On the Real Watership Down

Miscellaneous Photographs

More photographs from my journey around the landscape of Watership Down.

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One of my earliest memories—as early as the rhododendrons—is of being taken by Constance, in my pushchair, down the little lane leading off the Andover Road into Sandleford Park. Sandleford Park is not a municipal park, but a tract of open country a mile square, with woods, meadows and a brook. (It was from here that Hazel and his rabbits were later to set off on their adventures.) The lane led past some rather rough cottages, in one of which lived Mrs Dolimore, the milk lady. She used to come to our back door with the milk in a great metal drum with a lid, and from this, with a metal dipper, she would dip as much milk as we wanted. The milk and the metal also had their own smells.

The lane ran on between elms and high hedges into the Park meadows themselves. I remember the smell of the dust, the smell of dried cow-dung and of nettles and woundworts in the ditches. In the Park were some old, gnarled hawthorn trees, all bent every which way. One was bent into a regular ‘S’, and formed a natural seat. This seemed wonderful, and I always used to go and sit on it. Even a light breeze would bring out a whispering from the boughs of these isolated trees.

Richard Adams: The Day Gone By —Chapter II

Visiting as many of the real world locations in Watership Down as I could was a drawn out process, but a happy one. It has been therapeutic, allowing me to experience some of England’s most beautiful countryside and, at times, escape into a landscape where you can sense the past and simpler times.

Along the way, I took a good few photographs. Most have been consigned to the ether and a few became memories worth keeping and made it onto the main pages of this website. There were also some that were okay but didn’t make the cut, either because I wasn’t particularly happy with them or they weren’t totally relevant. Rather than bin them all, I’ve put the also-rans on this page, grouped by geography.