A MISCELLLANY OF HISTORY

A TEXTUAL WEAVING OF A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

A TEXTUAL SAMPLER

The inspiration for this endeavour came from Workshop of the World Raphael Samuel Edited by John Merrick Verso 2024

‘The orthodox account of the industrial revolution concentrates on the rise of steam power and machinery, and the spread of the factory system … But if one looks at the economy as a whole rather than at its most novel and striking features, a less orderly canvas might be drawn – one bearing more resemblance to a Breugel or even a Hieronymus Bosch than to the geometrical regularities of a modern abstract. The industrial landscape would be seen to be full of diggings and pits, as well as tall factory chimneys. Smithies would sprout in the shadows of the furnaces, sweatshops in those of the looms. Agricultural labourers might take up the foreground, armed with sickle or scythe, while behind them troops of women and children would be bent double over the ripening crops in the field, pulling charlock, hoeing nettles, or cleaning the furrows of stones. In the middle distance there might be navvies digging sewers and paviours laying flags. On the building sites there would be a bustle of man-powered activity, with housepainters on ladders, and slaters nailing roofs. Carters would be loading and unloading horses, market women carrying baskets of produce on their heads; dockers balancing weights. The factories would be hot and steamy, with men stripped to the singlet, and juvenile runners in bare feet. At the lead works women would be carrying pots of poisonous metal on their heads, in the bleachers’ shed they would be stitching yards of chlorine cloth, at a shoddy mill sorting rags. Instead of calling his picture ‘machinery’ the artist might prefer to name it ‘toil’.

While here in Stroudwater …

 There are hedges and fences and stiles and gates and streams and rivers and hills and valleys and springs and canals and railway lines and sidings and bridges and viaducts and locks and sluices and water wheels and chimneys and mills and farms and smoke and steam and iron and brass and copper and coal and barges and farms and fields and pasture and corn and barns and byres and carts and coaches and cobbles and candles and inns and cottages and mansions and lanes and houses and streets and stone and brick and scaffolding and hustle and bustle and strikes and riots and truck and hustings and turnpikes and tolls and mileposts and church and chapel…

And what individuals do we see in this panorama?

A yoeman, husbandman, shepherd, fuller, dyer, tucker, shearman, scribbler, card-maker, merchant, mercer, chandler, innkeeper, victualler, butcher, baker, candlestick maker, maltster, miller, apothecary, barber, vintner, attorney, surgeon, tanner, carter, shoemaker, glover, skinner, haberdasher, tailor, hatter, staymaker, mason, thatcher, plasterer, glazier, carpenter, cooper, smith, pewterer, grazier, copyholder, herdsman, farm labourer, drover, dairymaid, forester, knocker-up, spinner, weaver, bargee, navvy, rat catcher, mole catcher, tramp, itinerant, vagrant, vicar, curate, constable, overseer, judge, magistrate, doctor, brewer, servant, apothecary, governess …

 And there’s Colonel Wolfe with quill and parchment in 1756:

‘The people are so oppressed, so poor and so wretched, that they will, perhaps, hazard a knock on the pate for bread and clothes. The poor half-starved weavers … beg about the country for food … the masters have beat down their wages too ow to live upon, and I believe it is a just complaint. Those who are most oppressed have seized the tools and broke the looms of others who would work if they could.’ He thought that the main benefit that would accrue from his visit to Stroudwater would be the number of recruits he would garner from the ranks of the young unemployed …

And is that Paul Hawkins Fisher in the throng with his pen and diary, scribbling thus …:

‘1770 A stage coach for passengers and mails ran between Stroud and London twice a week. It started from Stroud and vice versa early in the morning and arrived at its destination in the evening of the next day. The route was by way of Oxford, and the rendezvous in London was the Bull and Mouth, Holborn. 1779 A man named PEGLER was branded in the hand at Gloucester for an offence against the law; this is said to be the last case of the kind on record.  1780 A coach, called a “diligence” came from Gloucester to Stroud every Friday. 1781 A stage-coach left Stroud in the evening and arrived in London the following evening, performing the journey in 24 hours.  1784 A narrow stone bridge was erected across the brook at Badbrook. Soon afterwards came a narrow bridge of wood with handrails for foot passengers. Prior to this there was a ford for horses and carriages and carts, and foot passengers crossed on stepping stones. 1786 The last bull fight with dogs in Stroud took place at the Cross.’

And here are questions about how this project might develop:

Hello Stuart

Do you want contributors to write in a factual way i.e., describing a scene or a job as it would have happened at a particular time? Or do you want people to imagine they are for example a 19th cloth worker and describe their day? Or do you want them to write about true experiences of themselves or their ancestors?I guess all of these?Your example describes a very detailed industrial scene with lots going on! I think this might be quite challenging for the ordinary person (not an experienced writer). So – are you looking for people who already have a talent for writing, which is fine, or contributions from “ordinary” folk. If you would like the latter then I think it would be helpful to give a couple more examples of possible contributions which might be a bit easier to understand?Apologies if I have not quite understood exactly how this will work. It sounds a great idea.

Best wishes

Vicki  (SHG)

Dear Stuart

I have made a start with my contribution to your Stroud Valleys “word” tapestry.I am seeing it as four pieces of a patchwork quilt – with brief glimpses of weavers and stone-masons from the late 1600s onwards, followed by the development of the beer industry and malt-making and the construction of new roads, turnpikes  and the work of the toll-gate-keepers.

“In the late 1600s my Stroud ancestors were weavers.  

Weaving was then a cottage industry, with the continuous clack of looms filling the air and whole families at work.  While wives were busy washing and drying fleeces, children sat patiently carding the wool into fluffy cocoons ready to be spun into skeins.  Husbands and fathers then set up the warp and worked the weft.  The huge looms, with heddles and shuttles always at the ready, would have filled a whole room in many a cramped honey-coloured Cotswold stone cottage.  

Stroud became famous for its scarlet cloth, used to make coats proudly worn by numerous regiments of soldiers, including the Grenadier Guards.  The surrounding fields would have been full of lengths of red broadcloth hung out on tenter hooks to be dried and stretched to the required width in the fresh air and sun.

By 1830, the town was the centre of the clothing trade, with mills every few hundred yards on every river. In the census of 1821 the parish had 7,097 inhabitants.”

I hope this is the kind of think you were thinking of.

It certainly is, Penny, and your completed piece will appear in the next chapter or two of this

MISCELLLANY OF HISTORY’S

TEXTUAL WEAVING OF A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

Happy Thursday Evening 2024

It must have been 1965,
We were having a lunchtime kick-about.
‘It’s Good News Week’ by Hedgehoppers’ Anonymous
Was playing on someone’s transistor
Just behind the goal nearest the school,
Someone was puffing out on the wing,
And crossed hopefully towards the edge of the box,
Where I had strayed, and where I stood,
Predicting the precise path of the ball.
It came, as anticipated, at waist height:
I leapt from the ground before the ball’s arrival,
Levitating horizontally a metre up in the air,
To meet the ball on the volley,
And send it hurtling into the top left hand corner.
I landed on the ground, elated,
It was the best goal I had ever scored,
A perfect harmony of prediction, execution and ambience,
And it was all so perfect that I didn’t even celebrate,
I just stood there in a Zen state of bliss,
Knowing that such an immaculate conception
Only happens once in A Good News Week Lifetime.

But tonight, nearly sixty years later,

At walking football at Stratford Park,

The ball came to me twenty yards from goal;

I hit it with the outside of my boot,

Creating a perfectly accurate curve,

That saw the ball travel towards Selsley Common,

And then arc through the midsummer sunlight,

In the direction of Cashes Green’s chip shop.

The goalkeeper, as they say, quite rightly,

Stood rooted to the spot, caught unawares.

No one could have predicted this parabola.

I raised my right arm in quiet triumph.

Team mates and opposition alike

Praised the perfection of the execution

With shouts that rose to the very skies.

It was, once more, a moment of Zen bliss.

‘I can still do it,’ I said, ‘on occasions.’

Nick replied: ‘It’s never gone away.’

As T.S. Eliot might have commented,

If he’d been playing last night:

‘We shall not cease from exploring.

And the end of all our scoring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.’