Category: History

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 …

It’s odd to think that the Chartist mass meeting up on Selsley Hill
Contributed to the formation and spread of public libraries.
But it’s true, after a fashion.

The Chartist decade of 1838 to 1848,
The ruling class fear of revolution,
The threat to private property and profit,
The association of freethinking with ‘intemperance’,
All helped lead to the 1850 Public Library Act,
The cult of municipal museums too,
And the Victorian emphasis on private study,
Within a public or familial space:
The familiar trope of the Victorian working class male autodidact.

‘We must educate our masters’,
Said Home Secretary, Robert Lowe,
After the urban working class gained the vote in 1867,
But self-help, the 3 R’s, libraries, museums and schools
Didn’t necessarily mean universal conformist thinking:
Fiction fostered the imagination, and non-fiction the frown:
Reading could lead to questioning, and such questioning,
Coupled with the study of a book’s bibliography
Could lead to the polite request that the local library
Might order a required book –
Not on the shelves –
Either as new stock,
Or from another library,
Out of town or county:
This was a public, national service,
Not just a municipal one.

Public libraries, public housing, public houses, public services,
Public footpaths, public baths, public broadcasting, public space,
Public health, public transport, public reading:
Children clutching their four books under their arms,
On their fortnightly visit,
Learning the nature of youthful citizenship
When paying their fines if overdue,
Studying the stamps and dates at the front of the book:
Wondering about who might have had this book before,

What were they like?
Were they just the same as me?
Would we ever meet, and discover that…
Once upon a time …

Or gauging the popularity of a book,
How could it be that no one had taken this book out for two years,
Two months and twenty-six days!
And when receiving a book through the out of county service,
The seemingly random nature of geography
And one’s own personal taste,
Resulting in strange affinities and remembrances:
How did Stroud know this book I needed
Was in Lewes Public Library?
In that faraway county called Sussex.
Why Lewes?

And back then,
There were libraries in all the suburbs, towns, cities, villages
And counties in our country, and travelling libraries too
For hamlets and isolated homesteads in the back of beyond,
Back in the time when England, Wales,
Scotland and Northern Ireland
Were not called Amazonia:
Use it or Lose it.

This posting, about Chartism in Wotton-under Edge, was kindly shared by Richard Barton, after our Weavers and Workhouse Walk during the Stroud Fringe: the original focus was upon the family history of the Lacey family, and this section has been taken from that overall family history research. Many thanks again to Richard.

 E.S. Lindley in ‘Wotton-under-Edge’, page 110:

‘Lacey’s diary also has some account of the mild Chartist agitation of 1839. He (Henry Ratcliffe Lacey of the Tabernacle), with his brother Rowland (whom we meet in other connections) made themselves prominent, but their brother Newton had to keep quieter, being master of the British School. There was a large meeting on the Chipping, addressed by Henry Vincent, a noted national leader then out on bail, who was very soon gaoled at Monmouth over a great riot of the Newport miners. At half past five on Saturday morning brother Rowland came to tell Henry that Mr. Cogswell and two others were waiting for him downstairs, and he had a warrant served on him for attending an unlawful meeting. After telling his mother he was going for a walk, he persuaded Mr. Cogswell to go on and he would follow. A little down Nibley road a fly was waiting and he took them to Dursley for examination. Friends had brought bail, and it was accepted; at assizes on the Wednesday they succeeded in getting postponement till the Spring Assizes. The prosecution wanted them to come to terms, and their friends persuaded them to plead guilty and enter into recognizances to keep the peace for two years. Nothing more happened.’

Feb. 28 to Mar. 9: Bristol, Cirencester and Stroud

WEDNESDAY, March 6. — Weather cold — took coach for Wootton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire. A very heavy fall of snow commenced as the coach left Bath. We had a bitter cold ride. Arrived at Wootton by one o’clock. The snow had ceased falling. Dined with Remy Lacey, a real good Radical and founder of the Wootton Association. After dinner Burns and I walked to the room of the Association — spoke to the people briefly, and were loudly applauded. The Wootton people are very intelligent and will soon upset the aristocratic power of the neighbourhood. At three o’clock a procession was formed, consisting of about 3000 persons, headed by an excellent band of music, with beautiful banners, flags, &., and proceeded through the town up to the Chipping, where a wagon was placed as accomodation for the speakers. [Meeting chaired by Henry Lacey; Burns and Vincent spoke] We returned to our inn in procession, and spent the evening in the company of 200 ultra rads. “Fall, tyrants, fall” was sung by the whole company in famous style. We separated about eleven o’clock.

THURSDAY, March 7. — Rose at seven — broke our fast in the cottage of Richard Skelton. Skelton is a stout, sturdy, six-foot Radical. … At ten we left Wootton for Cirencester, Gloucestershire. We reached Cirencester about three. The town is very neat and clean — the population about 7000. A meeting was convened for six in the evening, in the Market-place. At six, Burns and myself walked to the place of meeting. We found upwards of 4000 persons assembled. The agricultural labourers poured in from the surrounding villages. The town was in a very excited state. One man said such a stir had not been created since the town was taken by Prince Rupert. …. Burns and myself addressed the meeting at great length. An attempt was made by half-a-dozen “gentlemen” to interrupt the meeting, by throwing stones at the speakers. I had one capital knock — it did me more good than an electric shock. The people soon silenced the “gentlemen”. Al the resolutions were carried unanimously, and measures were adopted for obtaining signatures to the petition, and for collecting the National Rent. Burns and myself were elected Delegates. We had a great number of ladies present. God bless them!

Henry Vincent, ‘Life and Rambles’, in the Western Vindicator , no.4 (16th March 1839), p.1

Teetotal Chartists
Looking for the Charter “at the bottom of a glass of water”?

Both Lovett and Henry Vincent (an abstainer since 1836) appear to have been confirmed in their anti-alcohol beliefs by their experiences of prison, and in December 1840 Vincent would initiate an address arguing that the aristocracy ruled only because of the vices of the poor and that Chartists must therefore become teetotallers.

The address was widely disseminated, being published in full in the Northern Star, English Chartist Circular and the Odd Fellow, and it produced an enormous response, encouraging Chartists in many parts of the country to establish teetotal Chartist bodies alongside local branches of the National Charter Association, or to incorporate abstinence from alcohol within the objectives of their NCA branch.

Among the 135 signatories to the address were such other Chartist luminaries as Charles Neesom of the London Working Men’s Association, the bookseller and publisher John Cleave, and Henry Hetherington, the veteran campaigner against a stamped press and key ally of Lovett.

In “Teetotal Chartism”, a paper for the journal History (vol 58 no 193, June 1973) Brian Harrison wrote of the address:

“Judging by its signatories, Teetotal Chartism was strongest in the North of England. One hundred and thirty of the 135 signatories are known; of these, 48 came from Yorkshire, 26 from Lancashire, 20 from the Midlands, 13 from the Potteries, nine from London, four from Scotland, three from Ireland, two from Sunderland, two from Wotton-under-Edge and one from Brighton. But London had at least five Teetotal Chartist societies – at Bermondsey, Lambeth, Cheapside, Beak Street and East London.”

The East London Chartist total Abstinence and Mutual Instruction Society was led by Charles Neesom and his wife Elizabeth Neesom, who also founded the London Female Democratic Association and was the leading light in an East London Female Total Abstinence Society.

Teetotal Chartism was also strong in Scotland. In response to Vincent’s address Scottish Chartists used the Chartist Circular of 9 January 1841 to issue their own call to “dedicate this year to total abstinence”. Their own address was signed by 101 Scottish Chartists, including some of the movement’s leading figures.

On the other side of the argument, Peter McDouall would condemn the teetotal movement at the National Charter Association’s 1842 convention as “more of a religious than a political body”.

His views were firmly in line with those of Feargus O’Connor, who in the face of a rapid advance by teetotal Chartism and Lovett’s New Move denounced church, teetotal, knowledge and household suffrage Chartism as “trick, farce, cheat or humbug”. All were, he warned, distractions and potentially divisive, raising the spectre that those who were not Christian Chartists or teetotal Chartists might be judged not good enough for the vote.

His intervention was enough to prevent Warrington Chartists establishing a teetotal body, but marked a decisive split with Lovett and his supporters.

But the anti-teetotal line was about more than the personalities of leading Chartists and their positions within the movement. More politically advanced Chartists believed that Chartism could triumph only by organising and confronting its opponents in the ruling class.

Much later, speaking in Manchester on 20 October 1850 after his release from prison, the Chartist leader Ernest Jones told the crowd: “Some will tell you that teetotalism will get you the Charter: the Charter don’t lie at the bottom of a glass of water.” In the same speech, he marked his change of political stance by warning the authorities that before his imprisonment, “I spoke of a green flag waving over Downing-street.  I have changed my colour since then—it shall be a red one now”.

Signatories to Henry Vincent’s address on teetotalism

Members of the late General Convention
Henry Vincent, late Resident in Oakham Gaol
John Cleave, 1 Shoe Lane, Fleet Street
Henry Hetherington, 126 Strand
C H Neesom, 76 Hare Street, Bethnal Green
W Rider, Leeds
J Harris, London (late of Brighton)

Political victims
Rev W J Jackson, now of Lancaster Castle
W Shellard of Ponty Pool, Wales; now resident in Oakham Gaol, Rutlandshire
W Edwards of Newport (Mon.) now in Oakham Gaol
G E Boggis, Brick Lane, London
Messrs Williams and Binns, Sunderland
Isaac Johnson, now resident in Chester Castle
RD Lacey, Wotton under Edge
H R Lacey, ditto
G M Bartlett, Bath
R Spurr, London

Perry, ‘Wotton-under-Edge, Times Past – Time Present’, 1986, pages 136 –6:

‘Within a few years the desire for further reform found expression in the People’s Charter, calling for votes for all adults, the payment of M.P. s and the secret ballot. The driving course was the London Working Men’s Association. Henry Vincent, a fiery orator, was sent to do missionary work in the West of England and a Chartist newspaper, the Western Vindicator, published in Bristol, circulated in this district. Early in 1839 branches of the W.M.A. and its complement, the Radical Women’s Association, had been established in Wotton.

The moving spirits were Henry and Rowland Lacey, sons of a prosperous local family, and Joseph Witts, a weaver. On Whit Tuesday a great Chartist meeting was held on Selsley Common, near Stroud. The Wotton contingent marched there in good order led by a band and members banners inscribed ‘Liberty, Equal Rights and Equal Laws’, a slogan alarmingly reminiscent of the French Revolution though harmless enough to modern ears. The meeting was addressed by Witts, who stressed the importance of action within the law, and by Rowland Lacey, calling for economic sanctions such as the mass withdrawal of savings from banks and a general strike. At the close, the Wotton members reformed and marched home as a disciplined body.

Lord Segrave (Colonel Berkeley’s new title) wrote to the Home Office that Wotton was the stronghold of Chartism in Gloucestershire. Joseph Witts was busy founding Chartist branches in Uley and other villages. In July Henry Vincent came here to address meetings on Wotton Hill and in the Chipping; he belonged to that section of the Chartists advocating violent means. ‘Pull down the Palaces of Tyranny with your own hands… pull down their castles’. Lord Segrave, feeling himself threatened, wrote again to the home Office asking for leave to recruit a troop of Berkeley Yeomanry, to be commanded by Grantley, to combat ‘the spreading poison’ which was beginning to infect agricultural workers as well as unemployed weavers.

Henry Lacey and Joseph Witts were charged with attending an illegal meeting and were sent for trial to Gloucester, but the case was postponed until spring. Those leaders of the Wotton establishment, including Eusebius Foxwell and T.S. Childs of the Tabernacle, who had given evidence against them, were the objects of noisy demonstrations in the town; they were followed around by a crowd of up to two hundred persons, ‘abusing them in the coarsest terms’, kept within bounds only by the extraordinary authority of Rowland Lacey.

In the meantime Henry Vincent had been tried in Monmouth and committed to Newport Gaol. Chartists in Wotton were in daily expectation of a national rising. Three secret meetings were held at the Red Lion and a delegate was sent to the clandestine Chartist headquarters; the proceedings were reported by a government spy. Though there had been talk of joining, no one from Wotton took part in the Chartist march to Newport Gaol, in which twenty-four persons died. When, early in 1840, many Chartists involved in the Newport attack were imprisoned or transported, the movement in Wotton seems to have died. Though Chartism continued in the eighteen-forties, the emphasis was on peaceful propaganda; there is no information about its survival in Wotton. Henry Lacey and Joseph Witts were bound over to keep the peace.’

I knew of Mick and I knew of Nick,
But I didn’t know of your existence,
Until early one morning on the number 46 bus,
When I was reading a Swindon Town programme.

It was back in 1992,
And you told me that Nicky was your nephew,
And I looked at you, someone I had never met or seen before,
And I asked you the next obvious, but risky question:
And it turned out that, yes, you were a boyhood hero’s brother,
You were the brother of Buzzer:
You were Mick Summerbee’s brother!

And it was the best conversation I have ever had on a bus
With someone I had never met before,
It was electric empathy and just the ticket,
As I told you of how I had seen best mates Mick and Ernie Hunt,
Grave-digging, back in the close season maximum wage early 1960’s,
When I was train spotting on Swindon Junction’s Milk Bank,
And how I missed some important engine numbers,
Just so I could watch them walk down the street to the café,
And how Mick and Ernie and Donald Rogers were my idols,
And how Mick had given up his time to coach Swindon Boys,
And had actually passed the ball to me in training,
And I didn’t want to clean my boots for a week, oh no,
And all this came out in a stream of consciousness,
And at no point did I ask about you, who you were,
As a person, as an individual, as John Summerbee,
As Mr. John Summerbee.
But it didn’t bother you,
And we always said hello in the streets or on the ‘bus,
Or when out walking the dogs in the valleys and fields,
Or having our hair cut in Summerbee’s salon.

But I knew nothing of your boyhood, until one Christmas,
When I read Colin Shindler’s book,
And it’s then I read of your dad, George,
And his struggles to make it as a footballer,
The dream move from Aldershot to Proud pre-war Preston,
Going sadly wrong, with wage cuts and wage slavery
And demoralising constant reserve team football:
Obscurity instead of fame, the struggle to make ends meet,
The drop down the divisions, as the body slowed down,
The youthful dream of stardom turned to non-league dust,
While your mum, Dulcie, coped with all the moves
And temporary homes of a travelling journeyman footballer.

And I read of your real life as John, your dad’s favourite son,
In whose shadow, Mick nervously walked,
For you were the better footballer and cricketer,
Until you were shattered by George’s early worn out death,
All dreams ruined at the tender age of just forty.
It’s then you turned your back on sport, and used your other talents,
For you were a star carpenter and joiner, too;
And even though I never met your dad,
And have only seen the photographs and read of him in a book,
The handsome dapper young man in his hand cut suits,
With shoes as shiny as a new pin, that you could see the faces in,
I see you in Stroud, immaculately turned out,
And now I know that I am not just looking at Mr. John Summerbee –
But I am also looking at George’s favourite son,
Walking in no one’s shadow, but his own and his dad’s.

Walking between Climperwell and Caudle Green,
You walk through prehistory
As well as the spring-source of the River Frome;
And then at Grid reference SO 928117,
Latitude 51.80389980, Longitude -2.10581700
(400m metres south-west of Groveridge House,
Near Brimpsfield),
You pass an old Roman site,
On top of which stood a deserted medieval village,
Through which drivers now speed on their oblivious way;
But to the east of the road lies most of the settlement,
Earthworks about half a metre in height.

Excavations have found stone walls and rubble;
Field walking found 12th-13th century medieval pottery
(As well as Roman materials);
A holloway ran parallel to today’s road
(Containing tofts – building and croft platforms),
Other trackways, field patterns, lynchets,
And enclosures can be descried
With earthworks to the east indicating a sheepcote.

The field evidence is obvious,
But the documentary evidence is more of toponymy:
The fields are first named Manless Town as late as 1622;
The area has also been named Haywick; Munley Towne;
Old Mondley; Longlorn Town and Keywich –
No taxation records have been found.

A century later we have this survey’s definition:
‘A patch of Plumb Hey within the ruins of Old Mondley formerly a Market Town and a Roman Station was Sacked
and Burnt in the Wars of King John’;

Samuel Rudder called it a hamlet in 1779 –
‘If a place can be called so with no house in it’;
He wrote of ‘Haywick’ as the original name,
With a weekly market
‘Until all men were killed in the reign of Edward the Third,
And all the women and children departed,
Since when it became known as Manless Town’;

Another survey toward the end of the 18th century
(A ‘Survey of Lands in Brimpsfield’)
Speaks of ‘Longlorn Town, which was destroyed in the reign of King John, then and still traces of Foundations to be seen and it has since that time been called Manless Town’;

More prosaically, but just as tellingly, we can wonder
Whether the overlaying sheepcote on the eastern side
Might not indicate the turfing out of the peasantry,
And a manorial switch from arable to pastoral farming:
Sheep and the lucrative medieval wool trade.

But if we wander up here in a winter dusk,
Perhaps we might hear the voices of the peasantry,
And follow in their footsteps,
To what was once a hamlet of houses, gardens, yards,
And ditches, with ridge and furrowed open fields,
And quarries, enclosures, streets, paddocks,
And footpaths to Brimpsfield Church,
And Sir John Giffard’s Brimpsfield Castle –
A testament to King Edward the Second’s order that
‘Not one stone should henceforth stand upon the other’,
After Sir John dared to rebel.

Did the locals care?

Pasture and turbary,
Estovers and piscary;
Pannage and housebote,
Shack and ploughbote.

     ‘It is the custom in England … for the nobility to have great power over the common people, who are serfs. This means that they are bound by law and custom to plough the field of their masters, harvest the corn, gather it into barns, and thrash and winnow the grain; they must also mow and carry home the hay, cut and collect wood, and perform all manner of tasks of this kind.’

     ‘Let the reeve be all the time with the serfs in the lord’s fields … because serfs neglect their work and it is necessary to guard against their fraud … the reeve must oversee all work … if the serfs do not work well, let them be punished.’

     ‘What sayest thou, ploughman?
How do you do your work?’

     ‘Oh, my lord, I work very hard; I go out at dawn, driving the cattle to the field and I yoke them to the plow. Nor is the weather so bad in winter that I dare to stay at home for fear of my lord: but when the oxen are yoked, and the ploughshare and coulter attached to the plough, I must plough one whole field a day, or more.’

     ‘Have you any assistant?’

     ‘I have a boy to drive the oxen with a goad, and he too is hoarse with cold and shouting.’

     ‘What more do you in a day?’

     ‘Certainly, I do more. I must fill the manger of the oxen with hay, and water them and carry out the dung.’

     ‘Indeed. That is a great labour.’

     ‘Even so. It is a great labour, for I am not free.’

     I’d like to think the village became deserted because everyone got so fed up that they marched off to join the Peasants’ Revolt …

     ‘The rebels petitioned the king that all preserves of water, parks, and woods should be made common to all: so that throughout the kingdom the poor as well as the rich should be free to take game in water, fish ponds, woods and forests as well as to hunt hares in the fields – and to do these and many other things without impediment.’

“The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.”

     ‘You wretches, detestable on land and sea; you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live. Give this message to your colleagues. Rustics you were and rustics you are still: you will remain in bondage not as before but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you , and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity . However, we will spare your lives if you remain faithful. Choose now which you want to follow.’

Let’s imagine that this deserted medieval village near Brimpsfield was home to a community of Lollards (the word possibly comes from an old Dutch word meaning “to mutter”). Lollards rejected papal authority and various beliefs about the sacraments, transubstantiation, confession and the elevation of saints. They also placed an emphasis upon preaching rather than liturgy; they objected to the wealth and what they saw as the greed of the Church. The Lollards emphasised the importance of individual interpretation of scripture rather than priestly ceremony: this had radical freethinking implications.
Archbishop Courtenay of Canterbury (who succeeded Archbishop Sudbury, murdered in the Peasants’ Revolt) decided to extirpate this movement by banishing followers of John Wycliffe or forcing them to recant. The movement was linked in the eyes of many to the Peasants’ Revolt: hence its persecution.
It was strongest in the west of England and the heresy continued here, as it were, underground. Professor Christopher Hill saw a direct link between the Lollards and William Tyndale over a century later. He argued that the cloth trade with its links with London and the continent helped foster the spread of heterodox opinions. Gloucestershire was unusual, he said, for its Lollard survival; it was a key county in the continuity of belief stretching from the Middle Ages to the Tudor Reformation. The Wycliffite innovation of translating parts of the Bible into the vernacular would reach its destiny through this county.
Wouldn’t it be nice to imagine a link between this Gloucestershire radicalism of the fourteenth century and the Diggers of Slimbridge in the seventeenth century?
There’s no point in fetishising documentary evidence: imagine and re-create with guerilla memorialisation.

Post-script

Truth is stranger than …
First time as tragedy, second time …

The day after posting the above, it was stated that the reason why the heir to the throne did not attend his mother’s birthday celebrations in London was because he was attending a village fete at …. Brimpsfield.

May 21st 2016 – May 21st 1839
‘A lovely day spent on Selsley Common today, remembering this day in 1839 when 5,000 gathered here in support of the People’s Charter. Then a talk about it all in the Bell, and a toast with the commemorative porter. Something quite English about it all – a different heritage though.’

We put on our best blouses, aprons and hats

I’ll never forget last Tuesday, even if I live to seventy.
We all woke up so excited, never eaten porridge so fast.
We put on our best blouses, aprons and hats,
The men shaved their chins, put on their caps,
Moleskin trousers and fustian waistcoats,
And out we strode into the lane.
Such a sight you never did see!
The men and women and children,
All marching in an orderly line past our cottage;
Then when we got to Stroud, we couldn’t believe our eyes:
Serpentine lines climbing up every valley side,
There must have been thousands!
All laughing and cheering, but sore determined,
To get our rights and right our wrongs;
Bread has never been so dear and wages are down,
With long hours for those who do have work;
Then there was the Tolpuddle Martyrs,
Then there was the New Poor Law and the Workhouse.
The Bible tells us to nurture each other in sickness and in health,
But the Workhouse rents us all asunder!
So it was such a joy to see them all,
See them all streaming from Sheepscombe, Steanbridge and Slad,
Stroud, Woodchester, Uley, Wotton,
The Stanleys, Selsley, Cainscross, Minchinhampton, Painswick,
Rodborough, Stonehouse, Randwick, Ruscombe, Bisley,
Nailsworth, Avening and Horsley;
Bands playing, music flowing, banners billowing:
‘Liberty’; ‘Equal Rights and Equal Laws’;
‘For a Nation to be Free it is Sufficient that She wills it’.
Then the banners from the Working Men’s Associations,
And the Radical Women’s Associations,
Then the handbills and placards listing our six points:
Universal Suffrage; Secret Ballot; Payment of MPs;
Abolition of the property qualification for MPs;
Payment of MPs; Annual Parliaments;
Then the speeches up there on top of the common:
‘We must have the 6 points’;
‘Peaceably if we may, forcibly if we must’;
‘Those damnable Poor Law Bastilles are worse than prisons’;
‘May the Almighty inspire the people with vigour and energy’;
Then cheers for our Chartist leaders’ names,
And then the groans for Russell’s;
It was such a day and life will never be the same again:
Russell says we do not understand the laws of capital and wages,
But we do, my Lord.
We do.