Walking the meadows in 1959

From seven years ago  and still good.

There are many ways of telling stories of the past. One that has intrigued me was Mrs Broady’s Journal.

She was a botanist and recorded what she saw on the meadows in the late 1950s.

Now I am not really into botany but my pal David Bishop has carefully reproduced the entries which can be viewed on on his blog at and they make fascinating reading.

 Mrs Broady was walking this stretch of land when it was possibly at its lowest point.

For centuries it had been used as pasture and meadow land by our farmers, and today it is an area rich in plants and wild life. But at the close of the 19th century some of the land had been taken over for a sewage works and later in the 20th century parts were tipped on and others dug up to construct the nearby motorway.
Picture; the meadows near the site of Hardy lane Farm, 2011,  from the collection of Andrew Simpson


*http://friendsofchorltonmeadows.blogspot.com/search/label/History