Nea Meadows

Walking around Nea Meadows you'd think you were out in the countryside somewhere, and until the post war expansion in housing, you would have been. The area was an expanse of farm and heath land, a sparsely occupied buffer between Christchurch town and Highcliffe village, now one continuous conurbation, though Nea remains as a natural oasis in 'Bungalow Land', the post war urban sprawl, and a reminder of what was. Most of the developments took place before I lived around here, though in the last 40 years I've seen many of the remaining pockets of green swallowed up, until today very few remain. It's a lovely parcel of land too, grassland and woodland with a fair sized lake fed by two rivulets.  And, even though it's an island in a sea of housing, it's still and quiet, and it's not hard to imagine yourself far from the madding crowd.

Curious

Noticed the first Beech Mast of the season, well, the cases of anyway, good size they are too.  Initially I thought they were curiously early, although on reflection, we are nearly in June. Still though.

Nea more

Some years ago the Primary School had a 'local history' week, and one of the days we took a year group down to Nea Meadows, a local nature reserve. There was an old guy waiting for us by some ancient trees, Lesley, I think his name was (if it wasn't, I apologize), he'd always lived in Highcliffe. Lesley had lived in one of the local large houses of which few still exist, many have been demolished and those that remain have been remodelled, though if you look you can find several of their gate houses. Lesley described the landscape he'd known as a child as open fields, bustling hedgerows and clumps of coppice and woodland, his eyes widened and watered as he reminisced on what was; he was clearly moved. It's striking the power and depth of emotion which reminiscing evokes. The crux of his talk was that now Nea Meadows was all that remained of that open landscape he knew, a landscape consumed by piecemeal housing development since the war.  The children asked questions, and lesley regaled them with tales, beautifully described.  As he walked off after his talk (in the direction of sunset, as it happened), I couldn't help think what a melancholic figure cut, and I suspected that in his heart and minds eye, he still walked in those boyhood fields and copses. Lesley always comes to mind when I pass through Nea Meadows, and I ponder on the changes I've seen locally.