Exploring a Productive Landscape By Chris Stoate
From a long history to a sustainable future in the Eye Brook catchment
The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, Fordingbridge, Hampshire - 2010
ISBN: 978 1 901369 12 0
This attractive and informative book was produced last year to little local fanfare (in Rutland at least)
and deserves to be better known. It is the culmination of the work of the Eye Brook Community Project
carried out over four years and supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. It is an environmental study of
the borderlands between Leicestershire and Rutland from Tilton to Caldecott. It combines both an
historical and an ecological perspective to its analysis of how the landscape and rural culture has
developed over the years. It is particularly good on twentieth century life in an agricultural community,
drawing on the memories of local residents. Anyone remotely interested in environmental and
agricultural issues, should read the well edited chapters at the end of the book, outlining the issues the
Eye Brook environment faces. As such, it is a model environmental survey and history which could be
adapted to any local area with similar characteristics.
Chris Stoate and his team deserve congratulation for producing such a readable and concise volume. One
quibble, which comes to mind every time I pick this attractively produced slim hardback up, is that the
many wonderful photographs and illustrations are not large enough in the text. I would gladly have paid a
few extra pounds to see the photographs, maps and pictures more clearly. This is not a conventional
history book, but has content for anyone interested in rural life in the past present or future.
Hilary J Crowden for RLH&RS
