It has been a long time since the traveller’s joy was in flower but what lasts through winter are the silvery feathers attached to its seeds. Even when the sun goes in, the plumed seedheads hold light in the lane with a glow of their own.
In viney tangles up trees, sprawling over derelict quarries and roadside verges, this is a very social climber of limestone woods and characteristic of Wenlock Edge.
As the wild clematis this plant was thought too boisterous and its blooms inadequate to be grown as an ornamental in gardens. But the plants were used as rootstocks for the showier varieties and so infiltrated gardens in secret.
In 1597 John Gerard, the herbalist, claimed to have named the wild clematis traveller’s joy because he found it “adorning waies and hedges, where people travell”. However, the vanilla-sweet fragrance of its flowers and the papery strips of bark, which, when rolled up dry, readily catch a spark from a flint for lighting fires, are good enough reasons for giving joy to travellers.
During Gerard’s career as a botanist and herbalist the Guild Hall was built in Much Wenlock. Underneath this Tudor building is a market and when I called in on Saturday I noticed a door open at the far end into what I knew was a mediaeval prison, now used as a store room. The man from the vegetable stall let me have a look around: stone walls, a high window with an iron grill, a cracked tiled floor and a studded door are all that remain of the old gaol.
Then he told me a great story. A man was passing off counterfeit money in the Rock House pub on Farley Dingle. He was chased, arrested and brought to the gaol before standing trial in the Guild Hall courtroom upstairs. But he escaped.
Looking around, that feat seems miraculous. But apparently, in the records, at the end of the description of the fugitive’s appearance he was noted to be just 3ft 4ins tall.
The story sounded supernatural but I loved the idea of a Rumpelstiltskin-like character vanishing into the woods, scattering fake money, and hiding in thickets of traveller’s joy.
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