NATURE COLUMN: Bill Cawley
THE Methodist chapel in Milldale was wonderfully simple.
A date of 1835 above the doorway indicates primitive Methodists I would think.
The chapel must have met the spiritual needs of farm workers and miners for more than 100 years.
Honeysuckle around the doorway was visible and sweet smelling.
Inside nothing fancy just plain whitewashed walls and seating for no more than 20.
Candle wax was all over an antique harmonium as hot wax had dripped on the instrument from a holder above.
It was quiet apart from the sound of water rushing over the weir on the River Dove and the song of chaffinches and a linnet outside.
It was an August day.the visitors book was full of comments on the simplicity of the place set in a landscape of such beauty.
Some came to visit a settlement known to their relations - an ancestor was on the census for 1841.
Othersed recall family -’it would have been my father’s 100th birthday.’ A family from Glasgow ‘a peaceful wee haven’ and another from Bordeaux ‘jolie petite chappelle.’
The peacefulness made me think of silence in the countryside. It is a misnomer as the countryside is full of sound as I set out to prove early one April morning in the early 1990s when I was on Stiperstones in Shropshire.
Noise and signs of activity were all around me as I sat down and made a note.
In the distance I could hear the bark of a farm dog and the roar of farming equipment, proving that even on a Saturday farmers have to work.
The wind whistled through the moorland grasses. The only bird sound was the dismal call of a raven and far above them the less welcome roar of an aircraft.
The nearest recently I have got to minimal background sound was at Hunthouse Wood beside Rudyard Lake after a cycle on Christmas Day morning last year.
There were few people about. The Macclesfield Road was quieter than usual but I could still hear birdsong and I could make out several species.
The lake itself had a squabble of gulls who were making a commotion. In the wood on the other side the explosive cry of a pheasant hidden in deep cover and in the trees beside the railway halt the call of the wren was a remarkably loud and incredibly fast call for such a small bird.
Musician Joe Acheson recorded the song of the wren from his Edinburgh flat and slowed the sound down to discover the pitch developed into big plunging tones, not unlike the call of a gibbon in the rain forest reverberating around the landscape.