Above Photos by Deborah Roberts.
www.deborahroberts.biz
Sixty people gathering
In the welcoming woodland of Stroud Brewery,
Watching the preview of Day of Hope,
Listening to tales of weavers’ riots
And Chartist dreams;
Quaffing Chartist porter
While Paul Southcott sang us songs
Of the world we have lost …
Resting by a sun warm red brick bridge,
Walking past the last leafed sessile oaks,
Red berried hedges and apple bobbed branches,
Watching navvies on their way to Sapperton …
On past lock gates to Bowbridge:
Alongside Brunel’s main line,
The Great Western viaducts,
The River Frome and ruined mills,
To Wallbridge and the Midland Railway –
And so to the Bell at Selsley:
To gaze at November’s late afternoon light
Gilding Rodborough Common,
Seeing John Frost up there on Good Friday 1839:
Toasting him with more porter,
With songs of poachers and talk of Jenner and Colonel Berkeley,
Hearing Janet Biard tell us of the serpentine lines
Of Chartist supporters and sightseers,
Making their way to Selsley Common
From all over Stroudwater’s hills and valleys,
Along lanes, holloways and tracks of prehistory,
Back on Whitsuntide, May 21st 1839.
We climbed with their ghosts,
To join in the huzzas for the six points
And the hisses for Lord John Russell,
Silhouetted against a sun splashed orange sunset,
The Severn a silver line gleaming in the distance,
Hearing how the common would have been a white scarp land
Of limestone quarries and heaped blocks of Cotswold stone
Back on that famous Selsley day,
Hearing of the Pre-Raphaelite wonders of Selsley Church –
Until Paul gathered us in an old sheltered hollow,
For one final communal twilight song,
Until we wended our way back to the present,
In the gathering gloom of this last November Saturday:
A Day of Hope and a Day of Remembrance.
So here is the link to a bit of Day of Hope which we prepared for yesterday’s walk. This is not a finished item and some bits a bit rushed but gives a feel of the overall project.
