AUTUMN COMES ...

The last bank holiday before Christmas (surely too long a gap!) coincided very rarely with a heatwave, and we celebrated by walking down to the Scotch Corner Chapel, tucked away behind Sutton Bank, where the custodian of the site, Bernard Bunting, son of the creator the sculptor John, gave a very generous tour of the chapel, and the adjacent field, which the family has bought.

Immortalized by his younger sister Madeleine Bunting, in her book “The Plot”, the historic site of the skirmish with an invading Scottish army (which gives the place its name – not to be confused with the A66 junction a few miles north up the Great North Road) it has been improved, with the creation of a dewpond, the drilling of a well 150 feet down to provide water to fill the pond and nourish a small orchard, now starting to bear fruit (after an unfenced first stab fell victim to the local deer...

(To read the rest of this article go along to your nearest stockist and buy a copy of the paper)