Estate of Mind

It is a lovely field.

The stubble is freshly cut and there is that warm, dusty odour that you get just after the combine harvesters have worked through.

I stood in the entrance to the lane, the classic five bar wooden gate having been left open and marvelled at the wide open space.

The thought of buying my own field returned once again after a long absence but as strong as ever.

Just imagine owning your own tract of land and the possibilities that it opens up. You could just run about in it fully or partially clothed, pitch a tent at will, lie on your back and wonder at the stars in the night sky on a whim , keep a few bits of livestock, grow some vegetables or just revel in the idea of being a custodian of nature.

This particular bit of land stretched into the distance to a mature hedge and a few well established trees, too far away to give a name to their species.

Just beyond were a couple of farmsteads with well weathered stone and brick buildings under faded pantile roofs.

It was quite late in the afternoon and so I did not expect to see the sights and sounds of cavorting rabbits , hares or foxes who would be long gone into the cool depths of their respective warrens, burrows and dens. There were no pheasants or other game birds doing their erratic runs or kamikaze flights at car windscreen height. 

A few cars passed me at the gateway and seemed to slow down as though curious about why I was there. It was a quiet lane and they would no doubt be locals.

Perhaps they too were admirers of the field or in some way felt a vested interest in it as though it had featured in their own lives as a childhood playground, a place to walk a dog or go for a countryside ramble.

The topography was interesting.

The roadside verge was a bit of a high point in the landscape as it undulated gently away in a westerly direction.

Taking in that scene was one of those moments when you appreciate the big sky above. There was no real encroachment on the eyeline. It was just an idyllic rural outlook.

So what was I there for?

Well, the field had a long southern boundary onto a housing estate with a typically 1970's style of dwellings. The back gardens of the houses and bungalows terminated at what was the very edge of the town, in effect bordering onto the Greenbelt.

That particular population centre, a traditional market town in North Nottinghamshire and close to the county line with Lincolnshire had seriously outgrown its predetermined confines drawn up by the Planning Authority some 40 years prior.

It was a bit of an isolated settlement but add in the fact that it had a mainline railway station within about 90 minutes commuting time of London and reasonable access to the A1 and M1 motorway corridors and you have a targeted area for justifiable residential expansion.

Across the bonnet of my car, in that pleasant environment, I unrolled a large scale plan of that field.

On it was superimposed a network of roads and a representative layout of 165 houses from large 5 bed executive detached to rather more modest and less ostentatious 3 bed semi's and town houses.

That rolling meadow would certainly make for an interesting development and I could visualise a rooftop vista from my vantage point.

Those existing properties, for the last 50 years enjoying an open aspect would soon have the prospect of neighbours.

The distant farmsteads would become overlooked not by cereal crops but multiple windows and a mass of red brick structures.

The gated entrance would soon be a full splay in kerbstones and tarmac.

The rolling acres would become manicured gardens, hard paved driveways and just another fairly featureless streetscape.

I felt sad and ashamed about being implicated in the scheme, or rather the crime of stealing away that field.