OK – why hills? Why did I call this project Howe? How am I going to structure the time and what am I going to make? Will there be any tangible ‘art works’ or will the outcomes consist of reportage of performance/installation/intervention? I do need to think about these things and get something down on paper – or, at least, in this blog. This may take a few days of posting but feels like a very necessary first step.
I’ve just read a very relevant article by Jeremy Harte; Hollow Hills, in the magazine At The Edge . It addresses some of the things about hills that fascinate me, and I think I’ll be plundering it shamelessly for quotes (very much in the way that grave robbers plundered so many Neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, leaving a telltale hole in the top).
I’ve been reading about Barrow Hills on the Chertsey-Egham border. Here, three mounds had appeared as threm burghen in a charter of 672-4, and so they were duly scheduled in the County list as ‘Chertsey nos.1-3’. But ironically, inspection later on showed them to be natural hillocks…
On the other hand, when is a hill not a hill? When it’s a barrow. But in Norfolk (and elsewhere, I’m sure), many places named ‘hill’ (one example is Kettle Hill) turn out to be, not natural features at all, but burial mounds. There doesn’t seem to have been any real separation in the minds of whoever named them.
Who did name them? I guess that the names of hills may sometimes have taken shape organically, through a chinese whispers process, so that an Old English name became something quite different and quite strange in modern English. Some of them may have got their names through folkloric associations. I like the fact that we can’t know this, but, for example, a name like Ladies Hill sets the imagination into overdrive – perhaps there were tales of fairies dancing there, or sightings of ghostly ancestors, or the hill was perceived to have a feminine shape had therefore been thought sacred from time immemorial. What resonates for me is the knowledge that someone, or groups of people over time, named these places.
Crow Hill. Snow Hill. I love the way these hills have been named so simply and evocatively. Of course, as above, these names may not be all that they seem, if they are names that have evolved over time from older words or the languages of those from over the sea who brought their own names and customs.
So, to keep count, that’s really two separate things to focus on. Number one: the ambiguity of whether a hill is actually human-made as a burial mound (with its associations with the dead, with treasure, with the halls of the fairy folk) or a natural feature, which may also be linked with supernatural occurrences and have a human history as a place of ritual, or as a meeting place of any kind – including a gallows site. Number two: the actual names of the hills and what they evoke; their fascination for me stemming from the fact that they would not have names at all if it were not for the people who lived here before. And for me, the relevance of that is overwhelming.
To be continued …
