All Creatures Great and Sm

Two extraordinary incidents came to mind when re-visiting Landican Wood.  Well, perhaps many anecdotes came flooding back being there again after some 65 years.   I recall that the very muddy lane called Landican Lane was part of the 12 or 15 miles route we had to run from the School Playing Fields on Cross Country Days.  It was extremely deep mud and so exhausted everyone, as well as make us all very messy indeed.  Although I hated it it did lead me on when in the Army to run for Southern Command of the British Army and then join the Port Sunlight Athletic Club.  However, I diversify.  Landican Wood was on our list of places to check upon regularly for early Blue butterflies and a family of Green Woodpeckers ( also known as Yaffles due to their calls).  It started to rain heavily so we made our way to the lower wood and the river and where we knew that there was a water culvert in which to shelter.  We scrambled inside, the three of us and Toby the wee terrier.  Then there was torrential rain for a few minutes and we worried about the water level rising so kept a weather eye upon the level.  The culvert brought water down off the hill and into the river which then fed into the River Mersey.   Looking along the culvert to the other side we noticed that a water vole had appeared, also sheltering from the rain.  He looked warily at us, but we spoke softly to him and waved our hands slowly.  He shook the rain from his fur, turned his back upon us and continued preening, glancing up at the rain occasionally.  We called him Ratty, after the name given to such a vole by Kenneth Graham in Wind in the Willows.  Then the rain suddenly stopped and heat began to rise from the water as it was such a hot summer day.  Ratty turned around to look at us and then vanished into the river with a plop.  We were all sad to see him go and agreed that this was a rare experience.  Toby had his whiskers bristling and his ears cocked, also sad that Ratty had gone about vole business again.  We emerged and continued our search and found a swarm of Large Blue butterflies on the hill slope amongst the wild flowers.   No sign of our woodpecker family though.  The undergrowth was sodden so we did not venture further but retreated to where our bicycles were behind the hedge and retreated out of the rain threatening clouds.   The following day  was to be even more extraordinary.

We were all in the Rangiora Rover Scout Crew;  the only Rover Crew in the Wirral at that time.  We had been seeking a new place to meet and had put out feelers.  A man whose name sounded familiar, had telephoned us and invited us to his house where, he said, was ample room for us to meet, free of charge.  Now that was well worth taking up as an investigation. Was there a catch in it?  The seven of us all cycled across the Wirral to Poulton Hall, Poulton Lacey.  Our inviter was Roger de Lancelyn Green.  The Lancelyn Greens had lived at Poulton Hall for over 900 years and were well known not just as local folk.  Roger was Reader at Liverpool University at that time.  Prior to that he was at Merton College, Oxford, and was a member of the Inklings Club which comprised CV.S. Lewis, who was his tutor up at Oxford, J.R.R. Tolkein and others.  Roger invited us in to his rambling country house and ushered us into the Library and served us afternoon tea with lashings of cakes, I seem to remember.  He was a well known author of children's books, editor and biographer and had written books on the Sagas, Robin Hood, King Arthur and Greek mythology for children.  It was he who suggested to Lewis that Lewis call his book the Chronicles of Narnia.   I had read one of his books - The Saga of Asgard, and we discussed it.  After tea he showed us around and suggested a room which might suit us.  It was a lovely room but after discussion we felt it was too far away from where most of us lived and the cycle ride in bad weather would be awful so we politely declined his kind offer and explained why, which he quite understood.  However, he invited us back for tea and a chat on a monthly basis.   A few of us took him up and we returned monthly and drank heavily - tea of course, and ate lovely cakes and sandwiches at 4pm.  We chatted in the lovely library full of fascinating books and literary papers which I browsed rather than chatted, to Roger's amusement.  We put the world to right and discussed philosophy, the art of writing, linguistics and oh, we discussed cabbages and kings.  Looking back I believe Roger was lonely and missed the company of young men at the Inklings Club in Oxford.   At first I thought he wanted to join the Rover Crew but then realised that he just missed company.   He died young in 1987 at 68 yrs old.  His son, also a well known author, Richard Lancelyn Green, committed suicide.  His daughter Priscilla was also a well known author.  Looking back I realise that we were all extremely lucky to have met Roger de Lancelyn Green, one of those notable people who go down in history.  He certainly encouraged me in my love of literature.

Poulton Hall, Wirral & Roger de Lancelyn Green.