VILLAGERS of Kimbolton and Hamnish had a hand in the making of a modern Domesday-style book about their parish - and one even took to the air.

Robin James, who photographed this view of Bache Camp hill fort from 1,500 feet, made more than 20 flights in his own Rollason Condor and other aircraft, including helicopters, to get the shots he wanted.

His wife Yve, the editor of the book, accompanied him frequently - and reluctantly! She gave 'technical support' for the tricky business of aerial photography. Pictures are taken as the plane begins a roll. (Yve admits the whole thing makes her feel queasy).

"You have a window of opportunity of a few seconds," says Robin, who runs a Leominster engineering business. He says he got great pleasure from his flights from Shobdon to gather bird's eye views of his parish through the changing seasons.

Best shots

Some of his best shots appear in the book - 'Kimbolton with Hamnish, Into the new Millennium' - alongside the work of many other local people.

Photographs, sketches, maps and text touch on all aspects of rural life. The 'behind the hedges' peek at the local scene reveals a wide range of occupations - from mining specialist and computer buff to vet and heating engineer. Hobbies ranged from wargames to mountaineering - though gardeners were to the fore. They earned their own section.

Farmers formed their own working group to study patterns of land use, boundaries and field names. The book features their fold-out map showing areas of arable, grassland, orchards and woodland.

A significant change was the disappearance of hop cultivation from the parish. Otherwise the grass, arable and other categories were broadly similar in percentage terms to that of the 1842 tithe map.

Overall, there have been huge changes in local agriculture and they are well illustrated. An old photograph shows hundreds of bowler-hatted men, many of them standing on farm carts, at a dispersal sale of Hereford Cattle at Stockton Bury in 1884.

Anxiety IV, the most famous bull from Thomas Cawardine's acclaimed herd, was sold four years earlier for $400. Breed historians record that in the USA he "impressed his ancestry on 95 per cent of all future Hereford's on the American continent."

Mechanisation brought in sweeping change but much of the ryhthm of the agricultural year in Kimbolton, haymaking and the cider apple harvest, goes on, the book shows.

New farm enterprises and a marked local interest in gardening, wildlife and the footpath network signal a community that remains well 'earthed.'

l Kimbolton with Hamnish - Life in a Herefordshire Parish, edited by Yve James with Arthur Davis, Ann Malpas, Tony Malpas and Tom Pellow, price £7.50, is available from Border Books, Leominster.

htnewsdesk@newsquestmidlands.co.uk