Author: Stuart Butler

Radical Remembrance Walks

 

The Guardian used the phrase “cultural tyranny” recently to describe the atmosphere surrounding media expectations about the wearing of poppies. The editorial wondered if a poppy week might be a way of concentrating minds and hearts. We all recognise that attitudes vary towards the poppy in the buttonhole: I wear one to remember my dad and grand-dad; some wear them in recognition of current conflicts; some do not wish to wear one and some wear a white poppy. It is easy to forget that the renewed intensity surrounding Remembrance is of recent provenance.
Whatever our motivations, I am sure we are all united in our despair at the carnage of WW1. How can we forget Harry Patch describing war as “legalised murder”? So in that spirit, I include the final line of Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth, “And each slow dusk the drawing down of blinds”, for our own mobilisation and entrance to the front line. This image seems to capture the heart break of war; the atmosphere of a dismal November afternoon; the empty evenings and empty spaces; even the foreshadowing of the arrival of  the telegram announcing the news of Owen’s own death, on Armistice Day.
So with thanks to Chas Townley for his book “Lest Ye Forget” and with thanks to Eleanor M. Rawling for her “Ivor Gurney’s Gloucestershire Exploring Poetry and Place”, both of which I heartily recommend, I will try to suggest some walks and/or pilgrimages to suit all tastes this and every Remembrance-tide. The first thing to say that there are a lot of moving war memorials in the area – no wonder; for here are the numbers of dead listed in Chas’ book, taken from the pages of “The Stroud District and its part in The Great War, 1914-1919”, published by The Stroud News, in the aftermath of the ending of that conflict. (This is from a quick count – I may have made inadvertent mistakes.)
AVENING: 35 BISLEY-with-LYPIATT, EASTCOMBE and OAKRIDGE: 52 BRIMSCOMBE: 34
CAINSCROSS: 52  CHALFORD, FRANCE LYNCH, BUSSAGE and BROWNSHILL: 65
EASTINGTON: 21  EDGE: 6 FROCESTER: 5  HORSLEY: 39  KING STANLEY: 24
LEONARD STANLEY: 15  MINCHINHAMPTON: 45  MISERDEN: 14 NAILSWORTH: 43
PAINSWICK: 43  PITCHCOMBE: 12  RANDWICK: 13 RODBOROUGH: 45
SELSLEY: 14 STONEHOUSE: 52  STROUD: 249  SLAD: 16
THRUPP: 31  UPLANDS: 25 WHITESHILL: 36  WOODCHESTER: 25.
So, it would be easy to arrange walks, bike rides and pilgrimages to these memorials: a moving and memorable thing to do.
There are other places to visit too – Chas writes, in his introduction, that “More or less every Gloucestershire village  and town is marked by war memorials listing the fallen and it is easy to forget the many more practical projects undertaken to remember their sacrifice.” Here are these “practical projects” that one could visit:  the 1919 extension to Stroud Hospital, the “Peace Memorial Wing”; “Victory Park” at Cainscross;  “for the wealthy a public park, as at Park Gardens in Stroud”, says Chas and “ For the less well off, perhaps a bench or donation”.
Betty Merrett wrote of the “Parks and Gardens of Stroud” in the Stroud Local History Society’s Millennium Booklet: “Park Gardens was another gift to the town. Sidney Park was a local businessman and councillor. Parks Drapery prominently occupied the corner of King Street and George Street where the HSBC bank now stands. The family lived in a flat over the shop. Their only son, Herbert, was killed in France in 1917 in WW1 aged 23, and in 1920 Councillor Park gave a tract of land off Slad Road as a garden memorial to his son and all who fell during the 1914-18 war. The town’s cenotaph stands in the garden.” Now I return to Chas and his section on Oakridge: “Oakridge’s war memorial was a water supply and drinking fountain – a reminder that in the villages we did not have mains water for many years to come.” He also mentions the font at Minchinhampton church; the Eagle Lectern at Leonard Stanley church; the Wayside Cross at Woodchester Priory and, tells us a great deal more about the Oakridge War Memorial. This is worth knowing. It could mean a pilgrimage.
The Oakridge site commemorates the only woman to be named on a memorial in the area: Mabel Dearmer. She went to serve in Serbia as a hospital orderly; she died within three months from enteric fever, but left these comment for posterity:  “This war will not bring peace – no war will bring peace – only love and mercy and terrific virtues such as loving one’s enemy can bring a terrific thing like peace.” Her editor reflected on the tragedy of her end in a similar vein: “It is easy to go into danger when convinced that your country’s cause is righteous; she thought that for all countries war was unrighteous, yet she went.” Her husband served as a chaplain with the Red Cross; one son died at Gallipoli; one son survived the war. The Oakridge Memorial – a practical commemoration – brought the village a water supply from a nearby spring. These are the words on the Dearmer Inscription plate at Oakridge:
“In memory of MABEL DEARMER
who went from Oakridge the place she loved best
to give help in Serbia where she died of fever
at Kragujevatz on July 11th aged 43, and of
CHRISTOPHER DEARMER
Who died of wounds at Suvla Bay in Gallipoli
On October 6th 1915 aged 21
Proud of the war all glorious went the son.
Loathing the war all mournful went the mother.
Each had the same wage when the day was done.
Tell me was either braver than the other.

 

They slept in mire who went so comely ever
Then when you wash let the thought of them abide.
They knew the parching thirst of wounds and fever.
Here when you drink remember them who died.
Chas writes: “In a town that is divided
by values and visions of war and peace;
where the wearing of a poppy (for
some red for some white) is seen by some
not as an act of  Charity and Love
but as acts of personal controversy,
 something needs to be done to build
bridges…Couldn’t we all at least unite at
 Percy Dearmer’s  Water Fountain to
remember those  who laid down
 their lives  in our service?”
THESE OAKRIDGE MEN
ALSO GAVE THEIR LIVES
E. Blackwell  M. Blackwell  A. Curtis W.M. Curtis  A. Fern  W. Fern P. Gardiner  S. Gardiner
P. Hill W. Hunt  W.G. Hunt R.T. Gardiner  A. Robbins A. Rowles  A. Smith  T. White H. White A. Young E. Young  F. Young E. Weare
In GRATEFUL MEMORY OF
George Edward Ivor Fry PTE. RAMC
James Frederick Fry SGT. NAV. RAF
Albert Hunt PTE. RAOC
Stanley Henry Morgan GNR. R.A.
R.C.Baker Stallard-Penoyre LT. R.N. (A)
Arthur Phipps GNR. R.A.
James Edward Young PTE. R. NORF. REG.
WHO FELL IN THE WAR OF 1939-45
INTO THY HAND O LORD

 

 A Remembrance Walk to Oakridge and back to Stroud October 17th 2012

 

I caught the number 54 Cotswold Green bus,
On a russet-warm, apple-autumn day,
To Frampton Mansell Church,
In the 1920s footsteps of my dad,
Who lived here in a Great War Nissan hut;
His de-mob dad, seeking work,
 My dad, playing conkers on his way toschool,
Or watching the trains on the viaduct,
 Justas I do today in his memory.

 

Iwalked on down past the giant retaining wall,
 Underthe railway and across the canal,
 To climb the hill past streams, brooks, rills and springs,
To reach Oakridge Lynch War Memorial:
Thereare so many corners of foreign fields,
 That are for ever England,
In word, dust, deed, blood, ash and bone,
But here, on Oakridge village green,
Is a cruciform water- trough,
Fed by a spring that is for ever England,
That roams through wild flowers,
Breathing English air,
Bless’d by the sun on its way to the Severn,
A heart of peace, under an English heaven,
Giving back thoughts of England given.

 

I read the inscriptions and then sat back on the green,
Chatting to a woman gathering flowers,
Who told me that during the Tewkesbury floods,
When piped water became polluted,
Oakridge village used the springs once more;
Another woman told me of the war graves in the churchyard,
Recently and lovingly cleaned and pristine-restored;
She pointed out my footpath to Eastcombe:
“Go past the old toll house.”

 

I walked past more springs,
Then the site of a Roman villa,
Thenmore springs and some tumuli,
 Beforerain made me dispense with map and specs,
 Tofollow my nose and ask for directions instead:
 “Aimfor the waterfall”,
 “Contour Mackhouse woods and aim south for Stroud”.

 

I walked past black-spot sycamore leaves,
Blood-red rowan and spiked-steel hawthorn,
Thunder crackling above like guns across the Channel,
Hailstones ricocheting like shrapnel;
My path was blocked by fallen trees,
Prickled barbed wire stars of holly,
Puddles like forlorn foxholes,
And a succession of map-marked Spouts,
Until I left No-Man’s Land.

 

I ambled along spring-line Thrupp Lane,
Then down the canal to the Lock-Keeper’s,
Where on an opposite wall,
A new piece of graffiti has appeared,
A Banksy-like badger’s face,
 With a bullet in its blood-red eye.
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”

 

Walking the Landscape and Mapping Springs

Well, we all need Wikipedia, sometimes, I suppose, when we move out of our comfort zones, as I do today when I begin to muse upon our spring-quest and its depiction by map. The font of all knowledge says that “A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes. Many maps are static two-dimensional, geometrically accurate,” or almost accurate, “representations of three-dimensional space, while others are dynamic or interactive, even three-dimensional.” The article then goes on to speak of scale, ratio, projection etc. and the usual distinction between “political” and “physical” maps.

Why did I look this up today, the 29th August 2012? Well, partly because it’s pouring down again and I can’t face getting soaked again, but also because of a splendid article in the Guardian which touches upon our spring-quest. Oliver Burkeman wrote about Google Earth – “inspired by zooming satellite images in TV war reports” – and how Google continually adds new data to its maps (“in June it was 2,000 miles of canal towpaths…in July it was bike lanes”). This constant process could, of course, add data from the movement of individuals…No wonder “cartographic historian”, Jerry Brotton thinks that the switch to digital mapping is an even “more profound change” than the Renaissance manuscript to print revolution.
Now, seemingly surreal invention is at one’s fingertips: Alice in Wonderland one to one scale is possible, as are cartographic mash-ups, as is the seeming impossibility of getting lost. One of the most ubiquitous sights of recent years is the traveller consulting a smartphone and resolutely, if mutely, going on their way. No more “Excuse me. I’m lost. Could you help me find…” Burkeman points out, however, that “In a world of GPS-enabled smartphones” whilst you are consulting a map, Google and Apple are mapping you. Martin Dodge from Manchester University says that products that might appear to be “innocent and neutral” are actually “vacuuming up all sorts of behavioural and attitudinal data.”
The article concludes with cartography curator, Lucy Fellowes’ famous statement that “Every map is someone’s way of getting you to look at the world his or her way” and the implications of viewing the world through the lens of Californian capitalism rather than through Alice’s Looking Glass: a world of mercenary, Gradgrindian logic, no matter how cool the employees dress. So this is where we come in with the spring-quest.
Our map making will reclaim Lewis Carroll from Google and we will walk hand in hand with History, Philosophy, Geology, Literature, Logic, Mythology and Pyschogeography. We may not go down the rabbit-hole but we will certainly peer into the depths of our springs and map the genius loci of Stroud and the Five Valleys. Our maps will be collaborative, shared and Blakean in their envisioning of the fusion of Space and Time, past, present and future. Who knows? We might even meet the Green Man. And s/he might even tell us how to name unnamed springs and so change Google Earth. As the Paris Situationists used to say: “Underneath the pavements, the beach!”

 

The Genius Loci of Stroud: Springs

If you are looking for the genius loci of Stroud, it has to involve water, and as water moves and flows in a constant reinvention of itself, it is a fitting initial symbol of Stroud and the Valleys. To understand the effect of water around us, locally, we have to have some basic understanding of our local geology: we can slice open our scarp to reveal the layers of rock and time, stretching from the heights of Minchinhampton down to the River Severn. I thank the Stroud Museum for giving me this sort of Ladybird understanding, with their excellent displays; I have had minimal interest in or understanding of geology before, but I do recommend a visit to Stroud Museum, if you are geologically illiterate, like me. So, what did I discover? Well, on the top, we have Great OoLitic Limestone; dropping down to Rodborough, we find Fullers Earth Clay; then we drop down to Lower Inferior Oolite Limestone; then Cotswold Sands; then Upper Lias Clays (we are now at Stinchcombe, King’s Stanley and Wotton under Edge); we then get to the Maristone Platform and the Severn and Lower Lias Clays.

The springs that occur where limestone meets clay attracted early settlement, with wells subsequently dug away from the spring-line. This combination of rocks and clays has produced the history that will later follow, after our spring-line wander lust, in other ways too. The steep valleys caused by erosion have produced the fast flowing streams and the consequent cloth trade, with their quaint hill-climbing patterns of settlement. It is true to say, therefore, that our first search for our genius loci should involve some walking or cycling around the spring-line, writing and photographing the springs as we go. As Robert Macfarlane said in “The Old Ways, A Journey on Foot”, “This book could not have been written by sitting still. The relationship between paths, walking and the imagination is its subject, and much of its thinking was therefore done – was only possible – while on foot.” It will be the same for us – although we might well bike as well as walk, but just like Macfarlane, we might well have Edward Thomas and Flann O’Brien as company too.
Or, just like Rob Young, in “Electric Eden”, we might hear Caliban reminding us to
“Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I wak’d,
I cried to dream again.”
It would be good to declaim this by a spring’s harmonies when out walking, and then cup spring water in one’s hands, reminding ourselves, like Rob Young, of Blake, once more:
“Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.”
And if the walk to a spring, once named or featured on an OS map reveals nothing of its issue, then we could speak two lines from John Clare:
“There once were springs, where daisies’ silver studs Like sheets of snow on every pasture spread;”

 

Pyschogeography: Part2

So, let us follow further the ideas of Mr. Coverley, as in his lower-case entitled and unpunctuated “the art of wandering the writer as walker”. Here, Merlin Coverley invokes the spirit of an equally magically named savant, anthropologist Tim Ingold, “who has outlined in some detail his belief that such fundamental activities as walking, writing, reading, and drawing” will, in Ingold’s words now, leave “ a path through a terrain…a trace, at once in the imagination and on the ground.” This, he calls “wayfaring”, and the process of reading a book and reading a landscape through walking are the same: “To walk is to journey in the mind as much as on the land: it is a deeply meditative practice. And to read is to journey on the page as much as in the mind.”

So, we are almost ready to go wayfaring through space and time, but before we depart for the springs around Stroud, we have another port of call: William Blake. Coverley writes of Blake: “Here, then, we find all the features ascribed to pyschogeography today: the mental traveller who remakes the city in accordance with his own imagination is allied to the urban wanderer who drifts through the city streets; the political radicalism that seeks to overthrow the established order of the day is tempered by an awareness of the city as eternal and unchanging; and the use of antiquarian and occult symbolism reflects the precedence given to the subjective and anti-rational over more systemic modes of thought.”
This way of thinking (in a sense, the simultaneity of linear and lateral thought) has had a permanent influence upon me, ever since I had a time-shift moment at the Tower of London when I was 9 – way before I knew the term, “pyschogeography”.We’ve all had these moments, even if we don’t see angels in the trees in Peckham Rye, but I finish with four famous lines from Blake about the River Thames (even more poignant and relevant in 2012 with some economists describing water as “natural capital”) and an aside from me about our local waters. There then follows a piece from Tim Wright at http://www.timwright.typepad.com/L_O_S/  as an inspiration to us all to get walking and recording. It is not a conclusion; it is an introduction.

 

“I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.”

 

The Mill Race
When you sit by the mute, still, mill race,
With swallows swooping low over a surface
Likeglass, it’s easy to miss the water’s whispers.
I don’t mean the oozing and splashes,
The swish of the fish or the wind in the rushes,
I mean the tales of long ago when weir
And sluice meant a spuming spate of power,
A circuit of cog, belt, loom and jenny,
A revolution of the water wheels,
A pandemonium of 5 valley hammer-noise.

 

I laughed then in the face of precocious steam,
Bade weavers leave their homes to come to me,
Sprung cycles of boom and workhouse bust
To make any modern credit crunch seem very small beer,
Told workmen to form combinations,
Threw masters in the cut and felt the red coats’
Horses’ hooves pound the ground with General Wolfe,
Forced spinners to emigrate to New South Wales
Or lodge in hulks on their way to Botany Bay,
Saw coal black gold shift on cut and iron railway,
Fought a losing battle with boiler, chimney, steam,
Felt weed-dank choke my wooden-wheels,
Then knew my time was past.

 

So shed a mournful tear and took my vow of silence.

 

“Standing at the top of the Monument with the Bells of London ringing out, I had something of a Revelation. I am BlakeWalking to Escape. By refusing to Record the Obvious, by Publishing on the Hoof and Concentrating on Seemingly Aimless Conversation rather than Actual Output, by Consorting with Fellow BlakeWalkers, others who Refuse to Conform to the Usual Views & Routes, I can hope to Transcend; and perhaps Create a True Work of Personal Genius; rather than of General Commodity. Something closer to what might be described as a Vision! If youwould like to Walk and Talk and Create, please Make Contact so we can continue to Evolve our Shared Ideas and develop Continuous Creative BlakeWorks.”

Psychogeography: Part1

So what is psychogeography? I first came across the term when reading Ian Sinclair some years ago, but the Writing Britain exhibition at the British Library gave the term some further temporal contextualisation, in terms of British traditions of landscape writing, rural as well as urban. (Try to have a look at “Writing Britain, Wastelands to Wonderlands” by Christina Hardyment,  published by the British Library.) Two books by Merlin Coverley were especially helpful in this regard and I would heartily recommend “The Art of Wandering, The Writer as Walker” and “Psychogeography” to anyone. Indeed, the following synopsis owes a lot to Mr. Coverley: so, once more, what is pyschogeography?

The school of thought and activity is usually associated with the Paris Situationists, or the 19th century flaneur, or Thomas de Quincey, Ian Sinclair, J.G.Ballard, Will Self, Peter Ackroyd, Robert Macfarlane, Stewart Home (“avant-bard”), et al. It is a set of ideas that loosely revolve around the proposition that movement through space, through either aimless wandering or purposeful  walking, can enable one to re-connect with the past beneath one’s feet. In a sense, time immemorial and time out of mind can become time within mind; time can be experienced as synchronic rather than diachronic.
Guy Debord defined pyschogeography as “The study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.” It is a practice that is usually associated with cityscapes, but Merlin Coverley’s approach can be conveniently and completely applied to the tone, intention, practice and vibe of our Stroud research. Coverley’s comments in his 2010 book, “…the predominant characteristics of pyschogeographical ideas – urban wandering, the imaginative reworking of the city, the otherworldly sense of spirit of place, the unexpected insights and juxtapositions created by aimless drifting, the new ways of experiencing familiar surroundings…” are  what our projects will be all about, all be it, in and around  a mill town in the Cotswolds.

 

What do we mean by “Radical History”?

Edgelands - Journey Into England's True Wilderness
Laurie Lee Walking Program
Lowry and The Painting of Modern Life Book Cover

 My second posting on this blog will clarify what I mean by radical history. I use the term to describe both the content and the form of the story we intend to tell about our area’s past. The content will focus upon places in our local landscape that have a radical history, in a sort of upside down view of “Heritage”. Christopher Hill wrote of a world turned upside down; that is how we intend to write of our heritage. Places and stories that are often forgotten or ignored will be brought back to life; conventional narratives and explanations will be questioned. I remember the excitement of reading E.P. Thompson’s “Making of the English Working Class” on my 21st birthday and have never forgotten his wish that the lives of ordinary people should be rescued from “the enormous condescension of posterity.” That’s what we will be doing in terms of places, people and posterity.

I will now address what I mean by a radical approach: this has a number of varying meanings. One meaning is in terms of collaboration: the history that is written will be produced by a group of people in a number of different ways, using different media, rather than by anyone “voyaging alone on strange seas of thought”. Secondly, our approach will go beyond the usual analysis of primary and secondary historical sources; we shall also use imagination, together with artistic and literary responses to both the past and the landscape. We shall boldly go beyond the sources of evidence, as well as the split infinitive, with lateral as well as linear thought – we shall be both Newtonian as well as Keatsian historians. There will be, in short, a rewriting of historical protocol.
 This leads to our third emphasis: pyschogeography. I know that many of you will be thoroughly acquainted with this concept. I also know that many, at best, will think it a questionable notion. I am also aware that many will not have the slightest idea what this term implies. If it’s any consolation, I think I am probably in all three camps most or all of the time. But this confusion may give me an advantage in explaining this term for what teachers used to describe as “a mixed-ability audience”; this is what I/we will do on the next posting; we will define “pyschogeography” at some length and with some easily comprehensible detail. The posting after that synopsis will start to apply such a psychogeographical approach to our first choice of study: the whereabouts and meanings of our local springs.

 

Discovering Historic Stroud Together

Discovering Historic Stroud Together

I started writing A Guide to the Radical History of Stroud and the Five Valleys a year ago, with a narrative history occasionally touched by a comedic Mark Steele/ Mark Thomas style of analysis. After a year, I have reached the mid-nineteenth century, in terms of content, with a definite feeling that my style and approach are about to change. A visit to the Writing Britain exhibition at the British Library has made me think more widely about the relationship between landscape, literature, the writing of history and pyschogeography. It has also made me think more deeply about the collaborative use of different media in the presentation of my findings – as opposed to the lonely writer in the garret trope. Hence this blog, as a first step, as a first step towards discovering, perpetuating and developing the genius loci of Stroud and the Five Valleys. The story is too important for humour: serious history and literature might be needed; as will a group-effort. A lot of people who move into Stroud are fascinated by its radicalism and wonder whence it came; let us hope that we can all, locals and newcomers alike, answer the question, “What is the peculiar genius loci of Stroud and its associated valleys?”