Witherslack Woods and Howe RIdding Wood now and then

High summer with Common Blue on seeding grasses

Witherslack Estate came into the possession of the Stanley family circa 1485, soon after the battle of Bosworth. Possibly Thomas Stanley swayed the outcome of the battle with a switch of allegiance to his stepson Henry Tudor.  Stanley was created Earl of Derby and rewarded with Witherslack.  His wife, Margaret Beaufort, was the mother of the new king Henry VII, having negotiated his marriage to Elizabeth of York to unite the houses of York and Lancaster.  The focus is power and dynasty- not sure that Margaret Beaufort and Thomas Stanley revelled in Fritillaries in their newly acquired wooded estates. But imagine the biodiversity, and abundance in the late 15th century.  Summer is not what it was, not as I remember childhood summers, not in welcome ways. The heat-wave summer of 1976 is memorable for being an aberration, a one-off. July 2026 sees the third heat-wave of the year, triggering a wave of wild-fires, of unprecedented global range. 98% caused by mankind, either accidentally or deliberately, with devastating destruction to wildlife and the environment.  Kids with fireworks causing serious moorland fires!!! Portable barbecues red hot and abandoned. 
On 7th July 2026 I'm here on a Butterfly Conservation field-trip. We see several Silver Washed Fritillary. We saw High Brown Fritillary  here two years ago, but our experts  do not find them this time. Although the search is on across favoured sites. Howe Ridding Wood and the nearby Latterbarrow are important  for flora and butterflies and we learn of Natural England's work in Howe Ridding Wood to create appropriate habitat. 

12th July Brigsteer Wood 
The wood is sensuous and dream-like, with an aura of mid-summer magic.  Silver Washed Fritillary fly through deep shadows of the woodland-fringe, and out into strong sunlight over banks of bracken with hemp agrimony coming into flower.   A trio of dancing butterflies lives on in my mind's-eye, when photographs fail. They're too distant, too close, too swift in flight.  Circling close about me, tantalising large butterflies with pointed wings in a flash of deep orange. The secret lives of butterflies,  in their domain, in shadow and in bright sunlight, a glimpse of a butterfly alighting on a hazel leaf- gone in a second. They seem to sense my presence, almost brushing against me, never settling.  Wondrous and welcome, unlike the stinging horseflies. 
Each flash of deep orange is a thrill, a possible Silver Washed Fritillary.  Two morph into comma which settle deep in brambles to show their dark  underwing with jagged edge and menacing eye.  But the flight of large Silver Washed Fritillary is distinctive and if sometimes a glance is inconclusive, who cares.  The magic of the wood is everything; the fragrance of water-mint and flora of the herb-layer,  purple loosestrife and yellow-loosestrife,  meadow sweet and greater willow herb.  Resin trickling down tree-bark.  Red admiral alight on the track, meadow brown, ringlet and whites are everywhere. Not only today but now and then,  with memories of summer days here in this wood. 
I’m chased by a black and yellow chaser that circles and circles me.   Look and shoot, that’s all it takes.  But too much technology kills the magic. A ringing phone is intrusive. The latest craze is Meta-glasses but the idea of being photographed unawares and deep-faked is disturbing.
The essence of a mid-summer woodland is not about photographs.  An English woodland, now and then, then and now.  The weather is changing in new and unpredictable ways for which we are unprepared.  If we are heat-stressed, so are butterflies and flowers. So are cattle down in the Lyth Valley.