Yet another first:– the first working farm that I’ve mapped (other, non-working, farms in Gedling have been Manor Farm Arnold Lane, Glebe Farm Lambley Lane, Phoenix Farm Arnold Lane 1, Phoenix Farm Arnold Lane 2 & Scot Grave Farm Arnold Road). You can find Gedling Wood Farm farmyard & fields here:

• Gedling Wood Farm

The farmer was enormously helpful; she made a photocopy of the field layout for me and named every field. In return I’ve spent an hour moving the existing landuse=farmland out of the way & have entered the first 6 fields on to the map. I like the way that they are rendered on the standard map; much more subtle than drawing the hedges in.

I’ve got one difficult decision to make. Ordnance Survey have two “Gedling Wood” on the map, which OSM have duplicated + added a third:– [1] is to the north & larger; [2] is invented; [3] is close to the farmhouse & smaller. The farmer named the field containing the smaller wood as “Little Wood”. I’ve got a suspicion that the farmer will know the names of the fields & woods better than the OS do, so am tempted to rename it (and remove the invented wood). Still, that is for tomorrow.

This is the farmhouse; it is ever so much older than you think (1600s - she named some feature about the windows as being an example of that period, but I could not retain it; naturally, the farmhouse also has a well):–

Postscript:–

I’ve added all the farmer’s names for the fields, and used hers’ in preference to the OS duplicated names.

The farmer had an old embroidery on the mantelpiece which, when she gave me the photocopy, I realised was of those fields. It allowed me to realise the powerful sentiment that the family had for their plots. You only need to think about it a little to realise that those fields are the Farm, and are not just their livelihood but also their life.

Dumble

This is the name of a street in nearby Lambley as well as the northernmost-field on the Gedling Wood Farm. I could not find the name in my Concise Oxford dictionary, but it turns out to be a typical East Midlands word:–

Dumble:–

An East Midlands dialect word meaning a wooded valley … a belt of trees along the bed of a small stream

…which is precisely what happens in this case (an unnamed stream which flows through Burton Joyce & eventually drains into the River Trent).

Update 4 July 2022

Mapillary has changed it’s download URLs & therefore all links within my diaries that used photos stored in Mapillary in the old format are broken. I’m slowly going through to update them. The new URLs are terrifyingly long, but show OK on my screen (and I hope also on yours).