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''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
Continuing his series, the ‘Great British Sewing Bee’ judge makes like a medieval warrener as a mega warren threatens to sink both house and garden
To paraphrase the great Chas & Dave: I’ve got more rabbit than Sainsbury’s. Their warren stretches from my veg patch in the walled garden, under the potting sheds and across the back paddock to the lane — about a fifth of a mile. There must be upwards of three dozen separate ways in and out of this earthy labyrinth. These are hardworking northern rabbits.
In our house, we love all of god’s creatures (earthworms, bats, woodlice, spiders etc are all given red carpet treatment). Like anyone with half a heart I’ve wept at Watership Down, and the sight of the rabbits grooming their dewy whiskers in the morning, their kits doing laps on the front lawn, fills me with genuine happiness. I am as fond of a rabbit as any man. But they are a menace of epic proportions.
We brought rabbits here so that we could eat them, but they escaped (who’d blame them) and bred (like rabbits, unsurprisingly)
When I bought my house in Yorkshire seven years ago, one end was subsiding spectacularly — all thanks to the massive warren undermining the gable end. About a third of the house had to be dismantled and rebuilt, at no inconsiderable cost. More recently, the rabbits have munched with impressive rapidity through every green growing thing in the veg patch (bar the spud leaves — they left those for the slugs), and still had the appetite to munch the bark off any young trees foolish enough to spring up in the vicinity. Previously, my sympathies always lay with Peter and friends, rather than Mr McGregor. But these furry destroyers have brought about something of a volte face.
Hares are native to these shores, but it was the Romans who introduced the rabbit to Britain, farming it for food and fur. From Roman to medieval times, rabbits were housed in man-made warrens — substantial earth mounds enclosed by stone, brick or wooden walls, built deep underground to keep the rabbits in, and poachers and other predators out — and tended by the warrener. Keeping a warren was a manorial privilege (like the keeping of pigeons in a dovecote), and the warrener was a man of high social standing.
Many warrens were relatively small affairs, supplying a single household with meat once or twice weekly, but by the 19th century, rabbit farming had become big business. A productive warren could produce rabbits in spectacular numbers — the Thetford warren in Norfolk alone produced around 28,000 in one record year — and the largest reached 1,000 acres, supporting a wider economy of local trades like skinners, tanners, glovers and net makers. Rabbits were a big part of British rural life.
I know all of this because, back in July at the Royal Lancashire Show, I met William Pewton-Bishop, also known as The Medieval Warrener. Pewton-Bishop developed a fascination for the history of warrening through his love of ferrets — which he got from his dad, Simon Bishop, who set up the brilliant Ferretworld Roadshow 27 years ago. It still tours country shows during the summer to teach the ways of the warren and let the public handle and race their lovely ferrets (several of which also moonlight as therapy pets).
One of the perks of being a warrener was the keeping of ferrets, which, along with its ancestor the polecat, are native predators on these isles, tamed thousands of years ago to control rats and other grain-munching pests. They fell out of favour with the general public in the middle ages, replaced by cats (thanks to their somewhat fruity odour), but were crucial to the workings of the warren — when meat was required for the master’s table, ferrets would be sent down the burrows to drive the rabbits out and into the waiting nets.
Man’s agricultural age began about 10,000 years ago, at its heart the deliberate control of nature for the benefit of one species, us. But you cannot control for one, without upsetting the delicate balances that keep it all in check. We brought rabbits here so that we could eat them, but they escaped (who’d blame them) and bred (like rabbits, unsurprisingly). Then, when shooting became popular in the 18th century, the gamekeepers got rid of foxes, badgers, raptors and anything else that might eat a baby grouse, our renewed meddling this time unwittingly getting rid of the only things keeping rabbit populations in check.
Exploding rabbit populations put our food supply at risk, so we meddled again, introducing first the horrible myxomatosis, and more recently Rabbit Viral Haemorrhagic Disease (RVHD), all of which put us off the one thing we brought them here for in the first place: eating them. Our blundering interference knows no bounds. As a child I regularly saw rabbits and hares in butcher’s windows, but these days they’re decidedly off-menu — Chas & Dave would make no sense at all to a Gen Z audience. They’ve never seen rabbit in Sainsbury’s (or any other major supermarket, for that matter).
Patrick plans to build a wall like the old warreners did — but one to keep rabbits out, not in
Gardening is man’s subjugation of nature in miniature, but happily both gardeners and farmers are learning to ply their craft more harmoniously with mother earth. I want to keep much of the wildness unintentionally created in my garden through decades of neglect. I am happy to live with the rats, mice and voles because they bring the kestrels, barn owls and the stoat (the evidence of his or her hunts occasionally visible) — my garden and my warren are a well-stocked larder. I live in farming country so, sadly, I’ve never seen a fox or a badger, but I’d welcome them all on my little patch of land. I’m even glad to give a home to the rabbits, but would be gladder still if they were away from my green beans and my gable end.
Project rabbit is a two-pronged affair. First, the existing warren needs reducing and relocating, far from any buildings. Secondly, I’m going to take a leaf out of the medieval warrener’s playbook and construct a deep and substantial wall — but one to keep rabbits out, not in. My dad did similar at his place, building a deeply buried rabbit-proof fence around almost an acre of market garden, which (with regular maintenance) did the job.
Phase 1 needs the help of the William and Simon, who — along with Snowy, a four-year-old male ferret, and Mitzy, a one-year-old polecat — recently spent a day at my place, tracing the extent of my mega warren and beginning the process of relocation. The idea is to thin out the breeding population, rehoming the majority of the does to William and Simon’s well-managed warren in Worcestershire. Phase 2: I’ll make like a medieval warrener and build that wall.
‘Autobiographical fragments’ by John Clare
I hunted curious flowers in rapture and muttered thoughts in their praise I lovd the pasture with its rushes and thistles and sheep tracks I adored the wild marshy fen with its solitary hernshaw sweeing along in its mellancholy sky I wandered the heath in raptures among the rabbit burrows and golden blossomd furze I dropt down on the thymy molehill or mossy eminence to survey the summer landscape as full of rapture as now
Patrick Grant is the founder of Community Clothing, a judge on BBC television’s ‘The Great British Sewing Bee’ and author of ‘Less’ (HarperCollins)
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