalist, physician and astrologer Nicholas Culpeper has much to say about Burdock in The English Physician (1652) . . . 'the leaves applied to the places troubled with the shrinking of the sinews or arteries, give much ease. The juice of the leaves, or rather the roots themselves, given to drink with old wine, doth wonderfully help the biting of any serpents; and the root beaten with a little salt, and laid on the place, suddenly easeth the pain thereof, and helpeth those that are bit by a mad dog. The juice of the leaves being drank with honey, provoketh urine, and remedieth the pain of the bladder'.
Finally, if you are near some burdock when it starts to rain the leaves are big enough to make a foraged umbrella!
See short videos here (flowers time lapse), here (close-up) and here (detailed description).