Mere is an old Norse/ germanic word for a lake or sea and is still used in Northern England.
Pickmere is a village and civil parish near Knutsford Cheshire and its main feature is a beautiful lake.
Surprisingly for me, I have never been, despite having lived in this area all my life. As a child my mother's annual summer holiday used to be a day out at Wythenshawe Park or Pickmere in Cheshire.
When I visited yesterday I could imagine my mother's life long love of the countryside starting right there at Pickmere. To have a day out from the murky, polluted filthy slum housing of inner city Manchester to the beauty of Pickmere for a day-out must have seemed like heaven to her.
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Waste food from kitchens cannot by law be given to pigs, even if cooked as swill. Nowadays we have special bins that are collected so that the waste food can be sent to a hot composter. This can be a tunnel into which waste is pushed so that it can break down in the very high temperatures that it produces. Composting would not be done on site, as cooked food waste attracts rats.
Derdriu
I have a strong feeling that according to British law, wasted food has to be thrown away and must NOT be kept anywhere on site. I could only manage about a third of the portion I was given.
Veronica, Thank you for the acquaintance with Pickmere. Do you know what Red Lion does with unfinished portions? You mention their gardens and hanging baskets, and I'm wondering if they compost food scraps.
There are some Saxon names locally but Wythenshawe is largely Norman. Wythenshawe it self is an Anglo-Saxon name Withen scaga- Willow grove. Saxfield in Wythenshawe is another one, Poundswick . William the Conqueror though granted the lands to Hamon de Mascey and there are still many Masseys in the area, also Dunham Massey.
Veronica, your observation that Wythenshawe [North Cheshire] was drained in the mediaeval period has struck me as true, as what you said made me realize that many of the local place names there are mediaeval rather than Anglo-Saxon, which fact seems to confirm what you say.
You will find that soils can vary a great deal locally.
That is very interesting. TY .
Where we were brought up on the Cheshire Plain the soil was clay.
The salt lake was in the late Paleozoic era, about 210 million years ago, hence that is why they mine deep for the salt that it deposited. More recent geological events have involved glaciation and its aftermath. The presence of glacial clay on the land surface favours the development of lakes and swamps, as the clay is impervious to water, which therefore does not drain away quickly. Glacial clay is one reason why the north of the county was quite swampy in places. But I have noted that glacial clay does not cover the whole county. For example, when I worked in Tatton Park [in Cheshire] at the Tatton Flower Show, I noticed that the soil was mainly sandy.
Great comment BSG. Indeed the land is still very damp underfoot at times. Cheshire used to be an inland salt lake of course and there are still salt mines and huge salt reserves.
The "Little Ice Age " was a substantial period of cold during the medieval period. I don't know but I suspect that even when land is drained it would still have a tendency to get very water- logged because although it is drained the underlying geology would be the same.
Our conditions are very damp at the best of times of course but it doesn't upset us much. I say that the reason why the North West is so beautiful with lakes and lush green land is because it is so wet.
Between the times when the land was drained and now came the Little Ice Age. Did it have a lasting effect on the land there? I know it impacted England since the River Themes froze over during the Little Ice Age, and that certainly must have had some effect still noticeable today. So, conditions were at least temporarily changed since the time of the Normans.