On Gallows Down: Place, Protest and Belonging (Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize 2022 for Nature Writing - Highly Commended)

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One afternoon long ago I sat drinking tea with a young Ben Goldacre and tried to persuade him to write a book. What surprised me most about the meeting was his revelation that he had once been a road protester. In my mind, road protesters where well-meaning but pretty useless individuals. Ben, on the other hand, was smart and determined. He had a glint in his eye that told you he was going to do things his way or not at all. You could call that glint idealism or principles. And it was clear his principles directly underpinned his actions. I had principles but their relation to my actions were then, as now, a little vague. As soon as the family arrived in a new place, her mum would take them down the footpaths with the dogs to explore their new home and these early experiences with nature continue to influence her. We are writing for our very lives and for those wild lives we share this one, lonely planet with. Writing was also a way to channel the wildness; to investigate and interpret it, to give it a voice and defend it. But it was also a connection between home and action; a plank bridge between a domestic and wild sense. A way both to home and resist. Nicola Chester ’s‘On Gallows Down: Place, Protest and Belonging’, published by Chelsea Green next week, is our first of two Books of the Month for October. The following extract is reprinted with kind permission from the publisher.

to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more. Her home in Inkpen for the past 19 years has been a small rented cottage, the property of wealthy landowners. It is in an ancient part of England inhabited since the Mesolithic era, and west Berkshire remains steeped in feudal propriety. Gamekeepers have been known to stalk the hills on the lookout for trespassing naturalists. “‘It used to get really unsettling,” says Chester. P.S. My husband and I attended the book launch event for On Gallows Down in Hungerford on Saturday evening. Nicola was interviewed by Claire Fuller, whose Women’s Prize-shortlisted novel Unsettled Ground is set in a fictional version of the village where Nicola lives. Nicola Chester was born in Petersfield but was always on the move because of her father’s job. Her earliest memories were of chalk downland, seen as they moved across Hampshire and into Berkshire before she moved to Pangbourne at the age of eight. It was here on this housing estate that she fell head over heels in love with nature> She was wild, free and happy in the fields alongside the houses, playing in the River Pang and water meadows. She writes beautifully, but the thing that sets this book above most of its peers is that it feels truthful. Her writing is not performative in any way; she is not writing to impress, just to give a clear and honest account of her life and the landscape that has supported it. I think it is a future classic.

References and further reading

I hope you enjoy reading these pieces as much as I have enjoyed receiving and reading each one! I’m delighted to introduce them all: In the distance we can see the Newbury bypass, the scene of the most famous anti-road protest in British history, an event in 1996 that radically shaped Chester’s early life. “This was our home. Had been – and still was – our playground,” she writes in On Gallows Down. “And here we were, sat round watching it all fall on TV.” The next day she was on the frontline.

On Gallows Down is a powerful, personal story shaped by a landscape deeply loved; one that ripples and undulates with protest, change, hope – and the search for home.Nicola is now busy writing articles for various countryside magazines, but hopes to write some more poetry along with a novel based around the history of the area. This walk climbs to the interesting structure of Combe Gibbet and continues on to Inkpen Hill. The gibbet was erected in 1676 for the purpose of gibbeting the bodies of George Broomham and Dorothy Newman. The gibbet was placed high on Gallows Down as a detterent to other criminals. It's now a popular tourist destination with great views and a number of footpaths to follow through the surrounding countryside. The hill is also a popular climb for cyclists with a number of bridleways to follow across Inkpen and Walbury Hill. They were enormous animals with great big antlers. We stood completely still as they stampeded around us. It was incredible to experience but also terrifying at the same time. I remember going home and trying to put into words how exciting and visceral it was. I could smell their breath!” Nowadays the hill and its gibbet it is a popular local tourist attraction with good views of the surrounding area. It is also popular with hang gliders and paragliders.

Nature is everything. It is the place I come from and the place I got to. It is family. Wherever I am, it is home and away, an escape, a bolt hole, a reason, a place to fight for, a consolation, and a way home.With her husband, she moved around the country over the years due to various job changes and there's always that connection to nature and the outside world that allowed her to cope with change - the nature around always seemed to give her hope and it was lovely to see her passing that interest on to her children as she had them exploring local areas with her. Since then, the sentiment has shifted and On Gallows Down has become more poignant and relevant than ever before. Charting a life lived in - and through - rural landscapes, Chester writes with a painterly eye. Her descriptions of nature and wildlife are staggeringly evocative - sensory, but never overblown or sentimental. Rather, her style has an elegant, measured beauty as she tells a personal story of protest and resistance, of a profound connection to the earth and nature, to offer a story of hope and connectedness in fractured times. This is a memoir of Nicola Chester, who has found herself protesting over the years to protect the environment in various locations whilst bringing up her family, and doing what she can to pass on the knowledge and love of wildlife and nature to her children and those around her. I have nothing but admiration for this woman after reading about her life experiences, and how she writes so passionately about the natural world. Her enthusiasm is infectious and I share the same anticipation as her awaiting wildlife sightings whilst you're out for a walk. Nicola Chester’s magnificent book On Gallows Down isn’t soley about her time as a road protester, although this does feature heavily in the early sections. It is more a book about ordinary life as a non-posh person in the countryside.

She has now lived in Inkpen for 17 years, and has a son, 19, and two daughters who are 17 and 13. For the children, nature has played a key role in their upbringing. There is dislocation, loss and tragedy in the destruction of the environment yet Chester brings inspiration to persist in fighting for all that is wild and free. I am a great believer in connection and linking things together, and the ultimate way of doing that was through this book. It is a memoire of place and a need to find a home, and to show ownership for a place that you don’t own. At the heart of the book is nature, family and home.” My home was not mine. With a change of someone else’s heart or plan, or a rent hike, we could effectively be homeless with three children and a dog; a whole community built up and belonged to – gone in a couple of months’ notice. There was nothing else we could afford to rent locally. It sometimes felt like a precarious existence, and had been so since I left home, almost 30 years before.We have never been on a holiday abroad, instead we would go walking through nature, through the fields, up the hill and explore the footpaths. It made sound a bit cliché, but when I think about my children, it is the hill that raised them.” The gibbet was erected in 1676 for the purpose of gibbeting the bodies of George Broomham and Dorothy Newman and has only ever been used for them. The gibbet was placed in such a prominent location as a warning, to deter others from committing crimes. George and Dorothy, in an adulterous relationship, were hanged for murdering George's wife Martha, and their son Robert after they discovered them together on the downs. The lovers' crime was witnessed by Mad Thomas, who managed to convey what he had seen to the authorities. From the girl catching the eye of the “peace women” of Greenham Common to the young woman protesting the loss of ancient and beloved trees, and as a mother raising a family in a farm cottage in the shadow of grand, country estates, this is the story of how Nicola Chester came to write – as a means of protest. The story of how she discovered the rich seam of resistance that runs through her village of Newbury and its people – from the English Civil War to the Swing Riots and the battle against the Newbury Bypass. And the story of the hope she finds in the rewilding of Greenham Common after the military left, the stories told by the landscapes of Watership Down, the gallows perched high on Inkpen Beacon and Highclere Castle (the setting of Downtown Abbey). I like the cover although I’m not sure that it tells me what to expect from the book – but I like it; 7/10. It was work. I found wry comfort in discovering that John Clare, the agricultural labouring poet, worked with the enclosure gangs – the very enclosures he lamented. Enclosure brought an opportunity of employment Clare could not turn down: fencing, hedging, the destruction of trees or lime-burning – all to enclose the former freedoms of his own parish. It also brought fresh faces and new opportunities to socialise. Clare scholar Professor Simon Kövesi wrote in his book John Clare: Nature, Criticism, History: ‘There was no economic space for Clare to consider not doing the paid work of enclosing his village, or of lime-burning; choice is a product of socio-economic power, and he had none. There was no front for resistance because poverty denied space for that activity’.