To the south of our property, where our land jumps the lane and then runs above it to the east, there are two fields marked on the deed maps as Upper Tyning and Lower Tyning, and which we call collectively the Tynings. They are both roughly triangular with their longest sides touching along a precipitous bank, called a lynchet. Lynchets are medieval earthworks (some are believed to be neolithic) which were made by ploughing the hillside to form banks to ease the steep slopes. In the mind’s eye the bank is a little like a diagonal fold made from corner to corner on a handkerchief. A crease in a continuous surface that divides the one thing distinctively into two with an above and below and a steep slope between.

The lynchet is fifteen metres or so at its deepest point and tapers to both ends where the fields meet again as the contours connect and allow free movement of stock and tractors. There are four mature sycamores on the banks and a hedge at the top comprised primarlily of elder, blackthorn, hawthorn, elm and dog rose. Being too steep to manage, the slope has a vegetation all its own with cowslips, hypericum, oregano, knapweed and scabious that escape the heaviest of the grazing. In the time we have been here we have allowed the bank to rewild. It was regularly sprayed by the previous owner to keep bramble and dog rose in check and was barren when we arrived, consisting of little more than rough grass and seedling sycamores. The blackthorn, or ‘Mother-of-all-woods’, has created protective thorny thickets where briar roses, spindle and seedling trees are now pushing through.