The Slimbridge Diggers

Every Age Rewrites History

But not always textually

And the History may not even have been textual

To begin with tbh

‘Every Age Rewrites History?’: well, that takes me right back to 6^th form scholarship-level history (yes, I did get a distinction); and now, rereading Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down, that adage seems ever more relevant, as we try to discover the site of that mysterious, elusive Digger settlement at Slimbridge.

Thus wrote the magisterial Christopher Hill in 1972: ‘History has to be rewritten in every generation, because although the past does not change the present does; each generation asks new questions of the past, and finds new areas of sympathy as it re-lives different aspects of the experiences of its predecessors. The Levellers were better understood as political democracy established itself … the Diggers have something to say to twentieth-century socialists. Now that the protestant ethic itself … is at last being questioned … we can study with a new sympathy the Diggers, the Ranters, and the many other daring thinkers who in the seventeenth century refused to bow down and worship it.’

And here we are in the twenty-first century, in the age of the Anthropocene, or Capitalocene (call it what you will): a new age of climate crisis, and here we are ready to try and discover the possible location of the possible Digger community at Slimbridge. And I imagine you are thinking as you read this: Why Slimbridge? Slimbridge? Somewhere on the edge of nowhere? That seems literally incredible. And why only ‘possible’ Digger community? And how did you find out about this possibility? What’s fact and what’s conjecture? (And so on and so on and scooby dooby do …)

I’ll try and answer some of these questions – and also, perhaps, provoke some more.

I first came upon the Slimbridge reference over ten years ago in the online Utopia Britannica: “Diggers Colony 1649-50? One of a series of ‘other’ Diggers colonies. (See St George’s Hill, Surrey, for more details) GRID REF: Possibly on Slimbridge Waste. REF: World Turned Upside Down.”

And then followed this up by going back to Christopher Hill and running my fingers down the index. And we read thus on page 90: “It has been suggested that the unknown Digger community in Gloucestershire may have been at Slimbridge, where in 1631, during the Civil War, and again in 1650, ‘rude multitudes’ were ‘levelling enclosures.’ The waste of Slimbridge, John Smyth of Nibley had said in 1639, could yield £1500 a year but was not worth one-fifth of that now. On the contrary, it draws ‘many poor people from other places’ and burdens the township with ‘beggarly cottages … and ale houses and idle people’.”

The very knowledgeable local historian Owen Adams messaged me after I asked him his view on where the site might have been in Slimbridge: ‘Hi Stuart, all I know about it is that it gets a very brief mention in one book Brave Community as a possible site, however there was a long history of enclosure riots and disputes against the Berkeley family and their steward John Smyth in preceding decades over the new grounds, now the site of the wetlands centre … Also seems Slimbridge was known as Slymbridge, pronounced slime, as there was an industry of collecting alluvial river mud, quicksand known as slime, for spreading on agricultural land and improving it … I have a fair bit of information on an attempted Skimmington riot in June 1631 at Slimbridge New Grounds, which I will mention when I do a talk at Yate in June.’

(How this made me think about that old phrase used in my parents’ generation about the looked-down-upon: ‘common as muck’ … but here we can see a very different meaning involving the spread of muck on a common … one phrase implying social hierarchy … another implying equality … more on this later from the quill of Gerard Winstanley).

The next stage in wider research came in the spring this year when Bob Blenkinsop (‘Blenko’) lent me The Lefties’ Guide to Britain after a visit to the Cragg Vale Coiners trail when on a different mission: ‘Slimbridge Waste. A Digger community was set up on the Waste around 1650; the precise location, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, is unknown.’

A fruitless search of my bookshelves for Nigel Costley’s West Country Rebels (who did I lend that to?) meant buying another copy. Nigel wrote on page 11 about the 17^th century Skimmington riots against enclosures and de-forestation in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire (the Western Rising). His succinct description of the skimmington tradition will serve us as well as any other we could use: “A ‘Skimmington’ was a public shaming of individuals” who transgressed local community values, with the transgressor mocked in effigy with rough music. “The term was used for other actions that caused the community’s displeasure including enclosures … Riots were reported against the ‘new-gained grounds of Lord Berkeley’ at Frampton and Slimbridge …”

Nigel writes further about Slimbridge on page 25: ‘A Digger settlement was established on Slimbridge Waste by the River Severn in Gloucestershire. Little is known of the community and it is likely that it was brutally suppressed.’

So where was the Waste? Presumably an area of uncultivated land. Who defines an area as Waste? Definitions could vary according to wealth. Common land may not be waste from the lower orders’ point of view: it offers subsistence and a possible roof. But a landowner in pursuit of profit … might have a very different lens (see John Smyth above). So where was that Slymbridge Waste? The Moors? On the battle ground of the New Grounds? At the Warth (meadow land by a river)? Lost in the lands and waters of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust?

Buchanan Sharp wrote thus on page 111 in his In Contempt of All Authority

Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586-1660: ‘When the Berkeleys came to consider enclosure at Slymbridge in Gloucestershire in 1639, the main argument in favour of it was that the open common drew people from other places who lived in beggarly cottages, erected alehouses, and led lives of idleness and petty crime. Division into severalty would support honest husbandmen who could pay rents, instead of useless beggars and other such lazy and idle people.’ This was eight years after the offer from the other side of the river to assist in the skimmington destruction of enclosures. And seven years before the ‘order for Lord Berkeley’s quiet possession of the enclosed newly gained ground at Slymbridge’: Buchanan possibly points our way and compass with this sentence on page 156: ‘During the first Civil War the inhabitants finally rioted and destroyed the enclosure of 300 acres of ground new-gained from changes in the course of the River Severn.’

So, although John Gurney in Brave Community writes on page 185 that ‘Nothing is known of the location of the Digger colonies in Gloucestershire and Nottinghamshire. Enclosure riots took place in the Gloucestershire parishes of Slimbridge and Frampton in June 1650, and the Forest of Dean was the site of agrarian conflict later in the decade, but again no evidence has been found to link the Diggers to these places’, you might say there certainly seems to be a good deal of circumstantial evidence.

Circumstantial evidence: ‘Circumstantial evidence is indirect evidence that does not, on its face, prove a fact in issue but gives rise to a logical inference that the fact exists. Circumstantial evidence requires drawing additional reasonable inferences in order to support the claim.’

And on that basis, we shall walk along Moorend Lane, past Berkeley Court, and Shepherd’s Patch, over the canal towards the Warth and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, then return and walk along the towpath towards Gloucester, glancing towards the Severn and the New Grounds.

Why 1649-50?

Times were particularly hard in the decade before the putative settlement at Slimbridge: war; high food prices; poor harvests; and times were especially hard between 1647 and 1650, when, as Hill commented, ‘food prices rose steeply above their pre-war level; money wages lagged badly behind, and the cost of living rose significantly’. Corn was seized in the Severn valley, while away from Slimbridge, the Levellers were active within the army, and then in the spring of 1649 poor labourers began to dig the waste land at St. George’s Hill near Windsor.

The total number of people involved there – male labourers, women and children within families, numbered under one hundred; ‘we know the names of seventy-three of them’(Hill). Like Slimbridge, that area had a tradition of radical direct action – and traditions of agrarian communism may well have revived in the 1640s. (For evidence of these traditions, see Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, Book 2, canto 9, stanza 13; Book 4, canto 1, stanza 28; Book 5, canto 2, stanza 35-52; canto 11, stanzas 57-9; Shakespeare’s Coriolanus Act 2, scene 3; Henry 6^th, Part 2, Act 4, passim.) In short, although the numbers of people involved in Digger experiments in England in 1649-50 may have been few, St. George’s Hill was far from unique: the support for people whom the Levellers would have disenfranchised (servants, labourers, the indigent etc.) spread through Digger pamphlets penned by Winstanley – and through word of mouth. Digger ‘ambassadors’ would have been few in number wandering the parishes of southern England and the midlands, but wander did they did.

The fact that Digger ideas did spread through word of mouth (‘oral culture’) means that we should not be surprised to find it hard to pinpoint the exact spot of Gloucestershire’s Digger experiment. Out of all the Digger communities in 1649-50, St. George’s Hill is the best documented but if any of those involved in other short-lived experiments, such as Gloucestershire, could read and write, the speedy destruction of these essays in egalitarianism would have resulted in the burning, loss or destruction of Digger-penned documents. And, anyway. Why would you pen something that might incriminate you?

But back to Winstanley and Christopher Hill: ‘In the years 1649-50 Winstanley issued a series of pamphlets … and some at least seem to have borne fruit. Other Digger communities appeared at Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, Cox Hall in Kent, Iver in Buckinghamshire, Barnet in Hertfordshire, Enfield in Middlesex, Dunstable in Bedfordshire, Bosworth in Leicestershire, and at unknown places in Gloucestershire and Nottinghamshire. Not enough local work has been done on most of these places, but we know something about Wellingborough.’ (This was written in 1972.)

Hill outlines Wellingborough’s Puritan, Quaker and Leveller background – and its level of poverty: and, in consequence, the poor started to ‘dig up, manure and sow corn upon the common waste ground’. (We can see how Slimbridge fits into part of this template with its history of direct action and its poverty – and contested common waste ground.) Hill further comments: ‘So from Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire to Gloucestershire and Kent, Digger influence spread all over southern and central England … intensifying ill-feeling between landlords and tenants … they may have contributed to the class consciousness of Fifth Monarchists and early Quakers …’

Locally, the Quakers were a notable presence in not-so-far-away Painswick; the spirit of freedom was alive and smoking in the illegal tobacco plantations around Winchcombe, and there was the tradition of direct action in the Forest of Dean and along the eastern banks of the Severn too. Slimbridge sits between these places. Perhaps we can imagine itinerant ambassadors, or local Diggers and preachers, with Gerard Winstanley’s message, spreading the Digger gospel through valley and over the wolds. And as Hill pointed out: ‘a Quaker of the early 1650s had far more in common with a Leveller, a Digger or a Ranter than with a modern member of the Society of Friends.’

The next section of this disquisition will follow in the word-steps and thought-footsteps of Winstanley. We shall walk in these word-steps when in Slimbridge and we shall call this section A Light Shining in Gloucestershire.

‘If the waste land of England were manured by her children, it would become in a few years the richest, the strongest and flourishing land in the world.’

‘Work together; eat bread together.’

‘He that works for another, either for wages or to pay him rent, works unrighteously … but they that are resolved to work and eat together, making the earth a common treasury, doth join hands with Christ to lift up the creation from bondage, and restores all things from the curse.’

[I must] ’go forth and declare it in my action’ [to organise] ‘us that are called common people to manure and work upon the common lands.’

‘True religion and undefiled is to let everyone have quietly earth to manure.’

‘the bondage the poor complain of, that they are kept poor by their brethren in a land where there is so much plenty for everyone, if covetousness and pride did not rule as king in one brother over another.’

‘in the beginning of time the great creator, Reason, made the earth to be a common treasury, to preserve beasts, birds, fishes and man, the lord that was to govern this creation … Not one word was spoken in the beginning that one branch of mankind should rule over another … But … selfish imaginations … did set up one man to teach and rule over another. And thereby … man was brought into bondage, and became a greater slave to such of his own kind than the beasts of the field were to him. And hereupon the earth … was hedged into enclosures by the teachers and rulers, and the others were made … slaves. And that earth that is within this creation made a common storehouse for all, is bought and sold and kept in the hands of a few, whereby the great Creator is mightily dishonoured, as if he were a respecter of persons, delighting in the comfortable livelihood of some and rejoicing in the miserable poverty and straits of others. From the beginning it was not so …’

Ye Lords of the Manor: ‘The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the heads of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out the land.’

‘The poorest man hath as true a title and just right to the land as the richest man … True freedom lies in the free enjoyment of the earth … If the common people have no more freedom in England but only to live among the elder brothers and work for them for hire, what freedom then have they in England …’

‘Whilst this kingly power reigned in one man called Charles, all sorts of people complained of oppression … Thereupon you that were the gentry, when you were assembled in Parliament, you called upon the poor common people to come and help you … That top bough is lopped off the tree of tranny, and the kingly power in that one particular is cast out. But alas, oppression is a great tree still, and keeps off the sun of freedom from the poor commons still.’

‘wheresoever there is a people … united by common community of livelihood into oneness, it will become the strongest land in the world; for then they will be as one man to defend their inheritance … Whereas on the other side, pleading for property and single interest divides the people of a land and the whole world into parties, and is the cause of all wars and bloodshed and contention everywhere … But when once the earth becomes a common treasury again, as it must, … then this enmity of all lands will cease, and none shall dare seek dominion over others, neither shall any dare to kill another, nor desire more of the earth than another.’

‘…they tell the poor people that they must be content with their poverty, and they shall have their heaven hereafter. But why may not we have our heaven here (that is, a comfortable livelihood in the earth) and heaven hereafter too …’

‘Oh ye hearsay preachers, deceive not the people any longer by telling them that this glory shall not be known and seen till the body is lain in the dust. ‘

Here endeth A Light Shining in Gloucestershire

There is, then, a compelling argument for placing the Gloucestershire Digger experiment at Slimbridge, while simultaneously accepting that we might have got it wrong. But, so what? We are walking in a liminal landscape: the storm surge of 1607 would have turned the world upside down too. We are also walking through a liminal time-scape, rescuing ‘the poor and anonymous from the enormous condescension of posterity’, following our practice of ‘footsteps and footpaths not footnotes’; indeed, exemplifying that practice.

Perhaps there’s something of William Blake about our practice too:

‘To see the world in a grain of sand

And a Heaven in a wild flower

To hold Eternity in the palm of your hand

And Infinity in an hour.’

Conclusion

Jonathan Meades on page 3 of An Encyclopaedia of Myself:

‘Every time I write once upon a time I am, anyway, already exhuming the disputable, conjuring a photocopy of a faded print made from a detrited negative. I am striving to distinguish the original from its replays. So why add to the store of the provisional? The forms and shades of what used to be are already hideously mutable, every act of recall is both an erosion and an augmentation. I remember therefore I reshape.’

So here we are contributing both to a history and a mythology.

We may be in the wrong place in Slimbridge. Perhaps it’s not the New Ground. Perhaps it’s not on the site of the Wetlands Centre. Perhaps, it is or isn’t on the area called the Warth. On top of that, Slimbridge may not even be the right place.

But does that matter?

John Gurney wrote on page 180 in Brave Community that “Winstanley’s claim that digging ‘is the talk of the whole Land’ may not have been too much of an exaggeration, for it is evident that the Digger experiment did have an appreciable impact in radical circles.”

Perhaps it had an impact down here in Slimbridge. Perhaps a Digger experiment here, was, as Nigel Costley suggested, ‘brutally suppressed.’  Perhaps there might be a record somewhere in the Berkeley archives. Perhaps there isn’t.

But perhaps no record survives anywhere because this Digger experiment was more performative. A 17^th century ‘happening’. A short-lived carnival of misrule possibilities to show how the world could be turned upside down. Which is what we are doing today: ‘it is evident that the Digger experiment did have an appreciable impact in radical circles.’

Every Age Rewrites History

But not always textually

And perhaps we are contributing to a mythology

MYTHOLOGY: a quick google search: ‘A mythology is a collection of myths or stories about a specific person, culture, religion, or any group with shared beliefs.’ The as it were and so to speak common-sense definition is that ‘Most people don’t consider mythology to be entirely true, but they still take it seriously.’

A slightly loftier definition: ‘Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term “myth” that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the veracity of a myth is not a defining criterion.’

Talking of which, when we carried out a Slimbridge recce in late May, Bob spotted a poster pinned to a post:

Vale Friends of CRUK presents

A MURDER MYSTERY EVENING

In collaboration with Slimbridge Variety Showgroup

MURDER AT THE AGM

It is 1963 and the 40^th anniversary of “Diggers” Allotment & Gardening Society.

The committee is making the AGM a celebration evening … it will be a night to remember!

Do come dressed in 1960s costume,

there will be a prize for the best dressed male and female.

Saturday 1 June 2024

7.30 pm at Slimbridge Village Hall

Tickets £15 to include Supper

ADDENDA:

Hello Stuart,

1. I saw in Radical Stroud you are planning a walk to Slimbridge on July 2nd, to look for a Digger settlement. That sounds interesting! But what info do you already have about where it is, and what happened there? I live in Paganhill, Stroud, and im a fan of the Diggers but i never heard of this before. It would be useful to know what route and length you were envisaging this walk to be.

2. Good morning Stuart,
   Apologies for the delay in getting back to you on this one. Our colleague kindly contacted the Slimbridge Local History Society and sent over the below and recommends that you speak to the Berkeley Castle Team. Do you have a contact for them? We can provide one if not.
3. ‘I did come across this when researching a religious seal found on the Slimbridge Dig site, which was connected to Beckford Priory and probably lost here whilst visiting the Berkeley Minster area.
   There was a Digger Settlement in 1649 at St George’s Hill in Surrey and one here in Slimbridge – if this were on the site at WWT – I would expect it to be recorded within the Berkeley Castle Archives.
   Here is what I found when researching the seal – it’s in old English, but understandable when you get your eye in!

“I was a good pupile ande hearkened Ezekiel to make me learnne the Digger words of Gerard Winstanley offe by my hearte. I have them stille close bye me nowe by my bedde side. ‘Every one shall lookke upon each other as equalle in the creationne. We are all the sonnes and daughterres of Gode and Adame and Eve.’ ‘Governmente that gives liberty to the gentry to have all the earthe, and shutte out the poore commoners from enjoying any partte, ruling by tyrannical laws. This is the governmente of the Antichrist.’
Whenne I hearde that the Diggers had commenced the creationne of the rule of Godde with a commune at Slimbridge downe by the Severne, I made my waye alonge the Frome to reache the widde river and thence to Slimbridge. It was a welcome to meete with so manye fellowe Diggers. We tore down fences and enclosures so as to sow, till, ploughe and harveste in commone.
Just as the true borne leveller soldiers were shot down by Cromwell’s armie at the church in Burforde, so our Eden was to be laide waste bye his menne too.
I escaped with a bloddied heade ande made my waye to the Quakerres at Painswicke. Here I knewe I woulde receive succourre. The Grande Juryye of the Countyye spoke of our communitye as ‘Ranters, Levellers and atheists, undere the name of Quakerres’. This to uss was praise. I stayed some goode yeares there and witnessed the praiseworthie practicse of namelesse internmente. The beliefe was in equalityye in deathe as in life. We used noe titles. Alle were thou to a goodlye Quakkerre.

Esau Bingham”’

(My initial sense of exhilaration that we had nailed it was subsequently followed by a guilty sense of embarrassment when , shame-faced, I remembered that I had written this piece some ten years ago when playing around with documentary fiction …)

4. ‘I have just checked the book “Frontiers of a Barony” which covers the history of the New Grounds, but there is no reference to the diggers.’

5. Hi Stuart,

Thank you for contacting me and please accept my apologies for the slow response.

Please visit the Archives page of our website https://www.berkeley-castle.com/archives here you will find lots of helpful information / contacts / faq section, which will hopefully answer any questions you may have and further your research.

Kind regards,

Helen

Helen Berryman

               Visitor Business Coordinator

The Berkeley & Spetchley Estates, Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, GL13 9PJ

T: 01453 810303  F: 01453 512995

www.berkeley-castle.com

www.spetchleygardens.co.uk

6. Flooding in early modern England: Cultures of coping in Gloucestershire and Lincolnshire John Emrys Morgan’s PhD thesis University of Warwick has some interesting observations for us in our Slimbridge quest. He looks at areas like the fens and the eastern banks of the Severn which, in the 17^th century, ‘were increasingly seen as places of potential profit’ whilst simultaneously and in opposition, ‘the challenges of agricultural production on floodplains’ generated ‘communal action’. And in this Slimbridge context, John Smyth appears again; this time as regards warths (‘lands that lie directly on the shore of a body of water’). He moans about warths “used as common pasture”, for then, they “yeild not the 5^th part of their true value” and “drawe many poore people from other places, burden the township with beggerly Cotages, Inmates, and Alehouses, and idle people; where the greater part spend most of their daies in a lazy idleness and petite thieveries and fewe or none in profitable labour.”

Morgan pointed out how warth land on the upper Severn offered opportunities for seasonal grazing; whilst recurrent floods left clay deposits that helped the soil retain nutrients and so improve the grasslands for subsequent grazing. So, in general terms, warth lands were very much a liminal shapeshifting world; and using our Slimbridge lens, we can imagine the area from the Warth (on today’s OS map) running through the Wetlands Centre and on to the New Ground as a formerly liminal shapeshifting contestable landscape.

Here’s John Emrys Morgan again: ‘Warths that accreted naturally were often held in common, whereas deliberate attempts to create warths by “inning” or “warping” usually led to the resultant land being privately owned. “Warping” involved driving stakes into or erecting fence on the foreshore, so that at each inundation sediment would be retained and land would accrete faster.’

Disputation between privatisation and commonality seems to be a constant theme – and further local evidence for this comes just upstream from that elusive possible Digger settlement at Slimbridge and just afterwards too: Frampton, Saul and Fretherne in 1653. Surveyors examined 112 acres and reached the conclusion that if the lands were “improved” then rents could be increased nearly twentyfold.

Now all this improvement of land suggests improvement of pastoral rather than arable farming. But the Diggers and ambassadors, with their experimental innovations in the south and midlands, broadcast the planting of crops (with roofs over heads too) in their assertions of agrarian communism. Does that then argue against Slimbridge as our locale?

Not necessarily. As I have said elsewhere, perhaps the Digger settlement at Slimbridge was more performative.

Or perhaps the local Diggers at Slimbridge were following their long tradition of asserting communal grazing rights in the face of landlord encroachment. For example, the Slimbridge Warth (owned by the Berkeley Manor which had itself fought a suit against the Crown over land rights) had grown by 300 acres since the 13^th century through ‘successive increments’ of reclamation. In 1596, a hundred tenants from Frampton and Slimbridge brought a case against ‘wealthy local yoeman’ at the Court of Chancery. The villagers had enjoyed rights of common on the warth since medieval times: at “all tymes and seasons of the yeare with all manner of Beasts at their pleasure.”

But we note that those same communities also ‘sought to restrict access to the landless’: in 1613, cottagers (who grazed sheep); those on rack-rents (lacking an annually determined rent), and lodgers faced exclusion. These are people at the bottom of the pile. This appears to be a contestable landscape throughout the social hierarchy: but with the poor at the bottom suffering the most, needless to say.

Morgan again: ‘David Rollinson has referred to early modern rural landscapes as “memory palaces”, in which certain places and landmarks were invested with meaning beyond their immediate practical utility or aesthetic qualities.’ Perhaps we are evoking that image and metaphor – turning the world upside down with a ‘memory palace’ for the lost and elusive Diggers of Slimbridge.

So, I almost conclude with a memory from childhood –

the tune from Bill and Ben:

‘Was it NEW GROUND,

Or was it WARTH,

Where the DIGGERS sallied forth,

Which one is it on our walk,

Was it NEW GROUND or was it WARTH?

It was both, children.

Or, children, it was it neither.’

So, what do we know and what do I know? I’m hardly an authority – just read a few books, talked to a few people, cycled out for two recces, and yet I have been asked to give a talk at the Gloucester Heritage Centre. What on earth would Prospero say? ‘We are such stuff As dreams are made on …’

Talk and film: [booking essential due to room capacity limits]

• 15pm – The Digger Experiment in Gloucestershire: Was it at Slimbridge, 1649-50? by Stuart Butler of Radical Stroud

• 30pm – Showing of the community film, ‘Days of Hope – the Chartists in Stroud’ introduced by John Bassett, of Spaniel in the Works Company

• Document display of records relating to anarchy and insurrection taken from collections held at Gloucestershire Archives

• Free refreshments throughout the afternoon.

• Up in arms or hiding from trouble? Discover your personal heritage at the Gloucestershire Family History Resource Centre, open from 10am

[Main event starts at 1pm]

Booking essential for the talks. Heritage Hub, Clarence Row, Alvin Street, Gloucester GL1 3DW. Parking on-site.    For more information see our website at www.heritagehub.org.uk.

Now, for what will absolutely be my tautologically speaking, conclusion, for as T.S. Eliot said, “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploration Will be to arrive at where we started. And know the place for the first time.”

Every Age Rewrites History

But not always textually

And the History may not even have been textual

To begin with tbh.

For even though my historical practice involves footpaths and footprints rather than footnotes, the thrust of this disquisition points at the necessity of research in the Berkeley archives. But what if nothing is there about the Slimbridge Diggers? Would that mean ‘End of Story’, as Louis Armstrong said at the end of High Society?

‘It aint necessarily so.’

Is it?

After the Civil War

At Slimbridge Waste
A ragged band of Diggers came to settle with good haste,
They defied the landlords
They defied the laws
They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs

We come in peace they said to dig and sow
We come to work the lands in common and to make the waste grounds grow
This Earth divided we will make whole so it will be a common treasury for all

The sin of property we do disdain
No-one has any right to buy and sell the Earth for private gain
By theft and murder they took the land
Now everywhere the walls spring up at their command
They make the laws to chain us well
The clergy dazzle us with heaven or they damn us into hell
We will no worship the God they serve
The God of greed who feed the rich while poor women starve

We work we eat together
We need no swords
We will not bow to the masters or pay rent to the lords
We are free people, though we are poor
You Diggers all stand up for glory stand up now

But all has gone and disappeared
Even though the Diggers stood firm and upright without fear
Where were their cottages, where was their corn
They were dispersed but still the vision lingers on
You poor take courage you rich take care
This Earth was made a common treasury for everyone to share
All things in common, all people one
The Diggers’ heritage still lingers in this song.

So, when you walk by Severn’s grace

Make sure you visit what was Slimbridge Waste

And stand around and sing this song

All things in common and all the people one.

Another addendum:

Chas Townley September 2024: The Digger Movement 1649 Leslie S. A. Jones

1650: ‘In June there were serious riots at Slimbridge and Frampton … where “rude multitudes” were “levelling enclosures”.

After the Civil War At Slimbridge Waste
A ragged band they called the Diggers came to settle with good haste,
They defied the landlords
They defied the laws
They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs

We come in peace they said to dig and sow
We come to work the lands in common and to make the waste grounds grow
This Earth divided we will make whole so it will be a common treasury for all

The sin of property we do disdain
No man has any right to buy and sell the Earth for private gain
By theft and murder they took the land
Now everywhere the walls spring up at their command
They make the laws to chain us well
The clergy dazzle us with heaven or they damn us into hell
We will no worship the God they serve
The God of greed who feed the rich while poor men starve

We work we eat together
We need no swords
We will not bow to the masters or pay rent to the lords
We are free men, though we are poor
You Diggers all stand up for glory stand up now

But all has gone and disappeared
Even though the Diggers stood firm and upright without fear
Where were their cottages, where was their corn
They were dispersed but still the vision lingers on
You Poor take courage you rich take care
This Earth was made a common treasury for everyone to share
All things in common, all people one
The Diggers’ heritage still lingers in this song.

So, when you walk by Severn’s grace

Make sure you visit what was Slimbridge Waste

And stand around and sing this song

All things in common and all the people one.

Ye Prologue to the above (from olde notes)

So, there was Charles with his HQ at Oxford

(Having been turfed out of London at Turnham Green),

And if he were to retake London,

Then the Royalist armies in the West

Would have to advance towards Oxford,

 And thence east to the capital:

Taking Parliamentary cities that stood in his way:

Exeter fell, then mighty Bristol,

And so, Gloucester was next on the Royalist list

In the year of our Lord,1643.

But there was much ado around these parts,

Even before the Siege of Gloucester.

Archbishop Laud’s High Church reforms of railing off of altars

Led to Puritan complaints in Stroud.

Then in February 1643,

Prince Rupert wrote to his uncle, the king,

About Stroud and Minchinhampton

(Together with other cloth towns),

“Great quantities of cloth, canvas and buckrams

were to be had” for uniforms.

This appropriation was meant to be peaceful but it was said that

“They took away cloth, wool and yarn, besides other goods from the clothiers about Stroudwater, to be their utter undoing, not only of them and theirs, but of thousands of poor people, whose livelihood depends on that trade.”

With Gloucester on the Royalist shopping list,

Parliament took preventative action,

Encircling Gloucester with garrisons

at Stroud, Frocester, Sapperton and Beverstone.

There were other garrisons at Painswick, Miserden, Cirencester, Tetbury, Wotton, Dursley, Berkeley, Thornbury, Hampton Rd., Eastington, Frampton, Slimbridge, Arlingham and Brookthorpe.

The next month saw bloodshed at Barber’s Bridge,

When the Welsh Royalists were trapped after action at Highnam

(There is a monument nearby to commemorate the fallen),

 Captured Royalists were imprisoned

in St. Mary de Lode, St. Mary’s Square.

Be that as it may, King Charles’ army advanced on Gloucester

From Bristol via Tetbury, thence to Painswick,

where he stayed and where he issued a royal proclamation

in August 1643

(You can follow part of his route at King Charles’ Way

Straddling the Laurie Lee Walk above Slad).

His soldiers camped out on Painswick Beacon,

Before advancing upon Gloucester.

Notable events (and sites to see) during the siege include:

30 Westgate Street, hit by incendiaries August 1643.

The spire of St Nicholas’ Church in Westgate Street was hit.

Over has the remains of earthworks involved in

Sir William Vavasour’s Royalist

Advance on the city from the west.

Lady Well at Robinswood Hill

Provided the first piped water for the city:

The Royalists cut this supply at the beginning of the siege.

The lie of the land in Brunswick Street

And Parliament Street offer evidence

Of how defences were constructed:

A house here is called Bastion House.

Gaudy Green was where the Royalists

Placed the artillery battery

Of apocryphal Humpty Dumpty fame.

Llanthony Priory was the site of

One of the most important Royalist camps

(Parliamentarians destroyed the former priory church tower before the Siege so it was disabled as a potential Royalist reconnaissance point).

While Greyfriars was badly damaged by Royalist cannon in the siege,

it became an important point for Colonel Massey

as he directed the Parliamentarian defence of the city.

Look for a sundial at St. Mary de Crypt –

This marks the spot, so it is said,

Where a cannon ball did its damage.

Where else to call?

Hempsted Church, to locate the tomb of John Freeman,

Royalist and Captain of Horse.

26 Westgate Street: the possible site

Of Colonel Massey’s Parliamentarian H.Q.

The Cross, where Colonel Massey stationed

His main guard, ready for quick deployment.

The Olde Crowne Inn – a cannon ball

weighing 20 lbs. flew through a bedroom window

on the 24^th August and

considerately decided to land upon a pillow.

A fire was to be lit on Wainlode Hill to signal succour for Gloucester.

And it was lit:

The Earl of Essex made his painstaking way from London with relief for Gloucester and the Royalists withdrew from Gloucester on September 5^th 1643.

‘A City assaulted by Man but saved by God”

After the Siege:

(Old draft notes of mine)

Colonel Edward Massey warned the Earl of Essex in an October 1643 letter that the Royalist strategy would be based on gaining control of local food supplies. He said the Royalists meant “to lie at” Stroud and Painswick as well as Cheltenham and market towns in the Forest of Dean.

Then in March 1644, St. Mary’s Church in Painswick became “both a prison and a redoubt.” Colonel Massey established a garrison there to further help protect Gloucester. Royalists used cannon and grenades in their attack on the church, setting fire to the doors whilst also damaging the tower (evidence visible today). Parliamentary prisoners were kept there, one of whom was a Richard Foot, who scratched an inscription (derived from Spenser’s “Faery Queen”) upon a pillar: “Be bolde, be bolde, but not too bolde.”

Two months later, in May,1644, Beverstone Castle fell to Parliamentary forces. It was said that this helped release “the clothiers of Stroudwater from the bondage of terror” of Beverstone’s Royalist army.

In 1645, Royalists burnt down the manor house at Lypiatt Park, when after the roundhead garrison. The cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral were treated less badly by the Scottish Army in 1645: the cavalry merely stabled their horses there.

After the War:

Let’s go to Painswick:

A walk down Beech Lane to Dell’s Farm will take you to a Friends’ Burial Ground, from 1658. The walled enclosure contains nine ledger slabs; the usual Quaker practice was a nameless internment – a stone’s throw away from the parish church. Quakers were not allowed burials within the Established Church while in 1655, the Grand Jury of Gloucestershire complained about such people as “Ranters, Levellers and atheists, under the name of Quakers” and there was obviously a sizeable Quaker community in the area.

Brian Manning in “The Far Left in the English Revolution” points out that although the Levellers “provided much of the philosophy and programme of radicalism”, the Quakers were important too, and were to the “left” of the Presbyterians, Independents and Republicans who “dominated the revolution.” Christopher Cheeseman, a nationally famous Leveller, was also a Quaker and so we can imagine locals agreeing with a Quaker who chastised the rich thus: “Because of your much earth, which by fraud, deceit, and oppression you have gotten together, you are exalted above your fellow creatures, and grind the faces of the poor, and they are as slaves under you…” Many Quakers at this stage, had much in common with the Diggers, Ranters and other millenarian sects that wanted to turn “the world upside down” …

Just as the Digger, Gerard Winstanley believed that “Everyone shall look upon each other as equal in the creation”, so Quakers believed in “equality in all things…” as humanity was “of one blood and mould, being the sons of Adam by nature, and all children of god by creation.”

It is, therefore, perhaps, quite logical to imagine a degree of local agreement with the Diggers’ equation of unfair government with the Antichrist: “government that gives liberty to the gentry to have all the earth, and shut out the poor commoners from enjoying any part, ruling by tyrannical law…this is the government of…Antichrist…” (Winstanley). This is an important reminder to us, gentle readers: when we recreate the outlook of our radical forebears, we must remember that their consciousness makes no division between the spiritual and the mundane, between the celestial and the political. We must also remember the gentleness of the Quakers in their daily discourse: then, etiquette demanded that one address a social superior with the word “you”; “thou” was seen as a term of familiarity; needless to say, Quakers used “thou” to all, as a sign of their recognition of the equality of individuals.

But we must still accept that, in general, the Quakers were not quite as radical as the communistic Diggers, with their famous agrarian commune at St. George’s Hill, in Buckinghamshire (although a1659 contemporary viewed a Quaker as “ a sower of sedition, or a subverter of the laws, a turner of the world upside down…”). This is the Digger community that is remembered but a further 10 or so Digger communities were born across England – and in 1650, a “rude multitude” destroyed landlords’ fences near Frampton and Slimbridge. (Slimbridge must have been quite a place then for direct action – similar stuff had happened in the Civil War and as long ago as 1631.) The cavalry had to be called out to quell the disturbances.

It is of importance to note here, that at this stage in the evolution of Quakerism, there was no, as it were, doctrinal commitment to pacifism: we can imagine the support there must have been for the local Diggers. There may also have been passive support for the Leveller Mutiny, whose ringleaders were executed at Burford. There was probably knowledge about, and passive support for the anti-enclosure disturbances in the Forest of Dean; troops had to be called out there too.

For those of us influenced by occult continuities and ley line coincidences, a la Peter Ackroyd and Alfred Watkins, a report by Ben Falconer in the Stroud Life, July 11^th, 2012, might be of some interest at this point. Ben describes how the “Slimbridge Dowsers” located a lost village of 35 cottages, a long barrow, and a church that became a chantry in a triangular field called the Leys, at St. Augustine’s Farm, Arlingham. Farmer Rob Jewell said, “Having farmed that field all my life, I knew it was different but I never knew why.” The field is alongside Silver Street, “a pre-Roman track…which runs from Cirencester, through Arlingham to a ford across the Severn to Broadoak on the other side. The church was in alignment with May Hill…” Mr. Jewell went on to say that “It was fascinating. I did not expect anything like it. I could not take it all in. It makes sense…beside an ancient main access.” It would be great if the evidence of the Digger settlement on Slimbridge waste could one day be located; Nigel Costley in “West Country REBELS” says that, “Little is known of the community and it is likely that it was brutally suppressed.” For those two reasons alone, apart from anything else, a pilgrimage to Frampton and Slimbridge is necessary, perhaps with a local Clarion bicycling group.

Whatever: the monarchy returned in 1660 – look out for Charles the Second hiding in trees on inn signs on your future travels. But why not visit Milton Street in Painswick. Reflect on John Milton. The author of Comus, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Areopagitica, The Readie and Easie Way to establish a Free Commonwealth, Samson Agonistes: the poet who denounced censorship; argued for “ a just division of wastes and commons”; who believed that “all men naturally were born free”; the writer of whom Christopher Hill said: “It is Milton’s glory that in the time of utter defeat, when Diggers, Ranters and Levellers were silenced and Quakers had abandoned politics, he kept something of the radical intellectual achievement alive for Blake and many others to quarry.”