Key

H: = Interviewer, Helen
HB: = Interviewee, Heather Birkett
[time e.g. 5:22] = inaudible word at this time
[5:22 IA] = inaudible section at this time
[word] = best guess at word
… = interruption in sentence, trailing off or short pause

H:Heather, just briefly take me back to your history with working here at Acorn Bank.

HB:Sure. We moved here as a family in 2010 and I started volunteering in the garden here while I set up my own garden design business. And then in 2014 I was given a full-time contract with the National Trust but it was five days a week split between two properties. So I was at Acorn Bank one day a week for the next five years. Then in 2018 I became Senior Gardener at Acorn Bank and then in 2022 I became Garden and Outdoor Manager.

H:What does the place mean to you?

HB:Oh wow, that’s a very big question. To me personally it feels a bit like my happy place, I suppose. It’s somewhere that I’ve always felt extremely comfortable and relaxed and peaceful. A lot of people talk about it being peaceful but it really is. And that’s both the gardens and the woodlands and the river that runs through the woodlands, it all just oozes that sense of tranquillity that is incredibly supporting. So it’s somewhere that I can find peace, I think, as long as I’m not connected to a laptop or a phone. But beyond that, for the first… I don’t know, six, seven years that we were living in this area I had children still living at home so it was where we would come for family walks. We’d bring the dog down for a walk through the woodland and it’s somewhere that my family have now grown up loving just as much as I have. So there’s a big part of family memories there as well.
H:So you must know that woodland and the beck really fairly well now?

HB:Yes, I think so. Yes.

H:Have you got any particular places that you feel are special to you?

HB:Now I’m going to struggle to describe where this is but if you go down… There’s a couple of places but first of all with the river in particular. If you go down the zigzag path and follow the footpath round to where it meets the riverbank itself. There’s something about the light on the water there, coming through the trees when the water’s rushing down the beck, that is just magical. Just that particular location. Possibly partly because it’s one of the few places that you actually get to stand right next to the river and you can look down it and you can look up it and see it flowing by properly. But, yes, it feels quite a magical place. And in spring that location is also full of wildflowers with snowdrops and bistort and Stellaria, all kinds of beautiful groundcover plants coming up in spring as well. So a combination of those two things – that time of year and that location – are really magical. The other location that I love is a bit further away from the river but if you walk past the compost area towards the Newbiggin Road there’s a fairly level path goes all the way out past the drift mine. Before you get to the drift mine the woodland on your left-hand side is very open and… I’m not sure I can put it into words but there’s something about the atmosphere in that part of the woodland that is gentle, I suppose. But it feels like because it’s more open and there’s less groundcover like nettles and brambles and things, it feels like a lovely place for families to play, whether it’s den building or hide and seek or whatever. So that’s a lovely place as well.

H:And how important is that woodland area and the beck, do you think, to visitors who come possibly for the first time to a National Trust garden and maybe have expectations of what they’re going to see? What do you think they make of that woodland area which is really, as you say, quite wild?

HB:I think a lot of people don’t even know it’s there until they come. So people tend to arrive at Acorn Bank because they think we have a house and a garden and the garden, of course, is absolutely beautiful and we get lots of wonderful comments about that. But then what takes them by surprise is that this beautiful woodland, which is… in contrast to some woodlands it’s very accessible in that you don’t have to climb a mountain or canoe across a lake or whatever to get to it. It’s nature that anyone can get into and enjoy and enjoy spending time in. So, yeah, they’re taken by surprise and it’s a wonderful place just to spend some time, whether it’s connecting with nature while they’re there or spending time with family and friends. It’s just a lovely way to do that. It’s a gentle walk through a beautiful woodland that allows them to put the focus on themselves rather than on having to do something strenuous or pay attention to interpretation panels or information being given to them. They can just be and I think that’s really, really valuable. But it’s also really, really valued by our local communities for dog walking and so on, possibly outside opening hours, I couldn’t possibly comment. But, yeah, it’s very, very valuable.

H:They’re not supposed to come in when it’s closed, is that right?

HB: No, not really. Well, there’s a public footpath that runs straight through the property from the village, Temple Sowerby, across the parkland, through the woods and out towards Newbiggin. And, of course, public footpaths are a public right of way and anyone can access them at any time they like. But, of course, once you’re on site and if you’re walking your dog you’re just as likely to go for a wander around the rest of the woods.
H:And there is this lovely sense of it being a fantastic place just to chill out, isn’t there?
HB:Yes, yeah, there is, really, really is. It’s a small downside but of course the woodlands are full of ground-nesting birds and red squirrels here and there as well. So we do endeavour to try and encourage people to keep their dogs on leads, just to protect that wildlife, but it’s not always possible.

H:Animals and birds that are there, what do you think is the most… Well, what’s valuable about that?

HB:My understanding of it is that there isn’t necessarily anything incredibly endangered or special there but it is rich and diverse and varied and natural. So a lot of the woodland, a big chunk of the woodland from where the ponds are right over to where the compost area was, is, were improved by Dorothy Una Ratcliffe in the 1930s and ‘40s because she wanted to set up a wildflower and bird reserve in the woodlands here. And she’d been on a trip to a botanic garden in South Africa and seen how they used their botanic gardens for conservation of native floral species. And she came back with this grand idea that she was going to do the same thing in Cumbria for Cumbrian native species. So she got in contact with Kew Gardens and she got advice from them and they gave her 30 packets of seeds of wildflowers to grow that should be happy in the woodlands here. Unfortunately we don’t know what those species were but if you walk down there now you see an incredibly diverse range of…. Certainly when I’ve been down at certain times of year I’ve counted 40 or 50 different species of flower all in flower at the same time in late spring, early summer. So, yeah. And she wanted it to be a bird sanctuary, that’s maybe a grand word but that kind of idea, as well. And in one of her letters to Kew she talks about it possibly being… in reference to the wildflowers in particular, possibly being in her understanding the first wildflower reserve of its kind in this country. I couldn’t possibly vouch for that but it’s rather nice that she had that ambition. With the wildlife it’s the same – we have birds and red squirrels. There are badgers, there’s… Again, nothing incredibly scarce or protected but an interesting diversity of insects and birds and mammals, yeah, for sure.

H:Did you mention the date that Dorothy Una Ratcliffe did this?

HB:1930s and ‘40s off the top of my head. Obviously we have got digital copies of her letters with Kew which will be dated so I can look them up for you later if you need me to, yeah.

H:You’ve obviously read and researched quite a lot about this lady. How much do you think she was ahead of her time in that thinking?

HB:Well I think of Dorothy Una Ratcliffe as an incredibly strong, forward-looking woman. She was fiercely independent, from what I can see. Having travelled the world, some of it independently, sailed to Iceland for goodness sake, and all sorts of things. So, yeah, I don’t know a great deal about her factually but my impression of her is that she was very forward thinking. And despite having come from what can only be described as high circles of society, she would have been considered a socialite, actually had a great interest in all sectors of society and was a real proponent of the gypsy community, for example, and wrote her poetry in Yorkshire dialect. So, yeah, she wasn’t high and mighty, if you know what I mean. So, yeah, I think she probably was reasonably well ahead of her time. And possibly because she was doing that travelling that then informed her thinking.

H:And a lot of that tendency towards… well, more than a tendency, but a desire for conservation and for preserving native species, that’s very much in tune with how the National Trust is today, 60-70 years later, isn’t it?

HB:It really is, yeah. I suppose it’s a coincidence in some ways but I feel like the outdoors here, whether it’s the woodland or the garden or a combination of both, is the fundamental reason why the National Trust was keen to acquire Acorn Bank as part of its portfolio. So, yes, it sort of fits in very well with what we’re doing now.

H:And going back to the ground cover, the wild plants that you’re saying maybe 40 or so species, clearly her packet of 30 seeds has flourished.

HB:Well she would have had a team of gardeners at the time so hopefully they got it all off to a good start. And, yes, I only wish I had a list of what those seeds were because what is unsure now is whether what’s there now is what she planted or whether it’s been planted since then by the National Trust. Because record keeping is rare, I think it’s probably fair to say. So there are things growing in the woodland that I know for a fact were planted by previous National Trust Head Gardeners but there’s also huge swathes of things that I think have been there at least since Dorothy’s time, possibly a lot longer. So the area of woodland I was talking about that is very open and great for den building is absolutely full of wood anemone which is a key indicator species of ancient woodlands. So that feels like it’s been there a lot longer than the hundred years or so since Dorothy lived here. But then if you go down towards the river you’ve got a whole range of different flowers that I think were probably introduced by Dorothy. And certainly in a lot of the woodland there are huge swathes of daffodils which we know were introduced by Dorothy as well. So we have a record of Dorothy purchasing 66,000 daffodil bulbs from Backhouse Nurseries. I can only assume they were what you might now call bargain bucket bulbs because 66,000 is an awful lot to buy if you’re buying expensive cultivars. But, yes, it’s amazing when it’s out in flower.

H:So what are the kinds of plants and flowers that visitors here should look out for and how sharp do their eyes need to be?

HB:In the woodlands? Now you’re testing me. You know, I’m not going to remember a lot of them off the top of my head, Helen, but Anemone nemorosa, which is the wood anemone, is a tiny, tiny little flower, shorter than a snowdrop. So if it was just one or two you would need to be really keen eyed to see them. But there are so many of them that when they’re out, when they’re in flower, it is a carpet of white, so you can’t miss them. The snowdrops, again, produce carpets; the daffodils produce carpets. There are bluebells in patches, not in huge swathes sadly. Wild garlic is just completely… carpets areas of the woodland and the smell is amazing from that, you can’t miss that. You will smell it before you see it. But then lower down in the woodland you have Persicaria, which the common name is bistort, which is beautiful. The flowers are often planted quite close to the path which makes me wonder whether it’s a National Trust layer rather than an older layer. But, yes, the bistort is down near the river near the place where I was saying you can look both ways. You’ve got toothwort, toothwort is a really interesting parasitic plant. So it doesn’t photosynthesise at all, it gets all its nutrients from tree roots under the surface and then puts up these bizarre looking spikes of flowers that… yeah, you might look at them and think what on earth is that and not even recognise it as a flower, to be honest, but it’s a curiosity rather than a pretty thing. Huge, huge carpets of butterbur which you won’t miss either. I don’t know whether you know it, Helen, but it has these huge umbrella-like leaves, a little bit like… to the uninitiated they might think that’s a field of rhubarb over there. But actually it’s this beautiful, mainly foliage, plant which creates… I always think, because the woodlands here are known for their fairies, if you like, it’s full of fairy houses. The fairy population is thriving and I always think these huge canopies of the butterbur leaves must be great playgrounds for the fairies underneath.

H:Now we started this conversation really quite scientific and botanical and now you’re telling me…

HB:And now we’re talking about fairies.

H:There are fairies in the woods. Can you explain a little bit about what’s this… is this folklore about fairies, is it stories, are they real?

HB:Well, I couldn’t possibly comment whether they’re real or not, that’s for the individual to decide. Factually there is no provenance for this element of storytelling at Acorn Bank but we had a ranger here for many years who was very, very crafty in a carpenter kind of way, not in a sneaky way. And he made these beautiful fairy houses which just started popping up all over the woods. So there’s one tree in particular on the path that you take along the top of the woodland towards the mill, there’s one tree in particular that I remember had one fairy house tucked away. It was just a simple little door with a knocker, a door knocker, tucked away in between the roots at the base of the tree. Within a couple of years there was about ten of them all the way around the tree. So I say he wasn’t crafty in a sneaky way but I’m not sure about that. And then there would be one halfway up a tree on an island in the pond. There was one that has a jetty with a boat on it in the pond. There’s one that has a little tea set outside it as if the fairies are going to have a tea party. A fairy potting shed popped up in the orchard, full of miniature tools and little tiny balls of string and all sorts of things like that. So, yes, the fairy houses proliferated and caused a little bit of concern in some camps about whether the fairies were taking over the woods. So at the minute the fairy population is on hold and we are maintaining the fairy houses but trying to avoid them growing in number. But yes. The thing is that they are absolutely loved by visitors, particularly visitors with small children. So it’s just a lovely thing to go for a walk through the woods and stumble across these tiny, tiny little dwellings in unexpected places. It’s a little bit of joy for our visitors.

H:Let’s just get back to the plants for the moment. You mentioned bluebells there but of course we’ve got these Spanish invasive bluebells, possibly at the expense of the native ones. How difficult is that to manage, both in the garden and in the woodlands?

HB:Yeah, so the bluebells in the woodlands are English bluebells. I have found Spanish bluebells in the garden and when we find them we dig them up because we want to avoid the possibility of the two varieties hybridising. So all it would take would be for an adventurous little bee to come along and collect pollen from the Spanish bluebells in the garden and take it to an English bluebell in the woods and pollinate the flowers there. And then seeds from that are no longer true English bluebells. So as those seeds then fall to the ground and germinate and grow and develop you’ve got a whole new plant family… not family, a whole new plant variety popping up in the woodlands which… I mean, it’s still beautiful, it still supports pollinators but it has the danger of being more vigorous and perhaps taking over where the English bluebells would normally be. So, yeah, we definitely control them, we don’t want that to happen.

H:So for somebody possibly listening right now, taking a walk through the woodlands, can you describe what they should be seeing when they see an English bluebell, a native English flower?

HB:Yes. So English bluebells are smaller than the Spanish ones. The leaves are narrower, they’re not as broad and straplike. So they’re a little bit more of a subtle creature altogether. The flower stalk is shorter than the Spanish bluebell, probably… what’s that? About 20-25cm? And the individual flowers on that stem will look like they’re all on one side of the stem and the stem will usually droop over slightly at the very, very top. Whereas with Spanish bluebells they tend to be upright and the flowers tend to be arranged all the way round the stem. I don’t know why I’m showing you with my hands but anyway.

H:That’s fine.

HB:But, yes, so they’re less chunky, a little bit daintier and it looks like the flowers are all on one side, hanging over to one side.

H:So that’s what people should be seeing?

HB:That’s the English native bluebell, yes.

H:Moving on a little bit to the birds… Well, you mentioned the bees, birds and bees and animals, you’ve mentioned some of the species there. I know you’ve said that there isn’t anything particularly unusual. But, again, what should a visitor to these woods be on the lookout for?

HB:Helen, I’m going to struggle to remember names of things, to be fair. But I know that we have a relatively unusual butterfly called the Purple Hairstreak. You’d be very lucky to see one. We have seen them occasionally which is why we know we’ve got them but they tend to live at the top of the oak trees, so quite difficult to spot. The birds we have nuthatches and treecreepers and a variety of other things that I can’t remember the names of.

H:Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’m putting you on the spot.

HB:Sorry, my memory for things like that just…

H:That’s fine, I’m putting you on the spot. But just staying with that beck, it has proved quite problematic over the years for you, hasn’t it? And with your National Trust management head on, how difficult has that been?

HB:I think, gosh, it must be nearly 2-2½ years ago now, we noticed that Crowdundle Beck was creating some issues for us in a couple of locations. One is that it tumbles over a weir and the weir’s purpose is to maintain a head of water so that the mill can abstract water for milling. And the weir itself is being undercut by the water coming off the edge of the weir and then the turbulence as it does that is churning up underneath the weir and it’s at risk of collapse. And we have an ongoing project with an engineering company but also in partnership with Eden Rivers Trust, the Environment Agency and the National Trust water experts as well, to find a solution to this problem. We’re currently looking at creating a boulder ramp that will effectively replace the sloping face of the weir. So it will still maintain a head of water for the mill but the boulder ramp will replace the concrete ramp, allowing the water to cascade off the edge and tumble its way downstream but at the same time facilitate fish passage upstream. So it’s an improvement for nature, if you like, as well as maintaining the heritage value of the weir itself. The other place it’s causing us an issue is further downstream the river sweeps around the mill and heads towards the parkland. And at that point it hits the parkland with some force. This hasn’t been a massive issue in the past but we think that with climate warming the river is behaving more energetically more frequently. And unfortunately the soil in that area is very, very friable, it’s very sandy. So the river is undercutting the parkland and it’s just crumbling into the river and getting washed away. So it’s caused a cliff that is, I would say, four or five metres tall and that cliff has moved backwards into the parkland by about four metres in the space of two years. Our local water experts and regional water experts and Eden Rivers Trust have all commented that what they’re seeing happen here is unprecedented, that they can’t quite believe the speed at which it’s happening.
The reason it’s causing us an issue is because the erosion is travelling towards the driveway. Now, the driveway brings not only visitors to Acorn Bank, and therefore our income, but it also brings emergency services, deliveries and so on for heating of the house, the pellets that feed the biomass system for the house and all of that then supports the livelihoods for the people that work here and the volunteers who support us. The National Trust has an inalienable responsibility to Acorn Bank in that it cannot just walk away from it; it has to look after it. Those are the terms of its ownership. That includes protecting it from disasters such as fire. So even if we weren’t open to the public we would need to ensure that fire engines could get to the building, grade I listed mansion, if they needed to, God forbid. So this driveway that is being threatened by the river erosion is our issue. We have to maintain a driveway to the house.
And currently we have two separate strands of how to deal with this. The first one is an emergency solution. So if the river gets too close to the drive and we have to stop using the drive we need to be able to put an emergency solution in like that, really quickly, overnight, so that we can protect the building from fire if we needed to. That temporary solution is currently in for planning permission and it will create a loop that goes around the eroding river bank. Longer term there is potential for looking at a whole new location for the driveway. And this is because the options for dealing with the river erosion in any other way just aren’t ticking the boxes we need it to tick. The river is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, it's also a Special Area for Conservation, it also has that heritage connection to the mill. It also has the problem that although we are the landowners on one side of it, the other side is not our land and it’s lower lying than ours. So if we were to try and slow down the river or change its route or mollify it in any way, we risk influencing our neighbour’s land and causing flooding on somebody else’s land and that is something we don’t want to do, obviously. So it appears that the best solution is going to be to actually allow the river to do what it needs to do naturally, and that’s probably the best thing for nature as well anyway, and work around it. So that would mean moving the driveway in the long term, or being prepared to move the driveway in the long term at the very least. So this strand of this work is now looking at where that driveway should be and what the pros and cons are for that and the feasibility for doing it and identifying the funding to be able to do it. Major, major project.
Yeah. I mean, I won’t say it’s been a headache for me because actually one of the beauties for working for the National Trust is that you have a huge team of experts around you. So my part on that team is really just to represent Acorn Bank, staff, volunteers, visitor experience. But the real work is really being done by the Riverlands team, supported by the Environment Agency and the Eden Rivers Trust and, of course, our water advisor regionally as well. So, yes, all I do is communicate what’s happening to the rest of the team, really, I suppose and make sure that the team here is represented. That’s all.

H:I think you may have answered this anyway but I was just observing, really, how many different agendas are going on here to balance the needs of your neighbours, your visitors, a property, the woodland, the fish, the wildlife, the people, everybody.

HB:Yes, yeah.

H:That’s a huge balance and I just wonder day to day how that is for you, trying to keep all that together in your head?

HB:Do you want the honest answer? Well, I mean, the weir in particular, the conversation about what to do about the weir damage has been rumbling on for a very long time. And that, what you’ve just described, the number of stakeholders and the different needs of all those stakeholders, is what’s prevented it from moving forwards. So actually while I’m aware that it’s possible that some stakeholders, for example the millers, might be quite anxious about not getting it done now, I’m really proud that the team has actually got to a point where we have a solution and now it’s just about putting that solution into place. So, yeah, it’s been difficult. Yeah, there’s a lot to do but that’s the job, isn’t it? And communicating to people. I think communication is just fundamental to all of it. As long as you’re communicating with people and telling your stakeholders what they need to know, that’s half the battle.

H:If Dorothy was still here, I wonder if you have any thoughts about what she’d be thinking about what’s happening with this beck and what the future might hold for it.

HB:Oh gosh, I have no idea Helen. I suspect she would err towards supporting nature rather than supporting the heritage of the location of a driveway. Partly because I know that she had a passion for nature, as demonstrated by her work in the woodland, but also partly because actually in the 1930s and 40s the concept of heritage and conserving history was much less topical, if that’s the right word, than it is now.

H:That was a very difficult question, well done.

H:Is there anything that I should have asked you that I haven’t done in relation to the woodlands and the river, do you think?

HB:The only thing that’s coming to mind is recent storm damage which is nothing to do with the river, of course, but it was Storm Éowyn. We have a very exposed site, so for somebody that doesn’t know Acorn Bank, we have a house facing onto parkland and it’s facing west-southwest, that sort of direction. So it’s very exposed to our prevailing wind direction of the west. And immediately behind the house is woodland and the woodland descends down a steep bank towards the beck that we’ve been discussing. Because of that aspect the woodland is protected from the westerly winds very nicely and any trees that are exposed are braced against it because they’ve got used to it. And trees tend to develop supporting wood on their exposed face. But the danger is when you get a storm that comes from a different direction and that’s what happened with Storm Éowyn and it came from a more easterly direction and we lost several mature trees in the woodlands that year. Yeah, it’s really sad when it happens, to lose mature trees. It’s incredibly sad. And actually on the same note of losing trees, if we cast our minds back to the eroding riverbank and we had to take down four mature oak trees that were ballpark 200 years old each. That was probably the saddest moment of my career at Acorn Bank, to lose those four mature oak trees was incredibly sad. We all know how valuable oak trees are for nature and wildlife and how much they support but also just the visual presence that they take up in the approach to the house. As you come up the driveway you’re used to seeing these massive sentinels lined up alongside the drive. And they were unusually tall and straight for oak trees, most oak trees tend to be shorter and a little bit gnarlier, I think. But these ones are, or were, particularly tall and straight and stood really upright. So they really left a hole when we had to take them down, unfortunately.

H:And that’s quite an emotional hole that’s left isn’t it?

HB:Yeah, yeah it is. We’ve managed to keep… most of the wood, unfortunately, was sold for timber but we’ve managed to keep one slab of a trunk and we’ve located it next to the car park behind the house. So there’s a footpath that runs along beside it and I have an ambition which at the minute is just a dream, but I have an ambition of being able to engage an artist to engrave the route of Crowdundle Beck onto that slab and along it to engrave some of the wildlife that lives amongst it and beside it. I think it would be a nice way to use the wood and it would enrich the visitor experience as well.
So last year we held a Heritage Open Day to highlight Dorothy’s poetry and particularly how that ties in with Acorn Bank’s desire to be supporting nature and supporting nature experiences. Because on closer inspection of Dorothy’s poetry she writes not only in Yorkshire dialect but she uses… I suppose the right word is imagery that refers to nature. So on first glance, when you read a poem, it appears to be about nature but actually it tends to be about human relationships but in the context of nature or using nature as an example of using nature to describe the way she’s feeling. And that’s what I love about her poetry, actually, that I think she uses nature in a natural way, an informal day to day unaffected way, that we’ve lost. It kind of reflects a sense of nature being part of everyday life a hundred years ago in the way that for many people it’s not anymore. And we’ve lost that use of nature in our language that when you read her poetry seems to be so prevalent. So that’s what I was trying to get across with the Heritage Open Day and get people to see that use of references to nature that we seem to not use anymore.
H:In some ways we’ve become very scientific, haven’t we, about nature and we’ve become very expert but we possibly have forgotten…

HB:Lost the connection.

H:The day to day connection.

HB:Which is what Acorn Bank is trying to achieve. It’s trying to get people to connect back to nature. Yes. Somebody sent me a blog that they had read, so they’d just stumbled across this blog online one day and it was written by somebody that had been to the Heritage Open Day and really enjoyed it. And in fact talked in their blog exactly about what I’ve just said, about the fact that Dorothy’s poetry used nature as her reference point.