ARCHIVE: LEVELS 11 – LOOKING EAST, TOTNEY DROVE (MONO)
February 20, 2021 13 Comments
Looking eastwards along Totney Drove, a single track, tarmac road on Tadham Moor. Tall Willows are silhouetted by the sunrise, and water-filled rhynes (ditches) flank the road on either side. The distance is shrouded in fog, but the ghosts of cattle can just be made out in the background on the left.
This archive presents some of the pictures that I’ve taken on the Somerset Levels over many years. More context can be found in the first post in this archive – 1 – and also in my first Somerset Levels post, from 2011 – here . Further posts in this archive are here: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 . All of these links will open in separate windows.
Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day.
This image is best viewed enlarged: click onto it to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.
Technique: X-T2 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 83mm (equiv); 200 ISO; Lightroom, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation; Silver Efex Pro 2, starting at the Tin Type preset; Totney Drove, Tadham Moor, on the Somerset Levels; 19 Oct 2018.
SOMERSET LEVELS: SOME KEYWORDS
And finally – some keywords that will often be mentioned in this archive series:
Droves: to avoid crossing other peoples’ land when accessing their own, the farmers constructed a series of tracks, known as droves, between the fields. Some of these droves are now metalled roads and many persist as open tracks – all of which allow wonderfully open access to this countryside.
Rhynes: the fields are bounded by water-filled ditches – which both drain the ground and act as stock barriers. Hence strange landscapes – where fields appear quite unbounded, except for a gate with a short length of fencing on either side of it, where a bridge crosses the water-filled boundary ditch to provide access the field. These small wet ditches communicate with larger rhynes (“reen” as in Doreen), which in turn flow into larger drains, e.g. the North and South Drains in the Brue Valley. All of these waterways are manmade and, by intricate series of pumping stations and flood gates, all of them have their water levels controlled by local farmers, internal drainage boards or the Environment Agency.
Pollarded Willows: the banks of the rhynes were often planted with Willow trees, both to help strengthen the banks and also to show the courses of roads and tracks during floods. These Willows are often pollarded, i.e. their upper branches are cut off, which results in distinctively broad and dense heads to the trees. Pollarding keeps trees to a required height, while ensuring a steady supply of wood – more important in the past than now – for fires, thatching spars, fencing and so on.
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