Bottling the Bounds
here, now, at Stourbridge Common
little Miss Journey goes out for a journey
going wild
passionately pollinated
animals!
vines!
beetle!
beetle season
now we know
the wild is where magic happens…
cats are great
a long time ago
there were dinosaurs
we will remember
my adventure
adventure in nature
walking willows
taking roots
prendre racine
the willow needs to fall
and be reborn
it gets messier
for the greater good
we will return to
the Sourbridge!
thank you! ♥
Authors
A collaborative place-based story from Stourbridge Common, transcribed here as crafted and captured in place as part of the Beating the Bounds ceremony at Stourbridge Common in Cambridge, on Sunday 15 June 2025, between 11:00 and 14:00 BST, by Lotte Dijkstra, Friends of Stourbridge Common, Cambridge City Council Biodiversity and Tree Teams, Cambridge Nature Network, Hyem Landscape, and the more-than-human celebrators and rebels present.
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Beating the Bounds
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Celebrating Common Land
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Remembering the Rebels
• Beating the Bounds • Celebrating Common Land • Remembering the Rebels
Beating the Bounds of Stourbridge Common with willow switches, remembering and re-membering the edges of the common land open to all. Bottling the Bounds commemorates the Beating the Bounds ceremony of 15 June 2025 at Stourbridge Common in Cambridge, and celebrates what makes Stourbridge Common so special.
The beating of the bounds is an old tradition of passing on communal memory to the next generation. Rather than using paper maps, communities of commonors would make an annual circuit along the boundaries of the common land, tapping the boundaries with willow switches. This Beating the Bounds ceremony was organised by Friends of Stourbridge Common, together with Cambridge City Council Biodiversity and Tree Teams and Cambridge Nature Network. Along the way, singers, wandering herds, foragers, naturalists and tree carers shared insights on what makes Stourbridge Common so special.
The concluding storytelling event centred the stories of all ceremony attendents. It is important to celebrate these different stories, because we inhabit landscapes crafted, created and constructed by many others. Our more-than-human communities co-create the places we live in, and the spaces we construct as landscape architects, architects, urbanists, planners, designers and other space makers. Exploring different narrative points of view about landscapes helps us move beyond simplistic narratives and linear timelines, surpassing culture-nature dualisms and uncovering encoded features and patterns in our environment. Through narrative techniques, these shifts in perspective can be captured into collaborative more-than-human understandings of place, which contribute to more inclusive, intersectional and interscalar landscape practices.