During 2022, we collected some memories that local residents shared about Blockhouse Park, which you can read below.
A new perspective
“I live and work at the bottom of the hill below Blockhouse. During stressful days, when my head is full and noisy, I love to come up the hill to Blockhouse. I sit on the bench, feel the wind, listen to the birds and look down at my house below. What felt like a house full of stress instead looks like a little piece of a bigger picture, a gentle and calm picture. This new perspective, some deep breaths, and smiling at some passing dogs is exactly what I need to get my day back on track.”
– Stoke Resident, 2022
Playground
“I grew up in Stoke Village, so Blockhouse Park has always been my playground. I remember when there was a scout hut at the top by Pakington St. entrance and the area behind was called the allotments… Once when I was a teenager one of the entrances to the old air raid shelters broke open. I never knew how but some of the local boys tried to get down there.
Blockhouse has been the venue to many fayers over the years and I remember as a child standing and watching the huge floats going through and meeting at the park. The views at the fort are amazing and even though I’ve seen them since I was 4-years-old at 46-years-old I never tire of them.”
-Lisa Scales, Stoke Resident, 2022
Blockhouse’s Energies
“I use [Blockhouse’s] energies, earth, and plant life within all of my Witchcraft Practices. Yes I am a Witch, and have been for the last 30 years.
My story starts about 7 years ago when I started to get interested in the power of plant magic and medicine. I went on a day course to learn more. A part of the course was to take part in a meditation to speak to a plant or tree spirit that you feel connected to and I chose one of the beautiful Hawthorn Trees in the Park.
I know this story sounds a bit woo woo, but I did manage to speak to the Spirit of the Tree and as it spoke it asked me to put ribbons in its branches and in return it would let me use its energy to heal. So since that day every Sabbat or special celebration I tie a ribbon around one of its branches and when I do I reconnect to the Tree Spirit and request it’s help in healing my clients. What’s so lovely is that ever since I started doing it, I’ve noticed other people have been adding ribbons to the tree too!
Adding ribbons to Sacred Trees is a very ancient practice. Originally it started with the Shamans of Siberia. But it was once common across the British Isles and Brittany too.Here in Devon and Cornwall, the ribbons are actually called Clouties which derives from the local words for rags or strips of cloth. Clouties are left as gestures of acknowledgement and respect for the spirits of the land, and sometimes as prayers requesting general blessings or specific aid from those same spirits.
So if you’d like help from this beautiful sacred tree just add a ribbon to it and make a healing request. Hawthornes are particularly known as a healer of the heart – so it’s especially good to those who have a broken one.”
-Tamsyn, Stoke Resident, 2022
Little Haven
“During the lockdown, the wooded area of the park was a little haven for people to visit. The local community created a ‘secret’ space for the children to play and write letters/notes to each other. The locals treasured this haven and made decorations, which were hung from the branches. We will always treasure this ‘safe’ space at the happy moments spent here.”
-Stoke Resident, 2022
Blockhouse Dance
There is a game the crows play
Banking up the curve of wind
Showing a bit of purple to the hill
All pause and fall
A mother and her son walk the bending path
A view to an old volcano
And earthen almonds built four thousand years ago
But then the docks
She’d meant to buy him the toy robot
He’d wanted it
But there’s a shortage
So she carries a secret gift
Hoping it meets some as yet undiscovered need
They pause and loom across the moors
The crows are fighting off a buzzard
Interested in their young
The sun drops deeper pinker
The submarine cadavers throb
Something old in the ground squirms
Playing the tune of the game’s long pattern
Threads trail from a thorn
And everyone is taller in their shadows as the evening comes
-Stoke Resident, 2022