Simon English
England Revisited

On stake in field just south of the re-inhabited railway station south of Stow on the Wold.

On a stick in the same field south of the old railway station. This is next to a new post and barbed wire fence that prevents cattle from pushing through the overgrown Hawthorne hedge that once bordered the old railway as they do on the old hedge the other side of the field. I think that there were no fence posts in 1971 so I put the flag on a stick that I pushed into the ground.

The railway closed in the 1960 and by the time I visited at the start of the next decade track had been taken up and the old redundant station and yards had been converted into a private house. One feature, a line of Scots pine familiar to other old stations on this line, can still be seen.

The field is grazing land, presumably damp at the valley floor with rushes and buttercup. Looking southwest down the valley along the route the old railway takes the hedges are well trimmed while those on either side are uncut and tall. The fields are unusually long and this gives the impression of looking down the jumps on a racecourse. Looking at the map an explanation might be that when the railway was built in the 19th century it was taken across the large square fields on the valley bottom dividing each maybe two thirds on side, one third or less the other. This series of little strips remain even now that the railway that created them has ceased operations.
Points 55, 56 & 57