To anonymous on the love ely facebook page: Cherry Hill is not quite farmland, not quite park, not quite ‘wild space.’

One half of it, separated by simple post and rail fencing which is easy to climb over, looks like rough pasture, with several big spreads of nettles, and the three heifers that have been grazing there this year are assisted by a complex mowing regime which is evidently designed to encourage bio-diversity. The other half of it is regularly mowed, kept like park grassland except again for some areas which are left to flower and seed. On both sides of the fence there are mature trees, as in the country estates of the landed gentry, plane, several species of oak, horse chestnut, lime, and one dramatic bleached skeleton.

The dog that chased the muntjac is a domesticated animal but some dogs are hunters at heart and hard to tame completely. And muntjacs have been kept for generations in the parks of aristocrats from which they have both escaped and, on various occasions, been released into what we still refer to in this country as ‘the wild’. All these boundaries and distinctions are tested when a dog chases a muntjac on Cherry Hill. Who can really say what’s right and what’s wrong? And as for there being children present – would they be more upset than anybody else? Today I saw a flattened fox on the A 10, and the remains of a pigeon on St Mary’s street. Children can see animals and birds every day that have been killed by cars whose owners have only a ‘tenuous grip’ of their dangerous machines.

But what is Cherry Hill? Formerly part of the monastic estate of Ely, it once had fishponds and vineyards. At the highest point is the site of the Norman castle, unsigned, well fenced and hidden in dense woodland. But I’ve only just realised: there are no signs at all at Cherry Hill. No indication of who owns or manages the space. No Welcome. No warnings against barbecues, loud music, camping, ball games, let alone allowing your dog to chase muntjacs. Not even a sign to say, this is Cherry Hill, although of course everybody who lives here knows that. There’s just a little signpost near the top entrance, behind the Porta, the great 14^th century abbey gateway, which indicates the way to the Maltings and the Riverside. And at the bottom, near Broad Street, a fenced off little children’s playground has its official sign, with a comprehensive list of prohibitions: no dogs, no drinking alcohol, no children over the age of 12, no ball games etc. You know where you are in a council playground.

In the summer someone put up a little tent beneath an oak tree, very near the main path. Sometimes he had a very small fire. I passed him once walking briskly back to his tent an talking loudly to himself about injustice, about injunctions, about a court case years ago. He didn’t seem approachable. But on the other hand he could have pitched his tent well away from people. I met another dog walker who was disturbed by this state of affairs. No sign to say he shouldn’t be there; somehow she expected there to be one. It seemed wrong for his little tent to be sitting there by the oak tree, for him to have made himself at home there. She wondered if she should report him. But who to? A couple of days later two men in boots and uniforms turned up. I couldn’t place them at first, then I realised that they were firemen. Without their engines – and the signs on them – they had almost lost their identity. Anyway, the camper wasn’t there. They put out his small fire – which was very close to the base of the big old oak tree – with their boots, walked off and met the camper returning. He was polite. In fact he thanked them. Then a few days later, he was gone.

There were 52,000 muntjac in Britain in 1995 and 102,000 in 2008 – the latest figures in wikipedia, and the population is still growing. in the EU muntjacs are recognised as an ‘invasive alien’. In Japan one province has tried in vain to eliminate them as an agricultural pest. They were released from the Duke of Bedford’s estate at Woburn in 1925. Dukes of Bedford: what an impact they’ve had on this area! In the 16^th century as close friends of Henry 8^th they were able to take part in the great land grab which followed the dissolution of the monasteries, and which led to the extinction of common rights over thousands of acres. In the 17^th century they were foremost among the ‘Adventurers’ who put money into the draining of the fens – hence the Old Bedford river and the New Bedford river – and were rewarded with more huge areas of new agricultural land.

Muntjacs are very small and fast. They can escape among thorns and thickets. Gardeners hate them, to declare an interest. In the big garden on the edge of north London where I used to work one autumn they stripped clumps of geraniums – eating the leaves and leaving all the leaf stalks standing up like bristles on a brush – and ate all the flowers of the cyclamen, not touching the leaves. They were regularly chased by our dogs but got away, and always returned.

There is actually an organisation called Ely Wild Space. I don’t know if they have any opinion on the status of Cherry Hill. I guess a wild space is any space Where The Wild Things Are. So just about anywhere.