You may remember my going on about landmark firs, obviously my destiny after having been born below two of them. In most cases the ones I’ve recorded have a reason for their location: marking an ancient site, a crossroads, the bridging point of a river or maybe an isolated inn once used by drovers. Last Sunday I went down a local road that keeps drawing me back to a typical but remote High Leicestershire landscape. This imposing Scots pine has long puzzled me, there seemingly being no reason for it to be a marker. Pouring over maps I suddenly had an idea. Immediately to one side is a dismantled railway, so could a mound or tumulus or something else have been destroyed? The pre-railway 1835 Ordnance map shows nothing, but then it doesn’t really show such things anyway, not even the earthworks of nearby Sauvey Castle. So for now I’m still on the trail of the lonesome pine, ‘in the pale moonshine our hearts entwine’. #leicestershire #landmark #landmarkfir #scotspine #earthwork #tumulus #mound #dismantledrailway #ordnancesurvey #map #sauveycastle #robinatiptoehill #onthetrailofthelonesomepine
When I first knew this Leicestershire hill, stretching northwards from the Loddington to Tilton road, it had a brick wartime observation post at each end, no longer there. Lonely country, I stopped here yesterday and thought once again about a strange story that somehow suited the atmospheric and unpredictable weather. In an age when stealing sheep was a capital offence, a chap called Robin was strung up in the wind atop the hill that once bore the name Howback or Hawback Hill. But due to either a mistake in the height of the gallows or a misjudgment on the part of the hangman, the victim’s feet just touched the ground. Depending on which account you read or hear, Robin was either let off (the hanging by law having been executed) or his mates cut him down and spirited him away under cover of darkness. But his name lives on in Robin-a-Tiptoe Hill. Alternatively, some say the hill is named after the goblin Robin Goodfellow who tiptoed about threshing people’s corn while they were asleep. A likely story. #robinatiptoehill #tiltononthehill #gallows #loddington #leicestershire #sheepstealer #hangman #robingoodfellow #threshing #corn #observationpost #atmosphere