Category: Counter-Heritage

What If?

What If?

What if the soldiers hadn’t fired

From the shutters of the Westgate Hotel,

But downed their weapons and deserted instead,

To join the ranks of the democrats?

 

What if George Shell hadn’t endured an agonising death

Through three long hours,

But was welcomed into the Hotel instead,

To fraternise with the special constables.

What if Newport had been taken,

The iron works and collieries too,

The canals and tram roads and turnpikes,

In common ownership.

What if the mail hadn’t got through from Newport,

So that Chartists rose from all over England,

In common cause for the Charter,

And the Sacred Month of strikes.

 

What if soldiers in all their barracks and billets,

Refused to move against their comrades,

Disobeyed their officers and orders,

But made common cause instead.

What if the Charter had become law in 1839?

Whatever next?

Just as the world copied the first industrial revolution,

And copied the habits of British capitalism,

So it would have copied the first industrial revolution,

And the manners of British socialism,

The world would have followed the example of British socialism.

That is how important the Newport Rising was:

Ever Remember the 4th of November

And those anonymous burial plots.

 

A Gift from Newport to Stroud

So here I am in my front room in Rodborough, Stroud;

I looked out of my front room window,

To look for John Frost’s ghost climbing up Rodborough Hill,

3,000 gathered up there on the common,

Where I so often picture them,

John Frost on the horse drawn cart,

Addressing the crowds.

I took an evening walk to gaze at Sugar Loaf,

Far beyond the silver Severn,

Thinking of Stroud’s Five Valleys,

And the valleys of Newport,

The rush of rivers,

Topography, Industry,

The rush of history …

A few days later at the Chartist Convention:

There we were, like two old Chartists

Plotting in the churchyard at St. Woolas,

John, puffing on a roll up, like it was an old clay pipe,

Me, talking scripts, John Frost, cameras and our film,

Right by the Chartist memorial plaque,

When you, Pat, suddenly appeared, smiling,

With a gift, a volume of Thomas Cooper’s

The Purgatory of Suicides,

Written in prison after the Plug Riots:

Close to a thousand Spenserian stanzas

Of ‘Prison Rhyme’,

Expressing the radicalism

Of ‘The Hungry Forties’

(‘SLAVES, toil no more!’),

Ideas that made Disraeli stop and ponder,

And influenced Charles Kingsley’s Alton Locke,

Let alone thousands of Chartists by their firesides.

I was quite overwhelmed –The fading afternoon sun, The memorial, The autumnal leaves,

The setting, The generosity of the gift, The utter unexpectedness of such a gift, The sensitive symbolism of such a gift –Tears welled up in my eyes, And stayed with me though the afternoon twilight.

After I left the Chartist Convention,

I travelled by train under a Hunter’s Moon,

The Severn a floodtide of moonlight,

Wondering whose hands had first opened that book,

Whose fingers had first turned over those pages,

Whose eyes had first scanned the words by candle-light …

Reading aloud and sharing the words,

As I shall do to link space and time:

Newport and Stroud and Past and Present.

The Pubs and Inns of the 1839 Newport Rising

The Pubs and Inns of the 1839 Newport Rising

I sing a song of tram-roads, canals, and turnpikes,

A song of collieries, iron works and tin-works,

Of forge and smith and furnace,

Of chapel and beer house and wayside inn,

A song of club and pub and tavern

And working people’s societies,

A song of Union and Prudence and Energy,

Of horns and drums and flag and pennant.

I sing a hymn to all your Chartist Lodges,

And a hymn to all your Chartist pubs:

The Greyhound at Pontilanfraith,

The King Crispin at Brynmawr,

The Prince of Wales, Commercial Street, Newport,

The Star in Dukestown,

The Miners Arms near Nelson,

The Navigation Inn at Crumlin,

The Royal Oak at Blaina,

The Coach and Horses at Blackwood,

The King’s Head at Pontypool,

The Ship and Pilot at Newport,

The Bush Inn, Newport,

The Bristol House, Pontypool,

The Rolling Mill Inn, Blaina,

The Colliers Arms, Llanfabon-Llancaich,

The Colliers Arms, Nelson,

The Globe Inn, Tredegar,

The Horse and Jockey, Dukestown,

The Angel, Maesycwmmer,

The Maypole, Crosspenmaen,

The Boot, betwixt Ystrad Bridge and the Rhymney tram-road,

The Lamb and Flag beer-house at Blackwood,

The Old Bridge, Risca,

The Welsh Oak, Pontymister,

The Welch Oak, on the outskirts of Newport,

The Bush, Nantyglo,

The Six Bells, Stow Hill,

The Red Lion, Tredegar,

The Wyvern Inn, Sirhowy,

The Coach and Horses, Brynithel.

The Waterloo, Newport,

The Royal Oak, Mill Street, Newport,

The Trewythen Arms Hotel, Llanidloes,

The Red Lion, Sirhowy:

This is the song I sing.

Stroud and Newport Conjoined

Newport and Stroud Conjoined

So here I am in The Prince Albert,

After musing in late afternoon light

In my front room in Coronation Road,

Up the road from the Queen Victoria,

And the Lord John in Russell Street,

Reading a letter to the Home Secretary, Lord John Russell,

from Henry Burgh:

“Rodborough, March 29th, 1839, 6p.m. My Lord I acknowledge receipt of Your Lordship’s Directions this morning. I have taken measures to have them put into Execution. Some of the Chartists came to Stroud yesterday Evening, and today about quarter past two about 500 marched up Rodborough Hill by my house with 9 Flags and a strange Band of Musick…I have stopped the Beer Shops and Publick Houses…There are several policemen placed…”

Newport’s John Frost was selected as the prospective Chartist candidate for the next election in Stroud at this meeting,

Selected to oppose Stroud’s MP, Lord John Russell, the Home Secretary –

And so, my wandering through time and space

In South Wales –

The pubs, the inns and my imagination,

Had begun in my own front room:

Before I decided to walk up to the Albert,

To look for John Frost’s ghost climbing up Rodborough Hill,

3,000 gathered up there on the common,

Where I so often picture them:

John Frost on the horse drawn cart,

Addressing the crowds,

The People’s Charter within their grasp;

The sun was setting,

My favourite time,

So, I got up out of the chair for a constitutional:

An evening walk to the common,

To gaze at Sugar Loaf,

Seventy miles as the crow flies,

Far beyond the silver Severn,

Thinking of Stroud’s Five Valleys,

And the valleys beyond Newport,

The rush of rivers,

Topography, Industry,

The rush of history …

But the next day took me away from my home,

On holiday to St. David’s,

And here I walked by streams and springs and rivers,

Woodlands, orchards and pastures,

Along the raging sea’s margins,

Across rocks and cliff tops,

By holy wells and cathedral bells,

At autumn twilight time,

With red furnace sunsets,

And burnished cumulus clouds,

Like some fiery iron works in the sky,

With coal black sky-scape splashes

Down there on the far horizon

Of Storm Brian’s maelstrom,

Trying to hear, in the wind,

The footfall of colliers, smiths, foundry-men, furnace-men,

Wheelwrights, carpenters, miners,

Women from the kitchen, laundry, loom and spinning wheel;

Then tracing a finger line on a Newport OS map,

Trying to forage my way through Time,

In search of that dreamscape Silurian Republic.

A week later I scuffed through the fallen leaves,

To catch the train from Stroud to Newport,

White hills west to Wales in the early morning mist,

The first frost of the season:

I arrived in Newport before nine,

Keen to see how the Rising would feature

To the casual passer-by, in the streets,

Going about the business of the day:

I followed my Chartist Heritage Trail map,

Crossed a couple of main roads at pelicans,

Nipped through a car park and was in the centre

In a couple of minutes,

And was straight into the centre of

‘The invention of tradition’:

The Queen’s Hotel, with an imperial Victoria,

Not the young queen of the Rising;

A statue of Sir Charles Morgan of Tredegar Baronet,

A memorial ‘erected AD 1850’,

‘The man whose “benevolence they admired

and whose loss they deplore”’;

Blue plaques from the Newport Civic Trust,

Lauding architecture and design,

But the former Six Bells lies dilapidated and unrecorded,

The only cottages standing on Stow Hill

That witnessed that unique and remarkable march,

Stand mutely and unremarked,

While passers-by in the street of whom I asked directions,

(All generations and backgrounds)

Were mostly unaware of the Six Bells or the workhouse

(‘Oh! I suppose it’s where the hospital is. You’re right!’),

But the memorial at St. Woolos,

Is, of course, deeply moving and arresting,

And, like the sculptures outside the Westgate Hotel

(‘UNION’ ‘PRUDENCE’ ‘ENERGY’),

Is a late twentieth century memorial to the Rising,

Where art and the past and the here and now

Intertwine in serendipitous ways:

The Chartist mural on the hotel front door,

Colourfully recreating the scene of November 1839,

Is ripped by a real security padlock,

Which juts out through the picture,

Keeping the covered boarded up doors beneath,

Safely locked shut against any contemporary George Shells

Seeking ingress by the Vaping Poundland empty shops,

In some sort of indeliberate trompe l’oeil;

Chartist drapes and tapestries fluttered in the wind,

On the side of the Baltica Lounge,

Opposite Argos:

‘GET WHAT YOU WANT TODAY’, ‘WE’RE NEVER FAR AWAY’

‘WE’VE MOVED’

While a solitary dog, tied up in the porch of the hotel,

Provided a mis en scene mirror

To the dog in the mural fleeing the gunfire,

The bloodshed echoed by the ketchup

On the wrappings strewn on the pavement;

Shoppers scurried past, seeking their bargains,

On past the pawnbrokers and BET FRED,

Past the maps of the shops at John Frost Square:

No memory here, nor near his birthplace or draper’s shop,

But back near the Westgate Hotel,

On the hotel side of H. Samuel’s clock,

Time stood still – the clock face lacked its hands –

But pointed the way to beyond the veil:

‘It was said of one man that he lay dying under the portico of the mayor’s house for up to one and a half hours, pleading for help and receiving none. Until the authorities in the Westgate decreed it otherwise, time stood still.’

(David J. V. Jones),

So, I sat down by the banks and the mobile phone shops,

Reading David Jones’ book on the Newport Rising,

Seeing the occasional grandparent stop to point at the mural,

Stop to explain the sculptures to another generation,

On the first day of the half term,

Walked back up past the Pen and Wig,

To study the memorial to the Monmouthshire Regiment,

Heroes of Ypres,

Wondering how many of those men did not have the vote …

And then met Pat, who showed me the milestone in the street:

To Downing Street 145 miles,

And talked of the plans to develop Stow Hill,

With Chartist and Citizenship memorials;

We walked and talked,

Had a cup of tea,

And I returned home on the train,

To scribble up my notes,

And develop my pub pilgrimage ideas

About an Ale Trail Constitutional,

A recreation of a Rising march,

That could have changed the constitution.

Thursday December 17th saw me back on the GWR,

Rain-streaked carriage windows and leafless trees,

Bedraggled sheep, pasture and hedgerows,

Sodden brown earth ploughed arable fields,

Commuters checking weather reports about Storm Caroline –

But the sun was out when we got to Newport,

Sheets and towels billowing on the line

In the back gardens of the terraced streets;

I caught the X24 to Pontypool,

Drivers bending the rules and not charging me:

‘It’s an English pass. We’re supposed to charge.

But no worries mate. On you get.’

Young men behind me discussing drugs, prison,

Rehabilitation and Universal Credit,

And avidly reading books too:
‘There’s worse hobbies innit?’

I made my way to the excellent museum

(‘We have papers in our archive library showing that the Kings Head was in Crane Street; unfortunately it was not possible to pin-point the exact location. Trade directories merely indicate Crane Street, with no indentifying number. The Kings Head disappears completely from the Trade Directories in the 1870w’)

Just down from the UKIP offices –

‘I didn’t know we had a museum in Pontypool.’

And if those young men didn’t know of the museum,

Then how difficult it is to create for them

A parallel Chartist universe

Of rain-swept men marching through the night,

Through what is now a present tense landscape

Of roundabouts, dual carriageways,

Traffic jams, queues and traffic lights –

This is not a landscape for a pedestrian,

Let alone an ambulant dreamer:

Cars run past the signs tied to the lampposts:

‘NEED WORK? £450!’

This question of how to recreate and present

Our Chartist heritage so as to engage,

Inform, educate and entertain,

Preoccupied me when I returned to Newport,

Walking past the betting shop offering

Forty pounds’ worth of free bets,

Walking past the beggars in the shop doorways,

Walking past the sites of the Chartist ghost pubs,

For Commercial Street is for Christmas presents today,

And the Ghost of Christmas Present,

Not the Ghost of Chartism Past:

The traffic warden issuing tickets

Just near where George Shell fell …

‘”Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.” “Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge. “Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again. “And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge.’

 

 

Chartist Festival

We are planning to hold a ‘Chartist Festival’ on May 17/18 as a fundraiser for the Heavens and the Trinity Rooms.

As many readers know, in 1839, the last armed insurrection on British soil took place: the Newport Rising of 5,000 Chartists, led by John Frost. He had been selected earlier in the year to be the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Chartists in Stroud at a meeting on Rodborough Common.

Each November, a torchlit procession at the cathedral in Newport commemorates the uprising and aftermath.

We in Stroud have done much to commemorate the mass meetings of Chartists in the Stroud area in 1839. There has been a community film. I received a commission from Newport to write a booklet and the textual piece has been performed both in Stroud and in the cathedral and a pub in Newport.

The links do not stop there: the Stroud Red Band were part of the Newport procession in November 2024 – and that visit has led me to the proposal below. A joint fundraiser for the Trinity Rooms and the Heavens.

An exhibition/festival starting with a morning walk to and along Selsley Common to commemorate the May 1839 Chartist meeting held there, attended by 5,000 people. Katie McCue to read up there in situ.

In the afternoon up The Prince Albert: the community film running continuously (people dropping in as and when).

Posters and photographs and words around the walls to contextualise, inform, educate and entertain. The Big Red Band.

An evening performance – poems and song before the main event: The commissioned Newport-Stroud performance piece.

Invitations have been and will be sent out to Newport and Bristol to build further links too.

We imagine, at the moment, that entry will be donations/pay what you can rather than ticketed.

Sunday will  feature Chinese Burn and The Forgetting Curve: both have recorded songs about the Selsley Hill meeting (Chinese Burn in situ) and both will, no doubt, include these in their sets. Their two Chartist songs were based on original Chartist songs and hymns.

More to come as time’s winged chariot does its usual job.

Take a Walk in my Boots

Take a Walk in my Boots

Stroud Walking Football Club

(SWFC)

 

History doesn’t have to be about the great and the famous and the extraordinary. It can be about ordinary people too. For it’s true to say that ordinary lives are extraordinary too: it’s how you look at it – as William Blake said: ‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand, And Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.’

Well, at ‘Take a Walk in my Boots’ at Broady’s in the High Street in Stroud, we don’t reveal a life and a history in an hour, but we do something similar in 40 minutes or so per person.

But what is this ‘Take a Walk in my Boots’ of which I speak, I hear you say or think.

The idea is that a member of SWFC takes the stage and a mic with another player who has a mic: one asks the questions and the other answers to reveal the backstory of their life. And what’s so weird and wonderful about that you ask? Hasn’t the format of This is your Life been on television since the distant days of two channels in black & white? Doesn’t contemporary television cosset itself and its viewers with the chat show format?

Well, this is what makes it different: we are a group of some thirty or so people who are all at least fifty; mostly in their sixties, with a smattering of over seventies. And we all play walking football at Stratford Park in Stroud with the Stroud Walking Football Club. This was originally set up to assist people with their mental and physical health – but like Topsy …

Some us play three times a week; some twice and some just the once. Some individuals are connected with others by family, the past and the Venn diagram of seven handshakes, but, in the main, people only know each other through the medium of the football match and a chinwag before and after playing. Thus, knowledge of another player is almost literally and metaphorically skin deep.

We are, in a sense, a company of strangers.

So, opening up about our lives before an audience is revelatory.

When I witnessed the first presentation on November 6th 2024 from the audience and then when I witnessed the audience from the viewpoint of the questioner, I felt as though I and we were in a Ken Loach film where ‘ordinary’ people do the acting or in a Channel4 documentary of yore. It felt almost like a hyperreality and that was nothing to do with the lager I was sipping. It really was a People’s History William Blake moment: this truly was the much-vaunted beautiful game: but, oh so different from the usual meanings invoked by that trope.

And as I sat there as an interlocutor: listening and questioning and responding and extemporizing, whilst also studying and reacting to the audience, I began to think that this oral and consequently ephemeral personal history should be given some textual permanence. It was too valuable to lose: it was a Blakean moment where a world was seen in a grain of sand.

Hence this piece that you are reading at the moment.

In conclusion, so as to give all of this a bit of intellectual and historiographical heft, a few insights from Jonathan Meades’ An Encyclopaedia of Myself on the subject of memory and recall:

‘Every time I write once upon a time I am, anyway, already exhuming the disputable, conjuring a photocopy of a faded print made from a detrited negative. I am striving to distinguish the original from its replays. So why add to the store of the provisional? The forms and shades of what used to be are already hideously mutable, every act of recall is both an erosion and an augmentation. I remember therefore I reshape.’

My reply to that question: ‘So why add to the store of the provisional?’ is that we are recalling the past collectively and actively in the moment. This is no archival studious exploration in some candle-lit garret. This is individual recall as a collective experience. It’s epiphanic. It’s hyperreality.

In Broady’s. In the High Street. In Stroud. On a Wednesday night.

And as Raphael Samuel put it in Theatres of Memory Past and Present in Contemporary Culture,

‘…history is not the prerogative of the historian, nor even, as postmodernism contends, a historian’s “invention”. It is rather, a social form of knowledge…’

Penultimately, here’s Hilary Mantel on that hoary old chestnut, ‘What is History?’ ‘… history is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record. It’s the plan of the positions taken, when we to stop the dance to note them down. It’s what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it – a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth. It is no more “the past” than a birth certificate is a birth, or a script is a performance, or a map is a journey. It is the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them. It’s no more than the best we can do, and often it falls short of that.’

Finally. William Faulkner: “The past is not dead. It is not even past yet.”

So, take a walk in our boots and see what happens.

A People’s History Chapter 4

A MISCELLLANY OF HISTORY

A TEXTUAL WEAVING OF A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

A TEXTUAL SAMPLER

Chapter Four

 A few short years after our walk along Stroud’s High Street in the previous chapter, William Cobbett made his way through Stroudwater, as recorded in Rural Rides:

“From AVENING I came on through NAILSWORTH, WOODCHESTER, and RODBOROUGH, to this place. These villages lie on the sides of a narrow and deep valley, with a narrow stream of water running down the middle of it, and this stream turns the wheels of a great many mills and sets of machinery for the making of woollen-cloth. The factories begin at AVENING, and are scattered all the way down the valley. There are steam-engines as well as water-powers. The work and the trade is so flat, that, in, I should think, much more than a hundred acres of ground, which I have seen today, covered with rails, or racks, for the drying of cloth, I do not think that I have seen one single acre where the racks had cloth upon them. The workmen do not get half wages; great numbers are thrown on the parish; but … Here are a series of spots, every one of which a lover of landscapes would love to have painted. Even the buildings of the factories are not ugly … At present, indeed, this valley suffers; and, though cloth will always be wanted, there will yet be much suffering here, while at ULY and other places, they say that the suffering is great indeed.”

 

Now let us travel south in the county, courtesy of Trevor Simpson on one of his Bristol Rides, to Kingswood.

Kingswood Miners

‘Coal mining is recorded as taking place in the Kingswood area from at least the 13th century. By the end of the 17th century the community had developed a fiery reputation. Lawless and ungovernable or potential revolutionaries?

Most lived in the forest which gave its name to the area. It was seen as being independent and outside of societal norms. It was also largely impenetrable to the authorities across the border in Bristol and even more so to those in Gloucester to whom they were supposedly answerable.

The miners did venture out when their livelihoods were threatened by economic downturns or legislation which seemed to serve the same end, for example, the Turnpike Act 1731. Such actions invariably led to trips into Bristol with violent outcomes to and from the miners. A bit like Orgreave.

Throughout its existence the Kingswood coalfield’s main consumer was the ever-growing city of Bristol. By the end of the 18th century times were more settled, the forest had largely disappeared and the arrival of Methodism had changed the nature of Kingswood (although the impact of Methodism has tended to be overstated). Mining continued until the first half of the 20th century when it became no longer viable.’

I asked Trevor if he thought Bristol’s demand for coal in the 18th century was fuelled by sugar refining expansion rather than population growth. He replied: ‘It fed the pre-industrial machine of which sugar and tobacco would have been a feature. Glass for wine etc. The population of Bristol in 1700 was 20k and in 1801 was 64k. In 1901 it was 330k.’

Post script from Trevor:

‘Hanham, near the River Avon, was also a mining village. Its football team, Hanham Athletic, still has the nickname, ‘The Miners’.

 

 

 

Stroud Walking Football and the Heavens

Ye Stroude Walking Football and Ye Heavens

 It is reported that members of Ye Stroude Walking Footballe intend to gather for a ramble of Ye Heavens on Sunday October 27th (the happie daye when ye sun dialles go back an houre) at eleven o’clocke of the morning for an houre’s strolle and disquisition on ye historye of Ye Heavens before retiring to ye publicke house knowne as Ye Crowne and Sceptre. Althoughe footballe matches have been utilised by ye labouring classes to expresse their oppositionne to enclosure’s march of progresse by ye tearing downe of hedges and fences, the purpose of Ye Stroude Walking Footballe’s meetinge is for an antiquarianne perigrinationne and ye raising of ye fundes for the purchase of shares so as to save Ye Heavens for ye Publicke. Maye Godde preserve such goodlie kickers of the pigge’s bladdere.

It is reported that ye goalkeeper of Ye Stroude Walking Footballe has said that he shall rewarde those who showe their faces by ‘buyinge ye firste rounde.’ And maye Godde save suche generous custodians of ye onione bagge.

 

The Heavens in the Snow

Walking into the Past
On a winter’s day with friends;
The Heavens, where Bisley sat
In the cleavage of the hills.

Sunlight and clean bright water
Pooled together to concentrate life,
To bring people, sheep, grass and stone;
Final gifting, leats, to complete this idyllic painting.

But nostalgia has rubbed out the old noises,
The clatterings, natterings and smashings,
The belchings and smellings
Of smoke and dust from frost cracked stones.

From wheels grinding and spinning,
Weaving and teasing out life
From Blake’s little lambs
‘Over the stream and o’er the mead.’

Time passes, erases and changes
Those borders and walls, that noise and smoke,
Leaving only brambles and twists of the stream
Where we clung to life on the sunny side of the hill.

(Martin Hoffman)

The Heavens

The snow wandered into Stroud on a gusting wind,
Leaving a Lowry scene of red brick factories,
Serrated roofs, and mouldering mills,
All garlanded with icicles.

There was a silence that yearned for horse hooves.
Children tobogganed down car-free roads,
Matchstick women, men and tufted dogs
Tottered along the freezing canal towpath.

The fields at The Heavens were shrouded,
Though Thomas Bewick branches
Etched a January-tree-tapestry,
Across the muffled, white clad fields.

We walked down Daisy Bank and Spider Lane,
Past medieval window panes and casements,
Beyond the spring line below Field House,
To walk a footpath, once the main route to Lypiatt.

We marked hidden ruins by the first cottages,
The search for water and daylight,
Obvious in the silver afternoon sky
And spring line emerald fronds.

Sliding through the snow drifts,
We reached the site of Weyhouse Mill
And cottages, down by the fashioned slopes,
Between the bridge and the telegraph pole.

The forgotten groan of the water wheel,
And the long dead splash of the sluice,
Mournful memories in the wind,
Led us on to Widow Petett’s.

Here, the apothecary gathered waters
For tinctures and medicines,
By Fairy Spring at Turnip End Bottom,
Down by the crossing of the stream.

The hollows and brambles on the other side,
Indicated a sheep-house and springs,
Where seventeenth century residents
Had rights to water and an apple orchard.

The scattered remnants of weavers’ cottages
Came next, up there at Dry Hill,
In the woodland, above the spring line,
There by the ruined walls and wells.

We wandered on through our time line,
Crossing the stream at the water fall,
To drop down into Kinner’s Grove,
And further hidden ruins.

The rivulet was once diverted here,
To long vanished buildings on the right,
Where we sat and stared at the westward sky,
And a red-shift Neolithic sunset.

We climbed back up to Horns Road,
Lowry figures in red brick streets,
Pints of Budding in the Crown and Sceptre,
Reflecting on the past, in the here and now.

Madeleine moments in The Heavens,
The past beneath your footsteps,
For those with eyes to see, ears to hear,
And an archaeologist like Neil Baker.

The Heavens 2024 and beyond

Emma Kernahan:

‘A packed @stroudtrinityrooms on a wet and windy Sunday night to discuss the future of the Heavens Valley. The agreement to sell to the community is there but @friendsoftheheavens are in a race against time to raise the funds.

£850k is the goal. £300k has been pledged by the community, with half of those pledges realised.

A community benefit society has been formed, and two *incredible* individuals have provided bridging loans for the remainder, to purchase all 102 acres. They are locals who have taken a big risk, because they believe in the magic of this place, and want to see it belong to everyone. But we all still need to raise a *lot* of money to make this work. So – what can you do?

  1. Donate! As much or as little as you can – *every penny is crucial*.
  2. Become a shareholder – it costs £50 and you get a say in the future of the Heavens from the moment the land is purchased. You become a part of its story.
  3. We need fundraisers, admin experts, ideas people, connectors, social media types, cattle owners (really), facilitators, ecologists, lunch makers and morale boosters. If you have the skills then you’re in.
  4. Got a mad scheme or a big challenge in aid of The Heavens? Want to have a party or make buying a bit of magic land your Christmas gift this year? Tell your friends, family, colleagues! Get organising and spread the word 🙂

You don’t have to be from Stroud – we have fundraising happening in San Francisco, donations from Australia, people cheering us on from Canada to Cornwall to Cape Town.

It’s only a bit of land, someone said last night., but it’s really *important*. The fight for our access to the land is happening in so many places, and has been going on for so long. Maybe we are used to our resources being progressively sold off into private hands, rather than being offered to us, that this one bit of good news has rippled out a long way beyond a Gloucestershire valley. Idk – it really feels like a lot of eyes are on this at the moment, just waiting to see what’s possible.

Anyway, it might be a stormy night out there at the moment, but the community hall lights are definitely shining in Stroud for those who are looking x.’

 

Emma had previously posted this moving personal piece a few days before the meeting:

 

‘The owner of The Heavens has agreed to sell it to the community instead of another private landowner. Everyone in Stroud knows this already, but I wanted to put it here to mark the serious graft of the Friends of the Heavens – and also because I feel it marks something important about the fight for our relationship with the land everywhere in England, a little victory among all the battles going on right now across the country for access to what is already ours.

For the last fifteen years or so I’ve felt like this secret little valley was mine. It’s 102 acres of streams and fields and waterfalls and ruins and ancient woods and hidden Roman remains and very loud owls. In the lockdowns, I walked a groove around it, I examined every pocket, path and hedgerow portal, every day through the 52 seasons of the year here. My children have walked home from school through it, played in it, grown up surrounded by its views, listened to its noises through open windows at night.

I was away or ill for a few weeks this summer, and when I returned to my walks in the Heavens for the first time after hearing the news, I realised that what I had done before wasn’t ownership, it was permission. I was allowed to walk that land. Somebody permitted it, perhaps for now but not for ever. What I have now is belonging. The folds of these old hills will belong to my community, and we will belong to them. We have a chance to show what can be achieved when we work together and don’t take no for an answer.’

 

Now for news reports from James Felton stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk

 

‘The meeting at the Trinity Rooms … outlined the urgent need for donations … solicitors for the Heavens Valley Community Benefit Society (HVCBS) and the current owner are now discussing details of the proposed sale.

Some 65 per cent of the £300,000 … in pledges towards the £850,000 needed has already been converted into actual donations …

More than 300 people bought shares in the Heavens Valley Community Benefit Society … The push is now on to get everyone who’s pledged to convert their pledges into hard cash and find new donors.

Coordinator Martin Whiteside said: “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity … we can save the valley for ever – or possibly see it lost forever.”

He explained that if the entire £300,000 initial target can be raised soon, it will mean only £550,000 needs to be borrowed from the two local lenders. “So there is an urgent need now to get all of the £300,000 …”

Ben Challis, another member of the HVCBS coordinating team, said there were two main priorities: protecting community access and enabling biodiversity and nature recovery. “This will involve, among other things, improving and maintaining paths and looking at ways to increase accessibility …”’

 

‘HVCBS spokesperson Karen Thomas said: “Stroud people are … being incredibly generous, but we still need more to be sure of saving the land.

All the money raised in this first phase means that the Society will have to borrow less from the two local individuals who are providing bridging loans to help the community purchase the land.

Once the £300,000 milestone is passed, the HVCBS will forge ahead with raising the remaining £550,000 to repay our lenders and so secure the land for the community for ever.

I urge everyone to visit our website to find out more about becoming a shareholder and making a donation.”’

www.heavensvalley.org.uk

 

 

James Felton stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk

Ashley Loveridge Stroud Times

Update 4th October 2024

Matilda Jones (Heavens Valley Action Group Facebook page)

‘It means so much to us to have the official support of the countryside charity the CPRE …

The HVCBS has to raise £850,000 … So far, it has realised its initial target of £300,000 … The rest of the money is being provided in the form of low interest loans from two local supporters …

Once the purchase is complete the HVCBS will continue fundraising to repay the loans within two years. As lump sums are repaid to the lenders, parcels of land will be released from a “charge” that the lenders hold as security, and the land will come piece by piece into full community ownership.

HVCBS coordinator Karen Thomas said: “There has been huge interest and support from local people with more than 340 having bought shares and hundreds more having made donations. Some have offered to organise fundraising events while many more have signed up to volunteer for practical tasks …

we still have an enormous amount of money to raise, so we are urging people to dig deep to make our vision of full community ownership a reality.”‘

 

October 22 2024

Emma Kernahan:

‘We now have 9 days to put the Heavens into community ownership for ever …with just £15k to raise by the end of the month. The total amount of land in community ownership in England currently is just 250 acres. The Heavens is 102 acres. If we pull this off, we’ll be doing far more than saving an ancient Gloucestershire valley, we’ll be taking a stand for land rights everywhere. There’s this story we see all the time that ordinary people, communities, cannot take care of the land around them. That only wealthy people can be “custodians” of the land. Well, we know different …’

 

Stroud Times

‘The team behind the community purchase of the iconic Heavens Valley is on an urgent mission to raise the final £30,000 needed to fund the initial purchase. Contracts have to be exchanged by the end of October … “We are at an absolutely pivotal stage,” said Martin Whiteside … “… We urge everyone who has pledged money to fulfil their pledges if they can and we ask everyone else who can afford to, to help and donate urgently. One of the kind people supporting the purchase with a loan has stepped up to offer £5,000 in match funding at this stage. And we have received a further £10,000 in match funding from another generous individual – so every £1 raised from the community is, in effect, doubled so the target can be reached …”’

Donations can be made at https://www.heavensvalley.org.uk/donate

And shares purchased at https://www.heavensvalley.org.uk/donate/#shareholder

 

From Facebook:

Q. ‘…how will the people who have loaned the big amount be repaid?’

A. ‘Essentially through further donations, share sales and fundraising events to repay the loans within two years.’ (Heavens Valley Action Group)

 

 

Some of the fundraising and other events in October:

Freestyle expressive dance event at the Trinity Rooms

Stroud Suzuki Violin Group outside the Subscription Rooms

Drop-in meeting for admin/fundraising volunteers at Stroud Brewery: ‘If you’ve been wondering about whether you might like to volunteer to help out, do pop along anytime between 7 and 9 pm on the 22nd for a chat. Our priority right now is on finding people who can run fundraising events or help out with admin tasks: these might include, among other things, data entry, maintaining spreadsheets and organising the photo library. There will be a future session in due course for people who fancy volunteering for hands-on land management work. We look forward to meeting some of you!’

A workshop to Help Raise the Spirit of the Heavens at the Trinity Rooms, Stroud, Thursday October 24th 3-4.45 pm, with artist Alison Cockcroft. All ages: ‘share your memories of favourite places, and walks … Draw, print and paint onto cloth that will become part of a costume embodying the spirit of the Heavens for the Raising of the Spirit event on November 1st.’

Stroud Walking Football walking the Heavens October 27

November events

Every year, Neil Baker gives up his time to lead an Archaeology Walk of the Heavens … and it books up every time. This winter, Neil is running eight walks … we’re sharing the funds raised with our good friends at Heavens Valley Action Group, who are also helping us organise these events.’ First one is Saturday November 2nd. https://www.stroudvalleysproject.org/events

Heavens Valley Action Group November 1

‘Thank you so much to everyone who came to – or helped organise or performed or spoke at – tonight’s emotional and inspirational Raising the Spirit fundraising event, whether at a packed Crown & Sceptre for pre-drinks or lining Horns Road for the procession of The Stroud Red Band, or to the sold-out ticketed event at the Trinity Rooms Community Hub with a huge line-up of fabulous performers and speakers.’

Stroud Times November 3

‘The Heavens Valley Community Benefit Society (HVCBS) has now raised enough money to go ahead with the purchase of Thrupp Farm in Stroud, writes Sue Fenton.

A recent appeal helped raise an extra £30,000 which boosted HVCBS coffers to £300,000, which combined with loans from two unnamed people, have contributed bridging funding, will fund the £850,000 purchase cost.

The purchase will be the end of the first phase of the campaign to bring the Heavens Valley into community ownership … more than £300,000 donated and more than 600 people buying shares so far, with more shareholders signing up every day.

The next phase will be to raise a further £550,000 to repay the loans, as technically, the lenders will own some of the site until repayments are completed; each chunk of money repaid will bring more of the land fully into community ownership.

Karen Thomas, one of the HVCBS team negotiating the purchase said: “Our lenders want this beautiful land to be completely owned by the CBS as they are themselves part of the local community and are not in a position to manage large areas of public land themselves so we will be redoubling our fundraising efforts and we are confident that the community will continue its support.

In the new year we will consult with the community for ideas about how to move forward … We all love the Heavens and we all have our own vision of what this beloved landscape should look like. There are so many amazing possibilities, especially once we, as a community, own the entire 102 acres.”’

Emma Kernahan

‘It’s official 🙂

Everyone who donated made it possible, hundreds and hundreds of people who gave what they could, from 50p to 50k and then some. And given how much we’re led to believe this kind of stuff is impossible and we shouldn’t even try, I find it so remarkable that a bunch of individuals have, in just a few months, pulled together to make a *historic* community purchase of 102 acres of fields, streams, woods and valleys.

Just wanted to say that I’ve watched from the sidelines as the team at @friendsoftheheavens have put in hours and hours (and hours) of hard graft and skill, from the first meeting round a table at the Crown and Sceptre pub a year ago to (I believe, please fact check me if I’m wrong) the largest single community land purchase in England. None of this would have been possible without a small group of very clever, resourceful and determined people.

The work is now just beginning, to see what we can achieve together as neighbours in this place. More fundraising, more planning, more imagining to come – but in the meantime, I just want to point like mad to this incredible thing that’s happened and say look, if we can do this here, what else is possible? Where else can we raise the spirit of the land and community? If there’s one thing I’ve found out over the last few years it’s that once it’s been summoned, there’s no telling what might happen. Anyway that’s enough weird and wonderful for one weekend …’

Jon Seagrave

‘Bloody hell, Friday night was a good ‘un! We raised the Spirit of the Heavens with a gloriously shambolic neo-pagan community happening and I’m dead proud to have been a part of it. Poets, musicians, archaeologists, a socialist street band, radical historians and – of course – everyone’s favourite Morris dancing fashionistas, Boss Morris. Nice one @crappyliving for pulling it all together. All in aid of the community pulling together to save our beautiful valley from being flogged off to wrong ‘uns, and WE’VE DONE IT. The community buyout has been successful. Now to buy the Trinity Rooms for the people. The People’s Republic of Stroud is a good place to be living.’

Stroud Times

‘Emma Kernahan told Stroud Times : “Throughout the campaign to put the Heavens into community ownership, we’ve seen this incredible outpouring of support from the people who live here. Everyone locally has a connection to this place, and it’s deeply rooted in our sense of identity …

There’s such a spirit of resistance in this town, and a really strong community spirit … By making a ‘spirit of the place’ we wanted to create something that represented that, and also give us a chance to celebrate what we can achieve when we work together.

The whole event was a collective effort – it was organised by more than 20 local creatives and campaigners, and the response was so much more than anticipated. We thought summoning a genius loci in a community hall might be a bit niche – but we sold out so quickly, we were inundated with people wanting to come. People even came from places like Herefordshire, Brighton and Norfolk.

We’ve had messages of support from all around the world too. I think we tapped into a much broader need right now for community and our rights to the land around us – and if the Heavens campaign is anything to go by, once that spirit has been summoned, there’s nothing it can’t achieve.”’