On Gallows Down: Place, Protest and Belonging (Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize 2022 for Nature Writing - Highly Commended)

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P.S. My husband and I attended the book launch event for On Gallows Down in Hungerford on Saturday evening. Nicola was interviewed by Claire Fuller, whose Women’s Prize-shortlisted novel Unsettled Ground is set in a fictional version of the village where Nicola lives. Font adjustments – users, can increase and decrease its size, change its family (type), adjust the spacing, alignment, line height, and more. On Gallows Down is a powerful, personal story shaped by a landscape; one that ripples and undulates with protest, change, hope - and the search for home.

Passionate and poetically compelling, Nicola Chester’s On Gallows Down is a rich and rewarding must-read for nature-lovers, and for readers who adored H is for Hawk. So many times the wild characters that fill the book with life and lustre: the birds, trees and the landscape itself are introduced with piercing clarity but seemingly only as a prelude to the accounts of their displacement and destruction. Some of these, the author’s own eye-witness statements, are excruciating; the dislocation and loss that she feels so deeply is powerful and painful. It is deeply moving, with an emotional rawness that is sometimes uncomfortable to read. The human characters too are often somewhat tragic, not least the unnamed gamekeeper who at first is a much needed friend and ally, Chester’s guide and access to places she could not otherwise go, but who eventually reveals himself as something darker, and derails what they have been trying to achieve through his own conceit. Bob Mortimer wins 2023 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with The Satsuma Complex The story of a life shaped by landscape; of an enduring love of nature and the fierce desire to protect it - living as part of the rural working class in a 'tied cottage' on a country estate - and what it takes to feel like you belong.This walk starts at the Inkpen Beacon car park and climbs to the gibbet along the Test Way long distance footpath. It's a good path which leads to the Inkpen long barrow and then up onto Inkpen Hill. From here there are wonderful views over the surrounding Berkshire countryside. The Combe Gibbet is also the start of a scenic 16 mile off-road race to Overton organised by the Overton Harriers and Athletic Club. The race, which is typically in late March / early April of each year, is one of the few true off-road point to point running races in Britain, coaches taking competitors to the start. On Gallows Down is a powerful, personal story shaped by a landscape deeply loved; one that ripples and undulates with protest, change, hope – and the search for home. From treetop protests at the Newbury Bypass to the grand Highclere Estate, On Gallows Down is that rare thing: nature writing as political as it is personal. -Melissa Harrison, author of The Stubborn Light of Things: A Nature Diary Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.

Change is afoot, however. The local keeper has gone and an outbreak of bird disease has left the shoot silent for the first time in a century.

About the author

Part nature writing, part memoir, On Gallows Down is an essential, unforgettable listen for fans of Helen Macdonald, Terry Tempest Williams, and Robin Wall Kimmerer. A landscape doesn’t forget its stories. It wears them like lines on an old face, markings on an old body. Part nature writing, part memoir, On Gallows Down is an essential, unforgettable read for fans of Helen Macdonald, Melissa Harrison and Isabella Tree. Dystopian Fiction Books Everyone Should Read: Explore The Darker Side of Possible Worlds and Alternative Futures

And it is also the story of how Nicola came to write and to protest - unearthing the seam of resistance that ran through Newbury's past, from the Civil Wars to the Swing Riots and the women of the Greenham Common Peace Camps and to the fight against the Newbury bypass. A resistance that continues today against the destruction of hedgerows, trees and wildlife through modern farm estate management. On Gallows Down is a powerful, personal story shaped by a landscape deeply loved; one that ripples and undulates with protest, change, hope – and the search for home.The library is a fantastic place. It’s not just about books, but about ideas and digital information literacy, and a real flow of that goes on between the students. It’s almost like anything can happen in there.”

In everything I did, I tried to spread the word. I took writing and wildlife workshops into schools (and out of them) and the ’keeper and I did talks and guided walks, attempting to show how a farming and shooting estate could support wildlife too. We did a series of talks for some influential American ladies who were guests at the Big House. It was a hopeful attempt, and one I believed in. There was plenty of push and pull during our talks, plenty of banter, open disagreement and good-humoured challenge. I thought, ultimately, it was working. Newbury (and West Berkshire in general) may not be flashy or particularly famous, but it has natural wonders worth celebrating and a rich history of rebellion that Nicola Chester plumbs here. A hymn-like memoir of place as much as of one person’s life, her book posits that the quiet moments of connection with nature and the rights of ordinary people are worth fighting for. We have never been on a holiday abroad, instead we would go walking through nature, through the fields, up the hill and explore the footpaths. It made sound a bit cliché, but when I think about my children, it is the hill that raised them.” Evocative and inspiring…environmental protest, family, motherhood and…nature.’ Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground, Costa Novel Award Winner 2021 One element of belonging is an ethic of care. To belong in a place is to have a stake in its future. Chester not only has skin in this place, but her head and heart are also fully invested in her care for the corner of Berkshire she calls home. She recounts a life of protest against the destruction of the place she loves, beginning with the protests against nuclear weapons at Greenham Common in the 1980s, which she observed as a teenager, followed by taking part in protests against the building of the M3 route across Twyford Down, the Newbury bypass protests and ending with a protest against the destruction of a local woodland. Chester’s life has been shaped by fighting against the threat of environmental destruction.Part memoir, part nature writing and entirely impressive. I was completely bowled over by this book and finished it with huge admiration for Nicola Chester. From the girl catching the eye of the “peace women” of Greenham Common to the young woman protesting the loss of ancient and beloved trees, and as a mother raising a family in a farm cottage in the shadow of grand, country estates, this is the story of how Nicola Chester came to write – as a means of protest. The story of how she discovered the rich seam of resistance that runs through her village of Newbury and its people – from the English Civil War to the Swing Riots and the battle against the Newbury Bypass. And the story of the hope she finds in the rewilding of Greenham Common after the military left, the stories told by the landscapes of Watership Down, the gallows perched high on Inkpen Beacon and Highclere Castle (the setting of Downtown Abbey). I knew very little about some of the areas she talks about, but she brings them to life with her writing style and I also found myself googling pictures of the area to get more of a feel for the areas that meant so much to her over the years, and those areas that she fought so passionately to save and protect. Jonathan Stevenson is a forester and arborist living, working, and teaching sustainable woodland management in North Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion. I first came across Nicola Chester, winner of the 2021 Richard Jeffries Award for Nature Writing, at the Talking Place symposium organised by Women Talk Place, where she enthusiastically read sections of On Gallows Down to us. As she spoke about the protests against the Newbury bypass road-building project in the 1990s, I realised that our lives had overlapped when I was living in Reading and, like Chester, I had taken food to the tree-top protesters. Since it was built, I have travelled along the bypass many times. I immediately felt a sense of connection and wanted to know more.