It must have been bit like this
When the turnpike trusts improved a road,
Or the inland navigators came to town and village:
Severn Trent out there outside Sapperton Church,
Putting in new pipes,
Such noise and mayhem
And workers whose accents
Were a long way from home.
It brought the children out to watch.
What else is there to do in the country in the 18th century?
I was searching for the grave of Rebekah Mason,
Just by the south chancel wall,
Her life remembered in her husband’s grieving words,
The words of the astronomer and surveyor,
Charles Mason of the Mason-Dixon Line:
‘SACRED
To the Remains of Rebekah
Wife of Chas Mason Jun ARS
With the Greatest Serenity of Mind
She Departed this Life the 13th of Feb 1759
(at Greenwich Kent)
in the 31st year of her Age
Could the unsally’d of Heart from Dissolution save
In Vain might Death assum’d this silent Grave
But Fate how hard!
Her able Morn in Dark Shade expire
And Noontide Sun went down with Jobs Desire’.
I paid my respects,
Had a cheese and chutney sandwich,
Carefully carried my bicycle over the new tarmac,
And headed off towards Oakridge.
Charles Mason was baptized at Sapperton on May Day 1728,
And as a devout Christian,
He would have walked the lane I bicycled
From Oakridge to Sapperton and back
On countless occasions;
When I reached Oakridge,
It took me a while to find the farm where he was born –
Were Farm –
(‘Lower Weir Farm is just there.
Do you want Charles? He’s away in London.’
‘Well, I am looking for Charles, but Charles Mason
of the Mason-Dixon Line. He was born here.’),
I was given generous permission to take pictures,
Before locking my bike and walking out into fields,
Where he would have walked:
I came across a giant, weathered stone,
Serving as a stile –
A stone stile that Charles would have crossed,
Perhaps watching and reading about the enclosure of the fields,
Thinking of the mathematics and measurements involved,
Studying the stars in the vastness of the night skies
Above the Golden Valley,
Cogitating on latitude and longitude …
And so, some years later, out there, in the colonies,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, the Delaware River,
Weighed down with responsibility and Jeremiah Dixon,
Measuring rods, surveyor’s chains, quadrants, builder’s levels,
A sea chest full of almanacs, calendars, geometrical texts,
Tables of stars and the constellations,
Logarithmic tables, terrestrial maps,
Translations of the Iroquois and Lenape tongues …
And on that day when the Iroquois refused to go any farther,
Reluctant to enter lands of their enemies, the Lenape,
At Dunkard Creek, hard by the Morris Mountains,
Two hundred and fifty miles west of the Delaware,
When you had to retrace some steps,
Did you sleep that autumn night, dreaming of home?
Watching the shooting stars,
Then waking and gazing at the colours of the fall,
In the mountain woodlands and forests,
Remembering those Golden Valley walks to Sapperton Church,
Along the Cotswold lanes from Oakridge,
Shedding a tear for Rebekah and her grave,
Thinking that you would swap it all,
All the fame and fortune and adventure,
Just to be beside her again in Gloucestershire.