Category: History

Stroud, the Five Valleys and the Globe

A painting from about 1785 shows Stroud scarlet cloth stretched out on tenterhooks in Rodborough Fields – these fields lie just beyond platform two. Stroud scarlet cloth links this area’s history with that of the world in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. There’s more to this than meets the eye.

The cloth was traded with the Iroquois by the Hudson Bay Company; ‘strouds’ were traded with Native Americans beyond the Mississippi; mills at Chalford and Avening served the East India Company, and, of course, Stroud scarlet clothed the British Army in the periodic great power struggles and constant colonial conflicts of that era. There was a lot of demand for Stroud scarlet.

But when times were hard, local weavers often took strike action. Colonel Wolfe (before he became General Wolfe, killed in his redcoat storming the Heights of Quebec in 1759) expressed sympathy for the weavers in 1756, even though he had to quell any disturbance: “The poor half-starved weavers … beg about the country for food … the masters have beat down their wages …” These weavers helped make the redcoats worn by Colonel Wolfe’s troops …

On the other side of the globe, in the West Indies, red coats did another job, for it was said that enslaved persons “generally avoided anyone wearing a red coat, like those worn by grenadiers” and, in consequence, “some Gentlemen put on a coat of that Colour when they Travell …”

When slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833, a handful of local residents gained ‘compensation’, including Samuel Baker, up at Lypiatt, with his claim for 410 enslaved persons in Jamaica. This helped fund Baker’s Quay as an industrial hub at Gloucester Docks and fund investment in railways around Gloucester, the Forest of Dean and the Midlands.

About half a mile from the railway bridge at Paganhill in Stroud, however, you can find the oldest antislavery memorial in the country: the unique Abolition Arch from 1834, just by Archway School.

ERECTED TO COMMEMORATE THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE BRITISH COLONIES THE FIRST OF AUGUST A.D. MDCCCXXX1V

This unique source of pride is only a couple of miles’ walk from Stroud Station and you can walk along the Stroudwater Navigation for much of the way. You can also visit Rodborough Fields to see the site of the Stroud scarlet stretched on tenterhooks and you can see the painting from c. 1785 down at Walbridge, on the canal, just below the station. There’s more to this than meets the eye …

Navvies and Legerdemain: Who Built the Railways?

Two thousand miles of bucket-lift airshafts,

A million men in diseased shanty towns,

Or lost on the tramp in city or county,

No Navvy’s Head or Arms in the country,

A damp clay embankment instead for a bed –

Or cutting or brickworks, a bridge or a wagon,

A platform, a tunnel, a claypit or trench;

Then making the running up Sonning’s deep Cutting:

A forty-foot climb with barrow and earth,

Two miles of running and landslide bone-crushing,

With pick and with shovel, gunpowder and shot;

Tunnelling through the mud and flood water,

Conned by contractor and ganger and truck,

Calumnied by the press and the pulpit –

We travel today on their muscle and sweat,

And trains now today tell of white-collar fame,

But who can remember a navvy’s true name?

Their fustian skill and anonymous strength

Built so many lines on their steam power length,

But it’s hard to discover a navvy’s true name

In railway history ledger’s domain.

But as regards our local line …

There is a photograph of what was probably the replacement of the timber Wyatt’s Viaduct (Merrywalks Viaduct) with brick, showing men at work – some forty-five years after the Railway Mania.

You can see over 50 men standing or squatting somewhat precariously upon and within the struts and scaffolding. Proud of their labour, skill and fortitude.

But no names.

And as regards Sapperton Tunnel …

Let us remember a representative fragment: George Freeman and Henry Stokes crushed to death, Edward Harrap who died after three tons of matter fell on him, and George Dratsy who lost an eye in an explosion. And William Rice who fell 160 feet yet rose virtually unscathed, physically. But  what did that do to his mind …?

Who Built the Railway?

Everyone knows the name Isambard Kingdom Brunel;

And everyone knows that sepia photograph:

The top hat, the waistcoat, the cigar,

And the giant chain-link in the background –

The busy preoccupied self-assured pride

Of the foremost Victorian engineer:

The man of the moment:

Proud of his steam-ship leviathans,

Equally proud of his Great Western Railway –

The dignified certainty of genius –

Knowing that his 120 miles of long line

Would run all the way from Paddington,

And London time to Bristol Temple Meads

With a mean gradient of just 1 in 1,380,

Just as his drawing board intended.

But where are the names of those who built it?

Where are the names of the women

Who cooked and cared in the camps along the way?

Where are their Fox Talbot portraits?

Where the memorials to those

Whose picks and shovels and slide rule discipline

And one hundred deaths,

Carried the line through Box Tunnel?

Where the tribute to their collective anonymity?

(Box Tunnel is where Wilbert Awdry, as a boy, imagined conversations between engines as they laboured through the night time darkness.)

“There was no doubt in my mind that steam engines all had definite personalities … little imagination was needed to hear in the puffings and pantings of the two engines the conversation they were having …”

If you stand on Stroud station and gaze up to the clutch of red brick buildings on the hillside to the right of the tall red brick mill, you are looking at the area where the Rev Wilbert Awdry of Thomas the Tank fame lived and wrote for the last thirty years or so of his life. His house was named Sodor.

He had a great view of the Brunel Goods Shed from his garden and became Patron of the Goods Shed Appeal after British Rail removed the roof in 1984: decay and demolition loomed for the 1845 Cotswold stone gem …

This beautiful and unique Brunel building (‘Tudor Gothic revival style’) stands some 120-150 yards from the station on the up-line. The lettering on the side from the golden age of railway posters and advertising reads

GWR STROUD STATION EXPRESS GOODS

TRAIN SERVICES DAY TRANSITS

BETWEEN IMPORTANT TOWNS

Thanks to the efforts of the Stroud Preservation Trust and the Goods Shed Appeal, the Goods Shed is now used by Stroud Valley Arts as a performance, exhibition, film and cultural space: indeed, this year, the 180^th anniversary of the building, will see the official transfer of the building to Stroud Valley Arts.

Try and look at that lettering the next time you pass it on the train and reflect upon its history: its uniqueness and yet its symbolism: from an economy based upon steam and manufacturing to one based upon services: Industry to Art:

An Easter shower of cumulus rain:

But sunlight gleamed through the lazy raindrops

On the carriage windows of my Stroud-bound train –

When Isaac Newton’s spectral alchemy

Flashed raindrops silver quick as mercury

Across my reflection on the window pane.

A rainbow arced over Brunel’s Gothic Goods Shed:

Signalling a future – risen from the dead.

Industry and Art

Art and Industry

(A cycle of change and continuity)

I was inspired by reading about Rev Awdry and the first two books in the Railway Series.  How he eventually wrote the stories after telling them to Christopher, especially when he had measles etc; Thomas really first appears in the second book.  Thomas to me, was/still is a great metaphor for how we have to bide our time for our chance to get in the team, get on the road/train/plane etc. To break free  and be what we long and want to be in  an Incredible String Band Gandhi  type way

It’s written to the rhythm of the train in ‘From A Railway Carriage’ by R.L Stevenson (1885) which my grandmother used to read to me and which follows the poem; I’m sure you know it well).

Crispin

Thomas The Tank Legend

Thomas the legend where do we start ?

drove his blue train into the heart

Thomas the engine never will fade

how did he get here where was he made ?

the person who made him lived in this place

gave us a hero a smile on his face

to Awdry and Christopher trains were alive

characters breathing burning with life

Wilbert loved trains so did his son

when he had measles stories were spun

first there were Edward, Henry and Gordon

crowds on the platforms waiting there for them

children all waved whenever they saw them

railway enthusiasts loved and adored them

three railway engines* chugging along

pulling those coaches singing their song

huffing and puffing their smoke to the sky

rivers and fields went thundering by

Thomas was diff’rent Thomas had plans

Thomas was dreaming of racing the land

Thomas just longed to get out there one day

stuck at the station they kept him at bay

but Thomas was cheeky and painted in blue

did what they told him the way engines do

finally one day the moment arrived

Thomas the Tank Engine burst into life .,…..

2.

… endless adventures out on the tracks

off in the morning and all the way back

short stumpy boiler short stumpy funnel

six little wheels steam though the tunnel

past all the stations the guards and the porters

past all the grown ups their sons and their daughters

past all the villages past all the towns

past all the passengers waiting around

on past the trees on a long winding track

past all the places until he was back

back to the station back to his home

back to the place and the life that he’d known

when we’re all little it’s new and it’s true

longing and yearning of what we can do

there on the platform ready to go

dreaming of going to where we don’t know

to Awdry and Christopher trains were alive

characters breathing burning with life

’cause Wilbert loved trains and so did his son

when he had measles stories were spun

tales of an engine who fought to be free

longing for something like you and like me

taking his chance with his face on the train

something about him you cannot explain

smiling with joy as he climbed up the hill

and that’s why the children all love him now still

c Crispin Thomas April 2025 (*Three Railways Engines: First Thomas The Tank Engine book).

From A Railway Carriage

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,

Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;

And charging along like troops in a battle,

All through the meadows the horses and cattle:

All of the sights of the hill and the plain

Fly as thick as the driving rain;

And ever again, in the wink of an eye,

Painted stations whistle on by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,

All by himself and gathering brambles;

Here is a boy who stands and gazes;

And there is the grass all covered in daisies

Here is a cart run away in the road

Lumping along with a man and his load;

And here is a mill and there is a river:

Each a glimpse and gone for ever!

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,

Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;

And charging along like troops in a battle,

All through the meadows the horses and cattle:

Robert Louis Stevenson

From A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885)

Rev W. Awdry 1911-97

(Jottings made from a reading of The Thomas the Tank Engine Man Brian Sibley

The Story of the Reverend W. Awdry and his Really Useful Engines 1995)

In the Beginning was the Word,

But there was also a tunnel at Box,

Where a young child christened Wilbert

Lay awake in his bedroom, dreaming

Of steam-coal railway conversations

Between sleek express and workaday tank engines.

Twenty-odd years later, in wartime,

Wilbert reprised this conceit

With stories to Christopher,

His measles-stricken son, in 1943;

Stories jotted down on odd bits of paper,

With a devoted father’s drawings too –

A format that Margaret thought worthy

Of seeking some sort of publication,

But relentless wartime austerity,

And a national shortage of paper,

Resulted in a series of rejections,

Until a new format was decided upon:

Four tales per book with the Reverend

Also providing draft illustrations

As a guide for the eventual artist:

“We should require eight illustrations, oblong in shape,

with appropriate text matter of about 80-90 words for each of the drawings.”

And so, Edward, Gordon and Henry were born:

The book sold well and then along came Thomas,

Not just in text and illustration,

But also at home in the Awdry household:

A bit of a broomstick and metal tube,

A paper-fastener, too, of course,

Finished off with some carpet pins and screws:

Lo and behold!

Thomas the Tank Engine!

Meanwhile, over in the real world,

The Railway Gazette proved invaluable –

Providing inspiration for further stories,

A branch line to Wilbert’s imagination;

But relationships with the artist,

Clarence Reginald Dalby

Finally hit the buffers in 1957,

On seen as a slightly fastidious pedant,

And one seen as slightly cavalier;

But Wilbert’s brother, George, was a God-send:

Fellow cartographer and historian

Of the mythopoeic Island of Sodor

(Sodor’s original provenance lay

In Wilbert’s mapping of the race between

Bertie the Bus and Thomas the Tank,

To show Christopher it was fair and square),

But what of devoted wife and mother, Margaret?

A busy life as a ‘railway widow …’

For Wilbert had his parish duties,

His time-consuming model railway,

His commitments to preserved railway lines,

His research for further railway stories,

And yet …

“If I hadn’t had the books to write, I should have gone crackers”

Although …

“I had no sooner finished the manuscript for one volume … than I had to start thinking about possible stories and looking for new characters for the next book. There was a gap in parish life, between the end of July and Harvest Festival, and it was then that I would start getting things down on paper.”

John Kenney took over as artist in 1957

(Dalby: “I was sorry to give up … but …my patience became exhausted”;

Awdry on Kenney: “We got on splendidly. He was as different from Dalby as chalk from cheese. He was interested in the work and used to go down to his station and draw railway engines from life.”)

And back in those still Imperial days

The books and associated merchandise –

Including an LP with the Rev’s voice –

‘Precise’ and ‘slightly singalong’ according to Sibley –

Made their way across five continents;

But, just like Steam, Empire was ending too,

And despite the famous City of Truro

Appearing in the illustrations,

With ‘The Thin Clergyman’ alongside,

So did Diesels …

“I keep thinking about the Dreadful State of the World, Sir. Is it true, Sir, what the diesels say?” “What do they say?” “They boast that they’ve abolished Steam, Sir.” “Yes, Gordon. It is true.” “What, Sir! All my Doncaster brothers, drawn the same time as me.” “All gone, except one.”

With this dystopian melancholy,

Was industry as much as imagination

Now driving the Reverend’s writing?

There was no Christopher now to test a tale upon,

But Margaret and a tape recorder helped,

But declining eyesight sadly meant

That Gallant Old Engine was Kenney’s swansong;

But the Reverend liked the new artist:

Peter Edward’s depictions of engines,

People and landscape were just the ticket,

As was an appearance on Desert Island Discs;

Choosing two records of steam trains and Johnny Morris

Recounting the Edward and Gordon story

Blew Roy Plumley’s mind in 1964.

1964 and 1965 were signal years:

First of all, retirement and then the decision

To move across the country to Stroud.

The Move to Rodborough Avenue

Stroud was ideal: on the railway line

To ageing parents in London and Worcester,

With a house big enough for a model railway;

So, with the gift of a front gate from Emneth,

A determination to clear the back garden

(“You couldn’t see out the back windows”),

The addition of LMS bridge plate number 30,

The renaming of the house as ‘Sodor’,

All meant that Rodborough Avenue became home,

And with joint involvement with Margaret

In the busy life of the local community,

And with a joint definition in text and picture

Of The Tin and The Fat Clergyman,

All was sweetness and light in Stroud …

But, alas, nothing lasts forever …

‘I felt I was getting rather stale … it was uphill work’ …

And in 1972 came the last of that wonderful series –

But we’ll now jump on a decade again,

To the era of Britt Allcroft’s drive and funding:

Here she is, speaking about a new medium:

“Television … could offer children and their grown-ups an experience that is similar to that which they have when they sit down to read a book together”,

And then, of course, along comes Ringo Starr

With that half-mythologised visit

To the Rev Awdry and Margaret in Rodborough Avenue:

Ringo and the Rev in Rodborough

https://radicalstroud.co.uk/ringo-and-the-rev-in-rodborough/

or at

https://sootallures.wixsite.com/topographersarms/post/ringo-and-the-rev-in-rodborough

But we jump on another decade:

What did Wilbert care for his entry in Who’s Who,

Grieving for Margaret who had died the year before,

‘I and our children are still in something of a daze at the suddenness of it’,

‘Margaret was a wonderful wife for a diffident author to have. It was entirely due to her, when The Three Railway Engines existed only in pencil on the back of old circular letters, that they ever got off the ground at all…’

Wilbert took flowers weekly to Margaret’s grave,

But Wilbert had to use a taxi,

But then fell and fractured a hip –

It was obviously a difficult time

Both for him and the wider family,

But he recovered to visit Didcot

For a ‘45^th Thomas Anniversary’

And then the National Railway Museum,

Where his work was acknowledged as having

‘Played an enormous part in arousing children’s interest in railways’;

1994 was a watershed year,

With Wilbert President of the Dean Forest Railway,

And an engine named after him as well,

Christopher writing Wilbert the Forest Engine,

Where Thomas the Tank Engine and Wilbert meet:

So, a watershed year but also one

Effecting a certain circularity.

But then, in October, George died.

The final paragraph in the book

Concludes with an interview with Wilbert:

‘How would you like to be remembered?”

‘I would like my epitaph to say,

“He helped people to see God in the ordinary things of life,

and he made children laugh.”’

I’m so glad I got the book out of the library rather than off Amazon. A previous reader had written in neat pencil beneath the above ‘Amen 23/3/97

I thought the epitaph was almost William Blake-like:

‘To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.’

Ringo and the Rev

Song to be sung roughly to the tune of Octopus’ Garden

It’s strange but true

In Rodborough Avenue

A big car arrived with Ringo Starr

(Big car arrived with Ringo Starr),

Church tower and steeple

Gazed upon the Beatle

As he had a drag upon his usual fag

(Drag upon his fag)

His partner, Barbara,

Looked in the Awdry’s larder,

While staring at a railway mag –

SHE couldn’t find a bite to eat,

And so, bored, she almost fell asleep;

I’d like to be with the Reverend Aw-d-ry

With Ringo in that garden in the shade

I’d ask my friends to come and see
That meeting in the garden

That changed history –

Oh, what joy for every girl and boy
With Ringo in that garden in the shade

We would be so happy, you and me
Seeing Wilbert telling Ringo what to do;

I’d like to be with the Reverend Aw-d-ry

With Ringo in that garden in the shade

With Ringo in that garden in the shade

My notes from Brian Sibley’s biography are quite extensive but when I get to pages 23-24 in my note-book I can’t remember which bits are from Brian Sibley’s commentary and which bits are from the Daily Mail reporting on the meeting and whenever I’ve popped into the library to have a reacquaintance with the text, the book, alas, has been out on loan … so I’m not quite sure which bits are which in the section coming up … but I think the bits in quotation marks are mostly from the Mail on Sunday.

Ringo arrived in Rodborough Avenue clad in a blue satin jacket; the car was equally flamboyant: a bronze Mercedes, hotfoot from some Berkshire mansion or other, and so to Stroud with ‘Its soft Cotswold features scarred and pitted by roadworks’. He was accompanied by his wife, Barbara Bach. What happened next?

Wilbert ‘began to demonstrate the first part of the timetable of the Knapford-Ffarquhar branch line … a cream-lined jacket over his spare, slightly stooping frame. Round his neck hung a small wooden control-box from which he governed the movement of his engines … “Tell me when you’re bored” … “Not yet,” said Ringo.

Mr Awdry detached a couple of trucks from a line of goods-vans at the touch of an electrode. “Cool” said Ringo.

What happened next? They went out into the back garden. Ringo pulled out a packet of fags and asked Mr Awdry if he fancied ‘a ciggy’: the Rev, of course, was a pipe-smoker. He declined. He then had to correct Ringo on something far more important: Ringo unfortunately referred to the famous engine as ‘Tommy’.

And then this tantalising meeting of two very different worlds began to draw to a close: Wilbert ‘Reminiscing … in that gentle spell-binding way of all good story-tellers, when Ringo said he was sorry, but he had to go. His wife roused herself from a state of almost catatonic boredom … Mr Awdry bade them a courteous abstracted farewell.’