Woodchester Great War Exhibition and Great War Walk
This is Barbara Warnes in the Stroud News in 2014: ‘At least 174 villagers were involved…in some capacity… The names of those who died are publicly and visibly recorded, but those who survived are harder to track down. As well as soldiers, sailors and airmen, these include munitions workers, Red Cross volunteers and men in the volunteer force.’
She added:
‘The exhibition is not just about a few people who achieved fame but about the many who followed orders and left little trace behind… For example, in this parish alone we have a headmaster who died at the Battle of the Somme after winning the Military Medal, unsung heroes who volunteered but were turned back, several monks from the Dominican Priory who went to the front as Chaplains, two soldiers awarded the Victoria Cross, and a Red Cross volunteer who was awarded a Silver War badge.’
I visited the village on the day of their fete: flags, bunting,‘ trench cake’ and 50 pence each on the Great War guide books to South and North Woodchester – money well spent.
The guides are brilliant and informative: re-imagining the village as it was on the eve of warfare, before leading us around Woodchester’s 1914 present, and Great War future. This was a different approach from anything I had yet seen in the area: the exhibition in St. Mary’s was pleasing and standard, but these walking guides were an interesting innovation.
I biked out a couple of days later on a misty September Monday to St. Mary’s to follow the routes on two wheels.
It’s easy to get all dewy-eyed about the long Edwardian summer before 1914,
But the years from 1910 to 1914 also saw ‘The strange death of Liberal England’:
The Home Rule crisis, near civil war in Ireland, the Curragh Mutiny, gun running,
The Triple Industrial Alliance, Suffragettes, class conflict, constitutional crises,
An endless series of events abroad continually foreshadowing war –
The publication of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists also opened eyes,
And the walks around Woodchester bring this social history alive,
As well as providing a detailed and illuminating military history,
In a landscape and village with its pubs, grand houses, weavers’ cottages,
Mills, shops, farms, bakery, abattoir, old turnpike houses,
Old field names, railway station, level crossings (one private),
High climbing lanes, springs, wells, and a post office high street …
‘Imagine the date is around the bank holiday weekend
at the beginning of August 1914 – we stand on the eve of war.’
The headmaster of the village school will not return from the front,
There was a strike at the sawmill last year and a fire there in 1910,
There has already been a death in an RFC crash on Salisbury Plain,
Southfield House will turn into a War Hospital Supply Depot
(Run by the owner’s wife, Mrs. Allen, mother of the dead airman),
The daughters will immerse themselves in the work of the Red Cross,
And when peace is heralded in 1919, and each year afterwards,
Mr. and Mrs. Allen will hold commemorative reunions for the returned;
Down the road, it’s good to see that Charles Webb will get his print job back
At Arthur’s Press, Vale Mills, when he is de-mobbed in 1919,
But there will be sadness at Mill Cottages for John and Lucy Howell:
Their son Maurice will go missing at Passchendaele in 1917 aged 19,
While Alfred Palmer will serve at sea but die at the war’s end, of pneumonia;
Over at Grigshot House, Captain Smith will gain the military cross in 1917.
Whilst Sarah Cordwell’s work as the village postmistress at Lancaster House
Will be interrupted by news about her son, Charles, also in 1917,
When he will be awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal.
The Rectory will not be untouched by war either –
The Rev George Watton will become an Army Chaplain in 1917,
While Mr. Fawkes from the farm over the way will do his bit too,
As a second-lieutenant in the Volunteer Force;
Up at The Lawn and Larchgrove, Ethel and Beryl will become Stroud VAD nurses,
Gilbert Higgins, son at the Royal Oak, will join the Royal Garrison Artillery,
Minnie Wise from Oakley House will become a Red Cross stalwart,
And, of course, the churchyard will see plaques,
Solemn gatherings of family and friends,
Military gravestones and collective mourning;
The South Woodchester walk starts in Frogmarsh Lane,
It passes the Convent of the Poor Clares, which will shelter Belgian children,
As will Summerwells, while a good few monks from the Monastery
Will also serve as army chaplains, way before the Wayside Cross,
(An early war memorial) is erected in June 1917.
Up at Benwell House, Mrs. Clementina Mostyn will learn
Of her great-nephew’s bravery, when Lt. Dease is awarded the VC,
But she will also learn of his death, in just three week’s time.
Over at the Ten Bells, the latest news is discussed, while outside,
The cider press carries on its oozing of the orchard’s pears and apples –
The landlady’s grandson, Arthur Latham will sail for France within the year,
But some men will enlist but be turned down as unfit – flat feet, epilepsy,
Or, ‘weak but willing’, unlike Dick Turner of Home Farm who will gain the M.M.;
The Baptist Chapel’s congregation will be attenuated by the war,
And here too a plaque will be placed, sobering the men in the nearby Yew Tree,
George Evans of Atcombe, will end up in the Royal Engineers in Mesopotamia,
While Mrs. Evans – Minnie – will join many Woodchester women and girls,
Working down the road at Newman Hender.
Despair will continue to envelop Littleholme, where Mrs. Archer-Shee
Will grieve for her son, reported missing in two month’s time at Ypres,
While Harry Woodward, son of the village baker will be wounded next year.
There is more sadness along the High Street:
John Clift, one of four brothers in the army, will not return from France,
Nor will William Cook, young husband and father,
Although George Risbey, Royal Field Artillery, will attend the annual reunions;
Mrs. Horwood lives up at the Almshouses, up Bospin Lane,
Her remaining son, Thomas, will die just a week after the Armistice,
A prisoner of war in what would become Poland;
Walter Beard of Cross House will die in France next year;
Captain and Mrs. Bowles of Tower House will donate land in 1920,
And the village war memorial will be placed there, beyond Woodchester House,
Just past the sweet chestnut saplings (now having their centenary too in 2014),
The memorial will cost £180 by public subscription, when completed in 1920,
One of the names being that of my friend’s great-uncle:
‘Both my grand-father and great-uncle lied about their ages,
They were sixteen and seventeen. After my great-uncle was killed,
My great-grandmother wrote to the War Office:
“I’ve lost one of my under-age sons, I want the other one back.”
Her son never forgave her, even thirty years later,
When in the Home Guard on Selsley Common.’
The ghosts of Great War army huts still lie in the ground near the memorial
(‘And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds’?),
While over at the Plough Inn, one soldier will return as will William Brinkworth,
To Plough Cottage, but brother Wilfred will be a victim of the Somme,
One of so many:
I thought once more of those lines of Edward Thomas,
As I bicycled through the village, delivering ghost-telegrams,
To the grand houses, the farms, the cottages in the lanes and streets:
‘“Have many gone
From here?” “Yes.” “Many lost?” “Yes; a good few.
Only two teams work on the farm this year.
One of my mates is dead. The second day
In France they killed him…”
I watched the clods tumble and topple over
After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.’