Kelston Roundhill and Roundhill Barn

We’ve engaged a seriously good new young theatre company to put drama on Kelston Roundhill 14 July 2023. Troubadour Stageworks are coming to the hill to perform The Odyssey. Here’s the story:

20 years have passed since Penelope and Odysseus last met. 10 years of war, 10 of… well that is the question. What has kept Odysseus from home so long, and what has happened in Ithaca in the intervening years?

Join us for an evening of music, myth and monsters as this cunning couple, blessed by Athena, find their way back to the person they left.

Email kelstonroundhill@gmail.com for details. Or just get tickets here

Some hardy sledders made it up to the top for a greytone view and a bumpy ride down.

She celebrated International Womens’ Day by knocking off two men’s hats with snowballs.

We get enquiries from people whose late relative loved Kelston Roundhill. Can they scatter their ashes up in the clump?

First: it’s always good to hear from people who love the place. Second: it’s nice of people to ask, because not all do (though it’s a clear legal requirement to seek permission from the landowner before scattering ashes on private land).

But third: it’s more complicated than it sounds.

“Ashes” is a euphemism for what cremains really are (hint: it’s not like the wood ash from a fire). What’s left after cremation is very alkaline. Frequent scattering in a small space (eg inside the clump) would affect the ecology quite severely and kill plants. Even burying instead of scattering doesn’t really help. This is well set out at the Living Memorial web site; the approach they recommend as best practice is to blend the cremains with a soil blend, and then to scatter over quite a wide area.

There’s a fair amount of cost in making Kelston Roundhill open and accessible (fencing, keeping trees safe, insurance). Our priorities are supporting viable farming, appropriate amenity use and improving biodiversity across the farm. We’re not in the business of making it a garden of remembrance, and certainly don’t want permanent memorials of any sort (metal, plastic, stone etc).

People sometimes kindly offer trees and benches, but trees require proper planting with protection and also maintenance (watering in first couple of years when it’s dry). Maybe we should accept a bench, but it would not be an improvement to make this special remote place more municipal.

We do rent Roundhill Barn out for events. That helps balance the books. Roundhill Barn is extremely well suited to funeral and memorial events (with unattended cremation elsewhere). It is a great place to say goodbye. We’d certainly consider offering people who rent the barn for memorial events the chance of scattering responsibly as part of the package: be in touch.

We appreciate this land has strong emotional ties for many people and that death is difficult to deal with. It’s a legal requirement to have the owner’s permission before you scatter cremains on private land, and it’s reasonable for us to insist at the least that any scattering is done responsibly blending the cremains with a specialist soil mix to render it less damaging to the soil and ecology.

Post-cremation “ashes” are more like cat litter than wood ash. Mixing cremains with a bucket of specialist soil like this before scattering can reduce ecological damage.

Who wants a stuffy, municipal funeral with the imposition of meaningless language and symbolism and a sense that the next cortege is waiting and you have to move on soon? No-one. Take your time; do it as you want. There are better options available.

Footnote: Many “local” funeral directors or undertakers are in reality subsidiaries of the publicly quoted national market leader Dignity plc. Exceptions are Clarksons, one excellent local independent undertaker. Divine based in Bristol is first rate for a really contemporary style of service.

Pro tip: if you want to choose a good undertaker, ask a GP. And if you want to choose a good GP, ask the undertaker.

We’re happy to work with any funeral director that offers good service, good value and genuinely puts the needs of the bereaved first. You can also do natural burial at Clearbrook Farm, a beautiful resting place. It’s 25 minutes’ drive but would combine well with a funeral or memorial event at Roundhill Barn.

Today we planted some oak and elm saplings.

The iconic elm largely died out in the UK in the 1970s (see Wikipedia on Dutch elm disease), but there are now disease-resistant strains. There are no mature oak trees on the Roundhill at all. Conditions are clearly tough for oak but the ones we planted in 2013 seem to be surviving Ok.

Ruth had collected and germinated acorns from St Catherine’s valley, and wanted a happy home for half a dozen oak saplings. She came with posts and collected some topsoil kindly left in neat piles by Mr Mole. We had some recycled tubes and wood chippings from the tree work. Mark and Lewis were on site already with superior tools; we diverted them from their gate work and asked them to dig the holes (very helpful when the ground is mostly stones and I’ve slipped a disc or something like that).

Harry had ordered elm saplings to replace the losses in Owen’s avenue of elms, and Billie from Brocks Adventures lent a hand which she’s very good at.

Ruth had collected and germinated acorns from St Catherine’s valley, and wanted a happy home for half a dozen oak saplings.

Harry had ordered elm saplings to replace the losses in Owen’s avenue of elms, and Billie from Brocks Adventures lent a hand which she’s very good at.

Roundhill Barn hosted two funeral events in Jan 2023, making the point that funerals and memorials can be more beautiful and memorable in a rural setting.

One was a Quaker Meeting with tea after the family had attended Haycombe Crematorium. The other was an attended Quaker funeral, after which close family and friends said farewell as a hearse carried the wicker coffin off into the sunset for unattended cremation.

We’re happy to host faith based memorial events, and also humanist and other secular life celebrations.

The key think is the funeral or memorial is a beautiful, quiet, unrushed event. These work very well in a simple barn with a beautiful view under a huge sky, no 45-minute deadline, and no religious or municipal imagery or clutter. We maintain the track to a standard that a hearse can navigate it without problem.

We’re happy to offer Roundhill Barn to ethical independent funeral directors and celebrants.

Contact us with any enquiries about funeral or memorial plans, particularly if Kelston Roundhill is special to you.

by Jon Hamp

Walk on star-field bridge-
fur long, sea-swept grasses,
here at this wheeling world’s end,
the long year shrugs,
and passes.

Luminary cities throw
telegraphed jabs of light,
over the star-field bridges
to fracture
winter night.

2022 winter Solstice just after sunset

Attention walkers: the permissive paths from the Cotswold Way to Kelston clump will be closed all day Tue 20 Dec and Weds 21st Dec (until 1430).

This is for essential tree works inside the clump, undertaken for reasons of public safety and also for the longer term health of the trees more likely to survive and thrive.

Maintenance work on the ash at Roundhill Barn. We’re cutting it right back so it doesn’t overhang the courtyard.

Ash dieback is affecting trees across the country; for more information on ash dieback see eg here. The hope is that some ash will simply survive, but that picture is not yet clear.

It’s a crying shame to have to cut back ash when there are relatively few trees on Kelton Roundhill and ash is one of the main species that succeed here. But we have to take into account how badly the ash appears to be affected, and how often people are likely to walk near the ash tree in question. We take into account Forestry Commission guidance on management (see here).

The only parts where we expect the public are on the permissive paths round the clump and in the Roundhill Barn courtyard, and therefore for the second year running we’re cutting back ash which seems even slightly affected in those two areas.

Since Wed 21st is Solstice we’ll try to reopen the paths by 1430 in case anyone wants to see the sun set on the shortest day.

Next week 20 and 21 Dec the paths around Kelston Clump will be closed.

There are – for our money – no more accomplished and exciting musicians in the south west than Modulus III, the improvisation trio of Dan Moore, Drew Morgan, and Matt Brown. Dan and Drew are multi-instrumentalists covering synths, cello and Rhodes keyboard; Matt is a drummer in a class of his own.

Modulus III will sit down in Roundhill Barn this Saturday, look at each other, and start to play something no-one has ever played before. It’s edgy, it’s atmospheric, you can lose yourself in it, and you can dance if that moods sweeps over us all.

It’s their first time at Kelston Roundhill since their memorable gig in 2017 – see 20-min video here; you get the idea. If you’re susceptible to this sort of music Modulus II is absolutely the best of its type. Even if you’ve never experienced improvisation you’re guaranteed a memorable evening.

Come join us! There will be simple food (bread, soup, the award-winning local organic cheeses), a cash bar and we’ll light the fires for a warm welcome. Tickets via Komedia.

Tom Teague discovered this web site which evoked childhood memories. He writes

When I was a boy in the 1960s, once or twice a year, I remember being taken with my younger brother and sisters from our then home in Liverpool to visit relatives in the Bristol and Bath area. I have a vivid memory of a small hill with what always seemed to me to be a very distinctive but rather sinister clump of trees at the summit. You really couldn’t miss it. It almost always seemed to be on the skyline. I have seen it from Bristol and from Bath, but I have a particular memory of seeing it from the car as we drove between Keynsham and Bath. Not having made that journey again since about 1970, my memory of the feature may be unreliable.

This week I happened to be working in Bristol. For some reason I can’t explain, I have often thought of that hill during the intervening decades. This time I asked a lady where I was working and she told me she thought it was Kelston Round Hill. The position of the hill on the map does accord exactly with my memory, but the photos I’ve seen on the internet are all fairly recent and they don’t quite match what I recall having seen. My memory is not of a particularly dense clump, but of a small number of trees, at least one of which was a little misshapen. That may be the feature that made the sight so distinctive and unmistakeable. I’m as certain as I can be that it was Kelston Hill that I remember seeing, and it occurs to me that some changes may have taken place during the 50+ years that have elapsed since I last saw it. For example, more trees may have grown to maturity since then, making the older trees less noticeable or even masking them from sight. I’ve considered whether it may be that I saw the hill when there were no leaves on the trees, but I don’t think that explains the discrepancy. We most certainly did visit the area during the summer, although I seem to recall one visit in late winter or early spring.

I can’t explain why this peculiar landmark should have continued to fascinate me for so many years, long after I last saw it, but the fact is that the memory is still quite vivid. Incidentally, we never once visited the hill. I only ever saw it from some distance, on the skyline.

Do you happen to have any old photographs from the mid to late 1960s by any chance? Can you shed any light on why the trees now seem more numerous and dense than they did then?

Of course, it may just be the unreliable memory of an old man!

Incidentally, I was delighted to make my first ‘modern’ sighting of Kelston Hill (i.e.since 1969-70) yesterday afternoon, from the top of Clifton Observatory. It was very far away, but the approximate bearing (about 30 degrees south of due east) seems to match the position of Kelston Hill, and I’m sure I correctly identified it.

Tom asks if anyone can send in more photos of Kelston Clump as it used to be, in its more sinister state…

Roundhill Barn hosted the Kelston Records fest – a simple celebration of life and summer – 15-17 July. Around 100 guests from locally, Germany and as far away as New Zealand enjoyed Bath Soft Cheese meals, local lamb, a specialist Kenyan feast, local beer and cider.

Music was provided by the Marick Baxter Band, Anna Kissel, The R.A.M.O.A.N.E.R.S and Anunaki Fan Club; consistently excellent in very different ways. Brocks Adventures treated guests to archery and axe-throwing. Fairfield House provided logistics support and two excellent table tennis tables.

Kids were entertained with a craft workshop and firing lemonade bottles into the sky with the “Wacky Chad” custom water rocket engine. Thanks to all involved for organising, support and clear up.