Woodish Bottoms by Goldry Bluszco

Written and Produced by Glyn Barnes.

James Alden Lawrence - Vocals
James Griffiths - Electric Guitars
Ed Kocol - Bass

Special thanks to Alan Lawrence for encouragement and coordinating things in NSW.

When I look from the back of my house a ridge dominates the skyline. I once remarked that this ridge was not just a geographical feature because I felt my past lay behind it.

The Woodhuish area (Wood’ish to us locals), south of Torbay in Devon, is mentioned in the Doomsday book as parish of 17 households. In 1066 it was owned by the Lord Ordwulf.

“The Bottoms” refers to the valley bottom. I remember as a small child being taken there at Easter by my parents and uncle and landscape, the primrose and the frog spawn made a lasting impression on me. As it flowed towards the sea the stream filled a marsh and eventually poured over Mansands beach into the sea.

Looking back it seems 25 years from the end of World War 2 were probably the wildest period the Bottoms had known for many years. The 1869 issue of the 6” Inch to the Mile Ordnance Survey map shows there was a corn mill and cottages in the Bottoms and there and there were more tracks leading to it. On 1907 revision of the map the mill is no longer there, but the mill cottages remain. When I was a boy the cottages were in ruins and were later demolished. They were inhabited until World War 2. My father recalls the boys who lived there were frequently in trouble for turning up at school with muddy shoes, something they could hardly avoid when the tracks were sodden, which was most of the time.

As I grew my friends and I visited the place often, taking the road from the town up to the ridge top, crossing that ridgetop was always a liberating experience. We descended into the valley by the old pack horse trails. It seemed so remote, isolated and wonderful in any season. One of my friends drew a connection with the Tolkien’s Withywillow River and the home of Tom Bombadil.

In the late sixties things began to change, not as suddenly as the song may imply but the land and marsh was “reclaimed” as rough grazing land. Many of the trees in the Bottoms were cut down; Dutch Elm saw the end of many more. The marsh was drained, the wetland habitat less valued in those days.

In recent years the land has passed to the National Trust, they have begun “wilding” the marsh. The beach has been re-profiled and the marsh is wetland again. The reed beds are growing back and water fowl are returning. Further up the valley in the bottoms trees are growing back and we can be hopeful for the future.