1913 - 2001: A lifetime of difference
venata, Small Thymelicus sylvestris & Essex Skippers T. lineola on this sward together with a few
Small Heaths Coenonympha pamphilus. Red Admirals Vanessa atalanta and Commas Polygonia c-
album, while Speckled Wood Pararge aegeria, were on the wing where the path emerged into the
shadier regions of Willingale Churchyard. Neither of the last two species would have been present
for my predecessors to enjoy, both being extinct in Essex at that time; their reappearance during the
middle part of the last century a cheerful episode in what has otherwise been a calamitous few
decades for Essex butterflies.
There was no guided tour awaiting me when I reached the churchyard, nor, alas, a meal at The Bell.
Willingale is but a shadow of the village of 1913, or indeed the village when 1 first knew it, in the
1960s. The school, shop, Post Office and The Bell have all long gone. Even the remaining pub,
where I enjoyed many a lunchtime drink and snack until the recent past, is now just a gutted shell,
awaiting metamorphosis into either a private house or a Countrymans' Restaurant, in the latter of
which slightly shop-soiled botanists would perhaps not be welcome. Neither was there a horse and
carriage waiting to convey me to Norton Heath. Instead, I walked back down the hill towards Fyfield
and headed across the remnants of Willingale Airfield to Norton Mandeville. This wartime airfield
was leased to the USAF and for 2-3 years the 355th Bomber Group flew Liberators from here on
missions across occupied Europe. Apart from numerous access roads, little sign of their occupancy
remains other than a few blister hangars, nissan huts and the ruins of the operational headquarters.
Behind one of the buildings there is an old apple tree which still produces a good crop of fruit most
years. I like to think that it originated from a core casually tossed to one side by one of those long
departed airmen as he left the operations hut and prepared to board his aircraft and put his life on the
line over Germany once more. (This theory fits in easily with the English view of Americans, of
course; if he had been in the RAF the fellow would quite properly have been made to pick it up!).
Many of the hedges and hundreds of farmland trees were grubbed out in order to create the airfield
and Whitney Wood was split in two to accommodate one of the runways. The result, to my mind, is
an aura of openness that, because of its historical associations, is quite different from recently-
created arable prairies elsewhere, where all feeling for history has been lost. It is a landscape where
people still matter and will hopefully remain so as long as the war and those who fought in it are
remembered.
In its midst I stumbled across a large set-aside field, the vegetation in which had miraculously
escaped being reduced to a lifeless brown crust by herbicide, the fate that normally befalls such
fields by the end of June. There are undoubtedly very good agricultural reasons, relating to weed
control, for this to be carried out and studies by the British Trust for Ornithology do seem to suggest
that spraying the weeds is less harmful to ground-nesting birds than the alternative, which is to mow
them, but there are equally valid conservation arguments for leaving at least some such areas untouched
until the autumn, as this field clearly demonstrated. It was awash with the song of Skylarks Alauda
arvensis. Not just the odd bird here and there, which is the norm nowadays, but a dozen or more in
song together. I stopped, poured myself a cup of coffee, sat down on the edge of the field and
wallowed in the sound for several wonderful minutes. Nor was it just larks that were benefiting from
this set-aside. Several Corn Buntings Miliaria calandra were in full rattle on songposts scattered
across it (this is one of the few thriving populations remaining in inland Essex at present and is
subject to an RSPB study); at least three pairs of Yellow Wagtail Motacilla flava were nesting and I
flushed a pair of Grey Partridges Perdix perdix, another declining species across much of Essex.
Add to these, feeding flocks of 70 Stock Doves Columba oenas and 18 Mistle Thrushes Turdus
viscivorus, a tiercel Hobby Falco subbuteo displaying over nearby Whitney Wood, and - best of all
- a Quail Coturnix coturnix, and you have an experience that is not at all common in the county
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Essex Naturalist (New Series) 19 (2002)