Category: Counter-Heritage

Lines of Green: the hills and vales of the Five Valleys;
Lines of Red: Stroud Scarlet stretched on tenterhooks;
Lines of Black: Denotes strength and clarity of vision
And the slave trade and its abolition

History, topography, politics and football,
All conjoined in the design of the FVR football shirt,
A revolutionary shirt,
In nature, design and intention:
An inclusive shirt,
Not just for Stroud,
But for the Five Valleys too,
And the wide world beyond,
A shirt from the People’s Republic of Stroud:
Art of Clay.

Shirts £40, available from Art of Clay, 48 High St.

The People’s Republic of Stroud

Artist hours, but try to be open Mon – Sat 10-5.

To contact Clay, ph.  07968868397

 Saint Lawrence

Lawrence, according to Wikipedia, originally came from Valencia in Spain. He was a young deacon in Rome under Pope Sixtus II, before Christianity became the established religion, at the time when the Emperor Valerian launched a persecution against the early church. In 258 Sixtus was beheaded while celebrating the liturgy and Lawrence was ordered to hand over the church’s treasured possessions. He asked for three days to gather them, over which time he distributed the precious things amongst the community before presenting himself with a delegation of marginalised and disabled people.

“Where are the treasures of the church?” the prefect demanded.

“These are the treasures of the church,” Lawrence replied, meaning the people.

For this he is believed to have been slowly grilled on a griddle on 10^th August, his feast day.

“Turn me over, I’m done,” he was able to joke, it is said. He is the patron saint of cooks.

Saint Laurence

However, spelt with a u, another saint appeared over 300 years later. This Laurence accompanied St. Augustine on Pope Gregory’s mission to establish Roman Christianity in Britain. Based at Canterbury, Laurence succeeded Augustine as the second archbishop in the early seventh century, dying in 619. Of course the British or Celtic church had been here a long time by then – three British bishops are recorded being present at the Council of Arles in 314. Little survives except inscribed stones and the anonymous poetry of the Irish Annals with its reverence for the natural world.

The Roman delegation apparently met the British at St. Augustine’s Oak and it was noted that as the missionaries did not stand when the native party arrived, the meeting failed to find common ground. The Oak possibly stood by the Thames at Cricklade or near the Severn at Arlingham. It was, at least, somewhere in this area. Half a century later, Wilfred swung it for Rome at the Synod of Whitby and the rest is history. The Venerable Bede in 731 recorded that Laurence attempted to establish the Roman date for Easter with the Gregorian calendar. The British bishops, however, refused to accept it.

Near to St. Laurence Church at Didmarton, there is a well named after him. Perhaps he drank from it on his way to or from the meeting at the Oak and perhaps he rested here in Stroud.

Blake, Bunyan, Wordsworth and Forest Green

And lo, it came to pass that when the Forest Green fans sang
‘Stand up for the Forest Green’,
All fans throughout the ground and stands,
Stood up.
And when the Forest Green fans sang
‘Sit down for the Forest Green’,
All fans throughout the ground and stands,
Sat down.
Truly, this was a paradisal state of beatitude:
An epiphany where all was a New Lawn of harmony,
Where all division and dissent disappeared
In a blissful unification of opposites,
Where lion stood up with lamb,
And where lamb sat down with lion,
In a self-governing collective of joy;

And when the final whistle blew,
The public address system filled the valleys and hills
With Jerusalem and its effulgent message,
And the football poets and the People’s Republic of Stroud
Did walk upon the mountains green,
In Forest Green,
Far above the dark satanic mills of old Stroud-water –

But even in the midst of heaven, there is temptation,
For it is an arduous path of the pilgrim to the football league:
Past the Wicket Gate, the Slough of Despond,
The Hill of Difficulty, the Valley of Humiliation,
The Shining Light, the River of Death,
The Delectable Mountain,
Vanity Fair,
Half Man Half Biscuit
(For verily, these are the constituent parts of Tranmere Rovers),
If we are to reach the Celestial City,

Where there will be happiness in the by and by,
And quorn pie in the sky,
And we will walk with Wordsworth on Westminster Bridge,
And through the lanes and paths of Nailsworth,
Horsley, Forest Green, Shortwood and Newmarket:

For ‘Earth’ will not have
‘Anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty.’

Details on a performative, celebratory, historical walk to follow if triumphant at Wembley.

Public buildings are not just about accounts, ledgers and money,
They are also about what Raphael Samuel called ‘Theatres of Memory’,
Where varying conceptions of ‘Heritage’ can collude, collide, or elide:
If each of us could walk alone through the Subscription Rooms,
Alone in memory, reverie and seasonal darkness,
As the clock, Jacob Marley-like, chimed through the night,
What a miscellany of ghosts of Stroud Subscription Rooms’ past
Would be invoked!
Those concerts, those bands, those exhibitions, those meetings,
Those queues, the café, the bar,
Tickets for shows and the National Express bus …
The Council would watch, aghast, through the windowpanes,
As innumerable spectres flew through the air,
A murmuration,
Soaring, sweeping and circling the sky,
Till one spirit slipped through a frosty casement
To take the auditor in chief by the hand,
High over the rooftops to Stroud town workhouse,
(‘Are there no treadmills?’
The accountant asked,
‘Are there no prisons?
Who are these beggars in the doorways?’)
Then on to Paganhill’s anti-slavery arch,
Then up to the Chartist meeting on Selsley Common,
Then over the empty homes in the streets, lanes and villages,
Stroudwater families making their way to Bristol Dock,
And the emigration ships bound for New South Wales.

So my memory is a recreated one – I wasn’t there,
But it’s my contribution to Stroud’s Theatre of Memory,
It’s my ghost:
The middle-class Anti-Corn Law League held a meeting there in 1841 –
Working class Chartists believed the League wanted free trade,
And abolition of the protectionist corn laws,
Just because cheaper foreign corn and consequently cheaper bread,
Would give mill-owners an excuse to cut wages –
A Chartist agitator took the stage and disturbed the formality of the proceedings,
“shabbily dressed, (he) forced himself upon the platform
And with the cheers of the crowd made himself joint-chairman”.
The Quaker, Mr Fewster, then took the floor
After Anti-Corn Law League speakers were shouted down:
“ Perhaps they thought the clothiers were selfish people—(“yes they are”) —perhaps they thought farmers were selfish
And that the upper classes were selfish (“yes, yes”) …
A local employer, Mr. Hooper then spoke:
Opposition to mechanisation in the textile industry was delusional,
He affirmed …
The Chartist, Charles Harris replied
That when the People’s Charter became law,
Mechanisation would be for the benefit of all –
Any worker who supported the Anti-Corn Law League
Was a “willing slave” or a “hired fool” –
The League “wanted cheap bread only because they wanted cheap labour…”
Btw, 3.7 thousand people signed up for the 1842 Chartist petition in Stroud
Out of a population of some 10,000 …
And as Lindsey German and John Rees point out in A People’s History of London,
Nationally, 3.3 million people signed up for the 1842 Petition:
“Over half the adult population of Britain.”

These are my ghosts and my contribution to
Stroud Subscription Rooms’
Theatre of Memories –
What are yours?

It’s like History on Acid,
A Raphael Samuel Magical Mystery Tour,
Not Seven Rooms of Gloom,
But ten rooms which haunt and hex:
The dead still alive,
Watching us trip through space and time,
Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard outside,
Peering through the window panes,
Observing us in our candle-lit dream,
Clocks ticking away the century
Until it’s the time for Jacob Marley
To make his visitation and warning,
Not just to Ebenezer Scrooge,
But to us,
As well as the occupants:
The half real, half fictive Jervis family;
Marley’s chains rattle across the garret floorboards,
Church bells toll through the London particular –
Beyond Folgate Street, in Spitalfields
Beggars still line the streets,
Charity breakfasts are organised
For London school kids,
Scrooge is unredeemed,
Scheming in his City counting houses.
The Jervis family open the door,
Observe this millennial world,
Shake their heads in despairing disbelief,
And quickly return to their hearthside:
‘You either see it, or you don’t.’

In The Glade

Anne Creed has transformed the derelict waste land off Nelson Street into a place of beauty, special to many. A broken piece of roofing slate on the corner of the Golden Fleece carved with the word glade in Tom Perkins style marks the entrance and points to the cracked pool table inscribed with ‘Song’ by Ivor Gurney.

Only the wanderer knows England’s graces

Or can anew see clear familiar faces

And who loves joy as he who dwells in shadows

Do not forget me, quite, O Severn meadows

Gurney wrote it on the Western Front in the spring of 1917 before the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) where he was gassed. Broken in two, the slate was dumped in a skip. The break could represent the breakup of Europe in the First World War or the subsequent break down of his mental health.

“No it’s the River Severn,” a friend said.

Tina, a Reigate trained calligrapher, designed the letters and over the years of carving it has found itself in various places. In a Dursley garage, it broke into six pieces.

“They are the Severn meadows,” observed a neighbour.

Now at last it has a home in the glade alongside a growing number of my stones, including his poem ‘Brimscombe’ (1919) hand carved on fived panels of slate and marble, and …

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen

Should anyone want to talk stone or try carving, I’m often there.

 Before the Luddites Custom, community and machinery in the English woollen industry, 1776-1809

Adrian Randall CUP

This wonderful book opens with an exploration of the pejorative use of the term ‘Luddites’ – they were right weren’t they? Wages did fall and goods could deteriorate – and how they ‘could little have imagined the linguistic legacy they were to bequeath to posterity.’ Randall points out that a focus upon direct action – rioting and so on – does not ‘accentuate’ the ‘atypical’: ‘riots often provide historians with our only point of access’ into the past values, attitudes and traditions of custom-held rights. And this point of access reveals that ‘Resistance to machinery was multiform … peaceful petitioning, appeals to the courts … negotiations … strike action, intimidation and riot.’ Randall shows how this resistance echoed 18^th century Gloucestershire food riots – ‘Just as food riots reveal order, discrimination and a clear moral economy, so do the community-based riots against the jenny and scribbling machine.’

“Non-fiction uses facts to help us see the lies. Fiction uses metaphor to help us see the truth.”

Thoughts derived from a reading of

Creating Memorials Building Identities The Politics of Memory in the Black Atlantic

(Alan Price Liverpool University Press 2012)

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 –

So how do we create 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…

This reimagining is the result of Mr Randall’s inspiring research and writings.

‘I was born in Woodchester, near Stroud in 1772. I am now in my fortieth year, heartened and invigorated by news of the Luddites up north. (They say there are more Stroud Scarlet troops up there than are being used against the French. What say you, Mr Johnson?) Anyway, this invigoration has led me to pick up my quill and record my memories – such as they are, of the struggles of our scribblers, spinners, shearmen, weavers, men and women in Stroudwater, in my lifetime.

The master clothiers as a body looked down on us with smiling condescension, and although groaning from over indulgence, excoriated us if we had a tankard or two on our St Mondays – some worse than others – but I want to be more particular with my History – I have my notes here in my ledger by my side on the table – We used to discuss the Gloucester Journal at the ale house and I diligently kept a faithful record of both the journal and our debates in a sort of diary. I shall, part by wit, part by design, and part by happenstance, now present my evidence for Posterity, as though Posterity itself were both judge and jury. For the sake of brevity and clarity, I have chosen to edit some of my evidence. This will be shown by ellipsis.

I start my chronicle at Woodchester in 1792, when the Journal reported that ‘A considerable number of the most idle of the people employed in the clothing trade … proceeded to seduce the work people to follow them … but … could not succeed as they found them universally convinced of the advantages of the machines rendered … The rioters finding their cause desperate, dispersed as fast as possible.’

Well, I was there, at my Baptism, you might say, and I can say with all due Veracity that it was only the threat of the special constables that made us disperse. And as for the advantages of these machines, why then, did the authorities choose to suppress all news of the Tumult and unrest caused by these infernal things? I know what occurred but it weren’t in the Gloucester Journal.

And if these machines were so advantageous, then why did the scribblers petition thus?

‘To the Landowners, Renters and others affected by the poor … a great number of persons brought up in the business of wool scribbling are now nearly deprived of employment in consequence of scribbling machines.’ And if there was such a collegiate Commonwealth between clothier, machine and worker, why did the clothiers dismiss any shearman, and woman who had been part of this petition? And why did they declare that: ‘Should the scribblers obtain their demands, the industry would be ruined.’

The petition failed, of course; machinery advanced; Sir George Paul, hearing that a few of us had been reading The Rights of Man, helped foster the burning of a guyed Tom Paine in Minchinhampton. That didn’t stop the food Riots happening, but Sir George sniffed the air and he saw phantoms: Corresponding Societies and the French Revolution: ‘This is but the beginning of an evil that will turn to desperate consequences’, quoth the good Sir George.

Sir George perceived what he called Evil all over the Valleys, and particularly so in Uley in 1795 when this note was sent: ‘No King but a constitution down down down o fatall dow high caps and proud hats for ever dow down we all.’ Sir George could not imagine that poor folk could think about abstract Ideas, Rights and Principles; he imagined that hunger was the fundament – ‘the cry of want of bread … forms a body of insurgents, amongst them are mixed a number of seditious persons’, quoth the good and philanthropic Sir George.

His associate, the Earl of Berkeley possessed a similarly disparaging View of us, but he did have the capacity for perceiving that some of us could think. I have this in my ledger: ‘A vein of bad materials runs through the lower order in the clothing part of the county which still continues to study Tom Paine with a few political clubs of the very dregs and of T. Paine’s cash’. Dregs indeed. We can see the source of the Earl’s metaphors.

Sir George might have feared insurgents and seditiousness, but his patriotism was of a most intriguing texture. During the invasion scare of 1798 some master clothiers bade workmen that they should join volunteer militia – Sir George was rather more perturbed about his workmen bearing weapons than the French sailing up the Severn. Yet he was above embarrassment, as so many of his class: ‘If too many of them should get under arms … and no enemy appear, they might take an opportunity of holding strong language to their masters on the sore point of increasing machinery.’ Shall I add an exclamation mark? No. I do not think one is needed.

The shearmen were patriots mostly, however, and wedded to law and constitution, and married to Deference: ‘It is not the wish of the petitioners that the use of gig mills should be entirely suppressed, but only to confine them to … such cloth … the coarser sort.’ But such Deference could not budge Sir George from his entrenched opposition. Here is the beneficent Sir George again – ‘When I see a number of decent, orderly men … who can relinquish a life of industry which produced a comfortable subsistence and who determine themselves to be dismissed by their employers … for the purpose of laying on a piece of useless paper on the table of the House of Commons, I cannot but presume that they are biased by some motive adverse to reason.’

Truly, one man’s meat is another man’s poison, and so it is with reason.

I regret to say that Deference brought nought but unwished for consequence – the gig mills continued their advancement; Wiltshire rioted; some Gloucestershire shearmen communicated with the Brief Institution in the West Riding, a form of Combination, and then in 1800 … ‘Some evil disposed person’, ‘destroyed three cloths … in the rack grounds … at Rodborough and … nine more … in … Woodchester’; a reward of £100 was increased by another 500 guineas after yet another clothiers’ meeting at The Fleece; a penitent Joseph Stephens was hanged for the offence. The goodly clothiers uttered some mealy-mouthed cant, asking that shearing machines should only be taken up ‘in such a manner as not to deprive any of their shearmen of Employ’.

And mealy-mouthed Cant it was and Hypocrisy and Deceit.

I have written so far of the scribblers. I will now turn my pen to the struggles of the weavers, and then return to the food Riots. Like the scribblers, the weavers wanted to shun the ways of Wiltshire, and follow the path of peaceful Deputation. So it was thus: a meeting with Mr Watts, the Stonehouse clothier, about his new looms; followed by a mass meeting up on Rodborough Common; followed by the master clothiers’ customary meeting at The Fleece; followed by the clothiers meeting with Nathaniel Watts of Stonehouse.

The Consequence? ‘The miseries of the manufacturing poor are now inexpressibly greater … provisions being extremely dear, trade also languishing. … Bisley and Chalford Bottom particularly afford melancholy proof of how many wretches of the clothing district are prompted by the despair to wander about and trust to the shelter of hedges and barns rather than starve under their own ineffectual roofs.’

And so my pen is inexorably led to the Tumult caused by Want. With the price of bread so high and with wages so low and work so scarce, patience was at an end. Men and women and boys and girls marched down to the Navigations. They were at their Wits’ ends. Moral, frugal God-fearing and law abiding folk who could take no more and who were disinclined to see their children starve whilst food was exported from our fields along the waters to London. And so they tried, like pirates of yore on the high seas, to board the Barges laden with wheat. But blowing of Horns, and carrying knives to open Bags and Sacks of flour could not stop what also seemed to be the inexorable march of machinery.

‘Paul Wathen you Hare a Damd in Fernald Scoundrel and We will Teack yuir Damd Life from you if Don’t teacl care of yuirself. And We Hear in Formed that you got Shear in mee shens and if you Don’t pull them Down in a Forght Nights Time Wee will pull them Down for you Wee will you damnd infernald Dog. Andd Bee four Almighty God We will pull down all the Mills that heave Heaney Shearin me Shens in Wee will cut out Hall your Damd Hearts as do Ceep them and Wee will meack the rst Heat them or els Wee will searve them the seam.

Thear Read this and Weep do you For your Time is but shourt Hear your Damd Villian Raskell.’

No one hereabouts knows who wrote this Note but The manuscript ends abruptly here – pages have been torn out (see later).

The manuscript then continues

‘Workmen have been guilty of repeated acts of malicious mischief and of sending anonymous letters of a threatening and diabolical tendency … they have frequently resorted to … cutting the cloths in the tenters during the Night.’ That was Thomas Croome, Stroud Magistrate, after the destruction at King’s Stanley, 1805. Further Destruction followed throughout the valleys – the news was suppressed. But here’s what happened: LOOM SHOPS WERE ATTACKED THROUGHOUT STROUDWATER by what those of us in the know called The Stroudwater Secret Combination. We were a small group, but effective in our nocturnal Visitations. We tried to have at least one Member in each Village and theUnfortunately, some pages are missing here – they have obviously been torn out.

It seems that the pages were deliberately removed to protect persons unknown.

We think the compiler of this manuscript was Charles William Butler. The Woodchester parish records show his baptism on Aug 22^nd 1772. Records of births, deaths and marriages show that he died at Clerkenwell, London, in 1852. There is evidence of a William Butler working as a boatman on the Thames and Severn Canal and River Thames at Lechlade in 1816. A William Butler married Charlotte Alice Bingham in Rodborough in 1795. A William Butler of Clerkenwell appears in the Chartist Allen Davenport’s recently discovered manuscripts.

We can, however, continue our narrative through the eyes of Alice Bingham. Alice broke with gender conventions and worked as a weaver, not a spinner. She was something of an iconoclast and was equally resolute in opposing the master clothiers in their desires to introduce loom shops. She was born in Rodborough in 1776 and kept a journal from the age of sixteen. Her journal provides a fascinating insight into Gloucestershire for about ten years, before she moved to the West Riding. We omit the introduction from her journal so as to maintain emphasis, and jump straight to her recording of the notorious events at Uley in 1792.

The Uley weavers told Nathaniel Lloyd straight to his face that he was breaking both law and custom by having multiple looms under one roof. This led to the Uley Skimmington of the mid-summer. Two score and more weavers congregated outside John Teakle’s: ‘You be working under price for that damned Lloyd, Teakle’.’Give us that bloody cloth or we’ll dip ee with the skimmington’ and, ‘We shall have the slates off your roof if ee don’t comply, you damned rogue’ and such forth.

The long, tall and the short of it is that Teakle’s cloth got trampled on; he was ducked over Owlpen way, and there was a skimmington procession with him bestride the pole, through Horsley and Nailsworth then back to Uley until ale got the better of the weavers. When they got back to Uley, Teakle hid in William Webb’s house; doors, windows and slates were smashed.

Most of the crowd faced charges, but the good opinion of the churchwardens and the vicar of Horsley – ‘men of sober and orderly conduct’; ‘peaceable’; ‘good character’, and so on – resulted in lenient sentences. It also counted for them that Teakle and Webb had previously incurred the attention of the law: both had seen the inside of the lock-up.

We wondered if the sentences were also an olive branch to all the Stroud valleys – but if so, it was to no avail. Unrest continued, but strange to relate – or is it? – Not one report appeared in the journals and newspapers.

I see no reason to name names now. The only one I will detail is that of the Reverend William Lloyd-Baker: ‘I perfectly agree with your friends that government do wisely to keep it secret. The less riots are talked of the less likely they are to increase or succeed.’

He and his ilk weren’t just perturbed by the antagonism caused by loom shops, jennies and gig mills of course. They were aware that some of us were reading The Rights of Man; were opposed to monarchy, and could see the advantages of a republic. That’s why they made their pretence and dissimulated.

But it was not all tumult and nocturnal depredations. The majority of our weavers saw no reason to break the law; they said the law, precedent and custom were on our side; the Gloucestershire Society of Broad and Narrow Cloth Weavers was formed late in the year of 1793 – but the authorities responded with troops and militia, particularly in the vicinity, and streets, of Wotton-under-Edge and Dursley. St Clem’s Day resounded like a hammer on the anvil.

In the north of Stroudwater, in Bisley, the weavers maintained the use of law: they took legal action against a Chalford clothier who transgressed customary working. There was a consequent meeting at the Berkeley Arms – in Cam – in the south of Stroudwater – this was how effective we were – and a new Weavers’ Society was formed. It was modelled on Friendly Societies, with detailed rules, subscriptions and a calendar of meetings. It desired to maintain custom, maintain wages and prevent illegal working. Three thousand members and this conciliatory demeanour counted for nought with the master clothiers, however. Strikes followed in Wotton-under-Edge just as night follows day.

I argued that the Weavers’ Society was trapped like a fly in a spider’s web. Trapped between conciliatory deference, resolute clothiers and a few equally resolute weavers, who wanted the Society to countenance the law-breaking, machine-breaking stance of the Wiltshire weavers. Then the giant spider, Parliament, would come along and abolish the very laws that previously protected the weavers.

The Society lacked all potency.

A few of us talked of printing handbills or chalking exhortations on mill walls and parish workhouses: ‘Cheap Bread!’; ‘Cheap Bread and No King!’ But the inclement weather and the constant rain, together with a lack of copper, and a talk of government spies, all conspired to mute us. We didn’t trust those men from the North with their talk of revolution and a republic, but circumstances alter cases and so I resolved to tramp north to seek work in the summer of 1802.

Here endeth the Stroudwater chapter of my narrative.

Plus ca change. The day after completing my preparatory reading of Professor Randall’s book, I had to retrieve some euros from a Thomas Cook cash-card – and needless to say, had forgotten the pin number. The website failed me. The hole in the wall failed me. A lengthy period on the ‘phone failed me. So I went into the Thomas Cook shop where the assistant sorted me within seconds.

‘People are better than machines’, I said.

‘That’s what we keep telling head office’, she replied.

I wrote this re-creation at the beginning of the year, 2017, making my rough notes on the hoof ‘in the landscape’. I was on the hunt for The Fleece, in Rodborough (not easy – we had to think about four different possible inns of that name in the parish), where the master clothiers met. It is now, as I eventually discovered, Hillgrove House on the old turnpiked Bath Road, the A46, at the bottom of Bear Hill – which leads up to Rodborough Common.

It was a beautiful winter’s day; I made my way up to the common, sat on a bench so that I could gaze out to Woodchester and so allow the landscape to infuse my thoughts and re-imaginings. Sunlight lustred some scarlet spindle-berries in a bush to my left. I made some draft notes, then wandered to Rodborough’s church, where I sat on an 18^th century gravestone in a late afternoon sun, beneath a fretwork of branch-shadows. When it became too cold, I gathered up my notebooks and pens, when a gentleman hobbling along with walking sticks appeared from behind the crepuscular church door.

‘A peaceful place to write’, he said.

It was all a bit Edwin Drood.

I explained briefly what I was about – gazing out to Woodchester and re-creating the lives of weavers and so on.

He was born in Woodchester, he told me; his mum worked in a pin mill before the Great War – ‘pins everywhere then’; told me about Hillgrove House – ‘Used to be The Fleece. That’s where the master clothiers used to meet and where all the decisions were made about the canal and the railway.’

The sun was descending: it was time to go. I told him I would include him in my narrative – a narrative not just of the past, but of how the present and past collide when you write outside, in the landscape: a harmony of the diachronic and synchronic.

But who sent this revenant?

The sources used may be found cited in Before the Luddites: Custom, Community and Machinery in the English Woollen Industry 1776-1809, Cambridge University Press, 1991

The Stroud-water Food Riots and the Hangman’s Noose

Prologue:

Gilbert White, August 1^st 1786:

‘The poor begin to glean wheat. The country looks very rich, being finely diversified with crops of corn of various sorts, and colours.’

John Keats, To Autumn – 1819:

‘Who hath not seen thee oft amid they store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook… ‘

Chapter the First:

Bread of Heaven, the Staff of Life,

A biblical motif of justice

For the miller who grinds so small –

And should thee not eat thy bread,

‘By the sweat of thy brow’?

Chapter the Second:

Thus, the Stroudwater food riots of the 18^th and early 19^th century

Have a provenance ground in Time Immemorial,

Hence the banner:

‘We might as well be hanged as starved’,

When poor harvests, high food prices,

Dealers, middlemen, speculators, and ‘corn-jobbers’,

All conspired to exploit shortages for private profit,

As local labourers, shepherds, spinners, weavers, smiths and so on,

Observed the transport of local grain to far-off markets

(Such as Lechlade, bound for London),

With a perturbed sense of injustice.

Chapter the Third:

So horns were blown, banners raised, flags waved,

Crowds gathered with their chosen ‘regulators’,

Gathering in lanes, fields and inns,

No malice aforethought,

But a spontaneous reaction after arguments over prices,

Hunger, want, profit and justice –

A crowd swelling

To determine prices at market,

In the city of Gloucester, the towns of Stroud and Cirencester,

Calling at village, hamlet, granary, mill, baker’s, huckster’s, factor’s, and warehouse,

Taking stocks of food such as corn, flour, bread, bacon, cheese, butter,

Paying a ‘fair’ price, for redistribution,

Sometimes destroying the flour of speculators,

As at a mill at Painswick;

Crowds, regulating themselves,

Sometimes a thousand strong,

As on the march from Stroud to Cirencester,

Across the fields of Rodborough and Minchinhampton,

Gathering supporters from Thrupp, Brimscombe, Chalford,

Eastcombe, Bisley, Oakridge, Frampton Mansell,

Sapperton and Coates,

Sub-dividing into smaller groups to comb the valley bottoms,

An algorithm of determination,

Whilst others listened to the tattoo of horses,

Observing the troops moving in detachment,

Lines of Stroud Scarlet moving with officers’ orders,

And there, the sheriff with his javelin men:

‘On Friday last a Mobb was rais’d in these parts by the blowing of Horns &c consisting entirely of the lowest of the people such as weavers, mecanicks, labourers, prentices and boys, &c’,

‘They proceeded to a gristmill near the town … cutting open Baggs of Flower and giving & carrying it away and destroying corn &c’,

But in the main, Sheriff Dalloway said, they ‘behaved with great regularity and decency where they were not opposed and violence where they was; but pilferd very little, which to prevent, they will not now suffer women and boys to go with them.’

Chapter the Fourth:

The crowd,

Observing a fall in prices,

As landlords and gentry responded to the crowds,

By suggesting to their tenant farmers, that corn should be sent straight to market,

The gentry,

Watching ringleaders claim that they were in fact maintaining the law

Rather than breaking it:

‘Many that are under sentence of death thought they were doing a meritorious act at the very moment they were forfeiting their lives’,

As bread and corn were intercepted not just on road and in lane,

Stopping cart or heavy waggon,

But also on canal,

Inland navigations,

And the River Severn,

When barges laden with corn would be boarded.

Chapter the Fifth:

I sometimes walk around Ruscombe, near Stroud,

When I pop out from school at lunchtime,

And there in the lane is Baker’s Cottage –

In 1766, Hester and Jane Pitt pushed Mary Cooke off her horse,

And made off with a good baker’s dozen of 16 loaves,

Just here;

And when I bike up to Minchinhampton after school,

If I concentrate hard, then I can hear the noise of the cheese rioting

At Farmer Collett’s,

When Mary Hillier shouted to her comrades:

‘Mr Butt was come home & had fired a gun and killed two children’,

‘Come back and pull down the house’,

And when the High Street in Stroud is deserted at night,

Do I glimpse Sarah Franklyn and her husband, John?

Stealing out of a shop door,

Their laps filled with glue and soap and candles and tapers and other sundry items?

‘You do, sir. We did do the stealing sir and John was transported to America with a seven-year sentence for grand larceny. As John’s wife, sir, I was held to be not responsible for my actions and so was acquitted, much to my surprise, sir. But any pleasure was tarnished by the loss of my husband, sir. Although that melancholy is nought to the anguish I went through the night before our sentencing when we were in Gloucester Gaol. My mind was an open thoroughfare and turnpike for phantoms all through that night and the only tolls they paid was to fray my nerves.

I saw us both on the execution cart, making our doleful way through the crowded lanes of Brookthorpe, Standish, Stonehouse, Ebley, Cainscross, Stroud and Rodborough, and so, eventually, to the gallows and gibbet standing tall at Tom Long’s Post.

And there, in their thousands, all clad in their solemn Sunday best or their starched white smocks, silent as the grave, stood our well wishers. And there in front was the Sheriff, Mr Dalloway, with his javelin men in all of their finery too, clip clopping their way with their customary pomp and condescension. And then we came, the two of us in the cart, with the vicar and the hangman. Then behind us, the special constables and the gaoler.

The cart inched its way to the gallows, where the noose was placed around my husband’s neck. I was instructed to drop my kerchief when my husband gave me the nod that he was ready. The vicar got himself ready and I heard him whisper to the gaoler that he should pull on John’s feet should my husband kick in his death throes, as he dangled, after the cart rolled on. I was then asked what I would like to see done with John’s body: the gibbet or dissection by the surgeons.

I was later told that having spent a considerable time screaming and crying in my sleep, I then seemed to compose myself, sweat dripping down my clammy brow, opened my eyes, and sat bolt upright as one possessed and spoke these words as if in a trance:

The assembly gathers all around

From hills and valleys nearby Stroud,

A ghastly hangman is the host

At Rodborough Common’s Tom Long Post,

The throng is reverent, full of fear,

The condemned man now sheds a tear,

All is silent as the kerchief falls,

The cart rolls off – and Heaven calls.

As I said to you, sir, the night before was far worse than even that lamentable day of judgement.’

Chapter the Sixth:

I shall take a walk to Tom Long’s Post and pay my respects to Sarah and John Franklyn and recall her over zealous imagination on that tortured night in Gloucester Gaol. There will be cars and golfers rather than phantoms and gallows. But I may catch a glimpse of the ghosts of another crowd, with their banners and flags and corn-emblems of justice, on their determined march to Cirencester market.

Books and articles used in this recreation and reimagining:

British Trades Unionism 1750-1850, John Rule;

Moral Economy and Popular Protest – ed. Randall and Charlesworth;

Customs in Common, EP Thompson;

‘For the Benefit of Example’: Crime-Scene Executions in England 1720-1830, Steve Poole;

Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory

Creating Memorials Building Identities The Politics of Memory in the Black Atlantic

(Alan Price Liverpool University Press 2012)

http://www.britishhistory.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol11/pp184-190

There is an information plaque in Stroud:

The Shambles

‘Here is Stroud’s market, traditionally a place of plenty. But in 1766 it was the focus for bread riots by hungry Stroud cloth workers who couldn’t afford the price of a loaf. These rioters were severely put down by the Sheriff of Gloucestershire and his ‘javelin’ men – and the ringleaders hanged.

Perhaps these rioters inspired a group of Stroud boys to string up one of their friends – nine-year old Alexander Ball – as a prank. Luckily for him, he was cut down just in time by a passer-by. And luckily for posterity too, for he went on to become one of Nelson’s bravest and most talented naval officers, Sir J.A. Ball, who captured Malta and defended it against a French siege – achievements celebrated in Coleridge’s poem ‘The Friend’.

Four paragraphs then follow about the surrounding buildings and architecture, and then a chronicle-list of dates and events.

Raphael Samuel wrote how heritage and tradition can become ‘an expressive totality … projecting a unified set of meanings which are impervious to challenge … a fixed narrative which allows neither sub-text nor counter-readings … ‘, but, ‘History is an allegorical as well as … a mimetic art … We find occult meanings in apparently simple truths’.

“Non-fiction uses facts to help us see the lies. Fiction uses metaphor to help us see the truth.”

Thoughts derived from a reading of

Creating Memorials Building Identities The Politics of Memory in the Black Atlantic

(Alan Price Liverpool University Press 2012)

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 –

So how do we create 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…

The View From The Rock in NYC

The sign said that you could
‘Travel anywhere free in Manhattan for ten dollars’,
The best example of Marcusian unification of opposites,
Marxian false consciousness, and oxymoronic logic
I’ve seen anywhere;
But those advertisements help soften your mind
As a sort of hors d’oeuvre to Times Square,
The Rockefeller Centre, Rockefeller Plaza
And the Rockefeller world synecdoche,
Where the present tense meets Fritz Lang’s Metropolis,
Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984,
Where a cathedral of capitalism,
A tribute to consumption
And a monument to hedonism
Transport and process the market,
Beneath the giant biblical homily:
‘Wisdom and Knowledge are the Stability of thy Times’.

Nature and the world are playgrounds here,
Playgrounds to be conquered:
An ice skating rink, the flags of the world,
Grinning shoppers clutching their bags …
Queues for the Top of the Rock,
Queue for a view,
Where you pay for a view:
A panorama for 30 dollars,
360 degrees for 30 dollars,
The Empire State Building and towering icon upon icon
(But no biblical reference to the Tower of Babel),
Air conditioning – such a term – working everywhere overtime,
Oh look! There’s Central Park,
But too high to see the wood for the trees;
ANY
Point of view,
As long as you pay for it,
As long as it’s filtered
Through the Rockefeller propaganda machine:
You wouldn’t know from your visit
That he was a Social Darwinist,
That his firm Standard Oil,
Was assailed in the courts with anti-trust suits –
Even capitalist ethics questioned his monopolistic practices,
Who would know that Standard Oil
Waged war on trade unions and the Wobblies,
For when you enter the building,
Having been assailed by Disneyfication
Meet and greet performers,
A giant information panel tells us how grateful
A trade union leader was in 1932
For the construction of the building,
It brought work to the poverty stricken victims
Of the Wall Street Crash:
Rockefeller as beneficent philanthropist:
If it wasn’t for the rich, then the poor wouldn’t have any jobs,
This is what my gran used to tell me …
Outside St Patrick’s Cathedral,
Beggars on the streets and on the subway,
An incontinent young man in a wheel chair,
Head bent down,
Travelling God knows where
And for how long past Grand Central –
If you need private health care
Here for your physical health,
What of mental health?
How many mentally ill people did we see in the streets?
Shouting at no one in particular and nothing that made sense,
At crossing ways and subway entrances;
How many did we see aimlessly pushing trolleys,
Laden with black bin bags of clothing looking for a doorway,
Or some warm shelter for the night;
How many homeless did we see queuing for a bed for the night?
Sometimes you have to be in the gutter
To see the wood for the trees,
Rather than on top of the world,
You get false consciousness up there,
It’s a Fairy Tale of New York.

So, will this fog be gone by mid-day? No, I wouldn’t think so. Won’t the sun burn the fog off? Not really. No. 

Off we go. 

Cows, pastures, more cows, and a few sheep later. I’ve enjoyed yet another day of  rainy-day walking in the local area. My guests apologize again for the bad weather but I point out that no weather is bad weather when you’re from Boston, and it’s January. Actually I’m from north of Boston. North enough of Boston to think that fog, rain and temperatures above freezing are considered nice weather. I am talking REALLY enjoyable. There’s no ice underfoot and I can feel my face. To me that’s nice weather for January. 

My first day in Stroud began with a familiar trip, straight up hill to Stroud cemetery, with my furry friend, Hector. I’d been there before of course, but I left the directions up to Hector. Which way Hector, left or right? Hector was giving me definitive answers until I asked him how old the church was. About that he was more unclear, so we both just stood there and stared for a minute. I was rather pleased because Hector seemed to really see that church for the first time, you know. We headed back in through the arch, to find a plaque. Left, no right, left, back out again. Where is the damn plaque? I sensed annoyance from Hector. You Americans! Make up your mind for goodness sake. I need to head home and check my pee mail before the fam gets back. 

No plaque. Seriously Stroud, you need plaques. I know you have just loads of old stuff. But add a plaque for us new-worlders. Please. In America we add plaques to everything that makes it over 100 years. We’re just so excited when that happens. 

Day two. Out to dinner and then a nice walk home. In the dark. The long way around. Wow, those views are just so fantastic at night, and so little fog! A few roads are “murder-her-and-throw-the-body-in-the-woods” dark but that makes the walk more fun. I’m not going to tell anyone how cute Stroud is until I’ve bought myself a little cottage overlooking those twinkling lights of downtown. Then we can post this review and increase house values.

When I wake up my quads are a tiny bit stiff. Last time I felt that was walking the streets of San Francisco. Maybe it was all the walking in heels? I have a suitcase full of shoes but none of them appropriate for Stroud. 

Day three, headed to Cirencester to buy sensible shoes. And a shoebrush for the mud. 

Waiting For A Steed

There aren’t many Americans who can claim they have been to four, yes four events at Chavenage House. I am talking EVENTS – ball gowns, cocktail hour, formal photographs, champagne-swigging events. The whole 9-yards. I have the distinction of being the only American to have that honour. (Write-Ins entries will be accepted.) I keep waiting in the courtyard for the handsome titled Englishman to ride in, but when I wander outside I usually just get asked to have a smoke with the 20-something crowd.

Whenever I go to Chavenage I have the same experience I do when visiting a beautiful old church that has been converted into a restaurant. I wonder if somehow that old structure groans to find itself in this embarrassing position. Like an 80-year-old former high school beauty queen finding herself in the food pantry line, or foodbanks, as you call them in the UK. She had such an auspicious start in life and never pictured ending up in this sorry spot. She just figured her life would stay grand based on her looks alone. But time marches on and sadly enough, keeping up your good looks takes time and money. A facelift only takes you so far. More foundational work must be done.  The modern look changes you somehow and it’s never quite the same. Your value becomes only a link to the past. Stay cheerful, updated, and make money or no one will want you anymore.

Gentle readers may ask why I have been to four events at Chavenage, but just ask around town and someone will point out the traditional 16th century cottage where Hector lives. He has an ordinary family life, other than the blow-out party every five years. Someone’s always getting married or having a birthday worthy of dusting off the formal wear and dance shoes. Our cabby says he takes someone to Chavenage every week, and yet in his confusion we get dropped off at the stables and mistaken for the help. 

Time To Go Home 

I’m sorry. HOW much is a rail ticket to Paddington from Stroud? I blink, staring at the register. It says 101, but surely it must cost more than a pound and a pence. But it wasn’t; it was one hundred and one. I blink again. I’m sorry, don’t you have socialized, subsidized railways? What the hell? I can get into Boston for 15 bucks on the train. It’s how much? Seriously? (Looks like someone’s let the Tories back in.)

I’m sure gentle readers will remember that Monday. You know, the Monday of the tube strike, mud slide, heavy fog at Heathrow, motorcycle accident on the highway? That is how the day of Trains Planes and Automobiles started and before it ended I had a four hour journey to the airport that involved to die version buses, two full pat downs, two, take everything out, luggage searches, and one confiscated cosmetic bag.  Headed for 3 days of New York business meetings without anti-perspirant or make-up. That always impresses the NY business crowd. 20 hours later I land in New York, in eye-tearing cold with only a raincoat. At least I have sensible shoes now.

Has it been 5-years yet? 

Note from the editor:

Many thanks to Mel for penning this – btw, I think Chalford is about 100 miles from Paddington by rail. Mel’s one way ticket would cost her about a £ a mile …