Horns Road

Ye Prologue:

The late 19th and early 20th century
Saw a red brick suburban terrace street building boom,
All over the country and also in towns like Stroud, –
A walk along Horns Road to the Crown and Sceptre
Will exemplify that and take you down a wormhole of time.

More Prologue:

The late 19th and early 20th century
Also saw a bohemian near-worship of Pan,
As exemplified in the work of Arthur Machen;
A cultured mockery of shabby genteel pretensions
As in the Weedsmiths’ The Diary of a Nobody;
And also, an almost subliminal fear
Of the suburbs’ manic growth,
That fused together so many inchoate anxieties,
As articulated in Algernon Blackwood’s stories,
Where the ordinary, everyday red brick dwellings
Harbour dark secrets of sorcery and the occult;
As though the very utilities of mains pipes
Could transmit necromantic alchemical evil,
As well as water, gas and, eventually, electricity.

Last Prologue:

Of course, subsumed within this confusion,
Was also a nostalgia for the loss of landscape,
And a fear of the working-class and socialism.

Ye Prologue:

The late 19th and early 20th century
Saw a red brick suburban terrace street building boom,
All over the country and also in towns like Stroud, –
A walk along Horns Road to the Crown and Sceptre
Will exemplify that and take you down a wormhole of time.

More Prologue:

The late 19th and early 20th century
Also saw a bohemian near-worship of Pan,
As exemplified in the work of Arthur Machen;
A cultured mockery of shabby genteel pretensions
As in the Weedsmiths’ The Diary of a Nobody;
And also, an almost subliminal fear
Of the suburbs’ manic growth,
That fused together so many inchoate anxieties,
As articulated in Algernon Blackwood’s stories,
Where the ordinary, everyday red brick dwellings
Harbour dark secrets of sorcery and the occult;
As though the very utilities of mains pipes
Could transmit necromantic alchemical evil,
As well as water, gas and, eventually, electricity.

Last Prologue:

Of course, subsumed within this confusion,
Was also a nostalgia for the loss of landscape,
And a fear of the working-class and socialism.

Which all brings us, sequentially and logically,
Along the garden path and up to the name: Horns Road.

Horns Road:
Metonymy? Synecdoche? Nominative Determinism?
An almost bricks and mortar personification?

Perhaps residents could celebrate this history
And rekindle the words of these books and Prologues
By reviving the old radical tradition
Of beating pots and pans in the street,
Making a public din
(Rather than a private dinner),
Ringing bells, banging pans, blowing horns
(Donning madcap horns and coxcombs),
With domestic utensils used in public,
Expressing disapprobation
Through community pandemonium,
And a cacophony of disharmony.
It’s ROUGH MUSICK,
A symbolic and cacophonous
Criticism of the ruling class.

A symbolic representation of disapproval,
Marking a transgression of agreed social norms
By the great and good;
A community PAN-DAEMONIUM
To indicate disapproval of rulers,
With a Pan-tomimic declamation of their crimes,
The wrong-doer often shown in effigy,
Sometimes riding the SKIMMINGTON,
As in The Mayor of Casterbridge,
Or the 1825 Stroud weavers’ riots,
As the world is turned upside down.

Perhaps Horns Road residents and the Stroud Red Band
Could lead a carnival to the Crown and Sceptre,
And there vote and choose which cabinet-member,
Or, indeed, mere member of parliament,
Should be lampooned in effigy.
Bring on the Skimmington!
The Carnival of Continuity!

Saul Junction Stream of Consciousness and a Hidden Colonial Landscape

Saul

The waters that run past Saul Junction,
And the Stroudwater Navigation,
On the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal,
Flow past Phillpott’s Warehouse and Bakers Quay,
And on past Gloucester Quays and High Orchard,
Above a submerged heart of darkness.

For down there in the muddied depths,
Lie the hidden profits of Thomas Phillpotts,
The plantation owner and slave owner,
And the hidden profits of Samuel Baker,
Merchant and slave owner,
Down there with the shackles and manacles.

Down there in the submerged heart of darkness,
Sits their slavery compensation treasure chest,
The bounty that paid for Bakers Quay,
And the development of High Orchard.

Saul

The waters that run past Saul Junction,
And the Stroudwater Navigation,
On the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal,
Flow past Phillpott’s Warehouse and Bakers Quay,
And on past Gloucester Quays and High Orchard,
Above a submerged heart of darkness.

For down there in the muddied depths,
Lie the hidden profits of Thomas Phillpotts,
The plantation owner and slave owner,
And the hidden profits of Samuel Baker,
Merchant and slave owner,
Down there with the shackles and manacles.

Down there in the submerged heart of darkness,
Sits their slavery compensation treasure chest,
The bounty that paid for Bakers Quay,
And the development of High Orchard.

If you listen to the wind soughing in the reeds,
You might just hear the lamentation
Echoing from the Atlantic archipelago,
You might just hear the slave ships’ keening
Stretching across the black Atlantic.

If you stare into the depths of the waters near Saul,
Then, like Saul, you might see the world anew,
And glimpse that slavery treasure chest,
Down there in the submerged heart of darkness,
In the waters that run past Saul Junction,
And the Stroudwater Navigation.

WALKING THE THAMES TO LONDON #8

Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust
Abingdon to Wallingford

Abingdon to Wallingford March 12th 2020
Sunrise 6.20 Sunset 18.00
Carbon count: 413.78 Pre-industrial base 280 Safe level 350
14 miles Start 11.20 Arrival 15.25

The day after the budget the day before
(Hedge funds versus food banks),
On a train to Didcot and then a bus to Abingdon,
Past Didcot Power Station edgelands,
Pat business park daffodil roundabouts,
And a stream of greenwashing lorries,
Until I walk beneath the bridge at Abingdon,
Past medieval alms houses
(A Foodbank Pilgrimage),
Splashing through big sky open fields,
Past dovecots and manor houses,
Past bridges and weirs and locks and ferries,
Past thatch and pub and hills and woodland,
Following the line of pill boxes,
With magnolia in bloom in Shillingford,
Blackthorn and hawthorn in blossom too,
Hawk, heron, corvid, swan and skylark,
A rainbow over the church at Dorchester,
Half drowned trees and silvered puddles,
And all the time,
The relentless flow
Of the quickening, wide and turbid Thames,
Past Neolithic, Iron Age and Romano-British remains,
Past Paul Nash’s Wittenham Clumps,
Until I at last reach Saxon Wallingford,
And a bus back to Didcot,
And a train back to Stroud.

Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust
Abingdon to Wallingford

Abingdon to Wallingford March 12th 2020
Sunrise 6.20 Sunset 18.00
Carbon count: 413.78 Pre-industrial base 280 Safe level 350
14 miles Start 11.20 Arrival 15.25

The day after the budget the day before
(Hedge funds versus food banks),
On a train to Didcot and then a bus to Abingdon,
Past Didcot Power Station edgelands,
Pat business park daffodil roundabouts,
And a stream of greenwashing lorries,
Until I walk beneath the bridge at Abingdon,
Past medieval alms houses
(A Foodbank Pilgrimage),
Splashing through big sky open fields,
Past dovecots and manor houses,
Past bridges and weirs and locks and ferries,
Past thatch and pub and hills and woodland,
Following the line of pill boxes,
With magnolia in bloom in Shillingford,
Blackthorn and hawthorn in blossom too,
Hawk, heron, corvid, swan and skylark,
A rainbow over the church at Dorchester,
Half drowned trees and silvered puddles,
And all the time,
The relentless flow
Of the quickening, wide and turbid Thames,
Past Neolithic, Iron Age and Romano-British remains,
Past Paul Nash’s Wittenham Clumps,
Until I at last reach Saxon Wallingford,
And a bus back to Didcot,
And a train back to Stroud.
The end of self-isolation and social distancing,
The end of losing myself in time and space,
Back to the coronavirus anxiety,
Back to the lack of help for the gig economy,
Back to the land of the five-week wait,
Back to the land of hedge funds,
Back to a land of Cummings and going,
To a land of survival of the fittest,
To a land of ‘herd immunity’,
Now more than ever convinced of the need
For our Food Bank Pilgrimage,
But that’s not the reason why all those pill boxes
Were constructed along the banks of the Thames.
It was to stop the survival of the fittest.

I once walked out into a rain-blossom Thames Valley morning,
Feeling ever so slightly wired
And ever so slightly pantheistic,
That feeling aware of it all,
And feeling a part of it all sort of thing:
The robin singing in the cherry tree,
An Anglo-Saxon springtime song of joy,
No spear or seaxe, sword or shield,
No warrior-cry or smote-shout,
No blood-red stain in the rain-splash gutters,
But the corvids still cried in alarm,
Clacking and fluttering in the trees,
As I walked this watery defensive barrier,
A Dark Age storm-sheet rain cloud,
Enveloping the new-green land.

But later, the sun was shining
As I reflected on the Victorian cult of King Alfred,
That cult of Englishness and cult of imagined democracy,
When in fact we would have a 95% chance of being a peasant,
And a one in four chance of enslavement
A feudal, hierarchical society:
Monarch; ealdormen (jarls, earls); theigns;
geneats, cottars, geburs, boors (villeins); slaves …
‘Each boor must give 6 loaves to the herdsman of the lord’s swine
when he drives his herd to the mast-pasture …
When death befalls him let the lord take charge of what he leaves.’

STATE OF HUNGER RESEARCH:
PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN
REFERRED TO A FOOD BANK
HAVE A HOUSEHOLD INCOME
THAT WAS ABOUT THE SAME
AS THEIR HOUSING COSTS

Radical Cirencester

Cirencester seems like a typical
High-Tory Cotswold sort of town,
Men in yellow and red cord trousers –
Profuse pocket kerchiefs, tweed jackets,
Highly polished shiny brown brogue shoes,
Conservative ladies who take luncheon,
Just one silent beggar in a shop doorway,
Just one busking troubadour in the streets
To remind us of medieval days of yore …
But when I sit down by the weathered cross,
Down there by the church in mid-winter,
With a cheese and onion pasty,
And a warming cardboard cup of tea,
I wander through the fourth wall to read
The 1381 Poll Tax and its hated demands:
574 Cirencester subjects over the age of fifteen,
To pay the hated iniquitous tax,
No matter how indigent they might be,
A peasantry taxed to pay for a ruling class war,

Over the sea in France;
I glimpse, too, the Feudal Lord, the Abbott,
Studying his imposingly long list of tenant duties:
Thresh corn, plough fields, scythe hay,
Mow the fields, hedge and ditch;
Tenant’s corn to be ground in the Abbot’s mill,
Pay for the privilege, ditto at market;
If you grind corn on your own mill-stones,
The bailiff will take or break your mill-stones …

Cirencester seems like a typical
High-Tory Cotswold sort of town,
Men in yellow and red cord trousers –
Profuse pocket kerchiefs, tweed jackets,
Highly polished shiny brown brogue shoes,
Conservative ladies who take luncheon,
Just one silent beggar in a shop doorway,
Just one busking troubadour in the streets
To remind us of medieval days of yore …
But when I sit down by the weathered cross,
Down there by the church in mid-winter,
With a cheese and onion pasty,
And a warming cardboard cup of tea,
I wander through the fourth wall to read
The 1381 Poll Tax and its hated demands:
574 Cirencester subjects over the age of fifteen,
To pay the hated iniquitous tax,
No matter how indigent they might be,
A peasantry taxed to pay for a ruling class war,

Over the sea in France;
I glimpse, too, the Feudal Lord, the Abbott,
Studying his imposingly long list of tenant duties:
Thresh corn, plough fields, scythe hay,
Mow the fields, hedge and ditch;
Tenant’s corn to be ground in the Abbot’s mill,
Pay for the privilege, ditto at market;
If you grind corn on your own mill-stones,
The bailiff will take or break your mill-stones …

Pasture and turbary,
Estovers and piscary;
Pannage and housebote,
Shack and ploughbote.

Opposition and complaint was endemic
In the fourteenth century,
Imprisonment, too,
‘Until they made very grievous fines’;
And even though conflict climaxed with the
Peasants’ Revolt and consequent defeat,
Matters did not end there: four years later
The abbey was attacked by townspeople:
‘Divers of the king’s lieges of Cirencester … assembled
And gone to the abbey … done unheard-of things
To the abbot and convent and threatened
to do all the damage they could’;
Fifteen years later they beheaded
The Earl of Salisbury and the Earl of Kent,
Just there, where the red and yellow trousers,
Walk briskly by their wives, at their luncheon,
Where I eat my pasty and drink my tea,
Down by the beggar and he busker,
In the modern medieval market place,
Where I dream like some modern day Piers Plowman:

‘The rebels petitioned the king that all preserves of water, parks, and
woods should be made common to all: so that throughout the kingdom the poor
as well as the rich should be free to take game in water, fish ponds, woods and
forests as well as to hunt hares in the fields – and to do these and many other
things without impediment.’

‘You wretches, detestable on land and sea; you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live. Give this message to your colleagues. Rustics you were and rustics you are still: you will remain in bondage not as before but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you, and your misery  will  be  an example in the eyes of posterity.  However, we will spare your lives if you remain faithful. Choose now which you want to follow.’

And the End of all our Exploring around Cirencester

The end of all our exploring

The day started auspiciously and unusually:
A chat at the bus stop with a direct descendant of Tom Paine:
‘My father maintained that we were related.
We did have first editions, in fact:
The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason’;
The 54A took us to Cirencester,
Where we congregated by the church,
Overhearing a conversation,
‘Hello. Pleased to meet you. I’m John the verger’;
Near where, in the aftermath of the Peasants’ Revolt,
‘Divers of the king’s lieges of Cirencester … assembled
And gone to the abbey … done unheard-of things
To the abbot and convent and threatened
to do all the damage they could’;
Fifteen years later they beheaded
The Earl of Salisbury and the Earl of Kent –
But we walked out through the Bathurst estate,
A colonial landscape for those with eyes,
To turn right by Alexander Pope’s seat,
Past vast polo grounds,
To reach a lambent pocket of arable land,
Hard by a bronze age tumulus,
Where ploughed field tesserae,
And nearby Ermine Way
Suggest a sumptuous Roman villa,
And where we processed along a gleaming pathway –
Like so many genius loci,
Hooded like cucullati against the rain,
Until a rainbow arch summoned Robin Treefellow
To declaim his hymn to Cuda,
Goddess of Cotswold fertility,
There by the fossil-full ploughed fields,
Where Penda of Mercia,
The last pagan king of England
Once held his crimson sword aloft in victory.

Spring waters trickled their music,
Rivulets reflected storm threat light
In the growing puddles of a rising water table,
While the ghosts of Welsh drovers silent stood,
In the elemental alchemy of autumn.

The end of all our exploring

The day started auspiciously and unusually:
A chat at the bus stop with a direct descendant of Tom Paine:
‘My father maintained that we were related.
We did have first editions, in fact:
The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason’;
The 54A took us to Cirencester,
Where we congregated by the church,
Overhearing a conversation,
‘Hello. Pleased to meet you. I’m John the verger’;
Near where, in the aftermath of the Peasants’ Revolt,
‘Divers of the king’s lieges of Cirencester … assembled
And gone to the abbey … done unheard-of things
To the abbot and convent and threatened
to do all the damage they could’;
Fifteen years later they beheaded
The Earl of Salisbury and the Earl of Kent –
But we walked out through the Bathurst estate,
A colonial landscape for those with eyes,
To turn right by Alexander Pope’s seat,
Past vast polo grounds,
To reach a lambent pocket of arable land,
Hard by a bronze age tumulus,
Where ploughed field tesserae,
And nearby Ermine Way
Suggest a sumptuous Roman villa,
And where we processed along a gleaming pathway –
Like so many genius loci,
Hooded like cucullati against the rain,
Until a rainbow arch summoned Robin Treefellow
To declaim his hymn to Cuda,
Goddess of Cotswold fertility,
There by the fossil-full ploughed fields,
Where Penda of Mercia,
The last pagan king of England
Once held his crimson sword aloft in victory.

Spring waters trickled their music,
Rivulets reflected storm threat light
In the growing puddles of a rising water table,
While the ghosts of Welsh drovers silent stood,
In the elemental alchemy of autumn.

We followed a Christian path to Daglingworth,
To Anglo-Saxon wall carvings of the crucifixion,
And a sundial whose gnomon shadow,
Danced to the music of time,
As Robin sang the Dream of the Rood;

Thunder and lightning alarmed a flock of rooks,
Their silhouettes flashing across the western sky,
While we surveyed the vast abyss of time
At Daglingworth Quarry: dinosaur footprints
Once imprinted at the top of these rocks,
Far above the fossils of oysters, scallops and sea urchins,
Deep down in the quarried recesses
Of this revelation of eternity.

We carried on, fording our way through torrents,
The swelling River Churn and the Dobunni
By our side, the oppidum melding
The Cotswold hills with the Vale of the Thames,
Here in the high big sky country,
Betwixt the magic of Sabrina,
And the ancient tracks of Wiltshire.

Gilded cumulus climbed high in the west,
While lustrous moss on drystone walls,
And shining woodland lichen led us on
Past Bagendon, to follow a trail
That arrowed through medieval greensward,
Straight towards the tower
Of Cirencester’s church,
Past Roman and medieval gateways,
Mute sentinels of time.

And there by the cross was a friend,
Covered in dust and flakes and shards of masonry,
After a day spent carving saints for niches;
She told us of her endeavours,
A lone woman carving her art
In a masculine fellowship of masons.

We wished her well and bade farewell,
Knowing once more that,
‘the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time’.

A Prehistory Trip to Stroud Museum

‘Museums make you more aware:
Give You
Sense
Sensibility
Knowledge
A foothold in time
Make you feel a part of it all’

It’s a right regular education
When you visit Stroud Museum,
To process through the rooms,
On a trek to a prehistoric age:

For here’s a cabinet of curiosities:
Twenty-four exhibits, including
The tooth from an ancient Minchinhampton crocodile,
A coral from Newmarket, Nailsworth,
A Nautilus from Rodborough …
The Paris Situationists’ slogan
‘Underneath the pavements, the beach!’
Is displaced by this vista of the vastness of Time:
‘Over our heads as we walk the Stroudwater valleys,
The limitless ancient ocean!’

Stroud Museum and Prehistoric Stroud

‘Museums make you more aware:
Give You
Sense
Sensibility
Knowledge
A foothold in time
Make you feel a part of it all’

It’s a right regular education
When you visit Stroud Museum,
To process through the rooms,
On a trek to a prehistoric age:

For here’s a cabinet of curiosities:
Twenty-four exhibits, including
The tooth from an ancient Minchinhampton crocodile,
A coral from Newmarket, Nailsworth,
A Nautilus from Rodborough …
The Paris Situationists’ slogan
‘Underneath the pavements, the beach!’
Is displaced by this vista of the vastness of Time:
‘Over our heads as we walk the Stroudwater valleys,
The limitless ancient ocean!’

.
And here is another cabinet of curiosities:
A cabinet of ammonites and molluscs
A mixture of the extinct and the extant:
Long gone species such as the ichthyosaur,
But ‘Incredibly, the Lingula bracheopods have existed for some 500 million years’:
It’s enough to blow your mind as you muse on the ineffable nature of Time,
Here by the cabinets in Stroud Museum.
And there within a cabinet,
Carefully labelled and dated
By some fossicking antiquarian,
Lie the exhibits with their discovery date:
May 1939,
That last innocent spring
Spent in ruminative discovery,
Before the Age of Blitzkrieg and Holocaust.

Visitors wander along chatting about the exhibits,
Two plan excursions to fossil sites,
A young mum educates her child,
Friendly staff chat to me about what I am doing,
Another two people pass me,
Talking about Cotswold long barrows,
And here, a board with artists’ impressions
Of a Mesolithic landscape at Stroud,
The Neolithic long barrow at Nympsfield,
And the Iron Age fort at Uley
And here, a photo of Uley Bury in the here and now,
Together with a reconstruction of way back then,
Together with text about Crickley Hill,
And Neolithic arrowheads found there,
And slingstones and arrowheads found at Uley Bury
(built c.300 B.C.)
Then a large cabinet full of old bones,
Including – possibly – the bones
Of a Neolithic hunting dog
Found at the ‘so-called “Soldier’s Grave”,
a Neolithic round barrow at Frocester’,
And here, copper and bronze axes from the Bronze Age,
And Neolithic flint flakes
And Iron Age slingstones
In another cabinet of curiosities,
When along came Ian, a Museum volunteer,
Who told me how he often stands by the Romano-British altars,
And the funerary exhibits,
Reflecting on life, death and the genius loci
OF time and space locked behind the glass doors of the cabinets,
It all felt a bit M.R. James ghost story-like:
‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come To You, My Lad’ …
I wouldn’t dare whistle here if I were you …

For here is a cabinet with a boy’s skull and a beaker,
A Bronze Age cinerary urn
‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come To You, My Lad’ …
There, a Neolithic trephined skull from Bisley,
This is a copy. The original is in the British Museum.
‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come To You, My Lad’ …

Well, tempus fugit and all that,
It was time for me to go;
Sense, sensibility and knowledge all augmented,
Horizons broadened,
Educated, informed and entertained
In the true traditions of public service.
I bought some polished ammonites before I left the museum,
A present for my wife on her birthday,
To help her reflect on the nature of time and mortality,
And walked out into a windswept mad March day,
Feeling slightly wired by what I had seen and read,
Slightly ever so pantheistic,
Aware and part of it all:
The robin singing in the blossom blackthorn,
The rising, rushing Painswick stream by Tescos,
No bow and arrow or slingshot,
But the corvids still cried in alarm.
Clacking and fluttering in the trees on Rodborough Hill
As I ascended the hill to home,
Just as they did five thousand years ago.

‘Museums make you more aware:
Give You
Sense
Sensibility
Knowledge
A foothold in time
Make you feel a part of it all’

Springs: from Research to Blake to Oral History

Richardson: Wells and Springs of Gloucestershire, HMSO,1930 Introduction:

  1. Between Dursley and Dudbridge few springs issue; some of the more reliable are used for the supply of Coaley and King’s Stanley…”

  2. In the Nailsworth, Horsley and Avening Valleys…copious springs break out, such as at Gig Mill, Millbottom, the Coldwell Spring, those at the Midland Fishery in the Horsley Valley, in the grounds of “Pensile”, and in the vicinity of Longfords Mills up the Avening Valley.”

  3. Up the Frome Valley, above Stroud, is the powerful Clerk’s Flour Mill Spring…the springs at Bliss Mills, the “Black Gutter,” etc., and the considerable store of water in the Cotteswold Sands which furnished the original supply (by means of wells) of the Stroud Water Company.”

  4. If it had not been for the presence of the Fullers’ Earth, the greater part of the Cotteswold upland would have been void of villages, isolated farms and cottages…Kingscote, Nymphsfield, Avening, Minchinhampton, Sapperton, Edgeworth, Chalford, Bisley…”; the juxtaposition of Fullers’ Earth and the Great Oolite has been a fundamental determinant of settlement patterns.

Richardson: Wells and Springs of Gloucestershire, HMSO,1930 Introduction:

  1. Between Dursley and Dudbridge few springs issue; some of the more reliable are used for the supply of Coaley and King’s Stanley…”

  2. In the Nailsworth, Horsley and Avening Valleys…copious springs break out, such as at Gig Mill, Millbottom, the Coldwell Spring, those at the Midland Fishery in the Horsley Valley, in the grounds of “Pensile”, and in the vicinity of Longfords Mills up the Avening Valley.”

  3. Up the Frome Valley, above Stroud, is the powerful Clerk’s Flour Mill Spring…the springs at Bliss Mills, the “Black Gutter,” etc., and the considerable store of water in the Cotteswold Sands which furnished the original supply (by means of wells) of the Stroud Water Company.”

  4. If it had not been for the presence of the Fullers’ Earth, the greater part of the Cotteswold upland would have been void of villages, isolated farms and cottages…Kingscote, Nymphsfield, Avening, Minchinhampton, Sapperton, Edgeworth, Chalford, Bisley…”; the juxtaposition of Fullers’ Earth and the Great Oolite has been a fundamental determinant of settlement patterns.

  5. Some of the springs thrown up by the Fuller’s Earth are very strong: for example…Seven Springs, Bisley; Cherington Springs, near Avening…”

  6. The 1930 book mentions the work of JH Taunton, who reckoned that the River Frome and its tributaries drained about 79 square miles: most of the water “carried off by the Frome is derived from springs issuing from the Cotteswold Sands”; a much smaller amount “is derived from springs thrown out by the Fullers’ Earth…” The author then listed the chief tributaries of the Frome: “…the stream that rises at Clipperwell, Holy Brook, Toadsmoor Brook, Slad Brook, Painswick Stream, River Avon(or Aven) with its tributary the Horsley Brook, Stanley and Downton streams; while in this connection the group of springs known as “the Chalford Springs” must not be overlooked.”

  7. Fisher in his “Notes and Recollections of Stroud” gives further insight into wells and springs: “Near the centre of “The Cross” is a deep well of water, in which formerly stood the public pump.” Ex-mayor, John Marjoram says, in corroboration, that there are springs beneath the police station (these were discovered when the foundations were laid for the present building, he says). Fisher goes on to talk of “…the spring called Gainey’s Well, which rises in a hollow of Gainey’s Leaze on the northern side of Stroud-hill.” He further mentions “various springs which rise in Kilminster’s estate…situated near the top of Stroud-hill…” In a wider context, Fisher says that “the water in this neighbourhood, though perhaps sufficient, is not abundant. The dip of the strata of the Cotteswolds is from the north-west to the south-east – the direction of the valley of the Thames – which, consequently, receives the larger supply of the Cotteswold water-shed; whilst Stroud and the other smaller valleys receive only what flows from the…western face of the hills…” He goes on to talk about the fissures in the rocks and that “Hemlock’s Well is a public spring of water, flowing out of the south side, as Gainey’s Well does out of the north…both of them from the same causes, and both being on nearly the same level at the junction of the lias clay with the porous oolite rocks. But the springs in Kilminster’s farm rise from beneath the upper oolite rocks, at the junction with a clay bed of the fuller’s earth formation. Hemlock’s Well lies on the east side of the private road…leading down from Lower-street, near the Castle, to Arundel’s mill…It probably took its name from the common hemlock…which grew near it, and are found on the rocky eminences of the neighbourhood…About sixty yards farther down in the hill side, is an old stone cistern which was formerly supplied from the same source, and was called Nanny Croker’s Well. Tradition says that a person of that name hanged herself on a tree which grew near this cistern” but the reason why has been taken by “Time…and drops it into Oblivion’s pool.”

  8. Avening: Cherington Springs (Gillhays Bottom 897994,); River Avon (Aven); “Strong springs issue … in the south side of the Avon valley between Longfords and Iron Mills. The spring seen in the stone-sided opening in the road in front of the west face of Longfords Mill comes out of the bank to the south…Another strong spring issues…some 60 yds. to the west and flows along a water course that discharges into the “canal” that feeds the Iron Mills mill-pond.”

  9. Bisley-with-Lypiatt: Bisley or Seven Springs; “They are the source of a tributary of the Toadsmoor Brook, which rises in a spring…in Blanche’s Bank below Stancombe Farm.” There are also springs in Lypiatt Park, Middle Lypiatt, Lower Lypiatt…and below Bussage Churchyard. Nashend, Eastcombe, Bournes Green (“which is the source of a brook that joins the Frome below Baker’s Pool”), Oakridge, Oakridge Lynch (“likewise the source of a small stream”), Tunley, Daneway, Waterlane, Battlescombe, Througham, Slad Farm, Calfway Farm, Stancombe Farm, Fennell’s Farm, Ferris Court…are all situate…where water is obtainable from shallow wells or springs…Hill House and Snakeshole which give rise to a stream that flows down the Horns Valley that is joined by a streamlet rising below the Heavens.” The Slad Brook comes down the Dillay Farm valley and flows below Snow’s Farm and Steanbridge Farm, and southwards through the pond at Steanbridge. Below Snow’s Farm the Slad Brook is joined by a brook coming down the “Piedmont Valley”. The brooks derive their supplies from springs issuing from the base of the Cotteswold Sands.” These brooks flowed with an average of about 300,000 gallons a day according to a fine summer’s day gauging in 1927.

  10. Brimscombe: “There is a good spring running to waste into the canal almost opposite the Polytechnic and there are three smaller springs also running to waste into the canal between the Polytechnic and Bourne Lock.”

  11. Cainscross: Derryhay Public Spring “situate some 200 yds. east by north of the Chapel, Ebley…The water issues from the gravel bed, flows continuously, and,…runs to waste in the Stroudwater Canal. Westrip is dependent on wells…and springs issuing from, the base of the Cotteswold Sands. The Ruscombe Brook flows along the eastern side of the parish, through ponds near Cainscross Brewery, and discharges into the Frome.” The Brewery use wells from springs at “Puckshole, a hamlet between Paganhill and Randwick.”

  12. Chalford: “Rack Hill is supplied partly by…springs in the bottom, such as Tankard’s Spring. Numerous small springs are thrown out…in France Lynch, the strongest being that south-east of the church. The water from these springs runs to waste down Dimmel’s Dale into the Frome at Hell Corner. A fairly good stream rises at Old Neighbouring (Chalford Lynch) and flows down the valley past Chalford Hill Schools…a good stream comes out of the north side of the valley near the Queen’s Head Hotel and is taken under the canal (after having been joined by another stream under Whareham’s Hill) and discharges into the Frome.”

  13. Horsley: “Top level springs rising at Nupend feed dip wells in the main street…The Be-Thankful Fountain in the Horsley road is supplied by top level springs, which ran feebly in 1921, situate 1/3 mile S.E. by E. of All Saints Church, Shortwood, near Willow Cottage…There is a dip and a tank from which a pipe is laid to supply Willow Cottage. On the right hand side of the path south of Coldwell is a dip with a circular opening…There are some useful springs down Bartonend Lane.”

  14. Kings Stanley: “Middleyard…is supplied…from a spring in “The Combs” (as the comb between Pen and Selsley Hills is called), and Coldwell…The stream running through the village from Huntley’s Spring is polluted by drainage.”

  15. Leonards Stanley: “…there is a spring near St. Swithin’s Church which may be drawn upon by anyone who wants water and there are copious springs at Severn Waters – the water from all of which…runs to waste into the Frome.”

  16. Minchinhampton: “In times past Michinhampton was partly dependent on…Well Hill Spring.” Lots of fissures in the Oolite here – commonly used for “Any liquid, however contaminated”; made illegal “But at the time of the Minchinhampton epidemic (of typhoid fever in 1844) it was an almost universal practice”; author thinks it “wonderful” that there is only one other record of a local epidemic “except a small one in 1758.”…”Gatcombe Park is supplied by a spring. Bubblewell (Forwood), springs thrown out by the Fullers’ Earth, is used by those living in the vicinity. Four or five springs (strong ones) rising in the neighbourhood…above Springfield used to supply Forwood Brewery and the overflow went into a trough by the side of the road to Minchinhampton. Box is supplied by…Troublewell Spring which furnishes a good supply…Spriggs Well, near Rose Cottage, Amberley, used to furnish the supply for the ancient camp. Burleigh…a spring in the hamlet is largely used. In the Golden Valley a large number of springs – the Chalford Springs of literature – issue…the chief of which are “The Bubbler”, “The Black Gutter”, and the spring which is the main source of the Stroud Water Company’s supply at Clerk’s Mill. The Black Gutter…”is the biggest feeder of the Thames and Severn Canal and is fed by about twenty springs rising under the railway bank.” The author then goes on to talk about the Stroud Water Company and mentions two springs: “Clerk’s Flour Mill Spring (main supply)…comes out of the south side of the valley and is conducted through a culvert to a pumping-station beside the mill- pond. Into this sump discharges water brought through…a pipe from the Bliss Mill springs…About 30,000 gallons per hour are pumped…and there is an overflow into the mill-pond of about 1,000,000 gallons per day. There is another spring which is not now used, also coming out of the south side of the valley…The overflow from the “Black Gutter” is conveyed by an iron pipe and discharges into the millpond.”

  17. Miserden: “Miserden village is supplied by an undertaking provided about 1920, by F.N.H. Wills. The source of supply is a spring thrown out …towards the top of the steep valley side facing Bulls Bank Common…Before the present supply…the village obtained its water mainly from a spring in the bank east of the church.”

  18. Nailsworth: “Springs issue from two horizons, from (1) the basement beds of the Great Oolite…known a the “high” or “top level springs”; and (2) at or near the base of the Cotteswold Sands known as the “bottom” or “low level springs.” The water of the top level springs is hard. The springs are usually collected by means of stone drains…Examples of private supplies from top-level springs are those at The Hollies, Rockness House and Ringfield Farm. Good top-level springs are those (1) in the hillside south of All Saints Church, Shortwood…and another which furnishes a supply to Hillier’s Bacon Curing Factory; (2) above Rockness…(3) near Rowden. The water issuing from the Cotteswold Sands …has a very constant temperature, summer and winter of 42 degrees. The water that issues from the Sands has percolated through the Inferior Oolite. The Oolite exposed in quarries “steams” in frosty weather and all the year round “musty smelling air” rises from “lissens” in it. This steaming has gained the expression, often used locally, of “hot rock” and of houses being situate on “hot rock.” Notable springs issuing from the Cotteswold Sands are:- (1) near Newmarket Mills (demolished). Water from a spring here is pumped to Hillier’s Bacon Curing Factory; (2) at Springhill, the water of which is conveyed to…Axpills and Cossack Square…Day’s Mill, and The Fountain and Lloyds Bank…(3) at Gig Mill…(4) in Millbottom. The Millbottom Spring is a very copious spring used by those living in the vicinity but otherwise running to waste. In the bottom at Harleywood where by the path-side close to the southern end of the mill-pond is “Sweetwater Spring; (5) at the bend of the road between Holcombe Mill and Weighbridge Inn on the Avening road, a small but constant spring; (6) that used to supply Holcombe House and The Hermitage. Care requires to be exercised in determining springs in this district; many so-marked springs on the 6-inch map are “spout-springs” and springs originated from leaky or disconnected old drains, draining clay-slips.”

  19. Painswick: “…public springs, such as that at the bottom of Vicarage Street (under the Vernon’s boundary wall) and St. Tabatha’s Well in Tibbiwell Lane…spring at Cherry Hill Cottages, Spoonbed Hill…Slad hamlet…a spring near Laurel Villa…Cud Well is a spring (somewhat feeble)…At 300yds. N. by W. of Steanbridge is a spring…and at 150 yds. to the N. by W. several springs…the southernmost of which, it is said, “never fails”. There is a useful spring at the back of the Star Inn.”

  20. Randwick: “The village owes its supply to the generosity of the late Mr. Carpenter, and derives it from a spring at Long Court…about 100 yds. W.N.W. of the fish pond in the grounds.”

  21. Rodborough: “Numerous springs issue from at or near the base of the Sands in the hill-side. The most notable are:- Stanfields Spring, which…ran well…for 25 years but went dry in 1921; King’s Court…which is a good spring and available for public use; Court Bank, in the Stroud Valley, some 500 yds. north-east by north of Rodborough Fort; and about 500yds. east by north of Rodborough Manor.”

  22. Stonehouse: “ Formerly a number of properties were supplied by an overflow from the Verney Spring which issues…at a little below the 300 ft. contour in a hollow some 300 yds. north-east of the Stonehouse Brick and Tile Works. Another spring issuing from the same geological horizon east of the Glen is used by the inhabitants of Woodcock Lane…”

  23. Stroud: Similar to Nailsworth, there are “Low Level” springs “ from at or near the base of the Cotteswold Sands, from which they are thrown out by the Upper Lias clay and “High Level” which issue forth “from at or near the base of the Great Oolite, from which are thrown out by the Fullers’ Earth. A gravel bed rests on the Middle Lias and forms a terrace along the right bank of the Frome from Gannicox west-wards into Cainscross parish.” The author then goes on to talk of “The Stroud Hill Supply is derived from some eighty shallow springs thrown out by the Fullers’ Earth between the Bisley Road reservoirs…and Sydenham’s Farm, and collected into…iron pipes (via below Kilminster, Fennel’s and Anstead Farms)”; 2.6 miles long with a yield varying from 15,000 gallons a day in summer to 200,000 gallons per day in the winter months. The author then addresses Gainey’s Well: a low level spring with a yield varying from 60,000 gallons per day in summer to 110,000 per day in winter. There is also Farmhill Well, “in a field to the east of Farmhill Park…water was encountered at 24ft. down and it is said that there is never less than 12ft. of water in the well. There are a number of springs. Mostly small, in the District, issuing from at or near the base of the Cotteswold Sands.” The author then looks at the Stroud Brewery – “This brewery is adjacent to the GWR Station and obtains its supply from springs and wells at some distance.” The writer concludes by looking at “Boring at Callowell.- Borehole in garden of Plough Inn. Made 1925.”

  24. Thrupp: “Good springs thrown out by the Fullers’ Earth are those below The Horns and Lower Lypiatt, while a good spring issues from the base of the Cotteswold Sands above the old Brimscombe Brewery.”

  25. Whiteshill: “There are three useful springs in Ruscombe, namely (1) Near the Chapel; (2)…at the sharp bend of the road north of Ludlow Green; (3) the “Double Spout…in the dip between Ludlow Green and Primrose Hill, which yields more water than any in the neighbourhood and is the source of Ruscombe Brook.”

  26. Woodchester: “…many of the cottagers draw their water from “spout springs”, in particular the “Ram Pitch Spring,” near the Ram Inn, and “Turner’s Spring” at the top of Frogmarsh Lane.”

Local Spring Time

Liminal shrines: those strange, trickling gateways

To chthonic places, real or imagined;

Mythopoeic underworlds of mystery,

Hades with imprisoned Persephone,

Or a metaphor for hope and wisdom,

Or a deliquescent, dripping staff of life,

(Or Limestone, Fullers’ Earth and Cotteswold Sands),

Quicksilver mercurial alchemy,

A continuous flow of constant change,

One sip of which will switch your sense of time

(Drinking rainwater that dropped who knows when),

Like star-shine from ancient constellations,

A laughing trick all that slakes and comforts,

Yet mocks the tension of the present tense,

A spring-tide clock whose hands revolve backwards,

With messages from another aeon.

A Cabinet of Curiosities

The Age of Enlightenment

Gave birth to the Collector:

Rational, assiduous;

Naming and classifying;

Listing and cataloguing;

Creating and displaying

A Cabinet of Curiosities;

Flora and fauna pin-holed;

Rocks and fossils pot-holed;

God and Darwin side by side.

So, here is our cabinet,

A Blakean vision unconfined

By taxonomy’s constructs,

Escaping from the test-tubes,

Dripping from the tight-locked drawers,

Undermining Horatio’s philosophy,

With dreams of another way to be.

The Truth About Springs

The word “Truth”, just like the name of John Keats,

Is writ upon the ever changing waters;

And so, our systematic search for springs,

The cataloguing and naming of parts,

Resembles that of the alchemist,

Seeking out the philosopher’s stone.

But how can we confine the mercurial?

Those thin blue lines that disappear,

With culverts, pipes, wells and drainage,

Or wander with the whim of nature,

Through seasons of capricious rainfall:

So, just like Truth, springs are protean,

And our labours are a metaphor

For the half-wisdom of science and logic,

There are more things in heaven and earth than

Are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio.”

Jacquetta Hawkes, in her wonderful book, “A Land”, first published in the year of my birth, 1951, looked at the relationship between names and landscape:
“There is a sense in which the ordering of speech has a direct effect also upon the land. Names could be attached to all those features of the countryside that attracted… attention or were of significance. Mountains, rivers, springs…Above all, places associated with ancestral spirits, gods and heroes. Place names are among the things that link men (sic) most intimately with their territory. As the generations pass on these names from one to the other, successive tongues wear away the syllables just as water and wind smooth the rocks; so they…perhaps lose their meaning, yet grow more and more closely attached to the land itself…A geologist finds proof of past life in fossils, an archaeologist in objects…an etymologist looks instead to place names…”

Flora

Richard Mabey recounts the story

When Meux’s Horseshoe Brewery

Bored a well, over a thousand feet,

Into the five hundred million year old

Subterranean Cambrian rocks,

Below Tottenham Court Road.

And there, on Old Stone Age strata,

Were fossilised weeds, common today:

Knotgrass, creeping buttercup, chickweed, mare’s tail.

So, as we stride across our Stroud Valleys,

Ancient, abyssal depths beneath our soles,

With water coursing its way to spring lines,

Those flowers you saw by the side of the spring,

Might just be the children of those that stood

When the rains fell from unrecorded skies.

The Social History of Springs

So what do memories tell us

About how springs affect us?

When you think about it, springs and spring lines

Are fundamental reasons why we are here,

Why we are where we are when we are,

Yet the meanings we give to these life-sources,

Have been endlessly mediated and diverted

By countless culverts, pipes, utilities,

Waterworks, reservoirs and construction;

Most of us are understandably unaware,

Ignorant and unconscious of the power beneath our feet,

Yet the fragments that we glimpse reveal to us

How the issue of the underworld

Permeates our thoughts, minds and bodies,

In misunderstood ways, even today.

Memories may tell us even more:

The springs in Kingscourt, at The Street,

Helped make the path of true love run smooth,

Recalled Elsie Close, born 1903,

(Whose grannie used to be the village mid-wife)

Courted by Jack, bringing spring water

On Sunday nights to Elsie’s mum,

All ready for Washday Monday;

But springs could also roughen paths to the future,

When builders discovered them beneath planned foundations,

As in Oak Drive, near Rodborough Fields,

Or beneath Iceland in Stroud,

Or beneath the top of the High Street,

Where springs and an old reservoir by the police station,

Still cause subsidence even today.

Then there are the springs of the suburbs,

Sometimes culverted, sometimes disappearing,

But reappearing and running continuously somewhere,

As in Rodborough Avenue and Chandos Drive;

Or there might be memories of playing in the spring

Down by Bagpath,

Drinking its crystal clear stone cold waters,

Growing watercress, pumpkins and marrows

In spring-line beds,

Where Mr Strange would bathe his bruises,

After playing football for Thrupp FC,

While old Mr Turner yoked two large churns

On his shoulders for his daily supply,

Even though most of the houses in Butterow

Had spring-fed wells by then;

But mains water then came to Butterow,

The sign went up at the spring:
“Unfit for Drinking” –

We never took any notice of that and continued to drink

And play in the spring for as long as I can remember.”

Then there was the spring in Field Road,

On the way up to Stroud Hospital,

And the spring in Kitesnest Lane

Where pumpkins and marrows were grown,

Meanwhile the springs beneath Fishers Way

Still sometimes reappear and run across the roads,

While the spring still rises in Gastrells Lane,

And the springs in the Slad Valley

Still show with their summer-time

Dark green clumps of dark green grass.

Mrs Arthur of Kingscourt remembers her local springs,

Still being used in the 1940s,

While in her grandfather’s day, men bore a yoke,

Carrying the water back up the steep hill to Bowl Top Cottage,

While over at Ruscombe, the men bore the yokes from the spring too,

She thinks the spring at Stanfields may now be in someone’s garden,

But water from the spring at Selsley West,

By Middleyard, is still used by some people today;

Then there are the springs in All Saints Road

That fed wells at the back of the terrace,

One now flows in a conduit beneath the footpath,

But its laughter can still be heard in the drains

At the corner of All Saints Road and Springfield Road,

And then when you call in at Uplands Road Post Office,

It never stops, not even in drought or deep frozen winter,

And sometimes floods basements and cellars;

Then there are tales of wells in Stroud,

Hemlock Well and wells at The Field,

Hemlock Well, at the junction of Field Road

And the old Hemlockwell Lane –

The water supply comes through a higher well,

Once called Nanny Crocker’s cistern,

Legend has it that Nanny was hanged there as a witch,

But the waters poured in down the hill

To the water wheels at Arundel Mill,

While Gainey’s Well, whose 18th century wooden pipes

Were plugged with much needed kneaded bread,

Issued forth in Gainey’s Leaze,

While there had been a well where the roads fork

In front of the old Co-op, now laundrette (how fitting),

Since the early 18th century; a reservoir would follow;

This past subterranean reservoir

Still affects our mundane walking and shopping on the streets of Stroud,

TO BE CONTINUED AS MORE MEMORIES ARE RECORDED

John Clare: “There once were springs, where daisies’ silver studs

Like sheets of snow on every pasture spread;”

Dear Sir or Madam,

I was born and raised in Butterow near Stroud and well remember the spring at the bottom of the hill towards Bagpath, when we were children we used to play in the spring and drink the crystal clear water which gushed from a large pipe into a large basin. The water was always stone cold even in the height of summer, the overflow from the spring ran under the road and down a steep slope in which my father had water cress beds, also some of the villagers grew pumpkins and marrows by the side of the beds, my father played football for the THRUPP TEAM and my mother told me that my dad would stand in the spring on his way home to take the bruises out of his legs.

I well remember old Mr. Turner going by our house with a yoke over his shoulders with two large churns each side to collect his daily supply of water from the spring. Most of the houses in Butterow had wells including our house which had a pump in the back kitchen so the wells must have been supplied by springs. When mains water was supplied to BUTTEROW a sign was put on the spring saying that it was unfit for drinking. We never took any notice of that and continued to drink and play in the spring for as long as I can remember. I also drank from the spring in FIELD ROAD on the way up to Stroud Hospital and also there was a spring in KITESNEST LANE LIGHTPILL opposite ORCHARD VIEW ROAD where someone grew pumpkins and marrows by the side of the spring. The field on which our houses are built in FISHERS WAY and CHANDOS ROAD as covered in springs which sometimes reappear and run across the roads. Also in the valley in GASTRELS LANE there is a spring still running at the side of the road.

I hope this letter has helped you in your research on springs in the district as it brings back happy memories of my childhood.

Mr. Strange

I think there are quite a lot near us, in and near The Street ( we are hoping we are not on the spring line to the extent there’s one under our house!). There’s an ‘official’ one in the Street, not far from Zara’s house. We could show it to you. It’s for the public to use (though not everyone agrees). When a lovely old lady next door to us died in 1995 we put up a little plaque there in her honour. She was called Elsie Close (née Harris or Vick, I forget now). She was born in 1903 and lived in Kingscourt most of her life. Her granny had been the village midwife! (unofficially, of course, in those days). In order to ingratiate himself with Elsie’s parents when he was courting her, Jack, her sweetheart, would go to fetch water from the spring on Sunday evenings ready for Monday washing. They eventually married and had two daughters, both of whom have died. Jack died in 1979. I have a marvellous photo of him and Elsie taken by the SNJ photographer on the occasion of their Golden Wedding.

Carole Oosterhousen

Rodborough:

Bob Tiley and Oak Drive – they had intended to build individual houses there but it proved to be too expensive as the buildings needed such strong and deep foundations because of the springs there; so they built flats instead of houses. What seems to be a sociological or economic decision has in fact been determined by subterranean springs.

Tony says the spring behind his house runs down to the last house in Rodborough Avenue; springs have been culverted around this part of Rodborough but he is sure they run continuously. Giles Diggle has just had a spring appear in his garden in Chandos Road after one nearby was culverted; the impact of the wet summer, 2012.

sorry – forgot to mention the springs! You will almost certainly be aware of the springs along the Slad valley below Summer street. When we lived at Lower Woodlands in the Slad Road we could see the darker green grass clumps opposite our house very clearly in the summertime. We also discovered the hard way the seam of Fuller’s earth that runs around the Slad valley about two-thirds of the way up, behind Swift’s Hill – it made some footpaths extremely treacherous.

Are you including wells? There were a few on The Field estate in back yards, and I have an as-yet unidentified death of a man digging a well when it collapsed on two workers. I am trying hard to establish that it was on William Cowle’s own land but the Board of Health minutes reported in the newspaper are very tight-lipped (so since he was Chairman I might be right!).

Marion

Have just found your request for info. about local springs, there is one in the field below us at bottom of Gastrells which my paternal grandmother’s family used 1880 onwards. For many years she retained the yoke with which her brothers fetched water back to Bowl Top cottage. The Village Spring at Ruscombe has a nameplate just round the corner from the chapel on the left hand side. There is a lovely old photo of children fetching water in Victorian times using a yoke. There is a spring in The Street at Kingscourt, rather overgrown now but it was used in 1940′s as was the one at Stanfields (now in someone’s garden I suspect). People still collect water from a spring in Selsley West near Middleyard. South Woodchester has one just up above The Ram. In Stroud, Spring Lane has Hemlock Well now barred up for obvious reasons.

Maureen Arthur.

Parts of the High Street seem to be gently subsiding at the top end outside the Medieval Building! There are said to be lots of springs around the area of the Police station (- the (reservoir used to be just there) & the water is said to wash down underneath the road. In the 1980s when we were working on the Med Building, the road actually fell into a huge cavern!

Iceland had planned to have an underground car park, but it was said to be too expensive & difficult to build because of the water.

Anne Mackintosh

The All Saints Road spring used to feed wells at the back of the terrace of three houses built in 1860. The west house of the three does not have a cellar and we think that it would have flooded too much. The spring is now conduited under the communal footpath which runs down the west side of the terrace and then under All Saints Road where you can hear it flowing all seasons by the drain at the corner of All Saints Road and Springfield Road and again just outside Uplands post office. The spring never dries not even in the deep freeze two winters ago. There may be other springs feeding that drain from higher up in All Saints Road – I am not sure.

There is a second run of water into the bank of All Saints Road which moves occasionally – the bottom two houses cellars flooded badly in July 2007 never having been wet before and recent work on Thompson Road, parallel to All Saints road, moved those springs again and again the basements flooded.

The older people are the ones to talk to as they have such long memories of water movement in the roads and it is a very sensitive issue.

For instance the building opposite the Uplands Post office had a well in its grounds. When the cottage was redeveloped and upgraded that well had concrete put into it. The water then worked its way down the hillside affecting other buildings and seeped out into the walls of Slad Mills, just where the Mill touches Slad Road, necessitating a lot of extra financial repairs.

You will never finish this project – there are so many thousands of spring stories – fabulous and well done for doing this. I think it’s really important for people to know where the water runs under their houses!

Camilla

Steve – Leaky the Plumber – lives in Chandos Road – can always hear the sound of running water when he is awake at night.
We had lunch yesterday with neighbours who are involved in our FEWC research and live at one of the cottages that originally belonged to The Field mansion – probably 17thC certainly 18thC. The Field was the name of the house (yes it is a real nuisance) originally built possibly as early as the 1300s but certainly there in 1560 when it was bought, along with its mill and hillside, from John Huckvale by Richard Arundell. The house itself had a face lift in the 1800s but some of the original outbuildings are still visible, and the two adjoining cottages are fully functioning.

They have wondered for a long time how the original house got its water supply, and of course I thought of you and your research. The house was built on the only flat bit of the hillside, halfway up, with its mill in the valley on the river. Would it help to know the altitude? Here it is on an 1885 OS map:

They did tell the tale of a spring-supplied house up at the top of The Heavens that only recently went on mains water, and Hemlock Well is of course just at the town end of Bowbridge Lane, but surely there must have been a water supply nearer than that?

No rush – just another little jigsaw piece.

kind regards
Marion

Rowcroft Railway Bridge

The Wall beneath Rowcroft Railway Bridge

I love the railway bridge over Rowcroft in Stroud,
I love the way it continues the lengthy viaduct that straddles the A46,
I love that Dirty Old Town industrial revolution-
Collectivist working class feeling,
When dreaming underneath the arches,
And I love travelling over the bridge and viaduct too,
Whether it’s to Paddington or Cheltenham,
And I love walking the Up-platform,
To gaze down at the edgelands below,
The rebarbative railing and the obligatory supermarket trolley,
The litter, the detritus, the security signage …
But I have to confess,
When I walk under Rowcroft railway bridge,
Whether to or from Stroud town,
I usually scurry through,
Tbh,
Trying to avoid the congregations of pigeons,
And consequent widespread excrement,
As well as the fag smoke, vaping and sputum –
I usually keep my eyes to the ground,
Trying to keep my shoes clean,
And am oblivious of anything above or beyond the pavement.

The Wall beneath Rowcroft Railway Bridge

I love the railway bridge over Rowcroft in Stroud,
I love the way it continues the lengthy viaduct that straddles the A46,
I love that Dirty Old Town industrial revolution-
Collectivist working class feeling,
When dreaming underneath the arches,
And I love travelling over the bridge and viaduct too,
Whether it’s to Paddington or Cheltenham,
And I love walking the Up-platform,
To gaze down at the edgelands below,
The rebarbative railing and the obligatory supermarket trolley,
The litter, the detritus, the security signage …
But I have to confess,
When I walk under Rowcroft railway bridge,
Whether to or from Stroud town,
I usually scurry through,
Tbh,
Trying to avoid the congregations of pigeons,
And consequent widespread excrement,
As well as the fag smoke, vaping and sputum –
I usually keep my eyes to the ground,
Trying to keep my shoes clean,
And am oblivious of anything above or beyond the pavement.

But yesterday,
What with that first day of spring type feeling,
I glanced up towards the sky,
And noticed,
For the very first time,
A solitary old stone wall,
Just two stones thick
(One stone at the top),
At an angle of some 45 degrees,
Rising from the ground right up to the arch of the viaduct
Adjacent to the Rowcroft bridge.

Is it really possible that Brunel’s Great Western Railway,
‘The Permanent Way’,
Running all the way from Paddington to Cheltenham Spa,
Through engineering marvels such as Hanwell Viaduct,
Sonning Cutting, over the Thames,
Swindon Railway Works,
Sapperton Tunnel,
Is at one point,
Finely balanced with even-steven tension,
Upon a mouldering solitary old stone wall in Stroud
(Seemingly impermanent),
In a sort of oxymoronic embrace of fragility and stability?
What else is the wall for?
Merely to gratuitously divide empty space?

Question:
What would happen if the wall was taken away?

Lodgemore Mills and the Elements

There is a sort of elemental magic at work at Lodgemore –
The very word itself suggests an ability to expand beyond
Natural confines of space and time:
Lodge-more:
The lodging of Fire, Air, Earth and Water,
A numinous presence around these mill walls,
A perpetual elemental infusion and confusion
Of history, continuity and change:

There have been three fires here: in 1802, 1811 and 1871:
The 1829 Register of Pennsylvania looked at
The phenomenon of ‘spontaneous combustion’,
And ‘enumerated several substances, which under particular circumstances spontaneously inflamed, and it may be serviceable to mention, as a caution to woollen manufacturers, that a destructive fire at Lodgemore Mills near Stroud, in Gloucestershire, which happened, June, 1811, was occasioned by a quantity of flocks impregnated by Curier’s oil being left on the floor.’

There is a sort of elemental magic at work at Lodgemore –
The very word itself suggests an ability to expand beyond
Natural confines of space and time:
Lodge-more:
The lodging of Fire, Air, Earth and Water,
A numinous presence around these mill walls,
A perpetual elemental infusion and confusion
Of history, continuity and change:

There have been three fires here: in 1802, 1811 and 1871:
The 1829 Register of Pennsylvania looked at
The phenomenon of ‘spontaneous combustion’,
And ‘enumerated several substances, which under particular circumstances spontaneously inflamed, and it may be serviceable to mention, as a caution to woollen manufacturers, that a destructive fire at Lodgemore Mills near Stroud, in Gloucestershire, which happened, June, 1811, was occasioned by a quantity of flocks impregnated by Curier’s oil being left on the floor.’

The air, so necessary for this combustion,
Was once, more comforting,
Enveloping the cloth
Stretched out to dry on tenterhooks;

The subterranean limestone,
Quarried for mill, factory and cottage,
Also gave up its
Fullers Earth,
So necessary for the cleaning of the cloth;

The limestone and the Fuller’s Earth,
Also gave the five valleys its springs,
Its streams, rivers, cuts and canals,

Water
For Lodgemore Mills,
For the sluice gates; the maze of waterways, streams, rivers, Navigations, spumes, flumes and watery divagations,

Water
Dripping down the mouldering walls and rusting guttering;

Fire
Once stoked beneath the now crumbling chimney,
And no longer wreaking spontaneous havoc;
Air, Earth and Water
Nurturing the ash trees growing tall above the mill roofs;
Gothic-green ivy clambering over walls
And the present tense,
As the past reclaims the future,
In a landscape where nothing is stable,
All is mutable,
As the elements jostle for their daily lodging at Lodgemore Mills,
Watching us pass by in contemplative, detached amusement:
‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’

Sixth Sense Supernatural Psychogeography in Kefalonia

It all started quite normally tbh:
No hint of an MR James ghost story at all,
Just straight forward hiking and walking
(Though admittedly Edenic)
Through layers of time,
Following the route signs
And ticking the sights off the list:
Mesolithic coastal meandering;
Ancient Greek woodland temple:
Woodland cave where Pan was worshipped;
Roman cemetery with bas-reliefs
Depicting Persephone’s abduction to Hades
(Where we stretched out in open tombs,
Coins in our mouths to pay the ferryman),
Then a Byzantine Christian basilica;
Venetian footpaths and a ruined lighthouse;
A Guns of Navarone-like gun emplacement,
Where a giant Krupp battery commanded the Ionian Sea –
But this route required a passage through a deserted village:
A street succession of gaping windows and doors,
Doorways that once were portals between different worlds,
Entries to domesticity and security and a refuge
From the travails of the heat of the day,
But long open to nature’s calling,
With roofless houses,
Full of lustrous arum lilies, and countless trees
Soaring to a cloudless cypress sky;
And as I reflected on such liminalia, and took pictures
(Finding a shard of pottery as Trish picked a lemon),
I sensed a shadow and movement to my right –
And when I talked to Trish about my sensing of a ghost
Just there in front of the doorstep we had just passed,
The keys in my rucksack started jingling and jangling.

Now I am a rationalist and I am sure there are sound reasons
Contained within the laws of physics and the rules of the universe,
As to why those keys started their movement and their jangle –
But all I know is that it only happened just there,
Just that once, and on no other occasion on our walking holiday,
Even though the keys were placed in exactly the same place
In the rucksack, as a sort of half-baked empirical test.

All I know is that those keys started automatically jangling,
Coinciding with our doorstep conversation about how
Time had changed the meaning of these doorways.
Btw,

I hasten to add that we had no madeleine biscuits in the bag,
But I can’t stop thinking about it all.
Why did they jangle?