Life on the Levels: Voices from a Working WorldThe Moors and Levels of Somerset are still home to practices and professions that are particular to the unique landscape of the place. Lying in a bowl of hills bounded by the sea, and crossed by a network of rivers, ditches, dikes, canals and rhynes, these lowlands are defined by water and by flood. The farmers, fishermen, peat diggers, withy-growers, basket makers and cider makers in this area have all inherited traditions that were evolved over many years by Celts and Saxons, abbots and noblemen, commoners and landowners. Illustrated with evocative photographs of the landscape and its people, Life on the Levels presents the voices of local people talking about their memories of a now-threatened way of life. The book is both a study and a celebration of the men and women whose lives have always been lived to the rhythm of life on the levels. |
Common terms and phrases
acres agricultural anyway apples bank basket birds Black Maul bloody boat Bob Thorne Bridgwater Bridgwater Bay Burrowbridge butts catch cattle cent cider Clarks cows dairy digging ditch drain drainage Dunball eels elvers English Nature Environment Agency factory farm farmers father feed fields fish fishin flood Glastonbury goin gone grass Greylake grow keep land Levels and Moors live look machine nets never nice organic milk peat peat extraction pounds production pump rhynes River Brue River Parrett round RSPB salmon sell shoes shrimp silage skins Somerset Levels sort SSSI started stick Stolford strip there's they'm thing tide Tony Tony Brewer twas twenty Uncle village water-table week West Sedgemoor Westhay Westonzoyland wildlife willow winter withies withy bed zider