A SURPRISING DISCOVERY..

In September 2008, I wrote a piece on here about the landscape artist Rowland Hilder. Rather than repeat it all again, you can find it by typing `Rowland Hilder` in the search box at top left of this page and it tells something of his life and his association with the area where I live.

This afternoon, Barney and I went for our walkies around the village of Birling, just a couple of miles away. I parked the car behind the church and we set off for an hour`s ramble across the fields and lanes which are beginning to look a bit bleak at this time of the year. Barney enjoyed frightening the life out of squawking pheasants and scampering rabbits and I enjoyed the peace and quiet of a truly rural area. It reminded me of Rowland Hilder`s own description of Birling - "....miles from anywhere. Even people in the next village of Ryarsh were considered foreigners."

Our route back to the car took us through the churchyard and I discovered that Rowland Hilder was buried there along with his wife Edith, herself an accomplished flower artist. In an article appearing in The Countryman in April 1980, Hilder wrote that although born of English parents in Great Neck, Long Island, the family returned to England each summer to stay at Birling with his grandparents. It was during those early years that he fell in love with the Kent countryside and especially the area between Shoreham eastwards towards Maidstone, so often depicted in much of his work.

Looking back on the obituaries for Hilder, it becomes apparent that he was very highly thought of in the world of watercolours. Denis Thomas`s notes in The Independant following Hilder`s death in April 1993, recalled that this particular area of Kent had become known as `Rowland Hilder Country` evoking as much significance as the `Constable Country` of the Suffolk Stour. Rich praise indeed.

So my surprising discovery now becomes twofold, for it is one thing to have admired the artist for so many years and to have discovered his resting place in Birling churchyard, but quite another to be reminded that this part of Kent is indeed `Rowland Hilder Country.` I suspect that `label` is far better known outside the area than it is in it and I do wonder whether Kent County Council, in their endless quest for `marketing opportunities,` might perhaps be making more of this cultural heritage right on their doorstep. After all, it`s not every county that can boast associations not only with JMW Turner but also a landscape artist of such distinction that he became known as `the Turner of his generation.`

For More about Rowland Hilder, please see http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/theartofwar/artists/hilder_rowland.htm