Hill End Stories is our blog celebrating 100 years of outdoor learning
No.7 – Landscapes of memory: From teacher to volunteer
Do you have a favourite spot in Hill End?
Each part of our beautiful site holds a special memory for Kim Base
Kim first visited as a student and grew to know and love this wonderful place as a teacher, then a Hill End tutor, and today as one of our dedicated Friends of Hill End volunteer team. He shares here just a few of those memories, encapsulated within this wonderful place.
“I was preparing a new WW1 trenches ‘living history’ teaching day for Hill End when I came across an expression relating to the war artist Paul Nash. His landscapes were described as ‘landscapes of memories’…
The field gate.
For visitors, their first view of Hill End is from the field gate. My first time arriving as a student teacher was in 1985 and I remember the site, but not what I learned.
I didn’t know it then, but from 2016 to 2024 I would be spending many hours there leaning on or standing by it, and in autumn munching apples, whilst waiting for my pupil or group to arrive. I had time to chat to my friends, the other Hill End tutors, before we headed off for our day.
Adult visitors arriving for a training course at the gate sometimes had the unique Hill End conversation of enquiring where the ‘Green or Blue Dragon’* were, and not knowing who to ask – the Celt, the Roman Centurion or the WW1 army officer? I was the officer. (*for those not in the know… these are the names of two of the Hill End buildings!)
The main field.
As a deputy headteacher at Faringdon junior school I was able to establish our regular year five residential trip, returning for many years. Along with the amazing team I was working with we brought up to eighty children at a time.
A large area of mown grass on a slope can keep so many children happily occupied. Mainly just running around or rolling down. Plus games of football, frisbee or team challenges. This even sometimes included a game of cricket in the rain at 7.30am while breakfast was prepared.
Training for my forest school qualification, I was the only man on the outdoor first aid course. As expected I was always the last one chosen as a partner for each activity. I think there was an unofficial rota! However as a ‘body’ for an incident scenario I had to be a man who had fallen from something, acting with a broken leg. The first aiders on their assessment turn had one person holding my head still and chatting gently to me, another held my arm and checked my pulse while others made a splint to wrap around my legs. A nice warm sunny day to be lying on the field being pampered. Then I noticed my wife passing as she headed to an Early Years Teacher’s Team meeting in the Green Dragon building! I did explain I was working.
The field is always an amazing central focus for the ffennell festival’s activities.
The Barn, fire pit and pizza oven.
One of my memories is the Faringdon Juniors teaching team entertaining the year five children. The night before the wet cricket was an evening of rain. With a broom stick for a mic, and a guitar brought along as always, talented musicians and singers filled the Barn with their usual array of songs.
In all the other years, when it was always warm and dry, it was the year five talent show. From the first one making up sketches whilst on site this developed into children packing costumes and props in their luggage for more sophisticated (but not always) productions!
One year the staff team set out flour, water, a tomato sauce and optional extras and together every child made their own dough, added their own toppings and ate their freshly baked pizza in the (then) new pizza oven. The animals cleared up the mess once the children were pretending to sleep in the dormitories.
The stream and ponds.
This part of Hill End became the place to play ‘extreme’ ting tang. So many places to hide and chase each other. The best hiding place, only discovered when a boy was eventually found, was sitting in one of the ponds amongst the reeds! I needed four buckets of water to pour over him to get him quite clean. Laughing all the time he ran around in the sun until he dried off – which was easier than walking up to the high dormitory to change.
As part of the volunteer team I was involved in restoring the ponds behind the barn last year. A rewarding task to see such an amazing restoration of this area restored back to open water. But it ruined a great hiding place!
The woods – Bean and Wytham.
After the Covid break I was able to organise a family forest afterschool session each week for severla years. Some families came and went, others kept on coming. To be able to see young children develop their skills and self-confidence is always a privilege. Seeing the cheeky smiles of two sisters sat on a “tree house structure” that was deliberately designed to be five centimetres above our agreed safety height limit was priceless. As was the first quiet chat with a girl who hadn’t spoken before, or the giggles of the whole gang as all the cuddly toys were thrown in the muddy pond to see if they could swim.
Scattered around the woods, and elsewhere, there are secret fire pit areas big enough for up to four or five. The group of teenagers who helped create them and then return to, over the year, had their own private spaces to enjoy. The same group had a ‘chocolate bench’ in Wytham woods. Having proven that I could trust them they could run or walk ahead and meet me and their teachers on the chocolate bench to enjoy the view over Oxfordshire, and a bar of chocolate and a drink of hot chocolate.
I have taken hundreds of children up to the WW1 practice trenches for their history days. Teachers and teaching assistants loved shouting “you’re dead! (add your own chosen name) as they shot the charging group members advancing across no man’s land from the trenches. Certain individuals were shot repeatedly .. I can’t think why!
Particularly memorable ones have been when I took cubs and scouts up in the evening, in the dark, for remembrance day. Seeing them with their leaders and their flag whilst The Last post was played (by bluetooth speaker, not actual bugle) was very poignant.
One very special moment in Beanwood, it lasted a few seconds, but had been from experiences over weeks visiting Hill End, was a comment from a young adult saying. “I don’t feel autistic in the woods.”
As to volunteer memories, I really enjoy being part of the volunteer team. I have memories create and, spread all over the site. My longest lasting task was last year as I helped in the construction of the ancient settlement hut. A definite one off rather than a seasonal task.
So my landscape is not just the beautiful site but all the people I have met at Hill End.
Our huge thanks to Kim for all his hard work and valued support of Hill End in so many ways.
If you have your own memories of Hill End, no matter how old or how recent, please let us know in our new Memory Bank – it only takes a moment, and we’d love to hear from you!
You can read more about our rich heritage on our history pages and our 100 year celebration page.
Join us to celebrate and help ensure the next 100 years are even stronger.
