Yesterday I shared some pictures of the Yorkley Court Community Farm over the last four years. See that blog here.
Today I'd like to show you what I found when I returned to the site last week, two days after the community had been evicted by local property developer Mr Brian Bennett. As usual, you can click on any of the images to see a bigger version.
Today I'd like to show you what I found when I returned to the site last week, two days after the community had been evicted by local property developer Mr Brian Bennett. As usual, you can click on any of the images to see a bigger version.
Walking in from the woods, this was the first sight I came across.
Last time I was here, this debris and ash was a home in a tree that looked like this:
Last time I was here, this debris and ash was a home in a tree that looked like this:
 June 2014 |  February 2015 |  Interior, March 2015 |
With each step I saw rubble, ashes, ruins where there had been homes built with love. The community has been erased from the site and only debris remains.
 November 2012 |  March 2016 |
Last year I had the pleaseure of staying in this neat little treehouse over the stream. Not content with driving out the person who lived there and destroying the whole structure, the eviction crew seem to have tried to burn this entire, beautiful tree to the ground.
 Interior February 2014 |  March 2016 |
Treehouses weren't the only structures created and lived in on site. This little house was made using a traditional method of bending and joining willow boughs.
 April 2014 |  June 2014 |  March 2016 |
Interior January 2014
The home below was a geodome structure.
 January 2013 |  March 2016 |  Interior January 2013 |
A number of little houses have existed on this pretty spot:
 April 2013 |  April 2014 |
 March 2016 |  March 2016 |
One of my favourite homes on the site was a home built in a boat.
 March 2015 |  Interior March 2015 |
It has been burned to the ground.
March 2016
Of course, when the young environmental activists arrived at Yorkley Court in June 2012, there were none of these little homes. The whole site had been abandoned for years and was overgrown with brambles and weeds that had to be cleared by the community before they could plant their vegetables and build their homes. A couple of big structures were already there, remainders from when this property had been an MOD site. Of these pre-existing, industrial structures, the huge hangar was the most impressive.
June 2012
This too has been reduced to scrap by the bulldozers.
March 2016
There is nothing left. Everything has been destroyed.
 April 2015 |  March 2016 |
Here's what a walk round the site is like now...
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 View from the tower, April 2015 | For me, the most depressing aspect of this situation was the knowledge that this beautiful corner of the forest, alive with songbirds, trees and flowers, would never again be in the hands of people who would care so deeply for it. For four years the people who have lived on this site had nurtured the land and the living things that it sheltered. They designed their lives and their movements to be in harmony with this natural space and to limit their impact on the plants and animals with whom we share this land. This loving and nurturing community, committed to a future in which man can live peacefull with the rest of the natural world had been pushed out, and big machinery had come in to erase their homes. The calous brutality of the destruction that was unleashed on this peaceful site was shocking to me. The homes have gone, they are obliterated, turned to dust. But where are the people? |
After my visit tho the site last Monday, I took a walk and found the whole community living together nearby. They were still recovering from the trauma of losing their homes, but they were already looking to the future. A new site will be found. New homes will be built.
 Gate Sign March 2015 |  Gate Sign Temporary Home March 2016 |
The community farm has been destroyed. Wiped from the map.
The community continues and will rise again.
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