"The keeper" first appeared in "The Natural History of the Chew Valley" (1987) - "a very impressive resource" - Jonathon Porritt.
Austin Wookey, the subject of this article, died in March 1990.

the keeper

Austin Wookey (born in 1901) was one of the Chew Valley's best known characters. He and the bungalow he built 50 years ago at Coley 'starred' in a TV feature recently. For many years he was a gamekeeper. First on the Harptree Court Estate, then for Eastwood Manor, and finally at Green Ore. This is an extract from a tape of his memories, recorded in 1986.

When you were keepering it was a most interesting life. If you're a countryman you're a detective amongst birds and animals. You can track down any animal by its padmarks, you see. And birds, by their habits and calls give you a warning when there's something about, and you get to know if it's a fox and you get to know if it's a stoat - you'll know that tone.

You knew what you had to preserve and what you had to control. One thing we had to control was sparrowhawks. I can remember once seeing a pigeon coming across Hundred Acres making for the wood I was looking over a wall at. This pigeon I could tell was being chased by something. Its flight was ... terrified. And a sparrowhawk came along behind him, in flight, in mid air, and what he did with his talons, he hit that pigeon in the back of the neck, and the pigeon came tumbling down onto the ground about a hundred yards from where I was looking. He couldn't see me of course. And the pigeon was as dead as billyo.

The sparrowhawk flew round in a circle and came down and started plucking the feathers out to eat it. And I've seen them do the same with pheasants on the ground. Now a kestrel hawk eats mice and hundreds of daddy longlegs, so the kestrel hawk is most valuable to preserve, but the sparrowhawk had to be controlled - not exterminated! It's the same with badgers.

Keepers would ignore badgers usually, but they'd have the rogue. You see if you get five in a family you might get, exactly the same as human beings, one turn out to be a rotter. He starts burglaring and he'll be put in prison. And you get this with badgers. But in the 60's and 70's if a badger was causing trouble they'd put gas in the setts and kill the lot! Well the others are as innocent as the day! Badgers are not flesh eating animals at all. People say they eat this and they eat that, but if they only stopped and watched. They're grub eating animals, they eat earthworms and beetles. There's a black beetle that they just love - one that gives the colours light blue and grey, like a rainbow they are - and they love those.

Well, opposite Eastwood Manor there was a badger sett over in the gravel pit. One night a badger got on to their lovely lawn in the front of the house and they made such a mess, scratching up. All these dead plantains were withered in the sun when I got up there - it looked a terrible mess. Anyway they had five gardeners up there and they said 'oh we've got to have those badgers gassed, we can't keep a lawn like this with those badgers over there'. But Sir Foster Robinson said, 'not till I've seen Austin'. So he rang me and I went up.

I said, look, it's not a bit necessary to kill those badgers. I said you've got too many plantains in the lawn which grow close and flat to the ground, and this beetle loves creeping under those leaves to get away from the hot sun. That's their home. Well the badger was scratching out the plantains to eat the beetle. So they got rid of the plantains, and they've never had a bit of trouble on that lawn all those years since. The badger doesn't live in his sett all the time, he's not permanent like the fox. He travels. He'll leave a sett, he'll go away for three weeks to another sett, and then another one, and the foxes'll take over when he's out.

The badger makes a bed in there of nice dry grass and bracken, and it's the most marvellous thing, when they're bringing it out again they come out backwards to bring it out. Nature is amazing. You can't believe the intelligence of animals in the wild, I could talk about it for ever, the lovely antics they get up to. Now foxes, it seems to me they're like politicians, the way they stalk a rabbit. You see, the rabbits would feed out in the field. They might be 20 yards out from their burrow in the wood or in the hedge. But a fox would always get between the rabbit and their home. And they'd wander about like a sheepdog behind them, see, and they'd drive that rabbit farther out into the field. And they'd watch him, and let him come back a yard toward his own earth where he lives, but they'd cut him him off and drive him off another ten yards. And then they'd do the same again. And when they got him out in the middle of the field, he's got no chance of getting back.

Otters, yes there were otters on the Chew, you wouldn't often see them but I used to find the remains of the trout they'd eaten, and it was always the male trout. The male trout were too busy fighting each other, so it was nature's way of balancing up. And there were red squirrels in the woods, so many they had to be controlled. They'd gnaw down the bark of the young fir trees to get the sap for medicine you see.

I don't see the glow worms now either. Every summer on Coley Hill, either side of the road, they were a wonderful sight. My grandmother was a herbalist. When I was a boy I had to go and collect the plants, and I'm sorry I've never written it down, I'm vexed about it now I'm getting older and finding the benefit of all this stuff. My grandmother used to cure the ulcerated veins on the women's legs, they were in agonies of pain over them. She used to send me to go down the River Chew when I was a schoolboy to collect the hemlock. Well there's two kinds of hemlock, there's the clear stemmed and the spotted hemlock. Well I had to get the spotted hemlock, so she'd boil that up in the saucepans and the liquid when 'twas cooled down, she'd fill up the bottles with. And the strained vegetation she'd put into pots for ointment. And she'd clear up those ulcers in no time. Though my father once told me a woman drank the lotion and it killed her - well she never had an ulcer after!

There's so much in country life that ought never to be lost. But modern technology has got so destructive, they don't understand nature. We've got to have a balance, a balance of birds, animals, crops, flowers, everything.

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The diamond wedding
The sculptress
The poacher