On belonging
"one of the central human acts is the act inhabiting or connecting ourselves however temporarily with a place on the planet which belongs to us and to which we belong."
'In Praise of Shadows'
Junichiro Tanizaki
If you've ever visited remote parts of the Lake District and spotted the distant white-grey specks of Herdwick sheep scattered about high on unfenced fells, you may have contemplated who they belong to and why they don't just wander away.
The answer lies in the strong instinct of female sheep to restrict themselves to a specific area. Over time, this acclimatisation to certain grazing grounds is passed on, with successive generations of ewes showing their lambs where to graze and reinforcing the tendency remain within a specific area or group.
It was in the book 'A Shepherd's Life' by James Rebanks that I learned that the term for this instinct to stay put is 'hefting', a word which stems from the Old Norse meaning 'tradition'. In common usage 'heft' also means weight or importance.
I recently came across the use of the word 'heft' in this latter context within another fascinating (and highly recommended) book - 'The Stonemason - A History of Building Britain' by Andrew Ziminski - both concerning the physical act of moving a block of stone into place and to the fit of the mason's tools to his hand after years of usage.
This connection between the intuitive attachment to a place and the physical act of building made me wonder whether we too are innately 'hefted' to-and-by the built landscape of our place of birth or heritage.
I grew up surrounded by buildings constructed in the soft red sandstone of Warwickshire. Despite photographing, drawing and painting these buildings for countless art projects and exams, however, I don't feel that I consciously registered any connection until I moved away and found myself surrounded instead by south-west's golden-hued oolitic limestone.
Even now, however, having lived amongst this most mellow of stones for more years than the rusty Warwickshire sandstone, there is a distinct deep resonance and sense of 'home', most keenly when I return to the built landscape of my youth. Interestingly however this is also evident on tracing my 'ancestral' route further northwards - through the Derbyshire Peak District and up into the Scottish Borders and southern uplands - which have buildings constructed in materials of a similar geological origin.
We are fortunate in this country to have such a rich variety of stone which can often be experienced by merely taking a short car drive. On a journey from Bath to Bristol and down into the Chew Valley you will, for example, encounter buildings constructed in (bear with me on the geology for a moment): Great and Inferior Oolitic Limestone, Lower Carboniferous Limestone, Pennant Sandstone, Skerry Sandstone Dolomitic Conglomerate and Blue Lias Limestone, to name but a few. Zoom in on a particular - seemingly uniform - area such as Bath, and subtle variances are revealed. The coarseness of grain, scattering of shell debris and inclusion of calcite stringers (or watermarks) will set Combe Down Oolite apart from Bath Oolite.
The human-made landscape - particularly that of our traditional buildings - is a physical manifestation of the geology beneath our feet. Like regional accents and dialect, it is a display of identity, but one which transcends the conventional boundaries of village, parish and county to perhaps give an instinctive and heightened sense of belonging that roots us to a place.
What’s your stone? You can search on the BGS Geology Viewer here