BOURNE COMMENT

A personal view of issues
and events

by REX NEEDLE

MAKE HASTE FOR THE NUTTING SEASON 

An annual bounty of fruit and nuts can be found in Bourne Wood and is collected each year by those in the know, ranging from rose hips and blackberries to sloes and crab apples.  

In past times, before the arrival of the supermarket culture, there was a race to pick them when they were ready because food from the shops was expensive and so additional nutrition from the countryside for the price of a little physical effort was welcome for families subsisting on meagre wages. 

There is always a good crop of hazel nuts for those who know where to find them because they are not easy to see and it takes a trained eye to spot them while anyone who thinks they might collect a basketful, perhaps to keep for the Christmas festivities, will have to be quick because once they are ready to pick, they disappear literally overnight, such is their popularity. 

Hazel (Corylus avellana) is widely distributed in Europe and can be found in woods, thickets and hedgerows, growing to around 30 feet although often shorter and usually a broad bush, sometimes with a short trunk. The bark is a smooth and shiny grey-brown and the female flowers begin as small brown buds with protruding crimson stigmas, developing into clusters of one to four nuts, each partly enclosed in a toothed green husk, and changing from whitish green in mid-summer to pale pink brown and finally brown by the autumn when they are ready for picking.  

According to Richard Mabey's book Food for Free which was first published in 1972 and has never been out of print since: “They ripen at about the same time as the leaves begin to yellow. Use a walking stick to bend down the branches and once you have gathered your nuts, keep them in a dry warm place, but in their shells.” 

Late September and early October therefore, is the best time, one of wayside nibbling and sampling, because hazel nuts are then at their prime and if you wish to have a go but find that someone has been there first, try searching inside the foliage where the nuts may have been sheltered from sight, from the wind or from squirrels who pick and store them as their winter food. It would, of course, be a simpler task to go to Sainsbury's or Tesco and buy them by the packet but paying for them at the checkout will not give you the same pleasure as seeking them out in the wild and of course, they will taste that much better. 

In the early years of the 19th century, the collecting of nuts was banned by the Marquess of Exeter who then owned Bourne Wood and on Friday 21st August 1829 he posted a notice in the Stamford Mercury warning that the practice was prohibited because of damage caused to the woodland. "The woodsmen have directions to give information of all persons trespassing after this notice that they may be prosecuted as the law directs", it said.  

In later years, however, he relented and the public were suitably grateful for the concession that allowed them collect nuts in Bourne Wood which became an annual outing for many people from the town and surrounding villages and we have a wonderful evocation of this autumnal Victorian pursuit published by a local newspaper some years after his lordship lifted the restriction: 

“What a fine season for visiting parties; and where, we should like to know, is the place presenting such facilities for this autumnal enjoyment as Bourne? A large and well-ordered wood, within a mile of the town, is, through the kindness of the noble proprietor [the Marquess of Exeter] at the service of the inhabitants. We are gratified to add that this indulgence is duly appreciated as nothing annoys those who enjoy this privilege more than wanton mischief.  

“Of all places at this season, give me the nut-wood and the old umbrageous [shady] lanes, with the tall hazel thickets and hedges. How many delightful days spent in these places with young hearts and congenial souls come back upon the memory. They set out à la gypsy in a common cart or waggon containing the eatables and the drinkables, sundry rheumatic old maids and young wives to whom the walk would be too exhausting: the eternal gabbling of the damsels, and the screeching and screaming at getting over the stiles; the arrival in the wood; the rushing away to pull down the brown clusters; the meeting to show plunder, and take tea on the grass; the sentimental song in a trilling voice by a young lady of the party: what pleasures of a city and artificial life are worth one day of this description?  

“Alas that the game laws should have thrown their baneful interdict on even the pleasures of nutting. Alas that in thousands of woods and woodland places throughout the kingdom, the nuts should fall and rot by bluebells lest pheasants should be disturbed. Should we not then appreciate the privilege vouchsafed to us by the Lord of Burghley?”

Note: This article was published by the Bourne web site on 3rd October 2015