Heydon Hill Tree Nursery

Puppets in the Wood

P1080524_5 — **Puppets in the Wood Photos by Ingrid Hesling**

Ingrid wrote

[These puppets]were made in early 1950s by my Dad. He was a puppet master for “Hesling’s Marionettes” and brought puppet shows to villages and towns around Exmoor. These are just a small selection of puppets from various productions he and my Mum put on – from Rumpelstiltskin to review shows. They have been put away in boxes for over 50 years and desperately needed some TLC and an airing. I have wanted to take them out and play with them for ages and Heydon Woods seemed a perfect place to explore the idea of fairy tales and create new narratives for them. It was a fascinating process to find the right place to site the characters in the woodland and create the ‘sets’ for them to come to life in.

roofing the barn

Hoory hurrah, the roof is being done, almost as I write this. Thanks go to Cyril and Guy for their time and skills. I think Cyril ran out of patience with us ever completing the barn and got his scaffolding up and got on with it. Much appreciated.Though as usual, everyone is trying to get it done between other paid work and full time jobs. We’ve also been trying to take advantage of the scaffolding being up to finish the cladding. So please stop raining.

I never thought that I would be so obsessed about the weather before we had this wood, but it really can determine moving on and getting on, sitting on our impatient hands while the rain pours down and the wind blows through the trees. I’ve become one of those archetypal English women of a certain age,in the country, with ruddy cheeks, rough hands and cracked lips, discussing the subtle changes in light and cloud pattern. Do I miss the days of Clinique and Clarins? Not at all. I have a partner who comes home smelling sweetly of pine resin and saw dust and I get to be in a wood that must have one of the best views in the South West. It is especially stunning from the top of the scaffolding as it happens. So there are some compensations for spending your weekends up a ladder lugging heavy wavey edged boards and hammers around……. Honest.

Mid summer madness

Seems like a long time ago, but as the nights draw in and the cold creeps under the door it’s good to remember the fantastic summer we had.

Burning Down The House

These photos are from the event we had at mid summer.
Please see Events page.
It was a beautiful night, and made completely magical in the wood with the fantastic installations.
The house that Micheal and Louise made so lovingly, burnt down spectacularly.
Everyone was enchanted by the amazingly beautiful music that they created from Micheal Fairfax’s tree instruments, got lost in fantasies of climbing glass ladders to the tops of the trees, imagined themselves in the top of Louise’s watchtowers looking out over the hills, and following the trail of yarn from Jenni’s barn, that had been crotcheted from wool that had wrapped the whole boundary of the woodland,to find an exquisite giant fir cone that Caroline had lain down so carefully on a bed of moss and pine needles. A journey that took you to a beautiful burning and eventually to sleep a tranquil sleep under the stars in Jane’s bed.It was a journey that was described as “sublime”by one visitor. What more could we have all wanted?
A huge thankyou to Micheal Fairfax, Louise Baker, Jane Mowat, Jenni Dutton and Caroline and everyone who came and enjoyed.
THANKYOU
Thankyou to