Kelly Wetherick, Landscape archaeologist

The latest in the West Wight People and Place series on the Biosphere Stories blog by Pete Johnstone. What gives an area its sense of place? The answer to this question might lie in the landscape or in the distinctive buildings of the place.  Community interaction may also be important, as well as a sense of wellbeing and culture or the knowledge that people may hold for their immediate surroundings.

The strength and diversity of the local economy may also feature as well as any attachment that people hold for the area, be they visitors, recent newcomers or born and bred residents who can trace their family ties back generations.

In an attempt to answer this question, Pete Johnstone set himself a challenge and that was to find the sense of place of West Wight through photographing people living and working in the area and asking them about their connection to this largely rural area.

“Each time I come to work through this iconic front door I step back into the Victorian landscape of Julia Margaret Cameron and Tennyson”

What is a landscape archaeologist?   

Meeting up with Kelly Wetherick at Dimbola Museum and Galleries near Freshwater Bay, I ask her the obvious question: what is a landscape archaeologist? “Archaeologists always have to contend with the idea that they wander around in brown leather hats seeking treasure and tombs”, replies Kelly. “We’re not all like that. Archaeology is a vast discipline, from bones specialists to materials analysts, we straddle both science and the humanities. Not always at ease with each other, it has to be said!”

Landscape archaeologists, Kelly explains, are holistic in their practice. They look at the whole rather than an individual piece of, for example, pottery, a monument or a skeleton. They will engage with these objects in the context of the landscape they are found in, their proximity to other sites and patterns of distribution. 

“We’re often found with a map in hand, and we tend to ‘zoom out’ if you will, to consider wider, bigger, questions around space and time.

“For myself,” says Kelly, “I’m concerned with a more experiential understanding of landscape. That is, how we can get closer to the people of the past, their tasks, their routes, their understanding of a given landscape, by situating ourselves within their spaces.”

View of Freshwater Bay and East Afton Down with its scattered ancient earthworks.

Is West Wight’s landscape very different to anywhere else you know or have studied?

“West Wight sits within the context of the wider Isle of Wight landscape – a patchwork containing most of the recognised national landscapes. Chalk downland, lowland agricultural plains, wetlands, and the dry-stone walls of the Undercliff can mirror that of upland Britain.

The West Wight landscape is itself a microcosm of these national and Island landscapes, from the heights of Tennyson Down’s chalk to the estuarine wetlands through the Yar valley and the plains of Wellow and Thorley,” Kelly says. “The pattern of human settlement on Freshwater Isle – the area of land west of the river Yar and the north of the chalk downs – is evident as you travel through the landscape, she adds. It has been noted for its many hamlet-style mini-villages centred around greens – Norton Green, Middleton Green and School Green.”

Tennyson’s Monument on Tennyson Down.

West Wight is unusual as these hamlets sit within a very few square kilometres. “In my own research I argue that the Isle of Wight can be used as an example of a landscape that can tell national stories. West Wight is convincingly able to stand its own ground and tell its own tale within the wider story of landscapes and settlements.”

Why do you think the West Wight landscape is so special? 

As with all landscapes, West Wight has evolved with the interventions of humans and their interactions with the land, Kelly continues. “People of West Wight have always used their landscape, and Tennyson Down is a prime example of this. 

“We often think of ancient, prehistoric landscapes as tree covered wild woodlands but in fact our first farmers were from the neolithic period starting more than 5,000 years ago in Britain. We can see examples of their monuments in the Longstone at Mottistone, in Brighstone and Afton Down long barrow.”

Kelly says that clearings within the ‘wild wood’ for early settlements and subsequent grazing led to almost total tree clearance. “Grazing created the close-cropped sward we see today, and it continues to this day. We now understand this to be extremely important and fragile chalk downland.”

Shaped by millennia of human interaction, chalk downland can be rich in wildlife, yet it is a landscape that can change with the variances of management. With a lack of stock grazing, scrub and trees can, within a generation, become dominant.  The recent loss of trees to ash dieback disease is once again causing the landscape to change.  

“Looking back on aerial photographs we can plot the encroachment of scrub over this important ecosystem. But now we are seeing management techniques, such as grazing, to control the scrub and allow a greater biodiversity to emerge.

“The way Freshwater Isle, particularly, is nestled under the protection of downland begs the question: How did it feel for people of the past living in its shadow? What made this place special for them?”

Flint nodules found on the slope of the Down resemble bones – did our ancestors also make this connection?    

 In the future how could we best manage the West Wight landscape and its history?

“It is imperative that we understand the landscape and keep learning from it. The notion of landscape encompasses all its elements, including its people and their culture. The cultural heritage, I believe, is best understood when you are within it and when you move through it.

Sheep grazing on the downs is one form of management and one that can provide food as it has done for past generations.

“As we move within the landscape we can note the exact point that Tennyson’s monument appears on the horizon; at which point the wide expanse of the plains opens up for a view stretching east; when the sea colours the sky blue between the trees or where the mist lingers long in the valley. It is these images that make our landscape real and unique. Understanding it in this way gives us a deeper meaning, brings us closer to an understanding of the landscape of our ancestors.”

Tell us about your current role as curator for Dimbola and the links between Tennyson and Cameron?

“Becoming curator for Dimbola Museum and Galleries must be a career high for me,” says Kelly. She came to live in Freshwater aged nine and spent her childhood on an aunt’s farm at Farringford. Traces of Alfred, Lord Tennyson at Farringford House were everywhere. His story held a fascination for Kelly, from early on. “And if you are interested in Tennyson, you will be drawn to the story of Julia Margaret Cameron, an innovative English photographer of the 19th century. The two come as a pair.

“In my youth, I would be in Easton field retrieving the cows and I knew that the big white house I could see at the end of the lane was Cameron’s, was Dimbola.”

“I remember the work of Dr Brian Hinton and others, in the 1990s, to save Dimbola and protect her legacy. The more I learned about their time in Freshwater the more I understood what has come to be known as the ‘Freshwater Circle’. 

I learned about the houses of Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carrol), Alice Liddell (who inspired Carrol’s Alice In Wonderland) and sculptor and painter G.F. Watts. Alice Liddell was photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron and the latter was part of the group in London too.

“I learned how the creative practices of the circle were often fed from the geography of West Wight. It is thought Tennyson Down and the Farringford estate may have been the inspiration for illustrations in Alice Through the Looking Glass. Tennyson’s imagery comes straight from the sea crashing on rocks and the landscape around him.

White Park cattle, Farringford Estate.

“With this came the knowledge that many of my favourite places were their favourite places, their walks my walks. Through a shared understanding of place, their landscapes became intertwined with my own.

“Tennyson’s bridge was my favourite place as a child. It leads to his summer house and has a view across to Freshwater Bay.”

“Being able to continue the work to preserve Cameron’s home – her special place – and to bring audiences into the landscapes she knew is a great honour for me. One I could never have imagined all those years ago as a child in the field next door.”

About Kelly Wetherick 

West Wight is doubly special for Kelly. Although she came to Island aged nine, she subsequently spent her childhood on her aunt’s farm at Farringford where the fields and downs soon became her places.

“People have always erected monuments in the West Wight landscape. This landscape is my landscape, a monument of my own family legacy.” 

Growing up milking cows under the stewardship of her uncle, always keen to try out innovative new practices such as organic farming and homeopathic medicine for the herd, bestowed an early appreciation of the natural rhythm of a landscape. With the story of Tennyson ever present through the buildings he himself once oversaw, and an emerging understanding that ‘history’ could be so much more than kings and queens, came a fascination for archaeology, old places and their stories.

Tennyson had his own private entrance to Dimbola, so he could walk across the fields from Farringford unseen.

After a career in education came the opportunity to work within the heritage sector on the Isle of Wight, ensuring her beloved landscapes would be preserved and understood. With this came further study and the creation of an archaeological research project to track the time depth, configuration and distribution of the historic farmsteads of the Isle of Wight within their landscape context – the content of her PhD thesis.

Location map, courtesy of the National Trust

Photography © Pete Johnstone. Text Editor: Ali Worthy