Author: Stuart Butler

Woodchester World War One Walk

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.’

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.’

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

It came upon a midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
When angels bent down to the earth,
And changed machine guns into harps,
And turned leaden bullets into golden carols
That drifted across no man’s land,
And choirs of soldiers joined the angels
In a cease-fire of exultation,
While all the bloodied uniformed citizens
Of heaven above watched as silent knights,
As helmets and caps and whisky and schnapps
Were passed from frozen side to frozen side,
When a Tommy kicked a football up into the air,
And there it stayed, suspended high up in the sky,
Shining for ever in a continent’s memory;
A star of peace in a bleak midwinter’s century.

It came upon a midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
When angels bent down to the earth,
And changed machine guns into harps,
And turned leaden bullets into golden carols
That drifted across no man’s land,
And choirs of soldiers joined the angels
In a cease-fire of exultation,
While all the bloodied uniformed citizens
Of heaven above watched as silent knights,
As helmets and caps and whisky and schnapps
Were passed from frozen side to frozen side,
When a Tommy kicked a football up into the air,
And there it stayed, suspended high up in the sky,
Shining for ever in a continent’s memory;
A star of peace in a bleak midwinter’s century.

North and South

There, on the one hand, St. Pancras and Paris;
And there, on the other, Kings Cross:
Gateway to the LNER,
And night mails crossing the border,

And gateway to a world we have lost:
Pit heads and winding gear, tram-roads and collieries,
And curling smoke chimney stacks:
The world of the North,

The canvas telling the truth,
Up there in the Mining Art Gallery,
At Bishop Auckland:

A terrible beauty down there in the dark depths,
And a beautiful harmony up there in the streets
And homes and chapels and clubs and pubs:
The stippled mist-light of the pit village,
The twisted sinews in the eighteen inch seam,
Ears keening with the creak of each pit prop,
The mind tracking the echo of dripping water,
And the whisper of each rock –

There, on the one hand, St. Pancras and Paris;
And there, on the other, Kings Cross:
Gateway to the LNER,
And night mails crossing the border,

And gateway to a world we have lost:
Pit heads and winding gear, tram-roads and collieries,
And curling smoke chimney stacks:
The world of the North,

The canvas telling the truth,
Up there in the Mining Art Gallery,
At Bishop Auckland:

A terrible beauty down there in the dark depths,
And a beautiful harmony up there in the streets
And homes and chapels and clubs and pubs:
The stippled mist-light of the pit village,
The twisted sinews in the eighteen inch seam,
Ears keening with the creak of each pit prop,
The mind tracking the echo of dripping water,
And the whisper of each rock –

The unspoken fear of entombment,
The threat of explosion;

Eyes quick and darting,

The scent of fire damp,
Methane in the air;

And then there, on another broad canvas,
The women in the kitchen, curlers in the hair,
Stoking up the fire, preparing the bait,
Eyes smarting in the washday steam;

Out there,
Pigeons and whippets and ponies in the field,
Spuds for sale with the Christmas wreaths,
Communal allotments and shared apple trees,

The colliery football teams,
Like West Auckland,
Winners of the first World Cup in 1908 –
They beat Juventus and all,
But didn’t get paid while they were away,

But at least their wives and mothers and sisters
Weren’t grieving at the pithead though,
Grieving for their menfolk,
Trapped down there below,
Bodies trapped and wrapped by the black gold,
The black gold that heated the homes and mansions,
The factories, warehouses, palaces, stations and offices,
The black gold
That powered the smiths, and forges and furnaces,
That powered the trains and shipping lines,
The battleships and the dreadnoughts.

But we were now gazing at a sunset smelted sky
Flaming out over drystone walls and snow capped hills,
And the tumps of old lead mines,

While Christmas lights blazed in the villages,
While pub windows glowed orange in the twilight,
Beyond the nail parlours and tattoo shops,

While we tracked the paths of Charles Dickens,
Wackford Squeers, Smike and Nicholas Nickleby,
Through Barnard Castle and thence to Durham,
Where men and women swopped tales of football,
And where three pints cost six quid,
And where we were allowed to serve ourselves,
While coal, not dole, fires roared in Victorian grates,

Until we went to the People’s Bookshop,
Where books to inspire and educate and value
All line the shelves,
Not priced, but there for a donation,
What you could afford –

And where we talked of a divided ruling class,
And where we talked of victory,
Victory for the working class,
Victory at the next election,
As the sun once more sank in the west;

And so to the Pitmen’s Parliament,
Where a vast audience gathered
Beneath the banners of past struggles and victories,
For a class struggle film of Dennis Skinner,
And talk not just of class,
But of race and gender, too,
Where the ghosts of Socialism past,
Embraced those of Socialism Present and Future,
A world not so much as lost,
As a paradise waiting to be regained,
A union of North and South:

‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn.’

‘In the bar room, in the bar room,
That’s where we congregate,
To drill the holes, shovel coals and shovel up the slate,
And for to do a job of work,
Oh, I am never late,
That’s provided we can do it in the bar room.’

A Lament for Dorothy and Archie

Each little river has a tale which, if understood, cannot fail
To edify the Human heart; mine’s of Lovers who’d not part:
Both loved Nature, read her runes and worshipped countless harvest moons.
He, a Minchinhampton Man – she the lanes of Burleigh ran,
Eager, passionate, enthralled to embrace her Archibald.
The stream that gushes into town on Hazel Woods, as hail, crashed down.
High on that ridge where sheep are shorn, a tiny rivulet was born.
It seeped through soil and chiselled stone, caressing sea-spawned Cotswold bone.
A weave of light like soft silk shook became a dancing, babbling brook.
Through Gatcombe Park the waters curled, then through its stately gardens swirled
To trace a spiral as they whirled past Longfords Mill.

A Lament For Dorothy and Archibald
Who took their lives on the 28th August 1916

Each little river has a tale which, if understood, cannot fail
To edify the Human heart; mine’s of Lovers who’d not part:
Both loved Nature, read her runes and worshipped countless harvest moons.
He, a Minchinhampton Man – she the lanes of Burleigh ran,
Eager, passionate, enthralled to embrace her Archibald.
The stream that gushes into town on Hazel Woods, as hail, crashed down.
High on that ridge where sheep are shorn, a tiny rivulet was born.
It seeped through soil and chiselled stone, caressing sea-spawned Cotswold bone.
A weave of light like soft silk shook became a dancing, babbling brook.
Through Gatcombe Park the waters curled, then through its stately gardens swirled
To trace a spiral as they whirled past Longfords Mill.
Silhouette upon a twig, a dancing bird performs a jig;
She tips her tail, she dips her bill, she fans her feathers, she drinks her fill.
Mesmerised within this stream, new-born fish cascade and gleam;
So receptive is this river, even ducklings make it shiver;
Yet in this water, ice-cold, holy, these Lovers dipped their warm skin… slowly;
One a boy of twenty-four, off to fight a foreign war,
One a maid of sweet eighteen, whose love was rich and raw and keen:
These Lovers, who would not be parted, had a notion, which once started took firm root:
there was a way to overcome their Parting-day;
Sworn with many a heart-felt vow, they meant to end their lives right now,
To slip beneath Iron Mills Pond and from this Vale of Tears abscond,
To slip beneath an steel-cold lake and never ever once more wake
And to that end, with all their might, they bound his army great-coat tight
About their loving limbs, and then they slipped beneath that water
That stole away an old man’s daughter;
That stole away an only child – a boy once meek and sweet and wild.
In The Weighbridge Inn their bodies lay – was it for this God fashioned clay?
Was it for this that they were born, to never see another dawn?
To never witness dawn’s clear light first kindle then set the vale alight?
To never see each drop of dew shimmer with a rainbow hue,
To never hear a barn-owl sing, or watch the moonlight flood her wing,
To never smell his lover’s hair, or kiss those lips beyond compare.
He’s buried now, not far from home and those wild woods he used to roam,
His stone’s by Minchinhampton’s Church and near it passing crows find perch.
Her, sadder, grave, in Amberley, is all but lost to gravity,
Her tottering stone is sinking down towards rich earth that holds her crown,
Her hair, her eyes, her loving heart that from her Archie wouldn’t part;
Her unkempt grave, beneath a lime bears witness to another crime,
How could so sad and tender a tale be all but lost: let us not fail
To spread their edifying story. Tragic? Yes, yet tinged with glory:
For Love, Sweet Love, they’d die as one and forgo both stars and sun.
Their final words? The War they cursed, then defied Death to do his worst.

Thanks to Anthony Hentschel for the above post.

What Makes People Love History

What makes People love history?
So that it becomes a passion,
Not a subject, nor hobby, nor interest,
Not a diversion, nor a pastime,
But a consuming passion instead.

I started to read the virtual edition
Of the History Workshop Journal,
A compendium of contributors
And historians, who recounted
The reasons, recollections, emotions,
And afternoon madeleine moments,
That all conspired, to conjure forth
A love of the study of the past:
A Passion for History.

I’ve added my own, too;
I wonder which of these apply to you?

For example …

What makes People love history?
So that it becomes a passion,
Not a subject, nor hobby, nor interest,
Not a diversion, nor a pastime,
But a consuming passion instead.

I started to read the virtual edition
Of the History Workshop Journal,
A compendium of contributors
And historians, who recounted
The reasons, recollections, emotions,
And afternoon madeleine moments,
That all conspired, to conjure forth
A love of the study of the past:
A Passion for History.

I’ve added my own, too;
I wonder which of these apply to you?

For example …

The transformative book that showed you
That History wasn’t just a school subject
(Possibly your best – but why?)
Where you got things right or wrong,
And got marked and graded;
The book that became part of you,
Rather than something you tossed in your satchel;
The transformative book that wasn’t a text book,
With dull, deadly facts, tables, dates and statistics,
But a book that was elegantly written,
A book that made the past alive,
And relevant to whenever today might be,
A book that conjoined the then and the now,
Took you away from linear time,
And showed you that’s what History can do.
(E.P. Thompson first for me.)

The discovery that History could involve emotion,
Or an imaginative flight from linear logic,
It could help you hear voices, as it were,
Far from academe’s ivory towers,
And slip through Time’s wormholes.

Or it could be elsewhere or earlier in childhood,
The Christmas present of a history book,
Fairy stories, nursery rhymes,
Picture books,
The film on the telly,
Or Disney at the cinema,
The merchandising,
The spin-offs that turn a child into a reader,
The trip to the museum,
Family history,
A religious text,
A family bible,
The local war memorial,
Sunday tea at your gran’s,
Acting in the school play,
Displays in the school classroom,
Jackdaws,
The inspirational teacher,

Discovering that the history of a period
Could be studied through the literature of a period,
The discovery that fiction was not a separate subject;

Old maps and artefacts,
An old atlas,
Encyclopaedias,
Pictures and portraits on walls,
Collecting,
Ephemera,
The names of pubs,
Second hand shops and vintage shops,
Making your own museum,
Going beyond the empirical and documented,
With creative reimagining;

Politics,
Activism,
Migration,
Conversation,
Walking,
Landscape,
Cloudscape,
Seascape,
Riverscape,
Roofscape,
Music,
Dreaming,
Summer holidays,
Roaming,
Listening,
Remembering …
Googling …

I wonder which of these apply to you?

What would you add?
For …

What makes People love history?
So that it becomes a passion,
Not a subject, nor hobby, nor interest,
Not a diversion, nor a pastime,
But a consuming passion instead.

The Pilgrim’s True Path

It started with a glance out of the bus,
A blood red disc of a sandstorm sun,
It was ten past ten.

The light numinous rather than luminous,
As we opened the door to leave Bisley church,
Emigrant-ghosts waiting for the Bristol cart,
And a six week voyage to New South Wales.
It was twenty to eleven.

We walked through deep, shadowed holloways,
Walking the Bisley Path,
High above the valley marshlands,
Through woodland shrouded in the strange glow
Of another world’s grey-green light,
The harbinger of Hurricane Ophelia,
The wind now shrieking through the creaking trees,
Leaves falling like some autumn snowstorm.

Thanks to Mark Hewlett and Andrew Budd for the above images.

It started with a glance out of the bus,
A blood red disc of a sandstorm sun,
It was ten past ten.

The light numinous rather than luminous,
As we opened the door to leave Bisley church,
Emigrant-ghosts waiting for the Bristol cart,
And a six week voyage to New South Wales.
It was twenty to eleven.

We walked through deep, shadowed holloways,
Walking the Bisley Path,
High above the valley marshlands,
Through woodland shrouded in the strange glow
Of another world’s grey-green light,
The harbinger of Hurricane Ophelia,
The wind now shrieking through the creaking trees,
Leaves falling like some autumn snowstorm.

We were dry-shod, however; the leaf-path
A russet covered rustling track-way,
Until we descended to the spring line,
Thence to cross the Slad Brook’s hidden bridge,
Where medieval pilgrims, too, once crossed,
Travelling to Gloucester Abbey.

At Shepescombe Green, Reformation revenants
Dangled from the crossroad gallows:
We sought solace and succour at Dells Farm,
At the Quaker burial ground;

Blue skies rushed in from the westward hills,
As we trod a corpse-path;
It was afternoon.

The church bells rang out from Painswick,
To welcome us past sun-gleamed streams,
To the Celestial City,
Where a black-coated congregation hurried to church,
Like Lowry figures struggling with a headwind,
‘He was Roman Catholic but their church isn’t big enough for the big family.
So they’re using our church.’

The sun was red again, but was swallowed by the cloud.
It disappeared behind the church spire,
While the old church bells tolled for thee and me;
It was two o’clock.

We had walked five and a half miles,
From the high church of ‘Beggarly Bisley’,
Along ancient paths to a funeral at Painswick:
In these short hours of seeming pathetic fallacy,
We walked through the history of our Christianity,
A Pilgrim’s Progress,
High above the Slough of Despond.

On Seeing The Grave of Sir Fabian Ware at Amberley

On the surface, it all seems quite equal,
The Great War cemeteries and gravestones:
Identical – uniform – symbolic –
Equality of sacrifice in death;

But a different story lies beneath:
Officers: seasoned wood for their coffins,
And lids that were carefully screwed down;
Men and other ranks: had unseasoned wood,
And lids that were brusquely nailed and hammered;

1918 saw the vote given to some women –
But not the canary girls and phossie jaws,
They had to wait another ten years –
But also some five and a half million men:
Only 60% of males had the vote
When war broke out for King and Country.

On the surface, it all seems quite equal,
The Great War cemeteries and gravestones:
Identical – uniform – symbolic –
Equality of sacrifice in death;

But a different story lies beneath:
Officers: seasoned wood for their coffins,
And lids that were carefully screwed down;
Men and other ranks: had unseasoned wood,
And lids that were brusquely nailed and hammered;

1918 saw the vote given to some women –
But not the canary girls and phossie jaws,
They had to wait another ten years –
But also some five and a half million men:
Only 60% of males had the vote
When war broke out for King and Country.

Upstairs, Downstairs:

All those men over the age of twenty-one,
Giving their lives for King and Country,
Vote-less;
All those eighteen year olds,
Giving their lives for King and Country,
Vote-less;
All those women,
Giving their lives for King and Country,
Vote-less;

Stanley Baldwin on the new MPs of 1918
(‘The Khaki Election’):
“A lot of hard faced men who look as if
they had done very well out of the war.”

‘If I should die, think only this of me,
That there is some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England’ …
For there they lie:
‘Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori.’

Remembering Stroud’s Conscientious Objectors from WW1

‘How do you prove you have a conscience?’

You came to me via a pdf,
Out of the blue,
Via a Facebook message,
On a hot afternoon in late July,
With names, occupations, addresses and ages –
A bit like a census, in a strange way:
Official, bald, and bureaucratic
In your modernity,
No telegrams today.

Eighteen conscientious objectors
Whose courage, principles and politics,
Whose ethics, morals and steadfastness
Enabled them to stand up against the crowd,
In those heated days before and after July 1916,
And before and after November 1918.

‘How do you prove you have a conscience?’

You came to me via a pdf,
Out of the blue,
Via a Facebook message,
On a hot afternoon in late July,
With names, occupations, addresses and ages –
A bit like a census, in a strange way:
Official, bald, and bureaucratic
In your modernity,
No telegrams today.

Eighteen conscientious objectors
Whose courage, principles and politics,
Whose ethics, morals and steadfastness
Enabled them to stand up against the crowd,
In those heated days before and after July 1916,
And before and after November 1918.

Men from Stroud and around the Five Valleys,
Part of the 16,000, countrywide,
Who faced angry, suspicious tribunals
That demeaned and intimidated,
That despised sincerity and conscience,
As they deliberated on their verdicts:
“Does this man deserve absolute exemption?
Or some alternative to military service?
Or an army non-combatant role?
Or is he a liar?
Should he be summarily dispatched?
To the army, to training camp,
The front line and ‘combatant duties’?”

Some of you may have taken on medical and hospital work
(Some 6,500 did),

Some of you may have absolutely resisted:
You may have refused medical examinations,
You may have refused to wear uniforms,
You may have refused to march, salute or stand up …

You may have faced polite persuasion,
Or you may have been forced to wear a uniform,
Or wear a straitjacket,
Or have been placed in solitary confinement,
Or been one of the 6,000 thrown into prison
(‘Funny. You’re in for murder and I’m in here for refusing to.’)
Or been given ‘field punishments’,
Or been beaten up,

Or been given a death sentence,
That after a few seconds pause …
With hearts racing and with anxious swallowing …
Would be commuted to ten years’ imprisonment with hard labour.

I don’t know the judgements that you received,
And I don’t know what happened to you after the war
(If you survived),
The victimization that you faced
Might well have gone well beyond losing the vote,
Work, wages, friendship, family, faith,
People spitting in the streets as you passed by,
White feathers slipped through your letter box,

While gathering numbers of others,
Began to shake your hand,
Or place an arm around your shoulder,
And begin to wonder whether you might have been right,
All along,
When you stood alone.

But I silently stand and shake your ghostly hands,
And hope that at the going down of the sun,
And in the morning,
We will remember you:
Eighteen conscientious objectors
Whose courage, principles and politics,
Whose ethics, morals and steadfastness
Enabled them to stand up against the crowd:

1. Allen, James Whiteway Colony Stroud Labourer 21 (1916)

2. Apperley, Ebor 32, Bath Place Stroud Printer/compositor at Copeland Chatterson and Co. 27 (1916)

3. Burford, Edward Wyatt Edge Road, Painswick Grocer’s porter 35 (1916)

4. Butt, William Henry Stonehouse Farmer 26 (1916)

5. Clements, Harry Whiteway Colony Stroud Market gardener

6. Clements, William John Whiteway Colony Stroud Market gardener

7. Cole, Will Whiteway Colony Stroud Chemist turned market gardener

8. Cossham, Philip Raymond Park Farm Lypiatt, Nr. Stroud Land Agent 21 (1916) b. Cirencester

9. Hampton, Thomas Moor Hall Randwick, nr Stroud Described as a ‘Monk’

10. Kenworthy, George C. Whiteway Colony Stroud Farmer and carrier 26 (1916) b. Birkenhead

11. Kenworthy, John F. Whiteway Colony Stroud Farmer and carrier 28 (1916) b. Birkenhead

12. Mortimer, William Nailsworth Nailsworth Nr. Stroud Antiques and furniture dealer 36 (1916)

13. Murray, Stormont Oliver Whiteway Colony Stroud 19 (1917) b. Islington June 1898

14. Rudland, William 2, Bank Buildings, Regent Street Stonehouse Brushmaker 28 (1916)

15. Stevens, Will or Bill Whiteway Colony Stroud

16. Tilley, Albert Edward 4, John Street Stroud Jobbing Compositor at Copeland Chatterson and Co. 28 (1916)

17. Trussler, Arthur William Moor Court Gardens Amberley Professional gardener

18. Weight, Joseph Alfred Nailsworth, near Stroud Refrigerating Engineer 39 (1917) b. Nailsworth

Walking from Scottsquar Hill to Painswick and to Stroud

Prologue:

Stuart
I want to visit this spring in Painswick tomorrow. Have you ever been there? 10. St Tabitha’s Well (SO 867 097).  Issues from the roadside halfway down Tibbywell Lane which leads to the mill in the valley bottom. A simple stone spout pours water into a small pool which then drains away under some stone slabs. The street name is an intriguing derivative of the well’s name! And here is a bit about st Tab. Also known as Dorcas!

Commemorated on October 25
St. Tabitha was a virtuous and kindly woman who belonged to the Christian community in Joppa. She was known for her good deeds and almsgiving. Having become grievously ill, she suddenly died. At that time, the Apostle Peter was preaching at Lydda, not far from Joppa. Messengers were sent to him with an urgent request for help. When the Apostle arrived at Joppa, Tabitha was already dead. On bended knee, St. Peter made a fervent prayer to the Lord. Then he went to the bed and called out, “Tabitha, get up!” She arose, completely healed (Acts 9:36). St. Tabitha is considered the patron saint of tailors and seamstresses, since she was known for sewing coats and other garments (Acts 9:39).

Saint Tabitha’s Well

Washbrook Farm “New” Front Door

Secular Signage

Washbrook Farm Old Front Door

Thanks to Mark Hewlett for the above photographs.

Prologue:

Stuart
I want to visit this spring in Painswick tomorrow.  Have you ever been there? 10. St Tabitha’s Well (SO 867 097).    Issues from the roadside halfway down Tibbywell Lane which leads to the mill in the valley bottom. A simple stone spout pours water into a small pool which then drains away under some stone slabs. The street name is an intriguing derivative of the well’s name! And here is a bit about st Tab.  Also known as Dorcas!

Commemorated on October 25
St. Tabitha was a virtuous and kindly woman who belonged to the Christian community in Joppa. She was known for her good deeds and almsgiving. Having become grievously ill, she suddenly died. At that time, the Apostle Peter was preaching at Lydda, not far from Joppa. Messengers were sent to him with an urgent request for help. When the Apostle arrived at Joppa, Tabitha was already dead. On bended knee, St. Peter made a fervent prayer to the Lord. Then he went to the bed and called out, “Tabitha, get up!” She arose, completely healed (Acts 9:36). St. Tabitha is considered the patron saint of tailors and seamstresses, since she was known for sewing coats and other garments (Acts 9:39).

The Walk

Some Notes on the Route Taken

The 63 bus from Nailsworth to Gloucester dropped us precisely on the line of the Cotswold Way at Scottsquar Hill. We crossed the road and went East, following the official route of the Way to reach Painswick.

This took us first through the old quarries of Scottsquar, revealing bands of inferior oolite , then down hill over Rudge Common Nature Reserve, across the main road by the Edgemore Inn and further down Jenkin’s Lane, towards but not actually reaching, Jenkin’s Farm. We turned left and then right across the fields to pass the curiously half way(ish) marker stone denoting (approximately) the mid point on the Cotswold Way.

Then down to the wooded Washbrook stream, eventually turning right to pass the two front doors of Washbrook Farm. One is half buried below the present ground level and bricked up. The other is elevated and up a flight of stairs. Both show a curious coat of arms on their richly carved lintels. (“a puzzling building needing more investigation” – britishlistedbuildings.co.UK.)

From there we climbed the slope of the Washbrook valley to enter Painswick.

Uncountable yet numbered yews were noted, Spencerian graffiti photographed and much needed coffee drunk.

To find Saint Tabitha’s Well we left Painswick by the diminutively named (and slightly twee sounding) “Tibbywell Lane”. Down this lane, about half way to the valley floor a simple stone spout set in a dry stone wall pours clear water into a small pool which then flows away under stone slabs. It is enchanting and quite beautiful. Quite why this spring should be named after Saint Tabitha is unknown. There seems to have been a move to secularise it in the local signage (see photograph of “Tabitha’s Well”).

Tibbywell Lane was once part of a much used ancient track way to Bisley and on to Cirencester. However, we left this route when we reached the valley floor, turning South West to follow a series of footpaths along the Painswick Valley toward Stroud.

At first the route closely followed the Painswick Stream past the sites of several old mills but eventually we slowly climbed the valley side via footpaths through Sheephouse and Hammonds Farm. The meadows here are broad and lush and cut by the deep, wooded gullies of three streams that emerge from springs below the line of Wick Street only two or three hundred yards further up the side of the valley.

Eventually we crossed Wick Street (Painswick Old Road), to re-enter Stroud via the footpath above Badbrook stream.

We talked of many things on our walk from Rudge Corner through Painswick and back to Stroud: Why is Paganhill so-called? Why the maypole? We discussed the arch, the spring at Puckhole, Oolite limestone, Cotswold quarries, The Siege of Gloucester 1643, the cannon ball marks on the church tower, The parliamentarian graffiti in Painswick Church: ‘Be old but not too bold.’ The Ice Age and the path of the River Thames, hydraulic rams, Thomas Berwick lookalike oak trees flaming in the fields, Ornate, embellished depictions of Keatsian fecundity over at Washbrook House: Pediment pictures suggestive of ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness … Who hath not seen thee oft … sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep …’

We talked of 18th century food riots, weavers’ riots, skimmingtons, ghost roads, holloways, We walked past countless streams, springs and brooks, past Eyebright [Euphrasia] and, on marshy ground, Redshank [Persicaria maculosa]. Crumbling old bridges, silent mills, ghost waterwheels, redcoat ghosts, turnpike ghosts, Tollhouse ghosts, Mossy mouldering drystone walls, riven by towering beech trees, An Ozymandian valley of industry, now oozing, whispering, sighing through the leaves falling in the rain-swept breeze: ‘Look on my works, ye mighty and despair!’

We talked of Theodolites, trigonometry, chains and furlongs, the Mason-Dixon Line, Lucerne, crop rotation, Turnip Townshend and his four course with fallow, Equinoctial autumn, Thomas Hood’s November: ‘No Sun, no moon … November’, Memories of old school November frosts, Viking words like ‘hoar’ and ‘rime’, The Ancient Mariner, Coleridge’s Fears in Solitude and Frost at Midnight:
‘The frost performs its secret ministry unhelped by any wind’, Wordsworth in the shrouded treeline above the stream: ‘When vapours rolling down a valley Made a lonely scene more lonesome’,
How if we hadn’t had arranged this walk and tryst Then we all would have stayed in, moaning about the drizzle And would have missed all the magic of Coleridge’s Playbills: “Announcing each day the performance by his supreme Majesty’s Servants, the Clouds, Waters, Sun, Moon, Stars”, How last Saturday had been so hot, with bees in the flowers, ‘Until they think warm days will never cease’, But we know they will, and they are, as lowering, louring clouds over Stroud, (Like a limned Sutcliffe Whitby skyscape, or a tinted picture from a Claude eye glass, A heightened atmospheric picturesque, stretching along Badbrook, To its confluence with the cinema and the weavers’ strikes of 1825) Made so evident … the clock is ticking and the daylight receding, But the lessons we ignored in our schooldays still lie in our satchels, It might be William Blake now, but it’s Isaac Newton after break.
And talk of Gilbert White and his Hampshire word ‘hangar’ for woodland hanging above a coombe, And how Pitchcombe is a sort of toponymic oxymoron, And knowing when one should walk in a solitary manner or collective, With a musing over the wisdom of William Hazlitt: ‘One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room, but out of doors, Nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone … I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time …’ And the relative merits of cycling and walking and how it depends on the weather – as Edward Thomas wrote: ‘It was a still morning … But not until I went out could I tell that it was softly and coldly raining. Everything more than two or three fields away was hidden. Cycling is inferior in this weather, because in cycling chiefly ample views are to be seen, and the mist conceals them. You travel too quickly to notice many small things. But walking I saw every small thing one by one.’

‘But walking I saw every small thing one by one.’
And that’s what we tried to do today.
And that’s what we try to do on every walk.
And share our practice.
Hence this post.

Post-script:

Just to say thank you for your company on the walk today. Inspiring and amusing, as usual. I really value our socio/historical/psychogeographic expeditions.

St Mary’s Painswick, Empire & Colonies. Just came across this bit of info – Thomas Twining, tea merchant, was born in Painswick in 1675, and in 1706 set up his first tea shop at 216 Strand, London, which was to become the home of the famous Twinings brand.
Painswick etc.

Stuart, as always after a walk I am inspired to research…

nice description of Painswick in the early 1800s here –

http://places.wishful-thinking.org.uk/GLS/Painswick/index.html

Extract from Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of England, 1831.

Also this about “Shepscombe Green” in the age of Ed VI
“During the insurrections in the west and other parts of the kingdom, in the reign of Edward VI., Sir Anthony Kingston, then Knight Marshall, being lord of the manor of Painswick, caused a gallows to be erected on Shepscombe Green, in this parish, for the execution of insurgents, and gave three plots of land in his lordship, since called Gallows’ lands, for the purpose of keeping in readiness a gallows, two ladders, and halters; he likewise appointed the tything-man of Shepscombe to the office of executioner, with an acre of land in the tything, as a reward for his services; a field at Shepscombe, held by the tything-man for the time being, is still known by the appellation of Hangman’s Acre.”

I suspect Shepscombe Green is Bull’s Cross, rather than the rather out of the way green in present day Sheepscombe. What do you think?

and this is a lovely page about old tracks and roads around Painswick. Fancy walking the Bisley Path from Painswick to Bisley sometime?
http://www.painswickusers.org.uk/plhs/history/histroads.htm

Summer is back today! But would yesterday’s walk have been so memorable without the mist and clouds over the hangers and Selsley?

Oral History and Walking

ONE: DISCOVERY

An invitation to participate in a seminar held by the Oral History Society in September 2017, based on some work from thirteen or so years before, got me thinking about oral history and differing walking practices. Obviously, many people record their walks – but I wanted to seek examples of projects and ideas beyond that admittedly admirable practice.

So I joined the Walking Artists Network and introduced myself with a question: I wondered if any walking artists carried out oral history projects as part of their approach. Some examples follow, but first I thought I might outline my experiences and ideas.

The work which was so well regarded was for www.irespect.net – the website seems a bit creaky now, but my perspective was that the lives of ordinary people were as necessary to any transmission of ‘Heritage’ as the lives of the powerful: a form of ‘Counter-Heritage’, in a way. I also put together a whole series of worksheets and lesson plans for schools. What I/we haven’t done is to walk the streets of Gloucester, using those testimonies and questions for walking and discussion: the great thing about devising questions with testimonies is that it stops those oral testimonies becoming inert. The questions promote engagement – that is especially so, of course, with young people.

ONE: DISCOVERY

An invitation to participate in a seminar held by the Oral History Society in September 2017, based on some work from thirteen or so years before, got me thinking about oral history and differing walking practices. Obviously, many people record their walks – but I wanted to seek examples of projects and ideas beyond that admittedly admirable practice.

So I joined the Walking Artists Network and introduced myself with a question: I wondered if any walking artists carried out oral history projects as part of their approach. Some examples follow, but first I thought I might outline my experiences and ideas.

The work which was so well regarded was for www.irespect.net – the website seems a bit creaky now, but my perspective was that the lives of ordinary people were as necessary to any transmission of ‘Heritage’ as the lives of the powerful: a form of ‘Counter-Heritage’, in a way. I also put together a whole series of worksheets and lesson plans for schools. What I/we haven’t done is to walk the streets of Gloucester, using those testimonies and questions for walking and discussion: the great thing about devising questions with testimonies is that it stops those oral testimonies becoming inert. The questions promote engagement – that is especially so, of course, with young people.

My next involvement in oral history was with my local community: writing poems and recording local history textually, as well as with a microphone. This was a new development for me: taking a recording, making a transcript, and then writing a prose-poem, which would then be read back to the contributor. These testimonies and consequent writings can be embedded within different media, so as to contribute to further group walking and further recordings.

Here is a case study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xohBrBpr5w together with https://radicalstroud.co.uk/ls-lowry-and-local-landscape/

A search for the genius loci of my area (the Stroud Valleys: five valleys with fast flowing streams) followed. Fast flowing streams powered the water wheels of local industry – and those streams came from the plethora of springs issuing forth in the Stroud Valleys. That led to my cataloguing the names of local springs; then moving into a Blakean take on it all, whilst collecting memories of local springs too. This melding and conjoining of genres can be found at https://radicalstroud.co.uk/springs-from-research-to-blake-to-oral-history/

Since then, my practice has moved to a radical history of landscape and locality, in an EP Thompson style of rescuing the anonymous from ‘the enormous condescension of posterity’. This contributes to performative, historical walking. My approach involves research (sometimes primary sources); imaginative re-creations of first person voices based upon that research (a sort of one step beyond oral history); a planned, performative walk, with performers briefed beforehand; with factual, historical accounts, too, to act as a counter-point; followed by the recording of the walk textually and visually, with a posting on www.radicalstroud.co.uk

The website has a number of categories – accounts are placed accordingly. Here are two examples of recreated first person voices: https://radicalstroud.co.uk/the-last-words-of-thomas-jubiter/

https://radicalstroud.co.uk/i-was-baptized-josephine/

TWO: PRINCIPLES

Performative Walking and Oral History

Doors of No Return

Historic, documented, liminal places,

Not gone with the wind, but both visible and invisible,

Spaces and places in the Stroudwater hills and valleys

With messages and mementoes from a riotous past

Open doors to the truth –

A counter-narrative:

“A performative counter-narrative … a ‘guerrilla memory’”,

“Lieux de memoire, sites of history, torn away from the moment of history”

(Pierre Nora),

Memorialisation that moves beyond the empirical,

The documented, the evidenced and the historical,

To a counter-heritage, a counter-memorialisation…

For further reinterpretations,

And re-imaginings,

As we move art and monument

From object to process,

And from ‘noun to verb’,

As we create new museums of the past, present and future…

Beyond the Empirical!

Beyond the Documented!

Guerrilla Memorialisation!

THREE: CALIFORNIA

Three or four people or so replied to my question on the Walking Artists Network – here is an example of a different approach from Blake Morris, from California:

In terms of approaches to oral history, I work with the Ancient Greek technique of memory palaces to gather stories through walking. One example is my project Former Fresnans (2012-Ongoing) in which I do walks with people who formerly lived in Fresno, California, but now live elsewhere. We create a memory image for a Fresno-based memory palace after our walk, which records our story of walking together. I then take people in Fresno through the palace and show them the imaginary images and convey the stories of former Fresnans. You can find out more here, http://archive.fresnobeehive.com/2015/12/23/the-beehive-interview-blake-morris/,

FOUR: GLASGOW

TS Beale also replied from Glasgow:

She has been looking at the role of women in industrial actions and protest movements, ‘trying to recover/trouble/nuance/and otherwise mess with the “accepted” narrative about women’s roles in protest movements and industrial actions.’ There has been a walk alongside this:

https://www.facebook.com/events/131081357525702/?acontext=%7B%22action_history%22%3A%22[%7B%5C%22surface%5C%22%3A%5C%22page%5C%22%2C%5C%22mechanism%5C%22%3A%5C%22page_upcoming_events_card%5C%22%2C%5C%22extra_data%5C%22%3A[]%7D]%22%2C%22has_source%22%3Atrue%7D&__mref=mb

FIVE: ARIZONA

Post-Script

I have just seen Christopher Jagmin’s ideas for Scottsdale, Arizona; for us in Britain, a sort of mix of Mass Observation, and ‘A Day in a Life’ /‘Good Morning’ from the Beatles. I could fancy doing this as oral history/sociology – people convene; walk out; record; reconvene for a collective recording. It could also be a way of doing a new form of pub crawl – walkers allocated different pubs to record life; then reconvene for the collective fusion.

For one evening, Christopher Jagmin, Museum of Walking, and Scottsdale Public Art asks the community to join Museum of Walking to take a special historical walk around Scottsdale.

Meet at The Livery where you will receive a map of the area to get you started. Then you will be sent on your way to wander Old Town Scottsdale on a solo, self-guided journey for about 15-30 minutes.

While walking, we want you to explore and discover new experiences; say hello to a stranger, listen to the birds or a conversation taking place, take a photo of a place or person that looks interesting, walk down an alley, open a door for someone going into a building, turn off your cell phone and find a bench and enjoy the moment that you are having.

If you have been here many times you may have some memories of the place. If you are here for the first time everything is new. The hope is that you find or experience a moment to remember.

With your map, we ask that you document an experience from your walk, by marking the time, and the exact spot it happened. When you return to the Livery, we will pinpoint your experience on a map of the area, and we will also document them as historical document of Old Town.

I contacted the Museum of Walking and was delighted when Chris got back to me – see below

Hello Stuart.
The good people over at the Museum of Walking forwarded your email that you sent to them. Sorry it took a bit to get back to you, but was on vacation last week.

Your projects sound very intriguing and interesting. I wish I was closer to participate myself.

I am glad that you were interested in my project, and would be happy to talk more about my project and any thoughts. A collaboration is always possible.

A little bit about my collaboration with the Museum of Walking, and the residency that I am currently participating (I hope not too confusing). I also attached some photos of the signage that I have done for my History Project.

—————————————-

RESIDENCY: Safe and Sound
(http://www.scottsdaleindependent.com/news/artist-christopher-jagmin-sets-up-social-practice-projects-at-scottsdale-livery/amp/)

We are living at a moment in time that seems to be filled with high anxiety. I envision this livery space as a place to find comfort, make face-to-face connections, and maybe discover something interesting about ourselves.

The Livery space offers a variety of unexpected projects and opportunities to work with strangers, and express our community’s anxieties and joys without judgment.

—————————————-

P R O J E C T 1

The History Project

Historical markers are small story-telling signs that dot the landscape with sad, happy, or thrilling stories of known and forgotten heroes and villains, and the histories that were made at a specific location. These signs are the basis for a personal history project
that began in 2014.

This is a project that I have been personally working on for a few years. I memorialize important and not so
important times and experiences in my life, or notes overheard conversations and stories from other’s personal experiences. The signs are placed at the locations where these moments actually occurred.

I will ask community participants to remember a specific place (in Scottsdale) other than their home… where they had a profound, sad, joyful, or memorable experience. They would write their story and I would GPS these locations on a large map (at the Livery, and
documented later on a website) with colored pushpins to designate a felt emotion. This map of Scottsdale would show an emotional and alternate historical perspective of the city.

—————————————-

On the map that was given to participants, then follow up with documenting these “histories” on a map of the area, and a recording of these stories:
THE WALKING HISTORY PROJECT

Welcome to Sc be your first visit. Either way, there is a lot to see here and discover.

For this project I am asking you to take a walk around this area for 15 to 30 minutes, and experience new things, new sounds, new people, and maybe even discover something new about yourself.

Here are some suggestions for your journey:

– While walking… really listen. Put your phone down, and listen to the birds, the wind, or the sounds of the community. Perhaps you can have a seat on a park bench and listen to the conversations around
you.

– Why don’t you say hello to someone walking down the street. Or, hold a door open for someone entering a shop. You might want to offer a stranger a compliment, or just give up a big smile.

–  If you want a solitary experience… maybe you can walk down a street that is new to you, or cut down an alley that looks interesting (and safe!). Why don’t you take a photo of an interesting find, but instead of posting on a social media outlet, just share
with a friend in person.

My hope is that you challenge yourself and make a memory that you can tell me and your friends about.
Don’t forget to document your experience by marking the time, and the exact spot it happened on this map. When you return to the Livery, I will document this unique moment as a historical document of Old Town.

—————————————-

Wishing you well, and much luck
Christopher
— 

SIX: MORE IDEAS

PPS

Dear Stuart,

I saw your email on the wan digest mailing list and I thought I’d drop you a line. Your project sounds really fascinating!  I have been trying to use walking interviews as a way to conjure up life stories and geographical imaginations both in Northern Ireland and Spain

Gari

Garikoitz Gómez Alfaro

10-11 Pavilion Parade
School of Humanities
University of Brighton
BN2 1RA – Brighton

Hi again Stuart,

I enjoyed reading this palimpsest of yours. I wish I could escape to the West Country to join you in one of those radwalks!

There are a few other projects I know of that might be interesting to you – do you read Spanish? There’s a couple of really interesting projects in Spain, ranging from the Anarchist Route in Barcelona (with augmented reality) to derives organised by autonomist&feminist groups in Madrid.

I also wanted to draw your attention to an article by Lisa Hill, who is based at Bristol University. The first half of the article is a very useful academic review of approaches to memory/space then quickly turns into an interesting reflection about new ways of writing about life stories and memory. In addition to that, she puts those thoughts into practice in a very useful way. I hope this is useful.

Best regards,

Gari

—
Garikoitz Gómez Alfaro
Ph.D. candidate
—
10-11 Pavilion Parade
School of Humanities
University of Brighton
BN2 1RA – Brighton

SEVEN: DR HILL

I duly read Dr. Hill’s article about walking in the Forest of Dean, with Ron Beard, who provided the oral history – and here is a synopsis.

Dr. Hill spoke of the ‘spectral’: the ‘temporal disjunction’ that can happen when out walking – when landscape and mind intertwine; when memory (voluntary or involuntary) and time conjoin and disjoin, so that the ‘future-present’ is found within ‘the past’. Dr. Hill argues that different styles of narrative and writing are required to describe this mind-landscape fusion: styles that do have a common theme of disrupting authorial omniscience, however: the writer is in the landscape, not some sort of detached, positivist observer.

Hill draws on Proust, Benjamin, Derrida and Sebald as she develops her individual take on cultural geography and then applies this theoretical position to her walk with Mr. Beard.

Ron recollects and speaks of the past while out walking the Dean landscape. Dr. Hill walks, imagines, recreates, listens, records, with an acknowledgement of how important the senses are to any spectral recreations: the smell of coal dust, the whistle of a train etc.: ‘madeleine moments’.

Dr. Hill concludes by stating that she had ‘suggested that walking with memory could provide a more-than-representational perspective on the past. The act of walking creates powerful recollections because it provokes a distinct and familiar tactility with the world’: ‘the spectral … the revenant …ghostly memories … haunting memories … the haunting of the self.’

And this spectral disjunction of time will require a discourse that dispenses with linear narrative. Instead, a narrative should be one that ‘employs a subtle form of literary montage that operates by a process of juxtaposition and discontinuity – in the placing of text and image, and in the changes of topic and style.’ And this writing could well use ‘authentic’ oral history, but might also move towards the ‘fictive’, using a post-modernist multiple voice narration.

Food for thought! And reminiscent of George Orwell’s description of a ‘slum’ in Down and Out in Paris and London, where the initial ‘succession’ of yells first thing in the morning develops into a ‘variegated chorus’ later in the day. ‘Variegated chorus’ …

EIGHT: SPAIN

Talking of Orwell, Gari emailed me further:

‘Here’s the link for the project on walks and feminist memory in Madrid:
http://www.feministas.org/lugares-de-memoria-feminista-de.htmlhttp://www.feministas.org/lugares-de-memoria-feminista-de.htmlhttp://www.feministas.org/lugares-de-memoria-feminista-de.html

Many thanks to Helen Pomeroy at Archway School for the following translation:


We are a group of friends, feminist activists, who are united for the objective and in the interest of making visible and generating collective memorial spaces about the social struggles which have developed over time in the Spanish state. Also we want to contribute to the story of the emancipation of women. We want to know how we arrived here but above all we want share it and spread to others this interest. This is why we have created this group.

We believe that feminist story is collective, historical, rich, diverse and multiple. A memory which for the most part is not part of any textbook nor in any official stories in history, nor is it reflected in the streets of our city or our museums. It is a memory which is found nowhere, a memory which remains open and active in the heads and in the hearts of those people who are given to the moment of seeking alternative reconstruction who seek to transform personal sentiment to collective and public meaning.


and here the one for the barcelona project, which is probably less relevant as it isn’t directly related to oral history but might be interesting due to the possibilities the technology used offers:
http://cierto.org/pdf/tactical_tourism.pdfhttp://cierto.org/pdf/tactical_tourism.pdfhttp://cierto.org/pdf/tactical_tourism.pdf

NINE: TIM INGOLD

Also, I can’t believe I forgot to mention Ingold’s introduction to “Ways of Walking”: https://quote.ucsd.edu/sed/files/2014/09/Ingold-Ways-of-Walking-Introduction1.pdfhttps://quote.ucsd.edu/sed/files/2014/09/Ingold-Ways-of-Walking-Introduction1.pdf  ‘

Again, I duly read this and here is my synopsis:

This ethnographical overview provides a salutary lesson, with a global perspective on walking. It takes us away from a European and/or urban textual modernity, to walking as a social activity – footprints interwoven for some cultures with the transmission of ‘knowledge’, storytelling and oral history. It may be time to resurrect such an approach here in this country – ‘walking’ can become over intellectualised and dry as dust academic; it’s time to bring back the vernacular, when occasion demands.

And that’s what I am trying to do with the writing of a DIY guide to performative walking for my locality – writing with a voice that appeals to everyone. The hope is that there will be a widening collective sharing of experience, beyond the usual suspects.

More of that in the future – Christmas, in fact.

TEN: TOBY BUTLER

Almost finally, now …

Gari also drew my attention to the Memoryscape work of Toby Butler along the bank of the Thames (oral history in the landscape, rather than in museums or as transcripts) and an article at http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/memoryscape/

I tried to contact Professor Butler but he has left UEL and they have no forwarding email address.

ELEVEN: DR CORDER

Dr Kate Corder also contacted me about HOW (Heathrow Orchards Walks):

When I was planning my HOW events, I observed old maps of the Heathrow area and delved in to histories and archives. From 2014-2016 there were approximately 19 HOWs, three of which were not made public, but I had arranged to talk to people about the area history on route. Oral history of the area was an ongoing dialogue before, after and during the HOW event. Participants spoke to historians, activists and volunteers about the regional history met on route during the event. Even though I am not currently doing more HOW events, I am still working on things connected to HOW, (at the moment two publication essays and my work is included in the Alternative Document group exhibition touring to Stoke, Sydney, Bath and Brighton in the next year). 

TWELVE: SAPPERTON TUNNEL AND THE CANAL

As regards the Stroud area, our next performative walk, recording and podcasting will be on October 7th, when, inter alia, Uta Baldauf will perform a piece about legging through Sapperton Tunnel on the Thames and Seven Canal, right there in front of the tunnel. https://radicalstroud.co.uk/i-was-baptized-josephine/

This piece is an exercise in oral history of sorts: a first person voice of guerrilla memorialization that challenges historical orthodoxy and heritage. This recording of a transgressive account (‘Presentism’?) runs alongside (albeit in a parallel universe) official recordings on the Stroudwater and Thames and Severn canals.

But ours are the invented voices of oral history – authentic and valid in a different type of way from the voices of canal restoration.

Beyond the Empirical,

Beyond the Documented:

Guerrilla Memorialization.

On the way back on the train, Uta and others asked me about what happened to Joe/Josephine. I explained that I had invented her/him.

Uta turned round and looked at me:

’But, I felt she was a real person when I spoke her words. To me, she was a real person. I think she did exist. She did exist.’

https://www.facebook.com/100009938981619/videos/pcb.2372736622951837/534860346855260/?type=3&theater

https://www.facebook.com/100009938981619/videos/pcb.2372736622951837/534860333521928/?type=3&theater