On the country side of the rail tracks, Victorian picks and shovels once turned a hill into a hollow. After the quarrying ended, the landscape of Cox’s Hill was left contoured like a sports stadium – a flattish, sparsely grassed central pitch surrounded by stepped terracing on three sides, the west bank having been sliced away by the railway cutting. Crowds came to stand there over the ensuing decades – crowds of birches, sycamores, and bramble thickets.
The town fireworks were held in this wood-fringed bowl every year before the pandemic. In lockdown, townspeople crossed the bridge to breathe in its green lungs and children played.
Not any more. Shortly before Christmas, the landowning estate barred unofficial access by erecting a post and wire fence along the entire length fronting the lane, reinforcing the exclusion with “keep out” posts at regular intervals. I had walked the woods most weeks through the Covid pandemic, chatting with dogs and their owners. Lately, I patrolled the road outside, looking in at familiar features that were now out of reach.
I see a mature tree, one of many that I have found with shattered glass underneath. I can see – just – through to the “pitch” where last year caravans rocked up and, over the course of a few days, their owners emptied both the vans and themselves before moving on. And there, a still-bare patch among the brambles – one of four I sniffed out when fires were lit during our flammable July. The flames licked towards the edge of a mini-cliff, a popular spot from which to hurl tin cans, bottles, off-white goods, a saggy armchair, a sofa. Such behaviour is unacceptable in a national park, local park or any natural area.
There is, of course, too much British land that is off limits to the public. But in this instance, it’s no wonder the estate erected a barrier as a solution to, as the signs put it, “multiple incidents of antisocial behaviour”. Today, only words are stopping me from going inside. A week or so ago, the wires were cut and fenceposts heaved out of the ground. Cox’s Hill is off limits to the law-abiding, while miscreants are still making mischief.
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