Re-wilding the Wordhoard

Bucks Mills, North Devon March/April 2022

A unique collaborative art project by women artists that will engage local people and visitors to reflect on the language of landscape through the discovery and re-wilding of dialect words. This project, supported by The National Trust, Chalk Cliff Trust and Common Ground and partnered by Ditchling Museum, is led by sculptor Jo Sweeting. She will be joined by experienced practitioners in print and writing to enable a cross-fertilization of ideas through their shared interest in the language of the local landscape.

Project Overview – by Jo Sweeting

The ‘Word-Hoard’ first found in Robert Macfarlane’s book Landmarks unearths and exposes words specific to certain terrains, areas of landscape and counties in the British Isles. These words are ‘particularising’ aspects of language. They offer us a chance to reconnect with plants, farming activities, weather, terrain and ways of living that are part of our history. It’s through the naming of actions and objects that we notice and are able to develop a relationship with them.

Lettercarving is an ancient art. Carving a letter into stone celebrates and prolongs words and language. It has often been used by scholars and the establishment to give weight to dictums and lofty thoughts that were the terrain of an educated few.

The aim of this project is to celebrate and preserve the words of everyday people. These words are not Robert Macfarlane’s or mine, they are ‘ours’. That is to say, everyone’s words. They are everyday working words. They may describe the action of the weather, the slope of the land, or a space where once an animal lay. Many are falling into disuse because our lifestyles are changing. Words are particular to certain geographical areas, although they often share similarities in patterns and sound crossovers.

These words are fascinating, beautiful, and powerful with an energy and aura that is distinct and not often explored. By carving dialect words onto stone, I am taking the word-hoard back to the landscape from which it sprang, creating a lexicon of stone and calling for response from passers-by, co-creating new words that live on.

Devon was one of the richest sources of dialect words initially collated by Robert MacFarlane. The bedrock of carboniferous sandstones, shales and Devonian slate found in the county acts as a perfect material for carving letters onto and is evident in the striations visible on the beach at Bucks Mills, an ancient fishing hamlet that I have visited and stayed in for 20 years. The cliff formations are called the ‘Variscon Orogeny’. The stones are shales and sandstones that make up the area known as the Crackington Formation and were formed during the Devonian period. These geological formations were laid down 320 million years ago.

The bedrocks at Bucks Mills are scarred and scraped by the fall and roll of enormous boulders. These erratic stones occasionally moved along the coast in winter storms. Most remain stationary and have become known sentinels on the foreshore.

As Robert MacFarlane says: “My own quiet hope is that the land and sea themselves become co-collaborators with Jo, as well as the stone into which she proposes carving. I am very attracted by the idea of the main stone/shore boulder onto which Jo proposes carving as having a life of its own; moving and migrating, being shifted by tide and storm (like David Nash’s famous wooden boulder). For language moves too; has its own longshore drift, its own erosions. To me, the artistic resonances of the idea of a carved erratic with the way that language moves, slowly, are very suggestive. “

On the way down the cliff path to the beach is a tiny stone building known as ‘The Cabin’ once owned by the painters Judith Ackland and Mary Stella Edwards who worked here from 1920 until 1971. Now in the care of the National Trust, it is a place where artists hold residencies and will be the hub of our activities.

Devon Word-Hoard

Almost three years of carving, printing, writing, conversation and collecting dialect words has taken place since Jo’s first response to reading Landmarks and her appreciation of the Common Ground aim, ‘to promote local distinctiveness’ and prevent the commonplace from ‘being overlooked at the expense of the special and rare’. This is core to the Word-Hoard project.

In collaboration with Louisa Thomsen Brits and Tanya Shadrick, Jo carved the first iteration of the Word-Hoard conceived in the landscape – a response to a chalk boulder discovered while they walked the hills of the Sussex downland where they live. Initially carved with ‘foundle’, a Sussex dialect word meaning anything found on a hillside, it became the touchstone at the core of the Foundle Project.

https://www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing/foundle-by-tanya-shadrick-jo-sweeting-and-louisa-thomsen-brits/

A further 700 words from across the UK were ‘gifted’ to Robert MacFarlane since the publication of Landmarks. He gave these words to Jo to use in one of the richest word regions, Devon.Some words are still used frequently, whilst others rarely. They illuminate and record place, memory and time. Often describing weather, land, water in ways that not only enhance but also are particular to place.

Words such as:

Brimbo – Bramble

Dimpsy – Dusk

Sitch – Rise and fall of the tide

Smarthy -Humid/airless

Tiddly Tope – Wren

Discovering the word ‘Palsh’, a Devon dialect word meaning ‘to walk slowly whilst looking’, Jo lettercarved this and the word ‘Bide’ onto boulders on Bucks Mills beach pre-lockdown. She scoured them with sea water, seaweed and allowing the tide to reduce and reclaim them so that language, as time and tide, was changed and

altered. Jo has been in conversation with the public and Devon words have been offered to help prepare for the work ahead. This project is about to begin.

Project Plan

· The Cabin becomes a place to meet local people from the village and surrounding areas and to engage walkers as they pass by on the South West Coastal Path, collating their Devonian and other words from the regions they live in. A separate ledger for collecting dialect words will be accessible at The Burton at Bideford. A handwritten book of Devonian dialect words will be added to the Word-Hoard.

· Writer and collaborator Tanya Shadrick will record Devonian voices and contributions before and during the first open weekend.

Louisa Thomsen Brits will encourage visitors to share their experience of the local landscape, their understanding of the genius loci of the place and help them create symbols and compound words drawn from local dialect and their poetic awareness of the cabin and its surroundings.

People will be notified by NT, press, social media.

(Instagram @thestonecarver @wordhoard.project )

· A large boulder on the beach will be selected to carve the Word-Hoard words into its surface using traditional v incised lettering as taught by Eric Gill and handed down to Jo by John Skelton/Helen Mary Skelton. This will all be done by drawing direct onto the boulder at low tide and carving with hand tools. The public will be welcome to watch and be involved in discussions whilst the work is being made. If the boulder is moved along the beach in subsequent years, other words could be added to it. Of course, it may never move or may be lost to sea.

· Participants will be given pigment made from the ancient rocks found on the North Devon coast to paint some of the words that they offer the Word-Hoard onto the stone boulders on the beach or into the Word-Hoard book. The non-permanent pigments will be washed by time and tide.

· Local (Hartland-based) printmaker Merlyn Chesterman will co-collaborate with Jo Sweeting on a preparation for carving woodcut prints in response to the ‘genius loci’ of the area of Buck Mills. Jo and Merlyn will choose a boulder for its qualities, study its position, nature and placement on the beach and will use it as the starting point for a series of works noting tide, time and light. This core of words will be absorbed into the response and colour and pigment will be an integral part of the work.

· Common Ground will support the project and Little Toller will produce a pamphlet with an introduction by Robert Macfarlane.

· Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft (Sussex) will host a post-residency discussion and workshops for public participation.

TIMETABLE SO FAR

At Bucks Mills 30th March – 22nd April 2022

30th March – artists Jo Sweeting and Louisa Thomsen Brits start work on site.

1st April The Cabin and The Burton open for word contributions (on call at The Cabin).

2nd – 3rd April The Cabin Public Open Weekend – hosted by Louisa Thomsen Brits Jo Sweeting and Tanya Shadrick.

4th – 22nd April word collection continues, centred on The Cabin (artists’ contact numbers posted on the door if they are not present).

Jo Sweeting will be working on the beach for the public to see.

Throughout: Woodcut collaboration between Jo Sweeting and Merlyn Chesterman

Easter Saturday – 16th April Public Exhibition of work to date at The Cabin.

Dates TBC

Michelle Werrett will lead walks along the hedgerows to the beach

Poet Alyson Hallett will engage in a poetic response to the environment.

Post-Residency – talk/workshop at Ditchling Museum.

Words and offerings wanted. You can submit your words here.

The Artists

This generous and beautiful project will bring together seven women.

It is an unpaid and unfunded residency that hopes to celebrate nature, dialect and place by using each of the seven artist’s strengths and skills.

The project will be a ‘Common Ground’ residency linking back to Roger Deakin and its female founders Sue Clifford and Angela King and previous artists in celebration of ‘the common place’ rather than the special and rare. Formed in 1982, its archive is now held by Little Toller.

The aim of this was to promote local distinctiveness and work with artists mapping a spirit of place. The artists’ detailed biographies and activities are available but in short:

Jo Sweeting will lettercarve on boulders and make woodcut prints.

Merlyn Chesterman will make woodcut prints.

Louisa Thomsen Brits will write about the genius Loci of place and offer ideas to carve on to the erratic boulders.

Tanya Shadrick will interview and record dialect words and memories of the people of Devon encountered during the project.

Alyson Hallett will visit Bucks Mills and make a poetic response to the environment and place.

Michelle Werrett will write a response to the hedges and fauna on the journey into the beach at Bucks Mills from the main road as it leads to the beach’s terminus.

Jane Mote will interview and make a film and sound recordings of the entire project.

Robert MacFarlane supporting quote:

“I am very glad to support Jo Sweeting’s work. Jo and I have collaborated indirectly over a number of projects now; the legacy of JA Baker visionary author of The Peregrine (1967); my ‘word-hoard’ of dialect words for landscape, weather and nature, gathered in a book of mine called Landmarks (2015), which Jo began to cut into stone in the months after that book was published; and now Jo’s involvement with a sculptural and calligraphic response to The Lost Words, a book I made with Jackie Morris. This proposed new project will be our first direct collaboration, however, and I’m excited about its possibilities. I hold Jo’s art – and craft – in the highest regard. She is, unmistakably, among the handful of leading stone-carvers and sculptors in the country (not to mention her abilities as a print-maker and beyond.)”

RE-WILDING THE WORDHOARD will collect Devonshire dialect words from both residents of and visitors to Bucks Mills, near Hartland, and celebrate them in carved erratic boulders, woodcuts and writing. You can already submit words using the contact form below.

The artists will be working on the beach and in residence at the Grade II-listed National Trust Artists’ Cabin (with a fascinating history) which overlooks it.

The first stage of Re-Wilding the Wordhoard – the Foundle project – took place on the Sussex Downs using words from its local dialect, and was supported by the Chalk Cliff Trust and the Ditchling Museum for Art + Craft.

We are proud to have support and partnership from Ditchling Museum and The Chalk Cliff Trust.