On Watership Down,

in 1983 and 1985.

The top of Watership Down, looking east towards Cannon Heath Down

From chapter 19, 'Fear in the Dark':         ''There are some big trees there,' said Blackberry. 'the roots must have broken up the ground pretty deep. We could dig holes and be as well off as ever we were in the old warren. But if Bigwig and the others won't dig or say they can't - well, it's bare and bleak here. That's why it's lonely and safe, of course; but when bad weather comes we shall be driven off the hills for sure.'...'

'...During silflay, however, Hazel mentioned Blackberry's idea to no one but Fiver. Later on, when most of the rabbits had finished feeding and were either playing in the grass or lying on the sunshine, he suggested that they might go across to the hanger - 'just to see what sort of a wood it is'. Bigwig and Silver agreed at once and in the end no one stayed behind.'

On the other side of the line of low trees and bushes; the beech hanger is just to the right.

The same scene, but from further away, the beech hanger lies off to the right. This area is now fenced off and access is not as easy as it was in 1982.

        'It was different from the meadow copses they had left: a narrow belt of trees, four of five hundred yards long but barely fifty wide; a kind of wind-break common on the downs.'

        Watership Down, and indeed all of the downs so associated with southern England, may appear to be a natural place, wild and untouched by the hand of man. Nothing could be further from the truth.

        Downlands are the product of thousands of years of management. Once practically all of England would have been covered in open forest such as the beech hanger on Watership, this hanger is possibly a remnant of that forest left, as Richard Adams describes, as a wind-break. Chalk downland is formed by sedimentary rock; chalk being the remains of coral and other sea animal shells which died and fell to the bottom of a shallow tropical sea, such as surrounds the Florida Keys. Later the rock

Watership Down is not quite ‘a high lonely place where man hardly ever comes’ as Fiver in the 1978 film describes it. At times, particularly at the weekends, the down hums, if not exactly buzzes with human activity, not to mention, which Adams doesn’t, the racehorses that thunder along the gallops most mornings. Watership Down is not all that quiet at all!

was covered with other sediments such as clay and sandstone and the forces of tectonics forces the flat chalk layer into a dome. The top is eroded away leaving two ridges where the chalk breaks surface. Watership Down lies some fifty miles north of my home, the other ridge of downs lies less than half a mile to the south of me as I sit and type this. The thin acidic, chalky and flinty soil (flint being formed as a metamorphic product of chalk when it is squeezed and crushed) make downs unsuitable for crops, however they can support thin grass which is suitable for grazing of sheep. Indeed the name Watership is said to be derived from Water Sheep, i.e. a watering place for sheep. If you looked carefully at the soil at your feel you would find it full of chalk and flint fragments. The rabbits would have found it hard going to dig below about a foot, down there the chalk is often solid and impenetrable. The down is continually managed as it is used for racehorse training, as you can see in the top photograph and even today for sheep pasture, did you see them as you approached and climbed the down? No? Well its time to move on and examine the hanger a little more closely.