A Corsham dumping ground is now an award-winning garden one volunteer calls a reason to get up. A Lincolnshire school found a 23ft Bayeux Tapestry copy in its attic.
A former dumping ground in Corsham is now an award-winning garden for people who have been unwell or are caring for someone, and a Lincolnshire primary school has found a 23ft hand-stitched version of the Bayeux Tapestry in its attic.
The ground at Park Lane, in Corsham, Wiltshire, is three acres. Until recently it was somewhere people left things they did not want. This year it won the Royal Horticultural Society and BBC The One Show Growing Together Award for Community Gardening, and the citation the judges gave was about the people standing among the plants. 1
The garden beat about 1,000 other entries from across the UK. It has 66 members and is open to the public, and the prize is £1,000 of national garden vouchers to put towards planting and the next stage of the site. 2
The RHS judge Guy Barter said the garden was "growing far more than fruit, vegetables and floral fantasias but people, their connections and skills". 2
Stefi Robertshaw is 56, and one of the volunteers. She has ME, also called chronic fatigue syndrome, a long-term illness whose most common symptom is extreme tiredness, and which can get worse for weeks after activity. 3 She also has fibromyalgia, a long-term condition that causes pain all over the body. 4
She describes what the garden is for in plain terms. "I always get very depressed at this time of year as the nights draw in... but it has given me a sense of belonging and pride because it's the only thing I can be a part of that I can sustain," she said. It is, she said, her "reason to get up in the morning". 2
She describes who else is there. "A number of fit people in full-time jobs do all the heavy stuff... then we've got people who are physically disabled or have invisible illnesses like myself and people with depression and anxiety," she said. "Everybody is so wonderful, friendly and welcoming and we have a complete acceptance and lack of judgement on everybody and their situation." 2
Claire Harding is an unpaid carer for her mother, who has cognitive decline. The garden has given her, she said, a "massive boost". "There are times I just want to cry - but every time I go to the garden it's like a reset. I feel much lighter than when I arrived." 2
Jon Brennan founded the garden and chairs it. To be recognised, he said, was a "huge thing". "Every day there are at least a dozen-plus people who come through [the garden] and sit," he said. 2
What I keep coming back to is what the judges were measuring: a place where someone who spends her days caring for her mother, and someone whose body will not let her do the heavy digging, each have a reason to turn up.
The tapestry in the attic
In the attic of Uffington Church of England Primary School, in Lincolnshire, somebody found a 23ft (7m) embroidery, covered in cobwebs. 5
It tells the story of the Norman conquest of England and the Battle of Hastings in 1066, down to the death of King Harold II. It is thought to date from the 1960s or 1970s, and nobody at the school knows who stitched it, or exactly when. 5
For scale: the original Bayeux Tapestry, embroidered in the 11th century, is 70m (230ft) long, and it is on loan to the British Museum from Normandy while its home there is renovated — on display in London until 11 July 2027. 6 The school's version is about a tenth of that length, and it is hand-stitched throughout. 5
Andrew Evans, the head teacher, said he "couldn't believe it" when it was uncovered, and the detail told him it had taken real time. "The level of detail that's been put into creating this, it's not something that's going to have been made over one or two weeks," he said. 5
It is also unfinished. "There's a section at the end which seems to be missing, so we'll have to keep hunting," Evans said. "It might be up in the ceiling somewhere, hidden away or in a box." 5
The children have their own reading of it. Charlotte, 10, likes the battle scenes. "I love all the violence in it," she said. "It's quite cool looking at how they used to behave back then because right now we'd probably just like be settling it in court, which isn't very exciting." Her verdict on the school's version is blunter. "I think this one's cooler because the school made it." 5
George, seven, has a favourite scene too — Harold struck in the eye by an arrow. "I think it was a very brutal war," he said. 5
The embroidery has been given to the village archive, where Kate Genever and others are still trying to uncover its history. Genever said it came to light only after somebody with links to the school remembered where it had been stored. 5
"I squawked and said, 'it's gorgeous'. It's a fantastic thing," she said. "I love the colour of it. Of course, it's very different from the original but that's what makes it brilliant." 5
Evans' invitation to anyone nearby is a simple one. "If you're not lucky enough to get tickets for the British Museum," he said, "then to be able to kind of come and see this in the village would be second best." 5
References
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- 4Fibromyalgia
nhs.uk
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