There is a small boggy valley of old pasture at the centre of the village, a Wildlife Trust nature reserve that is remarkable for what has preserved it: a non-native flower more aligned with municipal parks.
Inkpen crocus field is where spring happens first. A rare example of unimproved, unploughed meadow (the sort we’ve lost 97% of, since this column existed), situated between houses and farmland. It’s rich in wildflowers such as heath spotted-orchid, devil’s-bit scabious, meadow saxifrage, betony and pignut, and with thick old hedgerows and a spring-fed brook in its fold, it’s often the first place I see bumblebees and brimstone butterflies.
But it’s the 400,000 wild crocuses I’ve come to greet. Poking above grass that’s been winter-grazed by cattle, their purple centres are filled with egg-yolk yellow, pollen-covered stamens. It is the largest display of wild spring crocuses in Britain, and became a nature reserve in 1912, when such rough meadows were abundant.
How they came to be here is a mystery. One theory is that they were brought back from the Crusades in the 12th century by the Knights Templar, as a cheap or mistaken form of saffron. Certainly, the Knights Templar settled in this out-of-the-way spot. Sir Roger de Ingpen, a veteran of the Crusades, founded our little flint church and is buried there, and there is a hamlet nearby named Templeton.
This may be a case of “the wrong crocuses”, however. Crocus vernus are not the autumn-flowering, saffron-producing Crocus sativus. Perhaps knights, or locals, weren’t immune to scams. Perhaps these flowers are really the result of centuries-old cottage garden waste.
Either way, this incongruous field of crocuses, neither lawn nor entirely a wildflower meadow, has survived because of them, and for so much more – the barn owl that hunts voles here, stoats that run over it and, today, a little sun after nearly 50 days of rain. It is a strange, gleeful and defiant nature reserve; the ordinary out of place and time, extraordinary either way, with its tentative history.
A warm southerly wind comes off the downs, stirs the lit cups into a dance, and tumbles a brimstone butterfly into being.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024, is available now at guardianbookshop.com
