The Bodmin moor Gazette
- jonchinn
- Jul 25
- 7 min read
The Bodmin moor Gazette is an ongoing prose, poetry and photographic archive. It has been the start point for the 3 multi-media projects currently developing and n featured on the website. It is continuously added to and reorganised. It is an (AN)archive.
Bodmin moor Gazette became more a state of mind from about 2016 when I began recording an album called Skylark by Jonathon Heron, a very limited cd release and 48-page book about walking around a route waymarked by trees, rocks and the Neolithic / Bronze age features of southeast Bodmin moor in Cornwall. It sold out very quickly.
It was a response to my wife's diagnosis of cancer. Mmm. Middle-aged man diverts someone else’s crisis to being about his crisis and then reflects on existence.
So what?
I’m not hostile towards that response. I thought it too. Skylark quickly got deeper than that. The Album became an attempt to remove the fear of death. Not necessarily my own. It was the point that, after many years of going to prehistory monuments, I thought about what the places were intended for.
My first full on encounter was the summer solstice of 1980 at Stone Henge free festival. At 15, I was already in that network through older friends, and being an embryonic, but already known as a “good” guitarist.
My counterculture ran through the 1980’s . Stone Henge until 1984. Swerved 1985 for obvious reasons. Bumped into various sub sects of “The Convoy” at various places. Until in 1987 I attended my last free festival at The Roll Right Stones in Oxfordshire. Ironically, I found out years later that Roll Right and Hook Norton were where my Fathers side of the family had orginally come from pre industrial revolution. The festival was about 500 travellers in a field. A heavy police presence but calm. A proper low key spares, repairs, intel for winter get together type of do. It had the feel of the end of an era. And it was. I wrote about it in the skylark booklet.
The late 80’s free festival scene was a different beast to the Aquarius hippy age of the70's and the stone bothering antics of today. It must be placed firmly in the context of post punk, Margart Thatcher, high youth unemployment, squats and heavy police tactics. “Love and peace” of the 60s and early 70s were still present in some quarters but not a driving force anymore. There were the usual scattering of trust fund punks, hippies and criminals as there always has been through out culture and art. However, there were a high number of people without the safety net or confidence that comes with British class entitlement who just didn’t want to play anymore.
Sat in a teepee with a banana fritter and a cup of tea, I had an early teens kid explain to me how they could get away with an "illegal" festival in such a place. The law was only broken when trespass caused actual damage, and actual damage was only clear when they had left. No prosecution because they couldn’t find them. Trying to “combat” the festival whilst significant people were still there not cost effective or politically desirable for the police at that point.
This annoyed me. I was a proper born at home country boy. I was already out of love with this scene. Worn out. Aged 22. Had a job for a year or so, and I had been offered a place at the radical Northeast London Polytechnic to do an Ecology degree. (yes in 1987 ). I was on a road to recovery. I wandered lonely as a cloud stylee. Sid Barrett wannabe survivor (just) come good. Don’t get me wrong, the “damage “on this site was low: A bit of mud/ tire ruts at the gate and obviously not useable for livestock until full checked. 500 people no toilets: work that one out. It was the attitude in a young kid that worried me. Loopholes and getting away with it. Missing the point by adult modelling.
After getting a degree, squatting around East london when you still could, and almost doing a Phd in Scotland, I eventually did a PGCE and became a Lead SEND Teacher: Inner city Birmingham, Home office, disaffection, community action then for the last 15 years In Cornwall. Initially to set up specialist facilities for “social excluded children” (thin veiled social engineering policy by Mr Blair ie Normalising to fit. I was more validation and resilience based in my approach and was supported by the schools that I worked in) and then Autism and complex social / emotional conditions. Lots of performance art!
Despite becoming an apparent “establishment” cog this wasn’t the case. “Good” guitarist and my experiences during my teens kept me in touch with the counterculture people and aesthetic and I managed to juggle both , one informing the other without compromising either. Be an agent , a chameleon on the inside. There was a cost further down the line but that would probably have happened anyway.
There is a hint of context. Now back to the Bodmin moor archive.
It is an (An)archive. Connections are made between groupings of media by how they are encountered: initiating new thinking. The best explanation I have heard for operation of an (An)archive process could be that you changed the direction of your walk every time the wind blew at a different speed which would give a different perspective of where you were walking. Or you throw your pictures and writing on the floor and see how you react to the way they touch each other. I suppose it is an arm of surrealism. The subconscious reaction where ideas come into your head. There is stuff on the net if you want to know more.
People are interested in the concept of “Ancient” sites for a lot of reasons. The association, the connection. I like the sedimented history and adding to it with my own. For me, It’s the here and now at a place. A place significant for lots of people and animals for a lot of reasons. Most of which we will never know. That’s okay because I was there too with people I know and love. Part of it.
The Gazette will be updated, and more sites added with notes / prose as I go along. I have been striding about on Bodmin moor for over 20 years now. It would be easy to go down the “mysterious folklore” etc route with these places, but the Gazette isn’t really about that.
I’ve been hanging around in places like this with a whole lot of motivations. Festivals. Wildlife interaction. Meeting points. By accident. Isolation and contemplation. I have gone for the “tourist gaze” in few images made consciously and subconsciously. I could get into a long narrative about “the Photographer really “making” an image of themselves…. The act of photography changes the intent of the image you make …. The location influencing the type of equipment you use (mainly waterproof and shit resistant for Bodmin moor) …. All true and you know that ….
This gazette is vernacular. It is visits with my children as they have grown up. Solo walks. Getting lost, getting very wet, covered in shit, getting to know certain animals. The ravens becoming familiar with you and following you around to see what you’re up to. Ditto the horses (and even sheep and cows in the more remote places). Its almost bringing horses and ponies home with you. Finding dead things everywhere. Other people’s magic. ashes, love, gesture. Lost gloves.
The animals and plants that have a relationship with the sites too. Part of their mythology their cultural relationship with the land scape. The weather. The context. The contact. Time. Completism. Like having nearly all the studio Fall albums. A photograph of every Guitar I ever owned. An almost complete Julian Cope collection. Modular synthesisers, a massive waterproof collection built on the trauma of daily distance walks in upland areas through the winter with very bonkers dogs. Satisfying but sometimes unhealthy.
I have included information about the sites. A lot of it familiar if you research these places. It’s almost compulsory for old people, local or insurgents, to write a book about Cornwall. Cornwall, the tourist gaze, Its counter tourist gaze, the idyll, Poldark, continues to be unmercifully monetised. Even more so in the London annexed West than the mid and the East.
The East and Bodmin moor have become more popular in recent times, but they remain a more committed adventure. Wading up to your knees, 4 miles through shit, mud, hungry horses, depressed sheep and philosophical cattle in a 40-mph wind and rain at 30 degrees to the ground, that stings, whilst not being able to see where you are. To find a propped stone.
I’ve given source reading in a list at the base of each project site where possible. I have amassed a lot of literature over the years. If you’re looking at this, you’ll probably know the books anyway.
Bodmin moor is still a hidden gem. There are complete Neolithic / bronze age“landscapes” despite heavy industry and farming. Their geographic upland location has protected them. People have recognised their significance, and they have survived as part of the fabric and are still relevant as their context changes.
No one really knows the context of these sites in terms of how they integrated into society culture beyond applying other anthropological information to them. People who take the time to visit them add to the story and keep them alive.
Comments