Category: Past

TOADSMOOR WALK

Friday 17th January 2020
Radical Stroud Walk

The Descent of the the Toadsmoor Valley:
From Bisley Church to Brimscombe Port
(and thence via the canal towpath to Stroud)

Approximately 4 miles. Mostly footpaths. Some styles and steep descents. Certain to be very muddy in places. Allow four hours. Bring food for your lunchtime repast. Optional stop for refreshments toward the end of the walk at Stroud Brewery

Directions to the start
Take the 8B bus from Stroud Merriwalks (stand k) at 10:10. Alight outside The Stirrup Cup, Bisley at 10:44 (scheduled arrival time). The walk will begin from this point at 10:50.

Brief guide to the context
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. On our walks we typically encounter many serendipitous points of interest and discussion.
Bisley is very rich in history, tradition and legend. There are ancient barrows, and significant Roman and Saxon remains in the area. Many of the houses date from the 16th and 17 centuries. Made rich by the wool trade, Bisley suffered economic decline in the 1800s and in 1837, 68 parishioners were given support by the vicar of All Saints to emigrate to new lives in Australia. We will visit the church to discuss this historical event. We will also consider the story of The Bisley Boy (suggesting that Elizabeth 1st was not Elizabeth 1st but was a replaced by a man); the burial of John Davies “ye black” in 1603; the tradition of dressing the impressive wells of Bisley; how Bisley lost its commons and “who stole the donkey’s dinner”.

We will then descend the steep, narrow and seemingly remote Toadsmoor valley via footpaths. Maps reveal that the tree cover of once coppiced woodland in the upper valley has hardly changed in the last 200 years. However, the remains of several mills (of various types) are evident below the fishponds in the lower valley, revealing the industrial legacy of the area.

We will cross the main road at the mouth of the valley and walk past the site of many stick, umbrella and tool handle manufacturing works that occupied the valley floor from the 1850s until the 1920s. In nearby Chalford, one such “stick works”, Dangerford & Co, employed more than 1000 people during the late 1800s.

Finally, we will head west along the canal towpath, past Stroud Brewery and back to Stroud.

Texts used on the walk or written during and after the walk now follow

Friday 17th January 2020
Radical Stroud Walk

The Descent of the the Toadsmoor Valley:
From Bisley Church to Brimscombe Port
(and thence via the canal towpath to Stroud)

Approximately 4 miles. Mostly footpaths. Some styles and steep descents. Certain to be very muddy in places. Allow four hours. Bring food for your lunchtime repast. Optional stop for refreshments toward the end of the walk at Stroud Brewery

Directions to the start
Take the 8B bus from Stroud Merriwalks (stand k) at 10:10. Alight outside The Stirrup Cup, Bisley at 10:44 (scheduled arrival time). The walk will begin from this point at 10:50.

Brief guide to the context
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. On our walks we typically encounter many serendipitous points of interest and discussion.
Bisley is very rich in history, tradition and legend. There are ancient barrows, and significant Roman and Saxon remains in the area. Many of the houses date from the 16th and 17 centuries. Made rich by the wool trade, Bisley suffered economic decline in the 1800s and in 1837, 68 parishioners were given support by the vicar of All Saints to emigrate to new lives in Australia. We will visit the church to discuss this historical event. We will also consider the story of The Bisley Boy (suggesting that Elizabeth 1st was not Elizabeth 1st but was a replaced by a man); the burial of John Davies “ye black” in 1603; the tradition of dressing the impressive wells of Bisley; how Bisley lost its commons and “who stole the donkey’s dinner”.

We will then descend the steep, narrow and seemingly remote Toadsmoor valley via footpaths. Maps reveal that the tree cover of once coppiced woodland in the upper valley has hardly changed in the last 200 years. However, the remains of several mills (of various types) are evident below the fishponds in the lower valley, revealing the industrial legacy of the area.

We will cross the main road at the mouth of the valley and walk past the site of many stick, umbrella and tool handle manufacturing works that occupied the valley floor from the 1850s until the 1920s. In nearby Chalford, one such “stick works”, Dangerford & Co, employed more than 1000 people during the late 1800s.

Finally, we will head west along the canal towpath, past Stroud Brewery and back to Stroud.

Texts used on the walk or written during and after the walk now follow

Thanks to Robin Treefellow for the following poem written after our walk.

Bisley Water Laughing Toadsmore

From Bisley’s rushing springhead
under the church: splashing, gurgling and giddy.
The water disgorged out the Victorian facade praising
the Creator in pedantic script.
Like a dam in a Welsh valley
the conceit of men to try tame the waters’ flow!
The Bisley spring regimented into its own moulded spout,
as if the reverend who had it built were
trying to educate water into behaving itself.
But in 2020 the water laughs
long away down Toadsmore,
swirling in transgressive script
through the sunk valleys,
brimful out Bismore Bridge.
Beech trees ascend,
while streams descend,
Toadsmore goes walking.
A silvery cask,
the valley is liquid.

There now follows some text on the Bisley emigration and that is followed by some thoughts on ‘Ye Black’ buried at Bisley in 1603.

Foreword
My emigrant’s passage started in Bisley
Along a snowdropped Sunday footpath to the church;
The service had just ended –
I sauntered in through the open door,
And there to my surprise, in a glass case,
Lay a nineteenth century list of parish accounts,
With an italicised card:
‘cost to the Parish of Bisley of ‘emigrating’ 68 persons from the parish’,
Together with a bible open to the fronts-piece:
‘The Bible which was presented by the Reverend Thomas Keble who was the Vicar of Bisley when they and 66 others emigrated to Sydney, Australia in August 1837 [The Bible has been rebound].
Two other information cards lay partially hidden beneath the bible, I could pick out a few words, however:
‘hoped they might have a more prosperous life. They were equipped with clothes, transport and food to Bristol and Thomas Keble also presented each family with a Bible and a Prayer Book.’

Prologue the First: Mr Ricardo

EMIGRATION
CONSIDERED AS A MEANS OF RELIEF
IN THE PRESENT DISTRESSED
CONDITION OF THE POOR
IN THIS
NEIGHBOURHOOD
BY DAVID RICARDO, ESQ.
STROUD:
PRINTED BY J.P. BRISLEY
1838.
Price One Penny each, or Five Shillings per Hundred.
EMIGRATION

The distress of the Poor at all times forms a strong claim upon our sympathy and compassion – and though in some cases it may be brought on by their own idleness and improvidence, and therefore require the application of strong measures to check its growth … like a parent who chastises his child … But in the present condition of the Poor in this Neighbourhood … we have to encounter all the difficulties of a failing trade, and our inability to substitute any other means of independent labour … their patience and resignation is urging on their more influential neighbours to make efforts to assist them.
The question is, – what is the best means of affording them effectual relief? …In the first instance, a Subscription was proposed, and the Rev. Thos. Keble, with that spirit of kindness and benevolence which characterize all his proceedings … raised a considerable sum among his own immediate friends; but it is quite clear that a sum of money thus raised could never be sufficiently large to meet the emergency of the case – and besides, it would only meet half the evil, for the question is, not to provide the poor with bread by the hand of Private Charity, but to devise some means by which they may earn it for themselves.

This proved to be the case – the Funds raised were found to be inadequate … shortly after, the first attempt was made to introduce a more sound and effectual system of Relief. A ship was sent to Bristol, and a portion of the unemployed Labourers were invited to go to another country … but from an indisposition to engage in anything new, and from a general misapprehension … this attempt did not meet with all the success it deserved; still, some families availed themselves of the offer, and the accounts they have sent home of their prosperous condition in New South Wales have tended to dispel the natural prejudices which all must feel against a country of which they know nothing. All parties agree to the relief occasioned by the departure of the few that went – and if at any future time Emigration should be conducted on a larger scale, we must still look back to this first Attempt, as the step from which all our further efforts have sprung.
About this time, Her Majesty at the suggestion of the House of Commons sent down a Commissioner to enquire into the distressed state of the Neighbourhood, and to see if any means could be devised to alleviate it. The Commissioner came down, and gave the fullest and most patient attention to the subject: he enquired of all classes … and the result was … with our failing Trade … the only means likely to give us real relief, was Emigration …
application was again made to Government to facilitate Emigration … but the engagements already formed prevented them from giving us a ship this year – however,–they showed their good will by requesting Mr. Marshall, the private Agent of the Colonial Government to come down, who has offered a passage to 205 persons; they hold out to us the hope of further and more effectual assistance next year, and there is every reason to hope, that Emigration may be carried on to a larger extent.
The following is a brief account of the nature of the assistance offered by Government …The expense of the Passage of a man and his wife to Sydney … is £35, but this sum is not raised by a Tax on us, but is supplied by the Funds, which the Colonial Government has raised by the Sale of Lands in Australia. It is of importance to bear this in mind … the Colonial Government very reasonably claims the right to itself of refusing to convey persons who would not be serviceable to them – the Government tells us, “all that you have to do for your Emigrants is to provide them with proper clothes and to put them on board the Ship …”
The quantity of Clothing required for each Passenger is, besides a Bible and if possible a Prayer Book, 12 shirts or shifts, 2 flannel petticoats (for females,) 12 pair of dark stockings, 3 towels, and such other articles of dress as are essential to cleanliness, health, and comfort; also a knife and fork, table and tea-spoons, peter or tin plate, tin pots, comb, soap, &c.
These articles are very expensive … it will often happen that a man may sell all his household goods, and yet not be able to raise a fund sufficient to provide them: if no fund were raised to assist … the poor man must linger on here … while the outlay of 30s. would convey him to a land of plenty …
The means of providing the Funds … are by a Rate upon the Parish. By a recent law, Parishes are allowed to borrow any Sum not exceeding half the Rates of the Parish for the purpose of Emigration, and to repay it in five years … this Neighbourhood is but one vast Family, and if we were to take away a portion of the more active and put them in a situation to fend for themselves, the bread that supported them is still left behind, and will be divided among those who remain … in the shape of an increase of Wages …
No! These are not the evils of Emigration … Expense … Clothing …Landlord … Tenant. A thousand other little interested considerations cross our thoughts and influence our minds, while we overlook the real and great objection to sending our Emigrants abroad – the sending them to a place where there is no Church Establishment regularly formed, and where they will often be placed in situations such, that they will not have the opportunity of having the blessed truths of the Gospel brought home to them. – But the eye of the Lord is in every place … if in the conscientious discharge of the duties committed to us, we should provide some of our neighbours with the means of going to New South Wales, I feel convinced that He will follow them there; – we shall in the mean time be looking upon that Country as the Land of our relations and friends … it must be our unceasing endeavour to send to them all the advantages of Religious Worship we enjoy at home.

Gatcombe, 15th Nov. 1838.
HINTS

For the consideration of Persons desirous to Emigrate

  • Large Families of young Children will in no case be taken at the expense of the Colonies. Young married people with families just coming on are the most eligible.
  • Each Applicant should be provided with Testimonials of his Character signed by the Clergyman of his Parish, or the Minister of that religious persuasion to which he belongs, and the respectable persons who may know him. Character is of great use.
  • Each Applicant should be provided with proper Certificates of his Health and the Health of his Family.
  • No woman would be received on board, who is so far advanced in a state of pregnancy, as to render it probable that she might be confined before the termination of the voyage.
  • None would be received on board, unless they have been previously vaccinated or had the Small Pox. Persons having families would do well to look to this, and get their Children vaccinated at once.
  • Linen made up of Calico of inferior quality may be had at the Market House School, Minchinhampton. Shirts, price 1s 3d. Shifts, 11d. and other Articles in the same proportion.

There is still room for a few young married persons of good character and not having large families of young children, by the ship Roxburgh Castle, on 28th December next. The fullest information on all subjects connected with Emigration may be obtained by applying at Gatcombe, on Monday and Tuesday in any week, between the hours of nine and ten.

J. P. Brisley Stroudwater Printing Office.

How does ‘Ye Black’ buried at Bisley in 1603 fit into all this?
That terse parish record entry:
‘John Davies, ye Black, buried 22November 1603 Bisley’,
Can blow your mind when you pass the village,
Cycling to Oakridge and Sapperton,
On the trail of the Mason-Dixon line,
Africa, and America,
And the sugar plantations
In the West Indies;
It’s high up, Bisley,
The wind blows cold, the rain sweeps in,
The snow can settle,
And ‘vapours rolling down a valley
Make a lonely scene more lonesome’;
So how do we rescue you, John Davies,
‘From the enormous condescension of posterity’?
How do we recreate your life to give voice to you?
These questions might be rhetorical,
They might be existential and ontological –
What was your real name?
Why John Davies?
How did you end up in Bisley?
Where were you born?
How long was your life in Bisley?
Did the weather quickly kill you?
Had you no immunity against the common cold, flu and so on?
Could you speak English?
Did the locals point at you, laugh and mock?
Were you a slave?
A servant?
A fashion accessory?
Were you baptised into the Christian faith?
Were you buried in consecrated ground?
Did you cry yourself to sleep?
How did your mind cope with this exile?
And with this stolen identity and stolen self?
Did you die of melancholy?
Was death a blessed release?
How can we memorialise you?
‘John Davies, ye Black, buried 22November 1603 Bisley’,

The Great Money Trick

The Great Money Trick
(Performed with Matches)
Hello and welcome to my company,
I’m going to be serious, I hope you will allow me;
I’m here to explain how you get your money:
This is serious, it won’t be funny –
A lesson about profit and how you get your wages,
I’ll make it easy, in sequential stages.
Now, imagine you’re a fagger, I mean a smoker –
Just now and then, not an absolute choker –
But you need to light your fag, and that’s a fact,
Now imagine that you use a safety match.
This lucifer will light our way to wisdom,
By exemplifying capitalism:

Each match will be a symbol, nay, an allegory,
To represent political economy;

Imagine I own the factories, shops, land, and banks,
I am the capitalist in these gathered ranks,
There are no tricks, no magical catches,
I own the means of production:
These four matches;

The Great Money Trick
(Performed with Matches)

Hello and welcome to my company,
I’m going to be serious, I hope you will allow me;
I’m here to explain how you get your money:
This is serious, it won’t be funny –
A lesson about profit and how you get your wages,
I’ll make it easy, in sequential stages.
Now, imagine you’re a fagger, I mean a smoker –
Just now and then, not an absolute choker –
But you need to light your fag, and that’s a fact,
Now imagine that you use a safety match.
This lucifer will light our way to wisdom,
By exemplifying capitalism:

Each match will be a symbol, nay, an allegory,
To represent political economy;

Imagine I own the factories, shops, land, and banks,
I am the capitalist in these gathered ranks,
There are no tricks, no magical catches,
I own the means of production:
These four matches;

You workers are free, not slaves in cages,
But to live, you must labour for your wages:
And earn one match, that’s it, complete,

 

And now you spend it the next week,
On those indispensable necessities for life,
Which gives me, the capitalist, without strife,
Another match to add to the pre-existent four,
We’ve got richer, you stay poor,
We’ve gone up from four to five,

 

You spent your wage on staying alive,
You’re all confined to your penurious corner,
While the rich get richer, the poor are poorer;
But that, of course, is not the end of it,
The capitalist takes and makes another match as profit,
The matches now go up from four to six,
While you, the workers, are left, of course, with nix.

You don’t need to be a genius to see
The implications of infinity.

And that, my friends, is how the system works,
And I’m not declaring that we’re all burkes,
But at the very least let’s make the rich pay much more tax,
And at the very least let’s all accept these awkward facts:
Why should the poor support the poor with homespun charity?
The rich should pay the tax that leads to parity,
A progressive tax that redistributes our wealth,
That guarantees some security and health.

.Now isn’t that preferable to being hapless?
It’s a scheme that’s absolutely matchless.
It’s a systemic Scrooge-like process of redemption,
It is in fact an immaculate conception.
A scheme I hope you’ll countenance and savour,
And at the very least remember to vote Labour.

Join Labour’s Digital Spread

Join the Digital Army
Speak and Write the Truth

I grew up in a working-class Tory household,
A Daily Express household,
So, I know the mindset:
Deference and false consciousness:
‘Gawd bless ya, Mr Scrooge’;
A generation after A Christmas Carol,
The Conservative Prime Minister,
Benjamin Disraeli
(So-called ‘One-Nation Tory’)
Described working class Tories as
‘Angels in marble’:
They had to be fashioned, sculpted, made, displayed,
In an alliance between the aristocracy and the working class,
With a modicum of social reform,
A hectoring printing press,
And an aggressive nationalism,
To provide the glue.
Sound familiar?

Join the Digital Army
Speak and Write the Truth

I grew up in a working-class Tory household,
A Daily Express household,
So, I know the mindset:
Deference and false consciousness:
‘Gawd bless ya, Mr Scrooge’;
A generation after A Christmas Carol,
The Conservative Prime Minister,
Benjamin Disraeli
(So-called ‘One-Nation Tory’)
Described working class Tories as
‘Angels in marble’:
They had to be fashioned, sculpted, made, displayed,
In an alliance between the aristocracy and the working class,
With a modicum of social reform,
A hectoring printing press,
And an aggressive nationalism,
To provide the glue.
Sound familiar?

So it was no surprise
When the urban working class was close to the vote in 1867,
That the Tory Home Secretary declared:
‘We must educate our masters’.
The result was the 1870 Education Act.

And it’s perhaps no coincidence
That the enfranchisement of agricultural labourers
In 1885, was followed by the growth
Of a Tory press: The Daily Mail;
Sensational stories in ‘penny dreadfuls’
Flooded the market:
‘angels in marble’ indeed;
The education of the working class.

It was not until 1912 that a newspaper
Sympathetic to the Labour cause was launched:
The Daily Herald.
In this age of a right-wing press,
And in Tariq Ali’s phrase:
An ‘extreme centre’, an ‘extreme centre’
That moves relentlessly to the right,
In an age where the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph,
The Sun, the Daily Express set the BBC’s agenda,
It’s easy to become dispirited.
But remember!
The almost revolutionary Northern Star,
The Chartist working class newspaper,
Outsold everything else in the 1840s,
It left the Times and co standing;
It spoke the truth for the working class.
It spoke the truth of the working class.
The same can happen today
In a different age and in a different medium.
Remember the Northern Star.
Remember the Daily Herald.
Join the Labour Digital Army:
Speak and write the truth.
‘We must liberate ourselves from our masters’
Join the Digital Army.

Prehistory: Why is it so entrancing?

Circles without Class Ceilings

Why can prehistory be so entrancing?

Why do some people find prehistory so entrancing?
Why do they become so spellbound
When walking by, let’s say, a long barrow?
How do they become so transported in time and space?
What’s it all about?

Is it because a standing stone, a circle,
A tumulus, barrow, or whatever,
Demonstrates the fragility of knowledge,
The equivocal nature of understanding,
In a sense, the ‘negative capability’ of John Keats:
Being conscious, simultaneously,
Of knowing and yet not knowing?
The recognition that sometimes any presumption
Of understanding the meaning of an edifice,
Can only be speculative
(Despite the accumulation of evidence and artefacts,
Despite measurement, mensuration and comparison,
Despite a commitment to the rigours of empiricism),
And a reflection of who we are in the here and now –
Or can Homo sapiens merely develop
A restricted trope of meanings, recognizable
And familiar, across time and space …
So some speculations are bound to be valid …
Or is signification, itself, a trope of modernity?
Nature and Nurture:
How circumscribed are we by time and space?
And how universal are we across the same?
What do these structures reveal and indicate
About what is quintessentially human?

So, prehistoric structures,
In an a priori, apostrophizing, manner,
The manner of an innocent wonderer,
As yet unread on the subject,
I question your meaning:
What were you for?

Circles without Class Ceilings

Why can prehistory be so entrancing?

Why do some people find prehistory so entrancing?
Why do they become so spellbound
When walking by, let’s say, a long barrow?
How do they become so transported in time and space?
What’s it all about?

Is it because a standing stone, a circle,
A tumulus, barrow, or whatever,
Demonstrates the fragility of knowledge,
The equivocal nature of understanding,
In a sense, the ‘negative capability’ of John Keats:
Being conscious, simultaneously,
Of knowing and yet not knowing?
The recognition that sometimes any presumption
Of understanding the meaning of an edifice,
Can only be speculative
(Despite the accumulation of evidence and artefacts,
Despite measurement, mensuration and comparison,
Despite a commitment to the rigours of empiricism),
And a reflection of who we are in the here and now –
Or can Homo sapiens merely develop
A restricted trope of meanings, recognizable
And familiar, across time and space …
So some speculations are bound to be valid …
Or is signification, itself, a trope of modernity?
Nature and Nurture:
How circumscribed are we by time and space?
And how universal are we across the same?
What do these structures reveal and indicate
About what is quintessentially human?

So, prehistoric structures,
In an a priori, apostrophizing, manner,
The manner of an innocent wonderer,
As yet unread on the subject,
I question your meaning:
What were you for?

Do you indicate liminality:
A corridor to another world:
A sacred, spiritual, site of worship?
Cotswold barrows:
Were you positioned high on the Wolds
So as to be close to the sun, stars, planets and moon?
Or merely because the soil was thin up there,
And high above the flood plains;
Or were you territorial markers,
Boundary-points, socio-political in meaning;
Or were you topographical in intent,
Adding meaning to a landscape;
Were you part of a network and fretwork
Of communication channels, made visible?

How did the practice of stone circle structure spread?
And why?
Was stone seen as sentient?
It warmed with the sun,
It cried with a thaw,
It spread patterns with lichen and moss,
It could be scented,
It could groan and cry out in anguish –

Or small stone and flints for tools,
Giant stones for thanks and worship,
The Gods of the Earth united with the Gods of the Sky
In calendrical geometry …
Or to demonstrate power over stone
In a belief-system’s symbolic display,
So as to ensure the continued production
Of rather more prosaic, but necessary, tools
That guaranteed survival and prosperity?

Now for a sort of social-psychological perspective,
Or is it anthropological …
Did everyone regard these structures,
And, indeed, the labour involved in their construction,
In a unified and collective way?
Were there, as it were, renegades,
Left field outliers, individualists,
Eccentrics and so on who questioned it all?
Commonality and cohesion are always assumed,
It seems to me on initial reading memory …
How was hierarchy, assuming it existed, revealed?
Doesn’t the assumption of hierarchy,
As both consequent cause and consequence
Of specialization- warriors and priests and rulers –
Merely reflect the assumptions
Of Western post-Enlightenment Capitalism …
Couldn’t those deposits –
Both human and artefact –
Symbolize the collective,
And be both part and representative of all?

The past might just be a different country,
After all,
And a prehistoric past might yet be a signpost
To a more sharing, caring future,
A collective rather than individualist one,
One that rejects hierarchy,
One that rejects celebrity,
One that embraces caring and sharing:
Circles without Class Ceilings …

Party like it’s 2500BC: Stonehenge building secrets unearthed

The process of building Stonehenge – and having a party at the same time – may have been more important than the finished monument, English Heritage has said.

Experts believe that choosing the stones, moving them and setting them up on Salisbury Plain, may have been a way of bringing people together to socialise and celebrate.

Over this weekend visitors, people who live close to the monument in Wiltshire and schoolchildren are being invited to try to move and set up a four-tonne stone similar in size and shape to the sarsen lintels at the famous stone circle.

The idea is not to puzzle out in a scientific way engineering aspects of moving and setting up the stones, but to bring people together to enjoy a communal experience.

English Heritage’s senior historian, Susan Greaney, said: “In contemporary western culture, we are always striving to make things as easy and quick as possible, but we believe that for the builders of Stonehenge this may not have been the case.

“Drawing a large number of people from far and wide to take part in the process of building was potentially a powerful tool in demonstrating the strength of the community to outsiders.

“Being able to welcome and reward these people who had travelled far, perhaps as a kind of pilgrimage, with ceremonial feasts, could be a further expression of the power and position of the community.”

Research showcased at Stonehenge reveals that prehistoric people brought animals to the site from as far afield as north-east Scotland, more than 500 miles away, to take part in lavish midwinter feasts.

Scientists examined some of the 38,000 bones and teeth (90% of them pig; 10% cattle) discovered at the site of a neolithic village called Durrington Walls, which lies about a mile and a half north-east of the main stone ring.

Durrington Walls was only settled for between 50 and 100 years but it is believed to have housed the circle’s builders and the first visitors after the sarsen stones were put in place.

Experts examined elements including strontium in the pig teeth found at Durrington Walls. Because isotopes of strontium differ chemically according to the geology of the place where the young animal fed, it is possible to discover where individual creatures came from.

They concluded cows and pigs were herded hundreds of miles along ancient byways and may even have been brought by boat to southern England. It suggested that in 2500BC Stonehenge was known across Britain as a place of pilgrimage and celebration.

Stonehenge experts have also been studying evidence from societies who more recently have practised moving huge stones – such as communities on the islands of Sumba and Nias in Indonesia, and in north-eastern parts of India.

Greaney said: “There are amazing photos from societies in Indonesia and parts of India within the last 100 years or so of people practising stone moving and raising. They show people in ceremonial dress, amazing feasts happening, hundreds of people coming together and having a good time.

“As soon as you abandon modern preconceptions that assume neolithic people would have sought the most efficient way of building Stonehenge, questions like why the bluestones were brought from so far away – the Preseli Hills of south Wales – don’t seem quite so perplexing.”

Over the weekend groups of about 40 people will use rollers and ropes to move a hunk of limestone (prosaically brought from a local quarry on the back of a lorry) before helping to erect it into a pre-dug hole. Visitors can simply turn up and join in.

Prehistory and Wormholes of Time

As the traffic rumbles past on Cotswold roads,
It’s hard to hear the chip of stone on flint,
Or the croak of corvids with their blood-drip beaks,
Or the breaking of the bones of a skeleton,
Or smell the rotting flesh on the capstone,
Or taste the ashes of the dead on the nightfall wind,
Or see the blood red sunset behind the silver river
Or the standing stone’s silhouette,
But try hard on a winter’s afternoon,
And you might just slip down a wormhole of time,
To rituals of death and memory,
And recognize the prehistoric past
For what it is and was:
Not something primitive and alien,
But something shared.

As the traffic rumbles past on Cotswold roads,
It’s hard to hear the chip of stone on flint,
Or the croak of corvids with their blood-drip beaks,
Or the breaking of the bones of a skeleton,
Or smell the rotting flesh on the capstone,
Or taste the ashes of the dead on the nightfall wind,
Or see the blood red sunset behind the silver river
Or the standing stone’s silhouette,
But try hard on a winter’s afternoon,
And you might just slip down a wormhole of time,
To rituals of death and memory,
And recognize the prehistoric past
For what it is and was:
Not something primitive and alien,
But something shared.

John Thelwall: Radical thoughts on Slavery, Empire and Landscape

A Pedestrian Excursion Through Several Parts of England and Wales

John Thelwall’s account of his rambles
Between the years of the naval mutinies
of 1797 and the 1801 Peace of Amiens:

‘The cottages in general, are small, wretched and dirty. Some of them are built of brick, others are plastered and may exhibit nothing but miserable mud walls, equally naked without and within. They are wretchedly and scantily furnished; and few have even the advantage of a bit of garden. To complete the catalogue of misery, there is a workhouse in the parish, in which a number of deserted infants are consigned to captivity and incessant application…’

And even though Citizen John was being pursued,
Followed and shadowed by spies,
With consequent anxiety,
Thelwall could still write that …

‘The vivacity of conversation made the miles pass unheeded under our feet. We canvassed various subjects of literature and criticism, the state of morals and the existing institutions of society. We lamented the condition of our fellow-beings, and formed Utopian plans of retirement and colonisations. On one subject, and only one, we essentially differed – America. I cannot look towards that country with all the sanguine expectations so frequently cherished. I think I discover in it much of the old leaven. Its avidity for commercial aggrandisement augurs but ill even for the present generation; and I tremble at the consequences which the enormous appropriation of land may entail upon posterity.’

A Pedestrian Excursion Through Several Parts of England and Wales

John Thelwall’s account of his rambles
Between the years of the naval mutinies
of 1797 and the 1801 Peace of Amiens:

‘The cottages in general, are small, wretched and dirty. Some of them are built of brick, others are plastered and may exhibit nothing but miserable mud walls, equally naked without and within. They are wretchedly and  scantily furnished; and few have even the advantage of a bit of garden. To  complete the catalogue of misery, there is a workhouse in the parish, in  which a number of deserted infants are consigned to captivity and incessant  application…’

And even though Citizen John was being pursued,
Followed and shadowed by spies,
With consequent anxiety,
Thelwall could still write that …

‘The vivacity of conversation made the miles pass unheeded under our feet. We canvassed various subjects of literature and criticism, the state of morals and the existing institutions of society. We lamented the condition of our fellow-beings, and formed Utopian plans of retirement and colonisations. On one subject, and only one, we essentially differed –  America. I cannot look towards that country with all the sanguine expectations so frequently cherished. I think I discover in it much of the old leaven. Its avidity for commercial aggrandisement augurs but ill even for the present generation; and I tremble at the consequences which the enormous appropriation of land may entail upon posterity.’

A visit to Wilton House led to musing
On art, gardens, the classics, literature,

And …

‘Our walk over the house and gardens had already cost us six shillings; and we flattered ourselves, that we had no more exactions to encounter. But, as we were going past the porter’s lodge, a servant stopped us with a fresh demand, informing us, in plain language, that they were all stationed there for their fees, and nobody could come in or out without paying. We  accordingly submitted to be fleeced once more. I am told, that this kind of tax upon the curiosity of travellers is peculiar to this country; and surely it is somewhat surprising, that the pride and ostentation of greatness should not spurn the illiberal idea of supporting its servants on the alms of curiosity. But there is a nobleman in the county of Derby, who is reported not only to save the expense of wages by this expedient, but absolutely to make a bargain with his housekeeper for half the vails collected by exhibiting his splendid mansion.’

Before we hear of Thelwall in Wiltshire again,
Here’s another radical topographer,
Philip Alston, from the United Nations,
Commenting on the pauperisation
Of 20% of the UK population,

In the spring of 2019:

‘I think breaking rocks has some similarity to the 35 hours of job search for
people who have been out of work for months or years’:
‘A digital and sanitised version of the workhouse’,

And, here, Citizen John:

‘The daily toil of these little infants (who if they are ever to attain the vigour and healthful activity of manhood, ought to be stretching their wanton limbs in noisy gambols over the green)…’

John Thelwall and Slavery
It goes without saying that John Thelwall
Would be a committed abolitionist,
An activist, who also used his pen against slavery,
In his Jacobin novel The Daughter of Adoption,

And in this poem:
The Negro’s Prayer

(1807, commemorating the abolition of the slave trade)
‘O SPIRIT! that rid’st in the whirlwind and storm,
Whose voice in the thunder is heard,
If ever from man, the poor indigent worm,
The prayer of affliction was heard,-
If black man, as white, is the will of thy hand –
(And who would create him but Thee?)
Oh give thy command –
Let it spread thro’ each land,
That Afric’s sad sons shall be free!

…

If while in the slave-ship, with many a groan,
I wept o’er my sufferings in vain;
While hundreds around reply’ to my moan,
And the clanking of many a chain;-
If then thou but deign’st, with a pitying eye,
Thy poor shackled creature to see,
Oh thy mercy apply,
Afric’s sorrow to dry,
And bid the poor Negro be free!
If, here, as I faint in the vertical sun,
And the scourge goads me on to my toil,
No hope faintly soothing, when labour is done,
Of one joy my lorn heart to beguile;-
If thou view’st me Great Spirit! as one thou hast made,
And my fate as dependent on thee,
O impart thou thy aid,
That the scourge may be stay’d,
And the Black Man, at last, may be free…’

Here we see three of the four (sometimes five) stanzas –
The tone doesn’t do justice, perhaps,
To Thelwall’s ability to see slavery
As part of an imperial nexus –
He would have noted the links between war,
Empire, colonies, slavery, and Stroud Scarlet,
In his stay here with radical clothiers,
After his ten days at Nether Stowey
With Coleridge, Wordsworth, and a watchful spy,

In the summer of 1797…

‘Had the Maroons and negroes never been most wickedly enslaved, their masters had never been murdered.’

How he would have enjoyed walking past Capel’s Mill,

Reflecting on coincidence,
For as Michael Scrivener has written:

‘In 1793, trying to circumvent the political repression, Thelwall spoke at a
debating club, The Capel Court Society’;

But as regards the hidden colonial landscape around us:

‘That great family of human beings, every one of which, whatever be his name, his colour or his country, is the brother of all the rest, and ought to enjoy with them a community of rights and happiness’;
‘It would be a happy thing for the universe in general, and for Britain in particular, if there were no such thing as a colony or dependency…’

Citizen John’s visit to Stroudwater
Obviously had a profound impact on him –
This landscape is remembered,
Possibly subliminally, in his slavery novel,
With the names of two of the protagonists –
He met with radical dyers and clothiers –
The Partridges at Bowbridge Mill;
The Newcombes at Bowbridge House,
And the Nortons at Nailsworth,
On that excursion from Nether Stowey,
In the summer of 1797:

There is a Newcombe in the novel and a Captain Bowbridge, too…

Conclusion

John Thelwall, the ‘Jacobin fox’,
Pursued by William Pitt’s spies,
Puts William Cobbett in the shade
With a rather more radical typography,
Straddling, as EP Thompson said,

‘The world of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the world of the Spitalfields
weaver’ –

But he straddled the ways of Socrates too,
For as Michael Scrivener has said:

‘Socrates was found, as usual, in the places of public resort – in the workshops of the artists, among the labourers in the manufactories, uttering seditious allegories, and condemning the desolating tyranny of the Oligarch’;

Or in Thelwall’s words:

‘Hence every large workshop and manufactory is a sort of political society, which no act of parliament can silence, and no magistrate disperse’…

But there is also something of the Rimbaud
About him too – something almost synesthesic
About the motto for The Tribune:
‘To paint the voice, and fix the fleeting sound’;

His imagery also possibly
Subliminally influenced William Blake –
Blake’s ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ seem to echo
These words of Thelwall:

‘For it is better, according to my judgment, – ten times better, to be immured oneself in a Bastille, than to have the Bastille put into one’s mouth to lock up one’s tongue from all intercourse and communication with one’s heart’;

Which is partly why,
In 1832, at the age of 69,
He was the sole eulogiser
For his old LCS colleague, Thomas Hardy,
His voice carrying to some 30,000 people,
Gathered at Bunhill Fields,

For this public ceremony and act of remembrance,
A reminder of the days forty years before,
When he lectured to audiences in their hundreds…
A reminder of the time when ‘pedestrian’
Meant wandering beyond accustomed paths,
Rather than its current meaning…

‘I have been rambling, according to my wanted practice, in the true democratic way, on foot, from village to village, from pleasant hill to barren Heath, recreating my mind with the beauties, and with the deformities of nature’

(ITLIC Tribune speech, 1795),
A pedestrian who could talk readily with anyone,
A writer whose mixed-genre The Peripatetic

Would influence Wordsworth’s rather more conservative The Excursion;
An activist who connected Nether Stowey with Spitalfields,
Spitalfields with Socrates and with Stroudwater too,

And Stroud scarlet with Empire;

He challenged the cultural hegemony of the classics,
He challenged aristocratic assumptions
About culture, hierarchy, and enlightenment:
The point of reading for Citizen John,
Was not to be elegantly learned and cultured,
But – to use the idiom of our age –
To empower and give agency
To the voices of the dispossessed,
In the triumph of Democracy over the Gothick,
In the triumph of a democratic sublime

Over that of Edmund Burke,
And in the triumph of collective walking
Over the solitary subjectivism of William Hazlitt:
A radical topography based on observation,
Discussion, inquiry and critique,
In language more lyrical than Wordsworth’s.

Post-script:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

‘We were once sitting in a beautiful recess in the Quantocks when I said to him – ‘Citizen John! This is a fine place to talk treason in!’ – ‘Nay! Citizen Samuel, ‘ replied he, ‘it is a fine place to make a man forget that there is any necessity for treason!’

Peterloo-Wiltshire Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt Walk

Peterloo Memorial Walk 2019
About thirty of us braved Manchester weather on August 16th on a performative walk around Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt’s birthplace in Wiltshire. Pictures here tell the picture of the day.
We carried out a dialogue between 2019 and 1819 as we processed: the poem below from Robin Treefellow gives a flavour of how memorialization of Peterloo can reach out to the new Extinction Rebellion generation.

Chalk and Treason

To the chalk
we must go walk.
On the chalk where vipers bugloss brightens
we must go to rebel, debate, and reinvent
This green island
owned by a small land owning minority.

So depart that moribund Houses of Parliament
mired in out-dated oppositional bun throwing.

To the high dreamy chalk we must go like the bees to nectar
discovering what Britain dreams:
dreams like a giant with ammonites in its beard.
When we have lost our way,
when the ways are all privatised,
when society is manacled to linear profit centred greed:
to the chalk we must go walk.
In walking by the yellow of toadflax and melliot
there is waking,
with waking we can change.
This green island where feudalism has gone on too long,
equality,
the earth common to all,
we must learn from the biotic knit of ground sward
and abandon the tenure under our hidden landlords.
For Britain dreams!
The land will be free of chemicals,
to breath and flourish.
So shall our life return
Rude and willed,
modernisation discarded by the road where mugwort grows.
O Albion calls us all
to remember!
freedom, green of leaf and brown of root.
freedom, bright as flowers by the way.

Peterloo Memorial Walk 2019
About thirty of us braved Manchester weather on August 16th on a performative walk around Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt’s birthplace in Wiltshire. Pictures here tell the picture of the day.
We carried out a dialogue between 2019 and 1819 as we processed: the poem below from Robin Treefellow gives a flavour of how memorialization of Peterloo can reach out to the new Extinction Rebellion generation.

Chalk and Treason

To the chalk
we must go walk.
On the chalk where vipers bugloss brightens
we must go to rebel, debate, and reinvent
This green island
owned by a small land owning minority.

So depart that moribund Houses of Parliament
mired in out-dated oppositional bun throwing.

To the high dreamy chalk we must go like the bees to nectar
discovering what Britain dreams:
dreams like a giant with ammonites in its beard.
When we have lost our way,
when the ways are all privatised,
when society is manacled to linear profit centred greed:
to the chalk we must go walk.
In walking by the yellow of toadflax and melliot
there is waking,
with waking we can change.
This green island where feudalism has gone on too long,
equality,
the earth common to all,
we must learn from the biotic knit of ground sward
and abandon the tenure under our hidden landlords.
For Britain dreams!
The land will be free of chemicals,
to breath and flourish.
So shall our life return
Rude and willed,
modernisation discarded by the road where mugwort grows.
O Albion calls us all
to remember!
freedom, green of leaf and brown of root.
freedom, bright as flowers by the way.

The text below is about how we put this walk together, with a recce in the spring of 2019. It contains a guide to the walk and aims to stimulate discussion about Hunt might be memorialized in Wiltshire. There is a post-script with a list of flowers and grasses seen on our second recce in early July.

How Henry Hunt is not memorialized in Wiltshire
And how Captain Swing almost is

Henry Hunt’s onetime associate,
Rural Rides’ William Cobbett,
Came down this way in late August 1826:

‘The shepherd showed me the way … and a most beautiful sight it was! Villages, hamlets, large farms, towers, steeples, meadows, orchards, and very fine timber trees, scattered all over the valley … downs, very lofty and steep in some places, and sloping miles back in others … From the edge of the downs begin capital arable fields generally of very great dimensions … After the corn-fields come meadows on each side, down to the brook or river … I sat upon my horse and looked over Milton and Easton and Pewsey for half an hour, though I had not breakfasted…’

We travelled by the cherry red
Swindon-Salisbury double-decker,
To alight at Enford to view the church
At 10.45 at the end of February 2019:
‘Above the arch is the COAT OF ARMS of King William 1V dating from 1831. Royal coats of arms were much in vogue in this period to display the parish’s loyalty and to add colour to the church …’
But obvs no mention of Captain Swing
Or the threat of revolution at this time …

But we went left to the crossroads.
For the lane towards Littlecot
And East Chisenbury and the Red Lion,
Thatched cottages and inns,
Flint and red brick and whitewash,
Just as in Cobbett’s and the Orator’s day;

A left hand turn on a footpath followed,
And so to the crossing of the main (turnpike) road,
Where we turned left along the verge to a stile on the right,
Where a footpath sign on a gate showed us our way up the hill;
We walked where Hunt no doubt took his horse,
A parliament of rooks democratically nesting
Below us on our left hand side,

Lichen splashing the track-way hawthorn,
The big sky landscape bare branched etched,
A solitary signpost standing to show our path
Across the lonely windswept downs,
Now resounding with ordnance,
Beyond the red flags down to Salisbury Plain:
An echo of the musket fire from the days of Swing,

Skylarks ascending to sing the spring,
While finches arced their way across the ploughed fields,

Barns with the ghosts of their threshing machines,
Boot-prints once down there in the oozing mud,
Cries of ‘Bread or Blood’ still there in the air,
The ashes of burnt hayricks and letters,
Once scattered across the nearby valley farms and fields,

The sun now gleaming on the puddled track-ways,
And on the white horse hillside to the south;
While, beyond, lay Hampshire and misty Dorset,
Where Captain Swing once rode on his white horse.

We wandered on to skirt a high Iron Age enclosure,
And so descend along a curving lane,
Past the birthplace of Henry Hunt on our right,
Widdington Farm:
‘I was born on the 6th November 1773, in Wiltshire, at Widdington Farm, not within a mile of any other habitation, near Upavon. Widdington Farm lies about a mile from the turnpike road … a lone farm, in a valley upon the downs.’
But no mention of the Orator today,
Instead:
‘WIDDINGTON SHOOT
WILTSHIRE
CLAY SHOOTING GROUND
OUR NEXT COMPETTION IS …’;

And this is how Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt,
And Wiltshire’s radical history is memorialized,
Mute and invisible in the Vale of the Avon,
Unless you use your imagination –
But, wait, in St Timothy’s Church in Upavon,
There is a brief but welcome reference to Captain Swing
On the information board:
‘In the beginning of the nineteenth century agricultural workers in general, and those of Wiltshire in particular, had been reduced to abject misery, and The Vale was a focal point of the agricultural unrest known as the Swing Riots of 1830.’
‘Abject misery’ is daring and arresting …
But the next sentence and paragraph
Guides the reader’s understanding thus:
‘By far the most important development was the Vale’s emergence as a transportation corridor … the Kennet & Avon Canal …’

‘By far the most important development …’
The subliminal suggestion …
Old fashioned Swing …
The modernity/progress transportation trope …
The modernity of ‘corridor’ …
The world of ‘abject misery’ has been left behind …
Mute and invisible,
Like Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt.

We hope to address this mute invisibility
On the 16th of August 2019,
The bi-centenary of Peterloo,
With a Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt performative walk:
Meet at the church in Enford at 10.45:
The walk will end at Upavon after about three hours,
A bit up and down and one bit by the main road;
Park at Enford and get the bus back from Upavon,
Or get the bus from Swindon to Enford and back from Upavon.

Post-script:

Wild flowers seen on July 11th on this walk:
Agrimony

Bird’s Foot Trefoil Black Medick
Bladder Campion Bramble
Broomrape
Buttercup
Burdock
Bush Vetch

Chicory
Clematis
Cleavers
Common Centaury Common Knapweed Common Toadflax Creeping Thistle
Cut Leafed Cranesbill Daisy
Dandelion
Dock
Dog Rose
Dogwood
Dove’s-Foot Cranesbill Elder Flower
Evening Primrose

Fairy Flax
Field Bindweed
Field Scabious

Goats Beard
Great Mullein
Great Willowherb Greater Knapweed Ground Ivy

Hedge Bedstraw Hedge Woundwort Hemp Agrimony
Herb Robert
Hoary Plantain Hogweed
Hop Trefoil

Ivy Leafed Speedwell

Lady’s Bedstraw

Marjoram
Meadow Cranesbill Meadowsweet Meadow Vetchling

Melilot
Milkwort
Mousear
Mousear Hawkweed Mugwort

Musk Mallow

Nipplewort

Oxeye Daisy

Pignut Pineapple Weed Poppy

Purple Toadflax Pyramidal Orchid

Quaking Grass

Ragwort

Red Bartsia
Red Clover
Rest Harrow
Red Valerian Ribwort Plantain Rock Rose
Rosebay Willowherb Rough Hawkbit

St. Johns Wort Salad Burnet Sanfoin
Selfheal Shepherds Purse Silverweed Small Scabious Sorrel Sow Thistle
Spear Thistle Speedwell
Spindle Tree

Teasel
Tufted Vetch

Vipers Bugloss

Watercress
Water Forget-Me-Not Weld

White Bryony White Campion Wild Carrot White Clover White Deadnettle Wild Basil
Wild Mignonette Wild Parsnip Wild Thyme Wood Avens

Yarrow
Yellow Rattle Yellow Vetchling

Re memorialization, readers might also want to look at the link below:
https://radicalstroud.co.uk/a-wiltshire-town-and-peterloo/

Worker’s Memorial Day Walk Remembering Allen Davenport

Remembering Allen Davenport

‘I was born May 1st, 1775, in the small and obscure village of Ewen … somewhat more than a mile from the source of the Thames, on the banks of which stream stands the cottage where I was born … I was never in any school … I had to get the very alphabet by catching a letter at a time as best I could from other children, who had learnt them at school … The next grand object I had in view was to acquire the art of penmanship …’

‘If there were no parks or pleasure grounds, the whole face of the country would present to the eye cornfields, meadows, gardens, plantations of all kinds of fruit trees etc., all to the highest state of cultivation.’

A government spy’s report of Allen’s words after Peterloo: ‘The Yoemanry had murdered our fellow Countrymen but had we in our own Defence shot even one or two of them it would have been called Murder and Rebellion, but [we] will put up with it no longer … we may loose a few lives in the onset yet what is the army compared to the Mass of the Country who are laboring under the yoke of Despotism … these Yoemanry are but few compared with us and it only wants the People to make up their minds as one Man for it is better to Die fighting in the cause of Liberty and freedom than be starved by our Oppressors.’

Thanks to Deborah Roberts for the above photograph.

Remembering Allen Davenport

‘I was born May 1st, 1775, in the small and obscure village of Ewen … somewhat more than a mile from the source of the Thames, on the banks of which stream stands the cottage where I was born … I was never in any school … I had to get the very alphabet by catching a letter at a time as best I could from other children, who had learnt them at school … The next grand object I had in view was to acquire the art of penmanship …’

‘If there were no parks or pleasure grounds, the whole face of the country would present to the eye cornfields, meadows, gardens, plantations of all kinds of fruit trees etc., all to the highest state of cultivation.’

A government spy’s report of Allen’s words after Peterloo: ‘The Yoemanry had murdered our fellow Countrymen but had we in our own Defence shot even one or two of them it would have been called Murder and Rebellion, but [we] will put up with it no longer … we may loose a few lives in the onset yet what is the army compared to the Mass of the Country who are laboring under the yoke of Despotism … these Yoemanry are but few compared with us and it only wants the People to make up their minds as one Man for it is better to Die fighting in the cause of Liberty and freedom than be starved by our Oppressors.’

Concluding Remarks on Allen Davenport
The King, or Legitimacy Unmasked, A Satirical Poem
Printed by the celebrated exponent of the Spencean burlesque,
Samuel Waddington in Oxford Street in 1819;
This poem written by the son of a weaver in Ewen,
Was bought by a government spy from Robert Wedderburn;
This boy who taught himself to read and write,
Would become a noted writer for Sherwin’s Political Register,
But when he made his last recorded visit to Wedderburn’s chapel,
So he ceased to contribute to the radical press –
The Theological Comet asked:
‘What is become of A.D.?’
Followed by Davenport’s poem,
‘Saint Ethelstone’s Day’,
Which commented upon Peterloo’s
‘Yoemanry Butchers’ who
‘hacked off the breasts of women
and then cut off the ears and noses of men’,
Then his lines about consequent Christian hypocrisy;
So let us remember Allen Davenport with his own concluding words:

‘Every man should study Politics, for my part I study them all Day. I write on them, I dream of them at Night, I stand here twice a week preaching Blasphemy and Sedition (as they call it and will continue to do so unless they rob me of my liberty.’
And, finally, his speech from October 27th 1819: “Let us prepare to knock down this system of tyranny to rush upon the Cannon’s Mouth and if we should not succeed Die gloriously in the Struggle.”

 

Oakridge Walk February 23rd 2019

‘When vapours rolling down a valley
Made a lonely scene more lonesome’,
Wrote Wordsworth in The Prelude –
Well, we weren’t lonely, a group of ten
Walking through early morning mists and fog,
Discussing enclosure of Oakridge common land,
A death-threatening letter for the squire,
Demeaning shouts of ‘Who stole the donkey’s dinner?’
Loud following him on his daily rounds
Past Lilyhorn Farm and Bournes Green.

A watery sun shone vaporous
As we stopped at a spectral crossroads,
Cogitating upon the Roman villa,
Down in the nearby fields of Bakers Farm,
Then processing Neolithic track-ways,
Past a field of sheep and hidden long barrow,
The sun now silvering the streams that run
Down to the Frome and thence to the Severn.

With thanks to Charlotte Rooney for the above photos.

Oakridge Walk February 23rd 2019
(Qui feratus est asinus est scriptor prandium?)

‘When vapours rolling down a valley
Made a lonely scene more lonesome’,
Wrote Wordsworth in The Prelude –
Well, we weren’t lonely, a group of ten
Walking through early morning mists and fog,
Discussing enclosure of Oakridge common land,
A death-threatening letter for the squire,
Demeaning shouts of ‘Who stole the donkey’s dinner?’
Loud following him on his daily rounds
Past Lilyhorn Farm and Bournes Green.

A watery sun shone vaporous
As we stopped at a spectral crossroads,
Cogitating upon the Roman villa,
Down in the nearby fields of Bakers Farm,
Then processing Neolithic track-ways,
Past a field of sheep and hidden long barrow,
The sun now silvering the streams that run
Down to the Frome and thence to the Severn.

Spring was in the air: blossom and catkins,
While on the ground, snowdrops and primroses,
Celandine, daffodils, and wild garlic,
Autumn’s crab apple windfalls perfectly
Preserved, still, in bare branched woodland.

We sat down at Strawberry Bank,
A butterfly arcing through the air,
Just where a Battle of Britain dogfight
Brought down a Junkers 88 bomber,
In the field right behind our resting backs;
We climbed up to St Bartholomew’s Church,
Thence to Wear Farm, the birthplace and home
Of Charles Mason of the Mason-Dixon Line:
We drew lines on our own maps of the past,
To take our varied ways back into the present,
But knowing if we whistle loud and clear,
Then we shall all be able to hear
‘Qui feratus est asinus est scriptor prandium ?
’
Wherever we are and wherever we go.

Qui feratus est asinus est scriptor prandium ?
See?

A Swindon Town Great War Pilgrimage

A Swindon Town Remembrance Pilgrimage

We must have numbered a football team,
Umbrellas unfurled at the cenotaph,
Where we spoke of Walter Tull and Spurs,
And Swindon Town and Northampton Town
Footballers who fell in the Great War –
The rain providing a suitably melancholy backdrop,
As we made our hilltop climb to Christ Church,
A welcoming peal rather than a knell
Resonating across the Old Town sky,

While we gathered, inside, by the war memorial,
Inscribing George Bathe’s name on a remembrance cross,
George Bathe, STFC, KIA 1915,
A memento mori for all to share,
Carried by George’s great-nephew, Phil,
Before we made our blue plaque way to Radnor Street,
To talk of Freddie Wheatcroft, star Swindon striker,
Killed in Action,
And Alfred Williams, the Railway Poet,
And the writer Edward Thomas who loved Swindon so much,
Killed in Action.

A Swindon Town Remembrance Pilgrimage

We must have numbered a football team,
Umbrellas unfurled at the cenotaph,
Where we spoke of Walter Tull and Spurs,
And Swindon Town and Northampton Town
Footballers who fell in the Great War –
The rain providing a suitably melancholy backdrop,
As we made our hilltop climb to Christ Church,
A welcoming peal rather than a knell
Resonating across the Old Town sky,

While we gathered, inside, by the war memorial,
Inscribing George Bathe’s name on a remembrance cross,
George Bathe, STFC, KIA 1915,
A memento mori for all to share,
Carried by George’s great-nephew, Phil,
Before we made our blue plaque way to Radnor Street,
To talk of Freddie Wheatcroft, star Swindon striker,
Killed in Action,
And Alfred Williams, the Railway Poet,
And the writer Edward Thomas who loved Swindon so much,
Killed in Action.

Autumn’s leaves were falling like flashing flares,
As we descended through no man’s land, to St Mark’s,
With its ornate St George Great War memorial,
A seeming arts and crafts medievalism –
Thence to further dedications of valour,
Sacrifice and heroism, half hidden
In the outlet shopping centre and museum,
Until we made our separate ways homewards,
Or to the County Ground for the match,
All enriched by a remembrance pilgrimage,
Through the red brick streets and past the old stone walls,
Along the empty alleys and busy thoroughfares
Of a Swindon Saturday afternoon,
All enriched by a collective pilgrimage,
Walking present tense pavements,
But slipping through wormholes of time.