Category: History

Boudonus a servant in the Villa Magni Widinis speaks:

‘My family have always been servants to the Great Family whose own ancestors had the villa built in the valley made with stone from the hills around; they were the Great Family before the Dobunni became part of the Roman Empire. My father said as his own father told him that the Roman men were very clever because they left our tribes as they were. In Britain we had our kings, priests and warriors, craftsmen and farmers; we had rich lands feeding our cows, sheep and growing grain. The Roman men left this because they could see it worked and all they had to do was make our noble men willing clients. Only they didn’t like our priests, the druids were too political refusing to acknowledge the divine status of the emperor. You know what happened to them’

‘We gave them tax,- yes that meant our grain-kept the peace–yes kept it because we were too busy scraping up enough grain for ourselves to think of disturbing Roman peace-and our nobility were left alone to enjoy the luxuries of the Roman Empire: lots of wine was the main thing and more skin off our hands working to keep the taxes up. At Villa Magni Widinis the Great Family are the richest here in Dobunnic territory and around them gather all their nobles who live in smaller Roman villas around the vale. My family has always been proud to be servants at Villa Magni Widinis.

It is not just a big house, no the villa is a place where there is industry and where the grain and wool from all the villa estate are sorted and made ready for being sold at the market at Glevum. Through the villa gates you will see there are buildings for pottery, iron working, brewing, baking, carpentry and weaving. They are done by families like mine who live inside the villa walls. It is the shepherds and field labourers who live outside and they are the poorest, but even they have to come to the villa to be paid in grain, beer, salt and wool.

But don’t think they all like the Roman Empire, my mother nearly starved as a child because her father was not given the full payment of grain and salt. Our nobility have to take that out if there’s been a poor harvest‘

‘The Great Family live in their household quarters at the head of the villa and they have many rooms arranged around courtyards which, I have heard, are planted with pungent herbs so their scent blows in during summer; they have their bath house and gallery room of marble statues of Roman gods that they say are inhabited by spirits that bring good fortune to our villa. The Great Family always have guests in the longer months who arrive in their carts and wagons bringing up dust from the roads. The men will spend whole days out with their horses and baggage stewards hunting in the woods here. They will come back to relax, wash and settle into their dining and entertainment as the sun sinks and the oil lamps have to be lit. You cannot begin to imagine the rich colours of their tunics and the loud eloquent voices that follow our noble men around as they speak. The women are as magnificent to look at, though being a servant I would not dare look too long though I know I would like to!

I heard my father did as a younger man and caught the eye of the noble daughter, he was ashamed afterwards because the head servant of the family was sent round with two bruisers, men who carry out the rough administrations of the family. Father was pulled away and came back home staggering black and blue’

‘That is only half of Villa Magni Widinis I’ve told you about. I didn’t tell you about the new reception chamber being built where the mosaic artists from Corinium are putting down they say a huge pavement with Orpheus and the animals dancing around him. Orpheus is one of those Roman stories: but we’ve got stories here about enchanters who are lord of the wild animals who follow their poetry and music. Not only animals though men and women who go mad and wander off. Everyone likes to have the Great Family’s patronage because they have succeeded in the Roman civilization and yet they do not forget their own old tribal loyalties.

Loyalty to them is after all what’s kept my own family from rags and hunger. One last thing, I’ve thought sometimes when the great villa perhaps lies ruined, not that it ever will be, but I’ve thought if it was, who would be remembered, the Great Family or my own lot, the servants and workers getting by at the lower end? In Roman law we’re humiliores: little men close to the dirt’

By Robin Treefellow

 

It’s hard to imagine the orchards of Heathrow,
Abundant as the orchards of Herefordshire,
Down there, by John Betjeman’s hated Slough:
‘Come friendly bombs’;
Hard to imagine windfalls in these
William Blake ‘chartered streets’:
‘One World: One Account’,
‘The future is exciting!
Get ready!’
But I shall be flying over gramp’s
Great War battlefields,
Towards dad’s Chindit warfare,
Via dystopian Dubai airport:
‘Dubai has transformed from a humble fishing village
to one of the most cosmopolitan and innovative cities in the world …
Jump on the metro, catch an amazing view from the world’s tallest building …
shop within The Dubai Mall Metropolis,
take a selfie in front of the famous Dubai Fountain …
All you have to do is get off a plane.’

But what of Kerala?
In the words of Stroud’s Rick Vick:
‘Apparently, a functioning, flourishing and fully communist state’,

Well obvs, the flora and crowds and traffic hit you right in the face
As soon as you leave the airport,
But so do the plethora of hammer and sickle flags,
Flying along the streets and bridges,
Not the tattered pennants of some marginal group,
But official flags guiding the way
Through the skyscraper trumpery of high finance,
King Midas commodity fetishisation,
Rats’ playgrounds of waste on the verges,
And the occasional shanty shack
Cheek by jowl with the serried tuk tucked jams,
And with highest literacy rate in India,
And a landscape of land reform,
With women’s spice cooperatives
(Easy India Company on the door),
The grave of Vasco da Gama
In the Church of St Francis,
The devout OCD and ODC –
Obsessively Devoted Christian –
Touching every icon three times with each finger,
The occasional imploring mendicant,
The huge open-air laundry,
Bare chested men hammering sheets against stone,
The lines of washing stretching across the wide field,
Tended by the women, line by line,
Huge steam cast iron irons ploughing through the haze,
Every worker on piece rates,
An honesty box for donations for photographs,
A shadowed, mildewed red flag hanging out the front.
There was something quite Dickensian about all this,
All that manual labour, long hours and low wages,
All that damp air, vapour and miasma,
All that shouting, pounding and cacophony,
It made me quite at home in time and space:
My great-great grandmother was a laundress in London in 1850 –
And today we have the gig economy:
All those long hours, low wages and queuing for a job:
Same old, same old, really.
And there, the toothless old laundry man,
Quizzing me about my job,
‘Ah! History. No. Legends. You mean legends.
Let me tell you about legends.’
This was more Wilkie Collins and The Moonstone,
Rather than David Copperfield –
All was quite bewitching at the laundry,
And at the joss stick shop:
‘Do you know Milton Keynes?
My friend lives there.
Too much concrete, he says.’

Outside, goats chewed tufts of grass on street corners,
Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus
All milled together by the various
Churches, temples, mosques and synagogue,
And we all read together in the museum:
‘The history of Europe particularly Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and England from the 15th to 18th century indicate that there was a lust for dominant power over rival states, and fighting for supremacy at sea etc.’
The diagram down the road,
Outlining the techniques of the handloom weaver,
Could have said the same about Stroud,
The East India Company and Lancashire,
I suppose,
For as the museum reminded us,
Once upon a time,
‘The sun never sets on the British Empire.’

It certainly shone on me when I was
Invited up to the podium in the park,
At the hammer and sickle spangled
Meeting of the Communist Party of Kerala,
For official photographs and fraternal
Exchange of greetings and cards
Later, I apologised for British imperialism
And the depredations of Stroud Scarlet:
‘The British did some good things too.
Education, for example.’

We were just by the park where kids play cricket all day long,
It once was the parade ground where the British army
Marched all day long in their red coats,
The sun beating down on them and Tommy Atkins,
The sun never setting on duty and discipline,
But now setting on the giant fishing nets,
The families playing together by the darkening sea,
And the giant skyscrapers on the other side of the harbour,
Young men and women learning English
(‘Fresh Up! Toilets! Ice cream!’),
Dreaming of a job and emigration,
Older men dancing the traditions of
Kathakali:
‘The most wonderful art form in the world’,
While we went on the next day to tea plantations,
Up past the picks and shovels by the roadside,
The relentless swinging of arms,
The tuk tucks climbing steadily past the stalls,
‘Tiffin Corner’, ‘Homely Food’,
‘Ample parking for your vehicles’
To that Scottish-Victorian innovation:
Tea plantations in the Kerala highlands,
And there we wandered at 5,000 feet,
Near the old colonial hill station,
Walking past the women working their methodical way,
Through the tea hedges, clipping their way
Through every second of their eight hour shift,
The male supervisors ensuring no tourist
Breaks the relentless rhythm of work with a request
For a photograph,
Some even run with their bags, when full,
Stuffed with eighty kilograms of tea,
Partly because they are on piece rates,
And partly because the supervisor has tied up the branches of the tripod,
Mustn’t keep him waiting for weighing,
And ticking and recording and eventual paying,
As the sun makes its way across the mountains,
And the tied cottages in the valley,
But always burning a path for the women
In their vibrant clothes and headscarves,
Moving steadily along the hedges,
Their arms and fingers clip clipping
For eight, unremitting, hours,
The serpent-eagle circling high overhead,
Beyond the verandahs and bungalows of pink gin history,
Beyond the hydrangea memories of home
And the dragonfly dreamland
Of the hallucinogenic angel’s trumpet,
Down in the lush grassland by the village stream.

But it was time to say goodbye to our guide,
And to Munnar,
And to this Home and Colonial cigarette card landscape,
To take the winding road and hairpin bends to Thekaddy,
But with Abraham for our driver,
All was fun and carefree and mesmeric in the car:
The perfumed garden of a spice plantation,
A fragrant arbour-synecdoche of history,
Of renaissance Europe
(Astrolabes, curiosity, money, war and colonialism),
The explosions of colour in the villages and towns:
The buckets and brooms and mops and bananas hanging from the hooks,
The shopkeepers squatting on the pavement in front of their door,
The lines of scooters and tuk tucks and women in saris,
Some with umbrellas and parasols,
Some on mobile phones,
Some breaking stones,
Some down on the river banks washing the sheets,
Some cleaning pots by the roadside or marching,
With all the dignity and decorum of labour,
With pots carried on their heads, all, shining in the sun.

But we,
We were here to trek and explore:
A bamboo ferry to take us to read the tracks of tiger,
Wild dogs, bison, deer, porcupines,
To spot what had gone before,
Proustian moments where past events
Cast their after-shadows,
Until our guide tracking up ahead,
Returned with finger to his lips,
With an instruction to hurry,
And there witness a baby elephant suckling,
And all around, the polyphonic, rainbow
World of woodland and waters:
Kingfishers flashing their iridescence,
Stork and egrets and cormorants and eagles,
Tribal people walking in their steady file,
Called, like all the teeming life here,
Here in the woods, and grass and air,
Called to the water’s edge.

Just like us the next day:
We gathered together by the water,
A cosmopolitan cast and crew
Of fourteen, together with our guides
(One armed with a rifle slung across his camouflage),
To row our bamboo rafts across the lake,
Sometimes running aground on hidden branches,
Or boughs and boles and trunks of trees,
One guide diving to retrieve a camera,
Held aloft like a pearl from the depths,
Past cormorants and egrets and storks and black eagles,
And monkeys scattering over our heads in the bending branches,
Once more in the shadow of William Blake:
‘Tyger, Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?’
A herd of boar made their ambling progress through the grasslands,
An ostracised straggler easy meat for the tiger,
As an elephant stood with sagacious and solemn dignity,
Over by the woodland clearing’s dust and rock.
(Appetites whetted – would there be more?
Be careful of what you wish for.)

Later,
The sun high,
We rested in the shade,
Like strolling actors in a masque,
Playing roles we only half understood,
A polyglot wind whispering through the leaves,
Until we all fell asleep,
Dreaming of our dragonfly Eden
(Where God rested after Creation,
And where Charles Darwin tracked the truth,
Through The Origin of Species),
Dreaming, as unseen eyes studied us,
Of our homes from the varied continents of the world,
Until alarm bells sounded for our guides:
A herd of bison up above the stream,
And there a herd of elephants
Suddenly appearing out of the green,
Obstructing our path, mother with young,
An obvious and urgent danger,
And only two hundred metres ahead.
Fingers to lips, our guides urgent and peremptory,
Anxiety etched across their faces,
We were ordered to take an unknown path,
There, into the shadowed woodland,
No photography allowed,
No staring into the eyes of an elephant,
No matter what the distance,
The rifle ready to fire if felt necessary
To deter a trumpeting herd;
Deer rustled to our right,
Snakes to our left,
And in this, our refuge of the forest,
Somewhere deep, the black cobra and green mamba,
As we made our chequered way back to the ferry,
An elongated snake line of walkers,
Chastened but elated by danger,
A walk into the heart of darkness and light conjoined,
A harmony and symmetry of fear and beauty –
‘What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?’ –
And later that night, in town,
As we walked past the poster of Che Guevara,
After a couple of kingfishers,
A young man shouted us this benison,
‘Enjoy your day in Paradise’.

How did he know we had been there?

The next day, Abraham took us to the backwaters,
Past icing sugar churches,
Then, surprisingly, a Lutheran one,
Lines of quiet, disciplined schoolchildren,
Waiting patiently in every village for the bus:
‘Holy Mary – Give Praise to God’
‘St. Jude’s’,
Past rubber tree plantations,
‘Build Strong and Secure with our Cement’,
‘Save Oil, Save India’,
‘Save Rainwater’,
‘Complete your family.
Kerala’s Number One Fertility Clinic’,
Past the old woman with her broom
And Indian Larkin Afternoons:

Each day she rises with the sun,
And, with the call to prayer and broom,
She brushes the leaves from her doorstep.

Each day the cars rush right past her doorway,
Blowing yesterday’s leaves
Back, onto her doorstep.

Each day the trees shed more leaves,
Dropping slowly in Larkin ones and twos,
In the long, hot, afternoon.

While she sleeps,
The moon silvers the silent road,
And the leaves gather in mounds.

The wind wakes up at midnight,
Performs its customary duty,
And deposits the leaves on the doorstep.

Each day she rises with the sun,
And, with the call to prayer and broom,
She brushes the leaves from her doorstep.

We passed a picture of Karl Marx,
In his customary magisterial pose,
But there, on the bridge,
Flags and bunting and a hammer and sickle,
Fashioned from polystyrene,
Waved high in the air,
As the crowd chanted in joyful unity.

In the paddy fields of rice,
Awaiting harvest just before the monsoons,
Arms swayed in pendulum rhythms,
Cleaning and clearing in the vast vista of green,
Palm fronds a fringe to the rivers, canals and lagoons,
The endless miles of lily pads and water hyacinths,
The lines of egrets and cormorants on the endless mudflats,
The lines of washing draped along the canal banks,
The chained elephant swaying at the Hindu temple,
To the rhythms of the sitars and cymbals and chanting,
Marigolds and candles lighting the path to the new year,
And like Orwell’s prisoner in Burmese Days,
We made our way barefoot,
Avoiding the puddles amongst the crowds
Of families praying at the shrines,
Or shopping at the temple market arcades,
Or the rusty bicycles propped against divine walls,
And the aged man with his lottery tickets at the temple gates,
A kaleidoscope of acid synesthesia for us,
The only white faces in this teeming heart of the orient,
Where Sergeant Pepper meets Wilkie Collins and The Moonstone.

We went back by tuk tuk,
The sun set,
The palm leaves became silhouettes,
The rhythm of Vishnu drifted high across the paddy fields.

The next day women beat their washing,
Women fished while men watched,
Boatmen herded flocks of ducks across the waters,
Like swathes of purposeful lily pads,
While swallows gathered on the wires
Which stretched across the wide navigations,
Schoolchildren with their bikes waiting for the ferryman,
Hare Krishna pulsating out from the river banks,
Well wishers waving their greetings,
A flock of cormorants gathered in the tree,
Wings outstretched, like so many pterodactyls,
But we watched the engagement procession train
At the St Thomas Basilica,
Wife and husband to be in white,
The procession, however, a riot of colour,
‘What is your name?
And your husband’s?’
But in the market,
‘My brother is a psychologist in Newcastle.
This is his house. He loves Newcastle United.’

We had lunch in a private house by the river,
And wished the Kerala Blasters well
In tomorrow’s match against Goa,
To make our way past the hammer and sickle flags,
And under the low slung bridges,
Where men washed themselves,
Women washed the clothes,
And men repaired the canal walls close by the red flag:
‘Workers of the world unite,
You have nothing to lose but your chains’,
Just like the elephant in the temple.

I awoke in the half light of dawn mists,
Pulled back the curtains and there right in front of my nose,
Two diminutive sun birds,
Dancing on the railings of the stern,
Bright yellow breasts catching the sunrise,
Then a corvid breakfasting on a fallen coconut,
Egrets busy on the bank,
A man, barefoot, climbing the coconut tree,
His rustling ascent quickly followed
By his steady tapping of his harvest,
Then, the shimmering pink lotus fields,
Air, earth and water in a harmony of tranquility,
A rainbow of butterflies fluttering,
While the doctors write to the matrimonial pages
Of the Hindu on Sunday:
‘Doctor seeks doctor –
Good family background preferred’;
While for another,
‘Caste not an issue’,
While another seeks a bride,
Who must have ‘clean habits’,
But, alas, the elusive butterfly of love
Wings its own way through the world,
Past the elephant trudging down the highway,
And all the Kerala brushstroke broom clean habits,
While the monsoon waits in the ocean wings,
And the aged woman brushes her leaves.

Shashi Tharoor Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India

Stroud Scarlet cloth,
A symbol of local and national pride,
All those red army uniforms,
But also a onetime cloth of contention
Betwixt spinner, weaver, and master clothier,
And a contemporary cloth of contention, too,
For being caught red handed
And being on tenterhooks
Have different connotations,
When we link the local and the global:
Stroud Scarlet:
Symbol of war and Empire,
Of imperial annexation
And colonial exploitation:

This tweet from today harks back to 1857 and the ‘first major Indian revolt, called the Sepoy Mutiny or Great Indian Mutiny by the British’.
I do have memory triggers.
And one of those triggers is red uniform coats.
Those are linked to the mass killings in the mango orchard.
My grandmother used to sing old folk songs about
the horrors inflicted by the ‘red coats’.

The horror referred to involves a series of hangings in the mango orchard.
By the red coats.

What makes People love history?
So that it becomes a passion,
Not a subject, nor hobby, nor interest,
Not a diversion, nor a pastime,
But a consuming passion instead.

I started to read the virtual edition
Of the History Workshop Journal,
A compendium of contributors
And historians, who recounted
The reasons, recollections, emotions,
And afternoon madeleine moments,
That all conspired, to conjure forth
A love of the study of the past:
A Passion for History.

I’ve added my own, too;
I wonder which of these apply to you?

For example …

The transformative book that showed you
That History wasn’t just a school subject
(Possibly your best – but why?)
Where you got things right or wrong,
And got marked and graded;
The book that became part of you,
Rather than something you tossed in your satchel;
The transformative book that wasn’t a text book,
With dull, deadly facts, tables, dates and statistics,
But a book that was elegantly written,
A book that made the past alive,
And relevant to whenever today might be,
A book that conjoined the then and the now,
Took you away from linear time,
And showed you that’s what History can do.
(E.P. Thompson first for me.)

The discovery that History could involve emotion,
Or an imaginative flight from linear logic,
It could help you hear voices, as it were,
Far from academe’s ivory towers,
And slip through Time’s wormholes.

Or it could be elsewhere or earlier in childhood,
The Christmas present of a history book,
Fairy stories, nursery rhymes,
Picture books,
The film on the telly,
Or Disney at the cinema,
The merchandising,
The spin-offs that turn a child into a reader,
The trip to the museum,
Family history,
A religious text,
A family bible,
The local war memorial,
Sunday tea at your gran’s,
Acting in the school play,
Displays in the school classroom,
Jackdaws,
The inspirational teacher,

Discovering that the history of a period
Could be studied through the literature of a period,
The discovery that fiction was not a separate subject;

Old maps and artefacts,
An old atlas,
Encyclopaedias,
Pictures and portraits on walls,
Collecting,
Ephemera,
The names of pubs,
Second hand shops and vintage shops,
Making your own museum,
Going beyond the empirical and documented,
With creative reimagining;

Politics,
Activism,
Migration,
Conversation,
Walking,
Landscape,
Cloudscape,
Seascape,
Riverscape,
Roofscape,
Music,
Dreaming,
Summer holidays,
Roaming,
Listening,
Remembering …
Googling …

I wonder which of these apply to you?

What would you add?
For …

What makes People love history?
So that it becomes a passion,
Not a subject, nor hobby, nor interest,
Not a diversion, nor a pastime,
But a consuming passion instead.

Times change don’t they?

“Are there no prisons?”
“Are there no workhouses?”
Asked Mr. Scrooge back in the decade
Known as ‘The Hungry Forties”,
When asked to assist with charity,
A charity that was mostly Christian rather than secular.

Times change don’t they?
‘’We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land
And it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand’…
I grew up singing that as a schoolboy,
Not knowing then, that it was a hymnal retort
To Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species …
Times change don’t they?

And when I sang that as a schoolboy,
We collected and distributed the fruits of the harvest
To senior citizens in the area,
Many, I suspect, widowed in the Great War,
And our posh head-teacher would not allow
Anything as common as tinned food
To sully the cornucopia in the hall,
Times change don’t they?

Then we started thinking of ‘The Third World’,
As it was known then,
Charity no longer started at home,
In the boom-time 1960s,
But when beggars returned to the streets
In the 1980s,
Tins were needed at home,
Times change don’t they?

And now, in a new century,
In the last two weeks,
I have fed the homeless in the streets around Kings Cross,
Written lessons about Mr. Scrooge –
And his redemption –
Written lessons about the cruelty of Stroud’s workhouse,
And now I am searching for the tins again,
For families,
For Stroud’s Food Bank,
For charity, once more, begins at home.
Times change don’t they?
Do they?

ONE: DISCOVERY

An invitation to participate in a seminar held by the Oral History Society in September 2017, based on some work from thirteen or so years before, got me thinking about oral history and differing walking practices. Obviously, many people record their walks – but I wanted to seek examples of projects and ideas beyond that admittedly admirable practice.

So I joined the Walking Artists Network and introduced myself with a question: I wondered if any walking artists carried out oral history projects as part of their approach. Some examples follow, but first I thought I might outline my experiences and ideas.

The work which was so well regarded was for www.irespect.net – the website seems a bit creaky now, but my perspective was that the lives of ordinary people were as necessary to any transmission of ‘Heritage’ as the lives of the powerful: a form of ‘Counter-Heritage’, in a way. I also put together a whole series of worksheets and lesson plans for schools. What I/we haven’t done is to walk the streets of Gloucester, using those testimonies and questions for walking and discussion: the great thing about devising questions with testimonies is that it stops those oral testimonies becoming inert. The questions promote engagement – that is especially so, of course, with young people.

My next involvement in oral history was with my local community: writing poems and recording local history textually, as well as with a microphone. This was a new development for me: taking a recording, making a transcript, and then writing a prose-poem, which would then be read back to the contributor. These testimonies and consequent writings can be embedded within different media, so as to contribute to further group walking and further recordings.

Here is a case study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xohBrBpr5w together with https://radicalstroud.co.uk/ls-lowry-and-local-landscape/

A search for the genius loci of my area (the Stroud Valleys: five valleys with fast flowing streams) followed. Fast flowing streams powered the water wheels of local industry – and those streams came from the plethora of springs issuing forth in the Stroud Valleys. That led to my cataloguing the names of local springs; then moving into a Blakean take on it all, whilst collecting memories of local springs too. This melding and conjoining of genres can be found at https://radicalstroud.co.uk/springs-from-research-to-blake-to-oral-history/

Since then, my practice has moved to a radical history of landscape and locality, in an EP Thompson style of rescuing the anonymous from ‘the enormous condescension of posterity’. This contributes to performative, historical walking. My approach involves research (sometimes primary sources); imaginative re-creations of first person voices based upon that research (a sort of one step beyond oral history); a planned, performative walk, with performers briefed beforehand; with factual, historical accounts, too, to act as a counter-point; followed by the recording of the walk textually and visually, with a posting on www.radicalstroud.co.uk

The website has a number of categories – accounts are placed accordingly. Here are two examples of recreated first person voices: https://radicalstroud.co.uk/the-last-words-of-thomas-jubiter/

https://radicalstroud.co.uk/i-was-baptized-josephine/

TWO: PRINCIPLES

Performative Walking and Oral History

Doors of No Return

Historic, documented, liminal places,

Not gone with the wind, but both visible and invisible,

Spaces and places in the Stroudwater hills and valleys

With messages and mementoes from a riotous past

Open doors to the truth –

A counter-narrative:

“A performative counter-narrative … a ‘guerrilla memory’”,

“Lieux de memoire, sites of history, torn away from the moment of history”

(Pierre Nora),

Memorialisation that moves beyond the empirical,

The documented, the evidenced and the historical,

To a counter-heritage, a counter-memorialisation…

For further reinterpretations,

And re-imaginings,

As we move art and monument

From object to process,

And from ‘noun to verb’,

As we create new museums of the past, present and future…

Beyond the Empirical!

Beyond the Documented!

Guerrilla Memorialisation!

THREE: CALIFORNIA

Three or four people or so replied to my question on the Walking Artists Network – here is an example of a different approach from Blake Morris, from California:

In terms of approaches to oral history, I work with the Ancient Greek technique of memory palaces to gather stories through walking. One example is my project Former Fresnans (2012-Ongoing) in which I do walks with people who formerly lived in Fresno, California, but now live elsewhere. We create a memory image for a Fresno-based memory palace after our walk, which records our story of walking together. I then take people in Fresno through the palace and show them the imaginary images and convey the stories of former Fresnans. You can find out more here, http://archive.fresnobeehive.com/2015/12/23/the-beehive-interview-blake-morris/,

FOUR: GLASGOW

TS Beale also replied from Glasgow:

She has been looking at the role of women in industrial actions and protest movements, ‘trying to recover/trouble/nuance/and otherwise mess with the “accepted” narrative about women’s roles in protest movements and industrial actions.’ There has been a walk alongside this:

https://www.facebook.com/events/131081357525702/?acontext=%7B%22action_history%22%3A%22[%7B%5C%22surface%5C%22%3A%5C%22page%5C%22%2C%5C%22mechanism%5C%22%3A%5C%22page_upcoming_events_card%5C%22%2C%5C%22extra_data%5C%22%3A[]%7D]%22%2C%22has_source%22%3Atrue%7D&__mref=mb

FIVE: ARIZONA

Post-Script

I have just seen Christopher Jagmin’s ideas for Scottsdale, Arizona; for us in Britain, a sort of mix of Mass Observation, and ‘A Day in a Life’ /‘Good Morning’ from the Beatles. I could fancy doing this as oral history/sociology – people convene; walk out; record; reconvene for a collective recording. It could also be a way of doing a new form of pub crawl – walkers allocated different pubs to record life; then reconvene for the collective fusion.

For one evening, Christopher Jagmin, Museum of Walking, and Scottsdale Public Art asks the community to join Museum of Walking to take a special historical walk around Scottsdale.

Meet at The Livery where you will receive a map of the area to get you started. Then you will be sent on your way to wander Old Town Scottsdale on a solo, self-guided journey for about 15-30 minutes.

While walking, we want you to explore and discover new experiences; say hello to a stranger, listen to the birds or a conversation taking place, take a photo of a place or person that looks interesting, walk down an alley, open a door for someone going into a building, turn off your cell phone and find a bench and enjoy the moment that you are having.

If you have been here many times you may have some memories of the place. If you are here for the first time everything is new. The hope is that you find or experience a moment to remember.

With your map, we ask that you document an experience from your walk, by marking the time, and the exact spot it happened. When you return to the Livery, we will pinpoint your experience on a map of the area, and we will also document them as historical document of Old Town.

I contacted the Museum of Walking and was delighted when Chris got back to me – see below

Hello Stuart.
The good people over at the Museum of Walking forwarded your email that you sent to them. Sorry it took a bit to get back to you, but was on vacation last week.

Your projects sound very intriguing and interesting. I wish I was closer to participate myself.

I am glad that you were interested in my project, and would be happy to talk more about my project and any thoughts. A collaboration is always possible.

A little bit about my collaboration with the Museum of Walking, and the residency that I am currently participating (I hope not too confusing). I also attached some photos of the signage that I have done for my History Project.

—————————————-

RESIDENCY: Safe and Sound
(http://www.scottsdaleindependent.com/news/artist-christopher-jagmin-sets-up-social-practice-projects-at-scottsdale-livery/amp/)

We are living at a moment in time that seems to be filled with high anxiety. I envision this livery space as a place to find comfort, make face-to-face connections, and maybe discover something interesting about ourselves.

The Livery space offers a variety of unexpected projects and opportunities to work with strangers, and express our community’s anxieties and joys without judgment.

—————————————-

P R O J E C T 1

The History Project

Historical markers are small story-telling signs that dot the landscape with sad, happy, or thrilling stories of known and forgotten heroes and villains, and the histories that were made at a specific location. These signs are the basis for a personal history project
that began in 2014.

This is a project that I have been personally working on for a few years. I memorialize important and not so
important times and experiences in my life, or notes overheard conversations and stories from other’s personal experiences. The signs are placed at the locations where these moments actually occurred.

I will ask community participants to remember a specific place (in Scottsdale) other than their home… where they had a profound, sad, joyful, or memorable experience. They would write their story and I would GPS these locations on a large map (at the Livery, and
documented later on a website) with colored pushpins to designate a felt emotion. This map of Scottsdale would show an emotional and alternate historical perspective of the city.

—————————————-

On the map that was given to participants, then follow up with documenting these “histories” on a map of the area, and a recording of these stories:
THE WALKING HISTORY PROJECT

Welcome to Sc be your first visit. Either way, there is a lot to see here and discover.

For this project I am asking you to take a walk around this area for 15 to 30 minutes, and experience new things, new sounds, new people, and maybe even discover something new about yourself.

Here are some suggestions for your journey:

– While walking… really listen. Put your phone down, and listen to the birds, the wind, or the sounds of the community. Perhaps you can have a seat on a park bench and listen to the conversations around
you.

– Why don’t you say hello to someone walking down the street. Or, hold a door open for someone entering a shop. You might want to offer a stranger a compliment, or just give up a big smile.

–  If you want a solitary experience… maybe you can walk down a street that is new to you, or cut down an alley that looks interesting (and safe!). Why don’t you take a photo of an interesting find, but instead of posting on a social media outlet, just share
with a friend in person.

My hope is that you challenge yourself and make a memory that you can tell me and your friends about.
Don’t forget to document your experience by marking the time, and the exact spot it happened on this map. When you return to the Livery, I will document this unique moment as a historical document of Old Town.

—————————————-

Wishing you well, and much luck
Christopher
— 

SIX: MORE IDEAS

PPS

Dear Stuart,

I saw your email on the wan digest mailing list and I thought I’d drop you a line. Your project sounds really fascinating!  I have been trying to use walking interviews as a way to conjure up life stories and geographical imaginations both in Northern Ireland and Spain

Gari

Garikoitz Gómez Alfaro

10-11 Pavilion Parade
School of Humanities
University of Brighton
BN2 1RA – Brighton

Hi again Stuart,

I enjoyed reading this palimpsest of yours. I wish I could escape to the West Country to join you in one of those radwalks!

There are a few other projects I know of that might be interesting to you – do you read Spanish? There’s a couple of really interesting projects in Spain, ranging from the Anarchist Route in Barcelona (with augmented reality) to derives organised by autonomist&feminist groups in Madrid.

I also wanted to draw your attention to an article by Lisa Hill, who is based at Bristol University. The first half of the article is a very useful academic review of approaches to memory/space then quickly turns into an interesting reflection about new ways of writing about life stories and memory. In addition to that, she puts those thoughts into practice in a very useful way. I hope this is useful.

Best regards,

Gari

—
Garikoitz Gómez Alfaro
Ph.D. candidate
—
10-11 Pavilion Parade
School of Humanities
University of Brighton
BN2 1RA – Brighton

SEVEN: DR HILL

I duly read Dr. Hill’s article about walking in the Forest of Dean, with Ron Beard, who provided the oral history – and here is a synopsis.

Dr. Hill spoke of the ‘spectral’: the ‘temporal disjunction’ that can happen when out walking – when landscape and mind intertwine; when memory (voluntary or involuntary) and time conjoin and disjoin, so that the ‘future-present’ is found within ‘the past’. Dr. Hill argues that different styles of narrative and writing are required to describe this mind-landscape fusion: styles that do have a common theme of disrupting authorial omniscience, however: the writer is in the landscape, not some sort of detached, positivist observer.

Hill draws on Proust, Benjamin, Derrida and Sebald as she develops her individual take on cultural geography and then applies this theoretical position to her walk with Mr. Beard.

Ron recollects and speaks of the past while out walking the Dean landscape. Dr. Hill walks, imagines, recreates, listens, records, with an acknowledgement of how important the senses are to any spectral recreations: the smell of coal dust, the whistle of a train etc.: ‘madeleine moments’.

Dr. Hill concludes by stating that she had ‘suggested that walking with memory could provide a more-than-representational perspective on the past. The act of walking creates powerful recollections because it provokes a distinct and familiar tactility with the world’: ‘the spectral … the revenant …ghostly memories … haunting memories … the haunting of the self.’

And this spectral disjunction of time will require a discourse that dispenses with linear narrative. Instead, a narrative should be one that ‘employs a subtle form of literary montage that operates by a process of juxtaposition and discontinuity – in the placing of text and image, and in the changes of topic and style.’ And this writing could well use ‘authentic’ oral history, but might also move towards the ‘fictive’, using a post-modernist multiple voice narration.

Food for thought! And reminiscent of George Orwell’s description of a ‘slum’ in Down and Out in Paris and London, where the initial ‘succession’ of yells first thing in the morning develops into a ‘variegated chorus’ later in the day. ‘Variegated chorus’ …

EIGHT: SPAIN

Talking of Orwell, Gari emailed me further:

‘Here’s the link for the project on walks and feminist memory in Madrid:
http://www.feministas.org/lugares-de-memoria-feminista-de.htmlhttp://www.feministas.org/lugares-de-memoria-feminista-de.htmlhttp://www.feministas.org/lugares-de-memoria-feminista-de.html

Many thanks to Helen Pomeroy at Archway School for the following translation:

We are a group of friends, feminist activists, who are united for the objective and in the interest of making visible and generating collective memorial spaces about the social struggles which have developed over time in the Spanish state. Also we want to contribute to the story of the emancipation of women. We want to know how we arrived here but above all we want share it and spread to others this interest. This is why we have created this group.

We believe that feminist story is collective, historical, rich, diverse and multiple. A memory which for the most part is not part of any textbook nor in any official stories in history, nor is it reflected in the streets of our city or our museums. It is a memory which is found nowhere, a memory which remains open and active in the heads and in the hearts of those people who are given to the moment of seeking alternative reconstruction who seek to transform personal sentiment to collective and public meaning.

and here the one for the barcelona project, which is probably less relevant as it isn’t directly related to oral history but might be interesting due to the possibilities the technology used offers:
http://cierto.org/pdf/tactical_tourism.pdfhttp://cierto.org/pdf/tactical_tourism.pdfhttp://cierto.org/pdf/tactical_tourism.pdf

NINE: TIM INGOLD

Also, I can’t believe I forgot to mention Ingold’s introduction to “Ways of Walking”: https://quote.ucsd.edu/sed/files/2014/09/Ingold-Ways-of-Walking-Introduction1.pdfhttps://quote.ucsd.edu/sed/files/2014/09/Ingold-Ways-of-Walking-Introduction1.pdf  ‘

Again, I duly read this and here is my synopsis:

This ethnographical overview provides a salutary lesson, with a global perspective on walking. It takes us away from a European and/or urban textual modernity, to walking as a social activity – footprints interwoven for some cultures with the transmission of ‘knowledge’, storytelling and oral history. It may be time to resurrect such an approach here in this country – ‘walking’ can become over intellectualised and dry as dust academic; it’s time to bring back the vernacular, when occasion demands.

And that’s what I am trying to do with the writing of a DIY guide to performative walking for my locality – writing with a voice that appeals to everyone. The hope is that there will be a widening collective sharing of experience, beyond the usual suspects.

More of that in the future – Christmas, in fact.

TEN: TOBY BUTLER

Almost finally, now …

Gari also drew my attention to the Memoryscape work of Toby Butler along the bank of the Thames (oral history in the landscape, rather than in museums or as transcripts) and an article at http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/memoryscape/

I tried to contact Professor Butler but he has left UEL and they have no forwarding email address.

ELEVEN: DR CORDER

Dr Kate Corder also contacted me about HOW (Heathrow Orchards Walks):

When I was planning my HOW events, I observed old maps of the Heathrow area and delved in to histories and archives. From 2014-2016 there were approximately 19 HOWs, three of which were not made public, but I had arranged to talk to people about the area history on route. Oral history of the area was an ongoing dialogue before, after and during the HOW event. Participants spoke to historians, activists and volunteers about the regional history met on route during the event. Even though I am not currently doing more HOW events, I am still working on things connected to HOW, (at the moment two publication essays and my work is included in the Alternative Document group exhibition touring to Stoke, Sydney, Bath and Brighton in the next year). 

TWELVE: SAPPERTON TUNNEL AND THE CANAL

As regards the Stroud area, our next performative walk, recording and podcasting will be on October 7^th, when, inter alia, Uta Baldauf will perform a piece about legging through Sapperton Tunnel on the Thames and Seven Canal, right there in front of the tunnel. https://radicalstroud.co.uk/i-was-baptized-josephine/

This piece is an exercise in oral history of sorts: a first person voice of guerrilla memorialization that challenges historical orthodoxy and heritage. This recording of a transgressive account (‘Presentism’?) runs alongside (albeit in a parallel universe) official recordings on the Stroudwater and Thames and Severn canals.

But ours are the invented voices of oral history – authentic and valid in a different type of way from the voices of canal restoration.

Beyond the Empirical,

Beyond the Documented:

Guerrilla Memorialization.

On the way back on the train, Uta and others asked me about what happened to Joe/Josephine. I explained that I had invented her/him.

Uta turned round and looked at me:

’But, I felt she was a real person when I spoke her words. To me, she was a real person. I think she did exist. She did exist.’

https://www.facebook.com/100009938981619/videos/pcb.2372736622951837/534860346855260/?type=3&theater

https://www.facebook.com/100009938981619/videos/pcb.2372736622951837/534860333521928/?type=3&theater

‘We think place is about space but in fact, it is really about time.’
(Rebecca Solnit)

When I first went in search of the soul of FGR,
I wandered through fields and lanes and hills and hedgerows,
Trying to find FGR’s elusive genius loci,
A topographical version of the soul,
Interwoven with local history,
Only to reach the conclusion that this soul
Might just be found in the imagination,
An invented fey ley line,
Emanating from the Jovial Forester,
Stretching up to The New Lawn Another Way
Down through the old hamlet of Forest Green,
And along the valley to the River Frome,
And thence to the River Severn,
A gateway to a world far beyond the Five Valleys:
In short, a Janus-like conjoining
Of both introspection and extrojection.

But a reading of Tim Barnard’s FGR history:
Something to Shout About
Gave me something to think about,
And grounded me further in time as well as space,

Viz:

1. Late 19th century Stroud Journal football reports used an eccentric first person approach from the point of view of the football: for example, ‘The goal Forest Green got was … a very lucky one. I was quite by myself, and the Stroud goalkeeper rushed at me … Signed: The Ball.’
2. Woodchester Priory had a team in 1895, and players readily switched clubs: Woodchester, Nailsworth, Forest Green, Stroud, and so on.
3. On the other hand, playing for Forest Green passed through the generations; the same names appear – Marmont, for example; or, the Browns: ‘Don’t you dare sign for Shortwood – Browns play for Forest Green …’ There was the ‘exaggeration of small differences’ syndrome: Newmarket, Shortwood, Forest Green.
4. A village like Amberley could put out a team before the Great War; so could the M&SWJ Railway – it makes you think about how that war ripped the hearts out of so many villages. (No one smiles in early 1920s team pictures, as a rule, do they?)
5. What’s in a name? Forest Green and Nailsworth teams seemed to almost serially swop names before the Great War: ‘Nailsworth and Forest Green United’ standing out as an archetypal period piece of footballing nomenclature.
6. Extracts from Trenchcoats for Goalposts: ‘Fancy a pint, Ernie?’ ‘Don’t mind if I do, Ernie.’ Lights shine on sign – Both: ‘The Jovial Foresters!’ ‘Home of Forest Green. Changed in here every Saturday. Its very quiet tonight though isn’t it.’ ‘Well … that’s old Kitchener for you.’ Both: ‘Your Country Needs You!’

   Who’s for the Game? by Jessie Pope:

   Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played,
   The red crashing game of a fight?
   Who’ll grip and tackle the job unafraid?
   And who thinks he’d rather sit tight?
   Who’ll toe the line for the signal to ‘Go!’?
   Who’ll give his country a hand?
   Who wants a turn to himself in the show?
   And who wants a seat in the stand?
   Who knows it won’t be a picnic – not much-
   Yet eagerly shoulders a gun?
   Who would much rather come back with a crutch
   Than lie low and be out of the fun?
   Come along, lads –
   But you’ll come on all right –
   For there’s only one course to pursue,
   Your country is up to her neck in a fight,
   And she’s looking and calling for you.

7. Lilian Northwood lived close to the pub and looked back to the post-war years in Forest Green Lily. She spoke of the team’s successes; marching behind the Nailsworth silver band; ‘The Rovers’ black and white flag fluttered proudly in the breeze’; music and dancing in the street outside the pub:

   We are the Forest Green Rovers
   Our forwards are hot on the ball
   Our half-backs and full-backs want beating
   And the goalie they can’t beat at all
   Chorus
   Where will they be when the Rovers take the running?
   Where will they be when they’ve done their level best?
   Where will they be with all their strength and cunning?

   Ten to one on the Rovers and nothing on the rest.’

8. FG yo-yoed up and down Chestnut Hill from The Lawn to Nailsworth and back in the 1920s. Pitches included Tanner’s Piece (now Park Road); Enoch’s Field (now King George V’s Playing Fields); Hayes Road (near the Jovial Forester), owned by FG Congregational Church – they had a team too, and The Lawn. You could spectate from a bedroom window, or crawl through hedgerows, or retrieve footballs from the same hedgerows, or help cut the grass and keep the ground tidy.
9. The British Empire transmitted its racial tropes: one ‘mascot’ would dispense with the customary black and white stripes, top hat and tails, and would, instead, ‘black up’, climbing Spring Hill, frightening children, armed with a shield and a spear.
10. Society transmitted its gender tropes: wives, sisters, aunts, mothers had to wash and iron all the football kit, on top of everything else.
11. 1936 was a year! Abdication Crisis … Hitler’s gamble on marching into the Rhineland … FG decide to buy the football ground at auction, without the necessary.
12. Local derbies attracted crowds of some seven hundred, otherwise ‘just a smattering’ (Peter Vick). People biked and walked over the commons for the derbies, Brimscombe being the key game for both FG and Brimscombe.
13. The sun shone, lawns were being mown, pillboxes at Framilode built facing the wrong way: ‘What a day for a war.’ During WW2, Lord Lee (resident at Avening) paid for a cup for a local league; it was won by Nailsworth Rangers and placed on a shelf at the Britannia; from where it mysteriously disappeared. Other matches took place against the RAF at Aston Down; the Home Guard kept watch; my old friend Peter Tickner was evacuated to Eastington from where he witnessed the night sky turn red when Coventry was blitzed; the football pitch at The Lawn was turned over to pasture. Players such as Ronnie Clift (killed in Crete) lost their lives.
14. After the war, Peter Vick would regularly cut his nose when heading the ball – his glasses were of steel, made to sit inside a gas mask. Other consequences of the war included Polish refugees and service people living in camps. (Remember the Polish contribution to the Battle of Britain and ‘The few’) They had a team in the Stroud League in the early 50s.
15. 1948-49 saw programmes sold for the first time – the night before a match at the George Hotel in Nailsworth and the Jolly Forester.
16. 1951: a colour change almost occurred, from black and white stripes (established 1919) to green and white stripes.
    

    ‘and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ TS Eliot

17. And the swinging sixties? 1965: Ready Steady Go!(?) No – Points West. FG on TV for the first time with the opening of the new grandstand.
18. Welcome to the 1970s: Punk comes and goes … The Falklands War … the New Romantics … and … … Mrs. Thatcher … and … ‘WEMBERLY, WEMBERLY, WE ARE THE FAMOUS FOREST GREEN ROVERS AND WE’RE PLAYING AT WEMBERLY’ 1982 FA Vase Final FGR 3 Rainworth Miners Welfare 0. The poignancy of that name! Rainworth Miners Welfare – little did we know exactly what was just around the corner … Miners’ Support Group(s) in Stroud …
19. And after that for FGR? Gates below 200; a team picture from 1986-87, back row, 2nd left: ‘unknown’.
20. And a name change … 1989, FGR rebranded as Stroud FC. A shock to all, one year before the FGR centenary. A couple of years later, and, money was owed to the Inland Revenue, the brewery was ‘after them’, the coffers could barely run to turning on the floodlights, debts kept mounting, a fanzine was launched and closed after two issues and the threat of legal action … But! There was a return to the 1970s black and white kit! And in May 1992, the name reverted back to Forest Green Rovers!
21. Frank Gregan was an old school manager – his training routines included sending the players up and down Chestnut Hill to report back on the price of an onion bhaji; there’s something of the Empire about this … did the restaurant continually alter the price under Mr. Gregan’s orders? Was inflation that rampant? Or was it an easy gig for the players … ‘Same price as last week, boss.’ Anyway, now that Girish is selling his vegan curries up at the New Lawn, life gets easier on the training ground.
22. A new stand in 1996; gates more than doubled in a couple of years to 500 … and a history of local, regional and the quaintly named ‘Hellenic League’, together with back-to-back promotions brought the demands of modernity to the table: promotion to the Conference would mean further ground improvements: more seats; more covered terracing.
23. The end of the millennium meant FGR’s second visit to Wembley, with a whole series of multiple miraculous escapes from relegation from the Conference in the new one. Last Minute Goals! Results improbably going FGR’s way on the final day of the season! Goal Difference! Other club’s malfeasance or inadequate stadiums! Glued to teletext and ceefax! You couldn’t make it up, folks! Safe for another season!
24. Meanwhile, in a parallel universe … ideas for a new stadium at Stonehouse; or along the Avening Road; instead … plans for a new stand at The Lawn to satisfy Conference rules and regulations. And in another parallel universe … coaches from Worksop for a fixture against FGR went to Forest Green, near Gatwick. You couldn’t make it up, folks!
25. And in yet another parallel universe … a repeated line: ‘The FA Vase and FA Trophy double would have to wait for another year.’
26. And back at the ranch … Stroud College objected to any expansion of the ground … that would mean that FGR could face relegation as the ground would not satisfy Conference regulations … so attention turned to the aptly named Highwood playing fields … work started 2005 … But debts continued to mount, indeed, spiral. And even though initial discussions with Dale Vince in 2009 about sponsorship were fruitless … like a windblown Topsy, the discussions grew … as did the involvement of Mr Vince, as chairman; as did the sponsorship of Ecotricity, as did the environmental awareness re cuisine and transport … and the team’s colours changed once more …
27. And now here we at The New Lawn, in the Football League, and with the possibility of a change of home to Eastington: there’s something typically FGR paradoxical about going west to Eastington; ‘Another Way’.

Conclusion

‘and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ TS Eliot

‘Pub team with money, you’re just a pub team with money.’

When the Eastleigh fans sang that, did they know that they were referencing the Jolly Forester?
Or was there an ambient, subliminal force at work?
A fey ley line working its magic, channeled from the old Jolly Forester?
The spiritual home of FGR.
The soul of Forest Green.

FGR have had an equivocal relationship with Forest Green and the local landscape; Newmarket, Shortwood, Nailsworth, Stroud, the Five Valleys; a part of it and apart from it. The topography has always meant a pressure on space and the capacity of stadiums. Climbing the football ladder has constantly meant a questioning of the utility of the stadiums at The Lawn and The New Lawn. Heraclitus: ‘The only constant is flux.’

Ditto, team strip and colours.

Ditto, getting to and from the match. ‘O tempora, o mores!’

The tales of LS Lowry-like women and men, girls and boys, matchstick dogs and cats … walking or cycling over the commons … and now … all those cars jamming the local roads … despite a brilliant local bus service.
It would be great if FGR could promote a healthy life style not just through diet and energy, but also through promoting walking, cycling and using public transport to the match.

I think it was Perry Anderson who said that nations were ‘imagined communities’. The same could be said of FGR – but having read, thought, wandered and wondered, my ultimate conclusion is that the heart and soul of the ‘imagined community of FGR lies by the Jolly Forester. (Singular? Plural?)
I shall walk up there sometime and re-imagine the band playing in the street outside, the dancing in the lanes, the singing, the celebratory recompense that FGR could give after the devastation of the Great War.
(See point 7 above.)

‘and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ TS Eliot

‘Pub team with money, you’re just a pub team with money.’

If and when the move to Eastington takes place, I hope there could be some heritage boards constructed at the new ground. And if the owners agreed, a plaque at the house which was the pub and changing room. There is a post box in the wall there: wouldn’t it be marvelous if when the ground switch happens, fans posted a memory of The Lawn/New Lawn to the new ground. There could be a changing display.

‘and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ TS Eliot

Post script
Stuart, I’ve been reading an e-copy of this. Fascinated by FGR’s early amalgamation with Nailsworth Thursday FC

FOOTBALL by Jean Philippe Toussaint
‘Toussaint is carving out one of the most fascinating literary oeuvres of our times.’ – Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
‘This is a book that no one will like, not intellectuals, who aren’t interested in football, or football-lovers, who will find it too intellectual. But I had to write it, I didn’t want to break the fine thread that still connects me to the world.’ (Jean Philippe Toussaint

Emerveillement
‘Le football, comme la peinture, selon Leonard de Vinci, est cosa mentale, c’est dans l’imaginaire qu’iI se mesure et s’apprecie. La nature de l’emerveillement que le football suscite provient des fantasmes de triomphe et de toute-puissance qu’il genere dans notre esprit.’

Wonder

‘Football, like painting according to Leonardo da Vinci, is a cosa mentale; it is in the imagination that it is measured and appreciated. The nature of the wonder that football provokes derives from the fantasies of triumph and omnipotence that it generates in our minds.’
(With thanks to Helen Aubrey for the translation)

Radical Stroud’s Entry on the History Workshop Journal Page

Stroud – that ‘mill town in the Cotswolds’ – together with its hills, valleys and Gloucestershire tracks, has a long history of radicalism: a Digger community down the road at Slimbridge; Parliamentarian supporters in the Civil War; illegal tobacco cultivation; food riots; weavers’ riots; Captain Swing; poaching; Chartism; agricultural trades unionism, Quakerism, a Tolstoyan community nearby – and, uniquely, an arch to commemorate the end of slavery.

I could go on, but there is another side to this this coin: ‘Stroud Scarlet’s imperial history. That cloth stretched out on tenterhooks, red-coated the British army; was traded with the Iroquois and by the East India Company; some of that cloth must have made its way down to Bristol, Bunce Island, Sierra Leone, North West Africa and …

Radical Stroud celebrates, recreates, challenges, and reimagines this history through collective performative landscape walks, fusing the performing arts, ‘history’, ‘literature’, psychogeography and counter-heritage. We go beyond conventional sources by creating first person prose and poetical accounts, giving a voice to those ignored by the ‘enormous condescension of posterity’. We blur the genres of History and Literature, of Fiction and Non-Fiction.

I will provide just a few examples here, but a browse through our website will give a fuller picture of our practice. Past shows and recordings include No Pasaran! – a history of west country involvement in the Spanish Civil War; Fair Shares for All – a history of the co-operative movement in Gloucestershire, and Trenchcoats for Goalposts – our current show about the 1914 truce, and local football clubs.

As regards collective walks, we had over one hundred people on our Weavers’ and Workhouse Walk, while our most recent walk saw sixty people walk five miles to commemorate a meeting of 5,000 people in support of Chartism on Selsley Hill, near Stroud in 1839. This featured the christening of a new Chartism beer remembering John Frost (he was selected as prospective Chartist parliamentary candidate for Stroud, some eight months before the Newport Rising) at Stroud Brewery; a walk along the Thames and Severn Canal, with songs and poems; and then the climb up to Selsley with a recreation of the 1839 speeches up there, together with more song against a sun-splashed Severn sunset.

We have received funding from Stroud Festival for our Chartism project, and a film about the 1839 meeting called Day of Hope is in gestation this year, and will be screened in the Stroud Fringe Festival next August. This is a community-based production, with local actors, scriptwriters, musicians, historians, and community involvement through public meetings and invitations via both traditional and social media.

As part of this project, we are also walking the Thames from source to Kensal Green, to commemorate the Chartist Allen Davenport, who was born by the infant Thames at Ewen, and who features on the Reformers’ Memorial at the cemetery.

Finally, a new Waterscape section will appear on the website in January: a radical history of our local canals and rivers, with radical boat trips as well as walks.

Brooklyn and the Slad Brook Conjoined Historically and Inter-Textually

I remember so well that day at Wallbridge in Stroud,
Seeing the man whose name I do not know,
Yet with whom I always share the time of day
Whenever our paths cross in the street;
He was leaning on the canal bridge,
Gazing out over the waters,
Beyond the information board
Which portrays Stroud Scarlet,
Stretched out on tenterhooks
In Rodborough Fields;
He was staring at the Cainscross Road,
Where the Slad Brook enters the canal –
In a reverie about the old brewery, I thought –
‘Remembering the smell of the beer?’ I asked;
‘No, I’m just thinking about all of these cars,
Where they all comin’ from, and where they all goin’ to?’

I thought of him, the canal, the cars and the picture today,
When striding out into New York City;
Some of that Stroud Scarlet stretched out in Rodborough Fields
Might well have ended up in New York,
Nearly two hundred and fifty years ago,
A spreading splash of crimson on Brooklyn Heights;
It had already been traded with the Iroquois,
A century before that,
And slaves, both north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line
Would have been bought with Stroud Scarlet back in Africa;

Back home, locals might well have gathered to gaze and chat on the bridge,
Talking of the war in America,
And of the new Stroudwater Navigation,
Watching the coaches and the Severn trows,
Wondering where they all comin’ from,
And where they all goin’ to;

Charles Mason, of the Mason-Dixon Line,
Was born back home:Wear Farm, Oakridge Lynch:
Baptized at Sapperton Church, May Day 1728;
Thomas Pynchon imagined him over at Randwick,
Watching a cheese rolling, admiring Susannah Peach,
Dreaming of the wealth in her father’s Minchinhampton house –
Samuel Peach, ‘a growing Power within the East India Company’;
But Charles met and fell in love with Rebekah –
‘he went toppling on to the grass …
As he arose, holding his head … her Voice first reached him.
“Were it Night –time, Sir, I’d say you were at Star-Gazing.”…
Her looks had him stupefied’,
There near ‘The towns around the Golden Valley’,
where
‘The precise Geography of the Water-shed was now primary,-
where Races might go, for Wheels to be driven and Workshops
to be run from them… ‘twas like coming before the Final Judge’,

Which is why whilst Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were making their line,
Twixt Pennsylvania and Maryland,
Manufacturers and surveyors and the traders of Stroudwater
Were dreaming of a line, a cut and an inland navigation,
Stretching from the Severn at Framilode, and so on to Stroud;

But in the year when General Wolfe and his Stroud Scarlet troops
Stormed the heights of Quebec,
Rebekah,
Mason’s first wife, died:
A memorial tablet stands upon a tombstone at Sapperton,
To recall her life,
When a few short years before,
Colonel Wolfe had ridden down striking weavers
in the valleys around Horsley and Stroud,

And even though he professed some sympathy for their plight:
“The people are so oppressed, so poor and so wretched,
that they will, perhaps, hazard a knock on the pate for bread and clothes… the poor half-starved weavers…beg about the country for food…the masters have beat down their wages too low to live upon,
and I believe it is a just complaint”,
He was in charge of six companies of foot soldiers
Enough “to beat the mob of all England”;

He reported that
” Those who are most oppressed have seized the tools
and broke the looms of others who would work if they could”.
And so he obediently awaited orders
from “the magistrates to use our weapons against them” –
and so, the production of Stroud Scarlet resumed,
Laid out on tenterhooks, in that picture down by the canal,
Ready for ‘The American War of Independence’,
‘The American Revolution’ –
For in 1775, General Howe stiffened Loyalist New York’s resolve
With over 30,000 soldiers:
Stroud Scarlet troops landing at Staten Island and Long Island;
Ready for George Washington’s march south from Boston,
To the tip of Manhattan, across the East River, to Long Island,
And Brooklyn Heights;

Washington was eventually forced to retreat
After the redcoats’ stealthy advance up what is now Park Slope,
(With just one solitary victory to his name, at Harlem Heights),
Back across the East River, once more into Manhattan;
Then further along roads on the west bank,
Across the Hudson River to reach New Jersey,
Across the Delaware, and so into Pennsylvania;
The British army and Stroud Scarlet would occupy New York
For the rest of the conflict,
But it was a hollow victory:
The British army would depart in ignominy,
Seven years later, on November 25th 1783;

Five more years would pass,
Until King George the Third would lose his mind,
The year in which he would start talking to the trees,
Lamenting ‘The loss of my Colonies’,
The year in which he visited the locks at Wallbridge,
And the tunnel at Sapperton,
The year before the French Revolution
Would subsequently lead to more war,
More tenterhooks,
And more Stroud Scarlet,
And yet more crimson spilt:
Families on tenterhooks,
Hoping husbands, sons and brothers would return,
Uninjured, in one piece
(Rather than forced to beg in tattered red),
To Stroud, its looms, its springs, its brooks and streams,
Its scarlet, and its crimson,
Up there in Rodborough Fields,
Above the Slad Brook,
Unaware of the fate of Nathan Hale,
A generation before,
Arrested in Queens as a spy,
‘Hanged by the redcoats’
In Manhattan in 1776, aged twenty-one:
‘I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country’:
The Slad Brook and Brooklyn conjoined.

Places to visit:
Saint Paul’s Church, downtown; Morris-Jumel Mansion, uptown;
Rivington Street, named after a Loyalist printer who acted as a spy for Washington and as a double-agent;
MacDougal Street, named after Alexander MacDougal, who founded the New York Sons of Liberty; Hannah MacDougal, his wife, led a Broadway march against his imprisonment for his ‘To the Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York’;
Murray Hill , remembers Robert Murray and his Wall Street shipping company and Murray’s Wharf, but even more his wife, Mary, who detained British officers with a fine meal, thus allowing American troops to escape pursuit;
Francis Lewis Boulevard – Mr Lewis, the merchant, signed the Declaration of Independence as a representative of New York. The Declaration was declaimed on July 9th 1776, in what is now City Hall Park.
It is interesting to reflect on the fact that New York is named after James, Duke of York (after the Dutch gave up ‘New Amsterdam’). The Duke, the future King James the Second, was a leading light in the Royal African Company. So much so, that slaves were branded DY before the middle passage to the Americas and the West Indies. There seems to be some amnesia about this: King’s County; Queen’s County; Prince Street …

New York …

Francis Spufford Golden Hill Faber and Faber 2016:

‘The Broad Way … was a species of cobbled avenue, only middling broad, lined … with small trees. Wagon-drivers, hawkers with handcarts … Beyond Broad Way … the lanes descended there to an uncertain shore, where rowing boats were drawn up in clumps of yellow grass, and wading birds stalked on mudflats exposed by the tide …

‘river-schooners from up the Hudson and coasters from all along Long Island and Connecticut, and wherries plying across from Jersey …