Naming ceremony at Blakeney Point

I was thrilled to participate in a very special event yesterday - the naming ceremony for the Francis Wall Oliver Research Centre on Blakeney Point.

Blakeney Point is a dynamic spit of shingle and sand dunes on the North Norfolk coast. The National Trust has been involved here for over a hundred years. The Point was acquired for the Trust in 1912, using funding from Charles Rothschild, and at the behest of Professor Francis Wall Oliver of University College London.

Yesterday’s event was a naming ceremony for the building that UCL continues to maintain on the end of Blakeney Point, adjacent to the Trust’s distinctive Lifeboat House. UCL continue to use the building as a field studies research outpost, accommodating students keen to record nature on the BlakeneyPoint National Nature Reserve, just as Professor Oliver did a century ago.

The event was therefore a celebration involving three groups of people in particular: research staff from UCL’s Centre for Biodiversity andEnvironment Research; National Trust staff; and members of the Oliver family, including two of his grandsons, two of his great grandsons, and a great great grandson.

It was a particular treat to see two pictures that were brought along for the occasion: one, an interior painting of the UCL building that was donated to UCL, the other a watercolour by Thomas Matthews Rooke of the National Trust Executive Committee meeting on 15 April 1912 at which the acquisition of Blakeney Point by the Trust was agreed. Shown as present at this meeting were Octavia Hill (though, in fact, she was not there, as she was close to death by this point), and Sir Robert Hunter, Chairman of the National Trust and a UCL graduate himself (he studied logic and moral philosophy there from 1861 to 1865).

It was wonderful hearing recollections of boyhood stays on Blakeney Point from Professor Oliver’s grandsons. It was also illuminating to hear that Professor Oliver moved to Egypt later in his life, and lived near El Alamein throughout the Second World War, continuing to live there even as the famous battle raged around him. He later published one of the first scientific papers on the impact of modern combat on the natural world, analysing the effect of tank treads on the desert landscape. This paper was apparently long neglected, but was much consulted in the aftermath of the first Gulf War.

According to his ODNB entry, Professor Oliver’s  sense of humour was “reflected in his Who's Who entry, where he listed his recreations as ‘once mountaineering, now washing up’.”. There was much washing up to be done after yesterday's afternoon tea - thanks to the UCL team for organising such a wonderful event. 

Wolf's Child at Felbrigg

Strange things are happening in the woods at Felbrigg at the moment. Each night, up to 250 visitors arrive for a performance that begins with a company of crows summoning up the bones of a wolf from a smouldering log fire, before leading the visitors on a walk through the dusky landscape. 

The story of Wolf’s Child, which has been the star of this year’s Norfolk and Norwich Festival, involves a running battle between the ‘Mother’ and her regiment of chanting maids, who live their ordered lives within the safe confines of the mansion, and the pack of wolves that roam the unruly woodlands beyond.

The story explores what happens when one of Mother’s maids, Rowan, answers the call of the wild by joining the wolf pack.  I mustn’t give too much more away, except to say that Rowan shows us one version of what we at the Trust might mean when we encourage people to ‘get outdoors and closer to nature’. The story explores the nature-culture divide, and demonstrates that however clever we two-legged human beings think we are, the crows are really the ones in charge.

If you get the chance to attend Wolf’s Child, please grab it and go while you can (it runs until 23 May). It’s such an inspirational glimpse of how places can be brought to life in new and interesting ways. The show has had rave reviews (including this one by Libby Purves). 

It really is something very special, written and produced by WildWorks (who previously worked at Kensington Palace and on the Passion in Port Talbot).