The Flyfishers’ Journal: Summer 2024
‘Shifting baseline syndrome’ is an idea which may never be more relevant than on the English, French and Danish chalk streams. These placid little rivers have undergone radical alterations, even in the past 100 years, yet our human memories are inevitably too short to register such changes clearly.
Enter Edwin Alfred Barton, a London doctor who arrived on the chalk streams of southern England in the years between the First and Second World Wars, just in time to witness their waning years as working agricultural landscapes.
Barton was an avid fly-fisherman who served as President of the Flyfishers’ Club in 1934, and Editor of the Flyfishers’ Journal from 1931 to 1937. He was a talented photographer too, who immortalised the chalk valleys with glass-plate images of extraordinary sensitivity and skill. Some of his photos appeared in his own books (and indeed in the Flyfishers’ Journal) but they’d never been collected in one place – until last year, when Andrew Herd and Jon Ward-Allen published them all together in E.A. Barton: The Lost World of the Chalk Streams.
This new volume is a worthy tribute to a photographer who has sometimes been called ‘the Ansel Adams of the chalk streams’: an understatedly beautiful book which contains valuable environmental insights and historical details mixed with the alchemy of early 20th century photography, and curated samples of Barton’s own writing.
So, E.A.B.’s self-portrait on the banks of the Test at Leckford is showcased on the front cover of the Flyfishers’ Journal for Summer 2024, and it sets the tone for the whole edition. There’s an introductory feature and photo essay from Andrew Herd himself, followed by in-depth discussions of our chalk streams’ past and future, including features from Mike Blackmore (‘The Great Chalk Dream’), Uffe Westerberg (replumbing our rivers and sewage systems for a more sustainable future), John Knott (examining a fascinating set of early 1800s fishing diaries) and more.
As always, it’s a pleasure to occupy this Editor’s chair… whilst also slightly daunting to remember that the polymath Dr. Barton once sat here before me!
(The Flyfishers’ Journal is a complimentary benefit for all Members of the Flyfishers’ Club, and it’s also available to non-members by subscription).
