Landscapes of Our Hearts: Reconciling People and Environment

Abstract

I grew up in a rural English landscape where water was a dominant and ever-present feature. Across the meadow from our house in the village of Hadlow was the River Bourne, a minor tributary of the River Medway that divides the County of Kent and flows past verdant orchards and hop gardens before emptying into vast estuarine saltmarshes and merging with the murky waters of the River Thames at Sheerness. The Bourne has its source at the foot of the North Downs, a great ridge of chalk grassland along which runs the ancient Pilgrims’ Way, from Winchester in Hampshire to the shrine of St Thomas à Becket at Canterbury Cathedral, the greatest place of pilgrimage in mediaeval England.