Earth Day & John Aubrey

A concern for the environment and awareness of environmental change is nothing new. In the seventeenth century, the Wiltshire antiquarian, John Aubrey, was aware of the changing landscapes around his childhood home at Kington St Michael, remarking on the impact of enclosure and deforestation or ‘disafforestations’. His anecdotes on soil, plants, birds, insects, reptiles and more are beautifully observed. On the pine marten, he wrote, ‘upon these disafforestations the marterns were utterly destroyed in North Wilts. It is a pretty little beast and of a deep chesnutt colour, a kind of polecat, lesse than a fox; and the furrreis much esteemed..’

John Aubrey

At Kington he noted wormwood grew plentifully alongside ‘Worm-wax (Luteola), my Lady’s bed-straw, sorrell and abundance of Sowre-herbes. Hartsongue, Adders-tongue, Mayden-hair, Brook lime. It is an excellent place for Plants.’ In the old hedges around the lands of the former priory in the parish there were a great number of ‘berberry-trees’ which ‘I suppose the nunnes made use of for confections.’  Nature was a passion, and while recording the flora around the former priory, he observed, ‘there is infinite variety of plants; and it would have tempted me to have been a botanist had I had the leisure…’

Aubrey also considered the deeper meaning of what he saw, the ‘formed stones’ (fossils) around the area he believed were ‘petrified cockles’, and he conjectured the seemingly universal nature of ‘petrified fishes’ shells gives clear evidence that the earth hath been all covered with water’.

Aubrey’s writings will feature within our research for the Victoria County History on the parish of Kington St Michael, and this Earth Day, I look forward to using them in my description of the landscape of the parish and exploration of how it has changed.

~ Louise Ryland Epton - 22 Apr 23