2nd: Devizes and Roundway Orchard – Wiltshire

Perhaps the best word to describe Devizes and Roundway Orchard and Old Cricket Field is suburban. Whereas I got the feeling that Upper Waterhay existed outside humanity, Devizes and Roundway seemed to be interconnected with us inextricably. It’s very close to the centre of Devizes and there is a very large hospital that has now been converted into homes right next to it. All this means there are a large number of people and dogs around most of the time.

The site only exists due to the building of the hospital in 1851. The hospital was in fact a facility for the care of mental health patients (more than 1,500 at its peak) and only closed in 1995. I can’t help wondering about the quality of that care, over almost all of those years, and what that says about us as a society, but I’m here to be inspired by the wildlife and habitats being preserved, not by our care, or lack of, for those different from ourselves. Mind you, I do want to include the hospital if I do a piece of artwork inspired by here somehow, as it’s so bound to the reserve’s existence.

The hospital itself was sold for housing development, but the old cricket ground and orchard were handed over to the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, who are committed to keeping the cricket ground as an open space for the locals to enjoy and keeping the orchard as an orchard, replacing diseased trees with local varieties.

None of this diminishes the importance of the habitat for local wildlife and the fact that many orchards are disappearing from our landscape make this sort of reserve even more important. The orchard itself is very small, and the immediate thing that struck me was the fascinating way the old trunks interacted with each other, crossing at various angles making a unique depth and pattern. It was this that I focused on in the on site sketch I completed.