'Poppy-Land - by a holiday-maker'

POPPY-LAND

[BY A HOLIDAY-MAKER]

AT A FARMHOUSE, NEAR THE SEA

Cromer seafront in Clement Scott's day
Restored and colourised using Google Gemini

It was during my rambles round the East Coast of England that that I chanced to find such an exceptionally-favoured and smiling corner, a village so secluded and at peace, surrounded by fields already ripe for the harvest within full view of the summer sea that it struck me some description of life in and England farmhouse at harvest-time might be sufficiently interesting to many on their rambles, and to many more who by this time have returned to work again.

The experience of a holiday spent amidst the most beautiful scenery of my own country, of walks from village to village, of many wanderings on down and cliff, of life at watering places, both fashionable and dull, leads me to the conclusion that many a traveller in search of health and rest might do worse than change the restlessness and excitement of travel for the seclusion and stillness of an English farm in a village by the sea.

At this time of year people are never tired of recommending to one another some quiet spot where they can live undisturbed by the great procession of tourists, a place where a table d'hôte is unknown, and the front-door is free from the confusion of arriving and departing guests, a clean, quiet homelike dwelling where literally you can take your ease at your inn.

Never a year passes but some discovery is made, only to be communicated to a few confidential friends. The theory is that when a pretty spot becomes known and popular it is spoiled. I must own that many such confidences have been duly communicated to me, but what surprised me most is that the United Kingdom is supposed to be outside the regions of romance and retirement. 

From time to time it has been whispered in my ear that if I really enjoy solitude and fine air, scenery and seclusion, I shall find it at some "pension" on the Jura Mountains remote from the ordinary Swiss route—in the Maderanerthal Valley half-way up the St. Gothard pass, deep in the heart of the Black Forest at Wolfach, where they brew excellent German beer, at Triberg, where they make the cuckoo clocks, or at Rippoldsau, where they take delicious pine baths for chronic or occasional rheumatism.

I have been recommended villages innumerable in many a Swiss canton, inns on the margin of many Swiss lakes. I have been promised rest in the Island of Man and welcome banishment in the Island of Sark. I have no reason whatever to doubt the good faith of any of my informants, but it must never be forgotten that each and all of these enchanted peace-spots can only be arrived at after hours of agony by sea, or nights of dusty torture in a railway train; you have to get there with difficulty and to return with fatigue.

How is it that we so often turn our tired eyes from these green islands of ours, forgetting that we too possess forests and mountains and deep dark valleys, that we have woods full of wild flowers almost untraversed by human foot, and hills of heather left to the birds and bees?

We steam up the Righi by a mountain railway to see the sun rise above the Alps, but never care to see the same sun ascending from the green sea that encircles our islands; we praise waterfalls abroad and leave our own mountain torrents unvisited; we almost persistently forget that with a couple of miles of some of the most fashionable watering-places in England there are villages, old churches, dreamy farms, flowered lanes, coppices, woods and miles of heather land that are as empty and untenanted as if they were far removed from the confines of civilisation.

It was on one of the most beautiful days of this lovely month of August, a summer morning with a cloudless blue sky overhead and a sea without a ripple washing on the yellow sands, that I turned my back on perhaps the prettiest watering-place of the East Coast and walked along the cliffs to get a blow and a look at the harvest that had just begun. 

It was the old story. At a mile removed from the seaside town I had left I did not find a human being. There they were all below me as I rested amongst the fern on the Lighthouse Cliff, digging on the sands, playing lawn tennis, working, reading, flirting, and donkey-riding, in a circle that seemed to me, as I looked at it from this height, ridiculously small.

In that red-roofed town, the centre of all that was fashionable and select, there was not a bed to be had for love or money; all home comforts, all conveniences to which well-bred people had been inured were deliberately sacrificed for the sake of a lodging amongst a little society that loved its band, its pier, its shingle and its sea.

A mile away there were farmhouses empty, cottages to let, houses to be hired for a song; a mile to the right there were sands with no human being on them, deserted cliffs, empty caves, unfrequented rocks; a mile to the left there was not a footprint on the beach, not a footfall on the grassy cliff. 

Custom had established a certain rule at this pretty little watering-place, and it was religiously obeyed; it was the rule to go on the sands in the morning, to walk on one cliff for a mile in the afternoon, to take another mile in the opposite direction at sunset, and to crowd around the little pier at night. But the limit was a mile either way. No one thought of going beyond the lighthouse; that was the boundary of all investigation. Outside that mark the country, the farms, and the villages were as lonely as the Highlands.

Not desiring to be followed I strolled on, and, attracted by a ruined church tower, took a cut through the cornfields towards a cluster of farms and a distant village. It is difficult to convey an idea of the silence of the fields through which I passed, or the beauty of the prospect that surrounded me—a blue sky without a cloud across it; a sea sparkling under a haze of heat; wild flowers in profusion around me, poppies predominating everywhere, the hedgerows full of blackberry-blossom and fringed with meadow-sweet; the bees busy at their work, the air filled with insect life, the birds startled from the standing corn as I pursued my solitary way.

So great was the change from the bustle of fashion to the unbroken quiet that I could scarcely believe that I was only parted by a dip of coast line from music and laughter and seaside merriment, from bands and bathing machines, from crochet and circulating libraries. Walking to the cliff's edge, I found a deserted sand; looking across the fields there was no sound but the regular click of the reaping machine before which the golden grain was falling.

It was just the time of day when an English farm has such a sleepy look. No one seemed about anywhere as I surveyed the farm buildings, no voice broke the silence. The men and labourers were far afield with the reaping, and the barns were ready for the first loads of harvest. An old horse came to look at me and put his nose over the gate of an adjacent field; the fowls were busy where the barley had just been cut; and on the grass plot in front of the silent farmhouse a deserted tennis net was the only sign of civilisation.

The ruined tower and graves of old Sidestrand church
Restored and colourised using Google Gemini

The contemplation of this homestead, close by a ruined church tower, the solitude of the surroundings, the silence of the scene suggested the charm of such a life. As the old song has it, "I said if there's peace to be found in the world, The heart that is humble might hope for here." But it was no use applying for lodgings or farmhouse accommodation in such a place as this; I was to be housed anywhere it must be in a place of quite another pattern.

So I pursued my journey in a contented frame of mind in the direction of the village. Even the village itself contained few signs of the stir of human life. A small number of children, released from school, were resting from the sun under the shade of the roadside hedge; a cart waited at the door of the village inn; but not a face was to be seen at any cottage window; the fishermen were away trawling in the North Sea, and there was uncommonly little trade at the village shop set back in a garden full of homely cottage flowers.

'Poppyland Cottage' in 1919.
Restored and colourised using Google Gemini

At last my patience was rewarded. Half a mile beyond the deserted village, at a bend of the road under the shadow of a windmill, there was presented to my sight what appeared to be a very cosy spot. It was one of those farmhouses which is an exact reproduction of the cottage that all children are set to draw when they begin their first lesson. A little red-brick house with three white windows on the first floor, a little white door in the middle, a window at either side and a stack of chimneys at each end of the house. The house was divided from the road by a white gate and palings, and in front of it was a garden brilliant with flowers.

I could not resist the temptation to lean over the white gate and contemplate so peaceful a scene. On the right of the gate was a bright bed of yellow evening primrose; on the left was a kitchen garden divided from the circular plot by rose trees, and in the middle was a perfect holiday ground for bees, a brilliant bed made up geranium, calceolaria, phlox, clarksia, and French marigold.

'Poppyland Cottage' and Windmill c. 1890.
Courtesy National Library of Scotland

This was evidently the miller's house, for it was not fifty yards from the slope of cornfield that was topped by the windmill, and here I thought I might venture to suggest the desired accommodation which had everywhere been denied to me at the adjacent seaside town. My question as met with that natural courtesy and cheerfulness that seem to be characteristic of the county of Norfolk.

I may pause here to remark upon a most pleasant feature of country life in this hospitable district. You never pass along the road morning, noon, or night without being treated to a cheery greeting; it is either a good morning or a good night, a chat about the weather or the crops, a bow from the lads or a curtsey from the lasses, as the stranger threads his way among the Norfolk lanes. I never felt more at home or was made more welcome than I have been in East Anglia. 

These things seem small and immaterial, but life goes along somehow pleasanter when the labourer trudging to his toil in the morning can exchange greetings with his neighbour, and when at nightfall a gruff "Good night" comes out of the darkness on the road as people pass on their way homewards.

Louie Jermy at the gate of 'Poppyland Cottage', c.1905
Restored and colourised using Google Gemini

"Could I be allowed a lodging for a few days?" "Indeed you could," was the answer of the miller's daughter, who opened the hospitable doors of the farmhouse that sunny morning. 

The family that had occupied the house all the summer had just gone away, and father would be delighted to have me as a temporary tenant. I was told that father would not quarrel about terms; that the fare at the farm was simple enough, but that every one would do their best for me; that I could come in at once, that very night if I liked, for all the rooms were ready, and that father was the possessor of a fast pony and a basket chaise, quite strong enough to bring me over with my traps whenever I cared to order it.

Need I say 1 closed with the offer at once. A farmhouse within two fields of the sea, a garden full of flowers and fruit, a bed-room spotlessly clean, with a full view of the windmill and the cornfields, a sitting-room full of old oak and old-fashioned furniture, country lanes bright with poppies and the wild Michaelmas daisy, not a sound but the drone of the bees in the flower beds and the busy presence of insect life, a hospitable host glad to welcome me and a civil little daughter determined to make me comfortable, early to bed and early to rise—these were some of the advantages held out in prospect to me. 

Many a time I have crossed the Channel and travelled many a weary mile in search of some such place as was here ready to hand in my native land. How far my ideas were fulfilled, and how pleasant holiday life can become in such a retreat, may more conveniently form the subject of a subsequent letter.

Notes

1. The author and journalist Clement Scott was commissioned by the Great Eastern Railway to write a piece to encourage visitors to the Cromer area. This article, published in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday 30 August 1883, was the result.
2. In it Scott coined the name Poppyland - or Poppy Land or Poppy-Land - for the first time. The expression had been used before to describe opium poppy growing lands in China. This association with opium poppies was followed up by Scott in his poem The Garden of Sleep.
3. The miller's house was occupied by the Jermy family. Alfred, the miller, and 'Louie' (officially Maria Louisa), his daughter.