‘Dorothy and Archibald’
On the evening of August 27 1916, Private Archibald Knee, 25 years old, and of the Gloucestershire Regiment was due to return to his battalion on a train from Stroud station, cured of his German measles. On any other Sunday evening, Dorothy Beard of Gravel Hill, Burleigh, eighteen years young, would have been preparing for work at Brimscombe Mills. But Archibald missed his train, and Dorothy did not appear at work the next day. Instead, having walked out to Longfords Lake, hand in hand, they tied themselves together with the belt of his mackintosh, and they drowned in Iron Mills Pond, Avening, in the early hours of August 28 1916. Dorothy’s watch had stopped at 3.51 a.m.
They left no note.
‘Dorothy and Archibald’:
A folding publication, with illustrations, produced to coincide with this year’s Stroud Book Festival. Designed and illustrated by Katie Johnston, an RCA graduate from Nailsworth, this collaborative book features texts by Alice and Stuart Butler, on the mutual suicide of Private Archibald Knee and Dorothy Beard in 1916, at Iron Mills Pond, near Avening.
Copies of the limited edition publication will be available for purchase. The publication, tied with twine as though it were a small parcel or gift, also contains a commemorative postcard:
The fear of France…
And all roads seemed as though they might well lead to France…
Unless you walked out one night,
Arm in arm,
Along the New Road that led to the Iron Gates Pond.
£3 a copy; 2 for £5