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A random thought!

PalustrisPalustris Posts: 4,307
edited September 2023 in The potting shed
On my morning walk today I passed by a Bowling green where the greenkeeper was mowing the grass. I t struck me that Bowls (flat green or crown green) can only have existed in their present form since lawn mowers were invented. Before that cutting the grass short enough to make bowling possible would have been rather difficult.

Posts

  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    Before 1830, when Edwin Beard Budding of Thrupp, near Stroud, UK, invented the lawnmower, lawns were often kept cropped by grazing sheep on them. The world's oldest surviving bowling green is the Southampton Old Bowling Green, which was first used in 1299.


    WP

  • PalustrisPalustris Posts: 4,307
    If the sheep they used were anything like the ones in the fields near to us, the grass would have been hidden under their droppings!
  • Joyce GoldenlilyJoyce Goldenlily Posts: 2,933
    I also had a random thought yesterday.
    My car was out of action so I walked the dog to the post box where there is a bench overlooking the countryside from St Austell out towards Penzance. Acres and acres of fields and hedges as far as the eye could see.
    It occurred to me that in not so many years the whole of the area in front of me would be buried under houses. 
  • Joyce GoldenlilyJoyce Goldenlily Posts: 2,933
    At least I will not be around to see it happen.
    The local councils have already started allowing corridor development between individual villages. The next step will be allowing the gaps to be filled in, resulting in the villages becoming suburbs of the towns. ie. Truro.
  • didywdidyw Posts: 3,573
    Even now I say - I remember when all this was fields.

    The countryside around the village where I grew up and spent many happy days wandering, sketching, paddling, had its horizon devastated by the M25.
    Gardening in East Suffolk on dry sandy soil.
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