Stroudwater and Empire (and Morris Dancing) (Written after reading The Cloth Industry in the West Country 1640-1880 J. De L. Mann) Chalford has such a labyrinth of weavers’ walks and footpaths – And on a mid-winter’s day, with plumes of smoke rising from Chalford Bottom read more
Category: Waterscape
Black and British (and Stroud)
Black and British A Forgotten History David Olusogalnd Bunce Island in Sierra Leone was once an early British slaving headquarters: ‘In exchange for slaves and other valuable commodities the British offered glass beads, bundles of cloth, gunpowder, European metal goods, read more
Trade Cloth
Trade Cloth: strouds, scissors and shrouds We travelled track 32 from Grand Central, The Hudson Line up to Beacon, Where fires were once lit on the Fishkill Mountains, To warn of British army redcoat movement; The hills and woodland were all red fall tint, On both sides read more
Stroud Brewery
Stroud Brewery – Organic craft beer www.stroudbrewery.co.uk Stroud is a hotbed of innovation and art. At Stroud Brewery we have crafted a range of organic and vegan beers made with barley grown on the surrounding Cotswolds hills. We love to make delicious beer and brin read more
Capel’s Mill
It’s a great walk down to Capel’s Mill from my house, Past old ridge and furrow and tenterhook hedgerows, Teazles here and there to raise your nap, Imagining the patchwork quilt of fields of two centuries ago: Rack Hill, Thresher, Bacon Slad, Spout Leaze, Lower Orchard, read more
Broadway Elegy
When you’re a slightly star struck English tourist, Visiting NYC for the very first time (‘It’s that Broadway Melody!’), It’s easy to forget the Paris Situationists: ‘Underneath the paving stones, the beach!’ You might stare at read more
Guiding Principles of Waterscape
WATERSCAPE: Inform, Educate and Entertain
Waterscape is the result of jottings, notes, recreations and re-imaginings after reading a number of texts, as well as navigating and walking canals and rivers, and cycling towpaths.
There is no fetishisation of documentary evidence and primary sources: in fact, a guiding principle of WATERSCAPE is to go beyond any available historical evidence, so as to recreate the lives of the anonymous, unrecorded lower orders. Waterscape is rather more about boatpeople and navvies, slaves, convicts and itinerants, rather than technology, weights, measures, the statistical and the numbered. We are, in the words of E.P. Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class, rescuing the ignored ‘from the enormous condescension of posterity’.
I have concentrated on local canals and, in the spirit of oral culture and balladry, I have changed the words of a few old songs to fit with the rivers and inland navigations of Gloucestershire.
WATERSCAPE: Inform, Educate and Entertain
Waterscape is the result of jottings, notes, recreations and re-imaginings after reading a number of texts, as well as navigating and walking canals and rivers, and cycling towpaths.
There is no fetishisation of documentary evidence and primary sources: in fact, a guiding principle of WATERSCAPE is to go beyond any available historical evidence, so as to recreate the lives of the anonymous, unrecorded lower orders. Waterscape is rather more about boatpeople and navvies, slaves, convicts and itinerants, rather than technology, weights, measures, the statistical and the numbered. We are, in the words of E.P. Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class, rescuing the ignored ‘from the enormous condescension of posterity’.
I have concentrated on local canals and, in the spirit of oral culture and balladry, I have changed the words of a few old songs to fit with the rivers and inland navigations of Gloucestershire. read more
The Upperlock Cafe
Pleased to be part of the revival of the canal, the Upperlock Cafe is open seven days a week. Located at Wallbridge on the Stroud Water Navigation, adjacent to the visitor centre of the Cotswold Canals Trust. The cafe provides a welcome and convenient place to stop on t read more
Transportation from the Stroud Area 1788-1842
It may not have meant a black cap, At those Quarter Sessions, Epiphany, Easter, Trinity and Michael-mas, But it meant a lifetime’s separation – And Gloucestershire was high on the list Of counties for transportation, Whilst the Stroud-water area itself, ‘Sent one- read more
Pirates and Stonehouse
ONE of the most notorious pirates in the history of seafaring came from Stonehouse, according to new research. The father of Edward Thache, better known as Blackbeard, was born in Stonehouse and had family in the area, claims Baylus Brooks, an American maritime historia read more