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To Strip Or Not To Strip
I bought a 19th century print of Tonbridge Castle yesterday. The castle looks exactly as it does today- apart from the ivy.
Our ancestors of the romantic generation liked their old buildings clothed in ivy. It prompted pleasingly shuddersome thoughts of change and decay. Here's a very young Charles Dickens discoursing on the subject:
Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green,
That creepeth o'er ruins old!
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.
The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed,
To pleasure his dainty whim:
And the mouldering dust the years have made
Is a merry meal for him.
Creeping where no life is seen,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.
There are a couple more verses. If you fancy them you'll find them somewhere near the beginning of The Pickwick Papers- or online, of course.
These days we strip the ivy off in the interests of conservation. I can see both points of view. I'm not taking sides.
Our ancestors of the romantic generation liked their old buildings clothed in ivy. It prompted pleasingly shuddersome thoughts of change and decay. Here's a very young Charles Dickens discoursing on the subject:
Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green,
That creepeth o'er ruins old!
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.
The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed,
To pleasure his dainty whim:
And the mouldering dust the years have made
Is a merry meal for him.
Creeping where no life is seen,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.
There are a couple more verses. If you fancy them you'll find them somewhere near the beginning of The Pickwick Papers- or online, of course.
These days we strip the ivy off in the interests of conservation. I can see both points of view. I'm not taking sides.
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It's a pretty plant but a damaging one.
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