Category: Landscape

I like visiting the Albert,
I like the way it commands a crossroads,
Welcoming all cardinal points of the compass,
Just like a traditional inn should.

I like visiting the Albert in springtime,
When vases of flowers greet you in the bar,
With vernal fragrance and equinoctial promise,
Stretching into blossoming infinity.

I like summer drinking in the Albert,
With a pint of Alton’s Pride,
It’s like an infusion of Thomas Hardy,
With every novel you’ve ever read
Returning like a Native.

I like autumn drinking in the Albert,
When mists and mellow fruitlessness
Entwine themselves around the eaves,
Just like a gothic Woman in White.

I like winter drinking in the Albert,
Sledging down the snow-scaped common,
Then in the bar for mulled ale and wine,
Just like we’re in A Christmas Carol.

I like chatting in the Albert,
With a catholic clientele of Prince, Pauper,
Snow White, Alice in Wonderland, many Musketeers,
And the occasional Sheriff of Nottingham.

I like walking around the Albert,
With a boulevard and a bowling green,
A welcome in the streets,
A chat on the allotments,
It’s like the Orwell pub of his dreams.

I don’t smoke, myself,
But I like the smokers at the Albert,
They congregate out the back,
Telling their varied stories,
Just like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

I like sitting in the Albert,
With its sofas, armchairs, ornaments,
Wireless and pictures on the mantelpiece,
It’s like the day when war broke out.

So I only visit the Albert,
It’s the sans pareil of Stroud,
Once visited, then,
There is nowhere else to go,
Apart from the Crown and Sceptre,
Bisley House and Ale House –
But those are stories for another time.

Edgelands: the Slad Brook in Stroud

‘Just take my advice, there’s nothing so nice, as messing about on the river’: and that’s true, even when doing that means walking along a brook, that is only intermittently visible, and which is hidden under tarmac, in the middle of Stroud. It’s edgeland terrain: a bit of a mess at times and a bit ‘urban-rural interface’.
The brook rises in the sylvan heights of Longridge Wood, with springs, bird song, and wild flowers for company; it’s joined by Dillay Brook at Steanbridge; it’s all a bit Laurie Lee. It ends near a roundabout, a new red brick bridge and a MacDonald’s: it’s all a bit JG Ballard.
I recommend walking the brook from its source, but our mission here is to navigate the edgelands: we shall start at the end of the brook’s independently named life. Have a coffee at the Lockkeeper’s, then drop underneath the bridge that carries the A46, to where the culverted brook meets the canal and thence the Frome. Its conjoined waters flow to the River Severn, the Bristol Channel and the wider waters of the world.
Have a look at the information boards by the side of the canal, and have a look at how the view used to be in the 18th century: you are now ready to wander through the present tense and enter the riverine world of the past. Turn left at the Lockkeeper’s, then left again at the mini roundabout, cross the zebra crossing (all hail Lesley Hore-Belisha), then turn left again so that you can study the larger roundabout. The Slad Brook that has such an arcadian start to its life, lies somewhere around and below this steady flow of vehicles and maelstrom of directions.
Now stay, as it were, on the A46, and head for the railway viaduct. When you reach this structure, glance to your right. Take in the indeterminate detrital deposits. But also notice the liquid alchemy at your feet. Then glance backwards:

There is, of course, a welter of road signs,
Satnavs instructing drivers where to go,
(And a funeral director’s sign,
Half-hidden in the trees and ivy,
Just behind the bench at the roundabout,
Just by Merrywalks House –’24 hour service’).
There is a rebarbative structure next to Ecotricity,
A car park that reaches up to a heady, grey height,
The same level as the railway station’s down platform ,
Where a walk reveals the hidden, fenced off edgelands down below.
Where an equally rebarbative street sign informs us:
‘Warning. These Premises Are Protected By
Glevum Security and Response
24 Hour Communications Centre’;
Here is a patch of land betwixt pavement and building,
Once designed as a garden, landscaped with shrubs,
Steps, railings and a gate,
But now running slightly wild with buddleia and sycamore saplings.
There is a glimpse of storage and Biffa containers
Seen through the viaduct’s arches and repetitive perspective,
(And a faded sign: IBC Cotswold Indoor Bowls Club),
With the brook a visible, flowing presence,
Down below the Ciao Eatalia Ristorante Pizzeria and Winebar
(The owner kindly took me through the kitchens for a peek out the back,
To see the stream flow fast and clear until it eddies around a metal grille,
Before it enters a tunnel to disappear beneath the road.).
The pavement itself takes you to the entrance to MacDonald’s,
Where the brook is limpid-laughing and curated,
Wild flowers and garlic and reeds and dock and buddleia
All tumble down the bank of the stream,
With a daisied lawn betwixt waters and fast food drive-thru.
The stream was opened up by the multinational,
Rescued from the depths of Lusty’s builders,
And the manager generously checked their site plans for me,
On a Charlie Chaplain Modern Times Sunday breakfast time:
‘The lawn’s on our site plans, but I couldn’t say 100% that we own it.’
The car park is full of signs denoting the control of space,
Making explicit the divisions between the public and the private,
Unlike the natural world of grass, flowers and stream:
Who owns this? What is public and what is private?
How are the meanings of space generated within this space?
This is real edgelands terrain: ‘the urban-rural interface’.
There is a stone wall by the brook’s side opposite the lawn,
Down beneath the roadside brick, where a pipe brings water,
Down from the steep school hillside on the other side of Merrywalks,
Then we have the doctors’ at Rowcroft and the chemist’s car park,
Three signs close together all saying the same thing:
‘No Entry’,
And an information board about Stroud in the car park;
‘A great place to walk, relax and explore’,
But no mention of the waters beneath your feet,
Waters that once powered the wheels of industry,
Grinding corn, spinners and weavers into dust and the ground.

I ‘phoned Stroud District Council a few days later to ask if they owned any of the land by the stream. They obligingly checked and ‘phoned back a few minutes later – even the bank of the brook is privately owned. An interesting and arresting oxymoron, in some ways: the quick, flashing sight of a free-flowing stream, untrammelled at last, and yet, this is private property. What we have here is an interesting illusion of liberty. The brook walks the walk but talks a deceitful talk: what you see is not necessarily what you get.
Unlike the cinema and Halfords, although you can’t always trust a bus timetable, perhaps; but be that as it may, the ‘bus station’ was, I think, near to the site of some of the duckings of clothiers during the 1825 weavers’ strike. This was at Mr. Holbrow’s fishpond, which was, I think, near Badbrook; and you find Badbrook Hall (‘Watson. Check the timetable. I am called to Badbrook Hall.’) just beyond the next stretch of open water. (Badbrook appears on an OS map just between Wick Street and Stroud; it looks as though it rises from springs near Hawkwood, and it would once have flowed, presumably, into the Slad Brook, crystal clear for all the world to see.)

I tested this theory by biking up to Hawkwood the day after I had written the paragraph above. The spring issues forth just beside a venerable sycamore tree and a stream is visible just beyond. It looks as though it must have joined the Slad Brook near the Slad Road-bus station roundabout. I wonder if it flows beneath the 1930s ribbon development around Loveday’s Mead, near Folly Lane and Birches Drive. But why the name: Badbrook? What did that name denote, once upon a time? (I have since been told that many people fill their water bottles from this deep spring: the water is rich in iron apparently.)

Anyway, the current stretch of visible streamlet that is the Slad Brook can be viewed just after the Stagecoach building, just by the bridge (The Bridge over the River Slad?). There are railings, a gate, a sign: ‘No Unauthorised Access’, wire mesh, deep walls of stone and brick, trees and nettles clambering down towards the mossy arch by the side of Smartworks, and the vaulted shadowed waters. The gardens have been landscaped here and there is a seat.

The brook disappears before Badbrook Hall, which, at the time of writing, is undergoing refurbishment. There is a piece of serendipitous graffiti behind the wall, however, which eerily reads thus: ‘That Which Is Out Of Sight Is Out Of Mind?’ Pondering this, cross the road and walk to the end of the Open Hours bakery. Find a short, curving, red brick wall and glance down to spot a small grilled drain. Down below there, lies the brook, on its curve towards the Smartworks building: many thanks to Shaun the Baker for showing me this.

The car park at Locking Hill lies straight ahead, part of which collapsed in the summer of 2013, to reveal the red bricked, culverted brook below: that which might have been out of mind was no longer out of sight. I was on my bicycle on this May day, on my way to the war memorial at Slad, but I noted the various signs in the street which indicated the brook, when hidden from sight, or when it reappears. Names like Streamside, Cottles, Stroud Instruments, Little Mill Court (off Lansdowne), Libby’s Drive, Slade Brook Drive, Slad Valley House.

When I returned from Slad, I got off my bike to walk these spots, so as to give them a bit more deservedly psycho-geographic attention. Slad Road is a most interesting example of town meets country. There is a pavement pretty much all the way between the village and the town, with rails running along the raised areas to prevent pedestrians from falling into the fields below, and then rolling down into the valley where the visible, wooded, brook runs. I noticed that the lodge of the imposing Slad Valley House has a street number: unusual for the lodge of a grand and imposing house. There is Gloucester Street Forge on the other side of the road; I suppose this might be an example of whatever the opposite of nominative determinism might be.

It’s worth popping down Libby’s Drive, however, if you want to get close to the brook again. It is visible on the Stroud side of the track, at the bottom, opposite New Mills; you can find it again by going behind the buildings. There is a sluice gate by Scorpion Tools and the stream is clearly seen again when you reach J & L Concrete Pumping and Curtis Engineering. But we cannot follow the brook back towards Slad, we have to advance towards Stroud; it’s back to the road for us, and on to the workshop of the magnificently named Omar Cottle (monumental mason).

There is a nineteenth century ring to such a moniker, and the surrounding redbrick Victorian warehouses add to that atmosphere. There is a good view of the brook here amongst the weathered gravestones. I was told that the brook rose by four feet in the 2007 deluge, but only slightly in last winter’s persistent rainfall: ‘Whatever they did seems to have worked.’ Evidence of our attempts to control the waters is discernible when you take the footpath linking Slad Road and Lansdowne. You can also see the brook at the back of the Slad Road, behind the back of the RSPCA building in Lansdowne. You can then follow a track/road between the road and Lansdowne and so reach Locking Hill again; we wonder if this path follows what was once the bank of the stream, as it makes its way on to Badbrook and the bus station.

Our journey is over. All that remains is to think about the number of springs that feed into this brook; there is a subterranean world of movement beneath our feet, which is only partly denoted by street names such as Springfield Road in Uplands. There is also the movement of water that comes down the other side of the hill: the powerful force of Gainey’s Well. We finish this exploration of the edgelands of the Slad Brook in Stroud, with the following piece about Gainey’s Well.

Do you know Gainey’s Well?
I know you’ve probably heard of it,
You can obviously google it,
But that’s not knowing it, is it?
It’s only knowing of it.

It lies at the end of a street with a rec,
Through a seeming suburban garden,
(That is in fact a secret pathway)
Where surprises, incongruities, improbabilities,
And the most fantastical impossibilities,
Reside both outside and inside
Of what appears to be a normal garden shed,
(Or marooned saloon family car garage)
Brick walls, tiled roof, lock and bolt on the door.

Outside this anonymously average structure,
Air vents rise up from an underground reservoir;
Inside, a roaring welter in the darkness,
Serpentine subterranean tunnels,
Pulsing water, limestone walls,
A limitless liquid mine,
Fed from Cotswold gravel beds of 800 acres,
More Stroud’s River Styx than aquifer,
A vault of torrential force in the abyssal depths.

Beneath the pavements the beach?
Beneath the lawn the abyss.

Well, there we are, then, walkers, flaneurs, psycho-geographers, cyclists and shoppers. There’s a whole new world beneath your feet. Watch your step.

Here’s a poem I wrote about the proposed (and still lurking) development plans on Rodborough Fields. It’s vital to keep these things in present consciousness lest we let slip our guard! (note: you may notice in the poem that the Lion is Lion Court, the modern day developers, and the Lamb is referring to sheep and hence the old cloth trade that once had its racks of drying cloth stretched out on Rodborough Fields.)

THE LION AND THE LAMB (written during 2012/13 when a proposed development threatened to destroy Rodborough Fields, an old hay meadow, with medieval ridge and furrow preserved in its turf)

The Lion is coming to Stroud,
Rodborough Fields like a lamb plays without knowing the shadow coming;
coming to grab its blossom bright fleece,
where butterflies abound.

Down in the Stroud Valley,
the Lion’s roar will be heard,
as JCB diggers get their claws in;
tearing to pieces its meadowy coat,
gouging out its buttery throat.

As Lamb bleats for its life,
the butterflies will rush away in a cloud,
filling the sky between Butterow and Spillmans.

Lion shall stamp and toss,
Lamb broken into the Frome brook below;
where kingfishers in fear will stay clear,
of the once peaceful stream.

As Lion roars,
flattening the fields,
the concrete will go down,
and walks through wild flowers will drown.

And no more will the Lamb play,
or you for that matter,
because the open fields of Rodborough
are closing behind the property developer’s desk.

Lit-Crit on a Bike

I had no idea, when I started out for Slad in the morning,
As to what voice I would use on the Laurie Lee Wildlife Way –
I decided to be guided by the first poetry post I encountered,
And I know there are mixed views about poetry posts in a landscape
(What if there is a disjunction between text and context?),
But I have to say that all the posts on this walk work beautifully:
You don’t have to read every poem in its entirety, each time you visit,
Choose the stanza or two that most suit your mood or the season
(Which is what I have done).

Whatever. Prologue over.

Convolvulus and hollyhocks greeted me on the road to Slad,
Where I stopped at the Woolpack to read The Abandoned Shade,
A poem that is almost an exercise in synesthesia,
For the shade leads to
‘buried voices’, ‘the yellow-hammer beat of blood’…
‘Hearing the tin-moon rise and the sunset’s penny fall,
the creep of frost and weep of thaw
and bells of winter robins…
the talking house…the four vowels of the wind’.
It’s a poem about lost childhood
(‘The voice of the boy, the boy I seek within my mouth is dumb’),
And lost, lost, madeleine moment time;
I arrived before the pub was awake,
Last night’s half full glasses were still on the outside tables,
A quite suitable sort of A la recherce de la temps pub-do type thing –
But enough of Old Father Time, Rimbaud and Proust,
I was off to dappled, shadowed Frith’s Wood and April Rise:
You can enjoy the first sensuous stanza at any time of the year,
‘If ever I saw blessing in the air
I see it now this still early day
When lemon-green the vaporous morning drips
Wet sunlight on the powder of my eye’…

But I had to climb up to Bulls Cross, up the turnpike road,
To the nightmare coach scene, the gallows, the murder,
And Equinox:
‘Now tilts the sun his monument,
now sags his raw unwritten stone
deep in October’s diamond clay.’

I tilted down dale to the spring-line source of the Slad Brook,
Past the lake, for a steep smooth beech bole ascent,
Where at the top of Longridge Woods is Landscape,
A piece of almost mother-earth worship:
‘The season does not leave your limbs,
like a covered field you lie,
and remember the exultant plough
Your sheltered bosom stirs
And whispers with warm rain’ –
This was almost meta-text; ur-text;
A text that became the landscape itself,
Where reader is no longer spectator,
But part of what s/he sees…
It was quite a Keatsian swooning moment and sensation,
I can tell you.

A cross-field walk followed to a woodland descent past the old shop
(What a curiosity),
And thence through bracken to Moss Rose;
When I read the poem, cumulus clouds sailed across its glass panel:
It was as though the sky itself (Laurie in the Sky with Diamonds?)
Had written diaphanous words of remembrance:
‘My mother would grow roses with each hand
drawing them forth from country-frothing air…
… lost mother, country gone,
groping in my grief around your moss-rose heart.’

Then it was over Dillay Brook to Home From Abroad:
‘So do I breathe the hayblown airs of home,
And watch the sea-green elms drip birds and shadows,
And as the twilight nets the plunging sun
My heart’s keel slides to rest among the meadows’.

Well, my chain did something similar shortly afterwards,
Sliding and jamming itself: I had to push my bike the rest of the way,
But The Three Winds was a delight at Catswood:
Starting with ‘The hard blue winds of March’,
Before the wind goes ‘piping the summer round’,
‘Till August sends at last its brick red breath’…

I wandered on through the August heat to meet the holloway
That once led King Charles from Berkeley to Painswick,
Then on to his abortive siege of Gloucester,
Before reaching The Wild Trees,
With the characteristic yearning for lost, past time:
‘Let me return at last
to your fertile wilderness
to sleep with the coiled fernleaves
in your heart’s live stone.’

It was then on to the Vatch, with views right across the Severn,
A delight at any time of the year,
But especially when in a Field of Autumn:
‘Like coloured smoke the day hangs fire,
taking the village without sound…
… Slow moves the hour that sucks our life,
slow drops the late wasp from the pear,
the rose tree’s thread of scent grows thin –
and snaps upon the air.’

And so down the Vatch, pushing my bike,
To Furners Farm, a mistletoed orchard, and Apples:
‘Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers, the rind
mapped with its crimson stain’.

It was then back to the Woolpack,
Where groups of walkers sat enthusing about the walk,
I had just a quick chat and lemonade,
I had to push the bike back home to Halfords,
Who generously did the job gratis –
Only Stroud Museum and Town Owl to go now:
‘On eves of cold, when slow coal fires,
rooted in basements, burn and branch,
brushing with smoke the city air;
When quartered moons pale in the sky,
and neons glow along the dark
like deadly nightshade in a briar;
Above the muffled traffic then
I hear the owl, and at his note,
I shudder in my private chair’…

I must confess that I had shuddered in my private chair too.
Saddle-sore after so many bumps, humps and stiles;
My advice?
Don’t do this walk on a bike.
It’s too good for that…
‘I’d rather have Shanks’s Pony’:

‘Strolling, just strolling,
In the cool of the evening air,
I don’t envy the rich in their automobiles,
For a motorcar is phoney.
I’d rather have Shanks’s pony,
When I’m strolling, just strolling,
With the light of the moon above,
Ev’ry night I go out strolling,
And I know my luck is rolling,
When I’m strolling with the one I love.’
(Flanagan and Allen)

Death after a Night at the Woolpack and other Great War Stories resulting from A Guide to the War Memorials of Stroud and the Five Valleys
1. Sheepscombe and Slad:
I am indebted to Karen Frank who put me onto this tale of truth and woe – Karen gave me a lift to Zeta printers to pick up my booklets on local war memorials and, in exchange, I gave her two copies, one of which Karen gave to the Sheepscombe Local History Society.
Elizabeth Skinner, Sheepscombe historian, asked Karen if I knew of the war grave in Sheepscombe churchyard, for the grave contained the remains of the man killed after a night out at the Woolpack, as imaginatively recounted in Cider with Rosie. This seemed improbable to me: how could the dates be reconciled? A winter’s night in the 1920s in Slad is a long way from the Western Front or Gallipoli, in both time and space. I received this email on holiday in Spain and decided that I would bike out to the church on my return.
I visited the churchyard in early August and the verger said he knew nothing of a war grave. I recounted the story; he said there is ‘often a modicum of truth in these tales’. He directed me to the other graveyard beyond the war memorial and across the road, and suggested that I try there.
I noticed for the first time that the memorial itself had a sundial on each of the four sides of its column, before wandering through the long grass over the road. The gravestones were resolutely non-military and I trudged despondently down the slope until I reached a yew tree: there, hidden in shadow, was a war grave.
I took a picture and recorded the details in my notebook: 121577 Corporal AV Birt Royal Air Force 10th April 1919. I bicycled home through Painswick, pondering on this conundrum: how could this be the rich, boastful, colonial returning boy? There are names of antipodean aircraftmen recorded on the Amberley war memorial, so I began to wonder if Corporal Birt had been stationed locally…but the date…
Karen had emailed me to say that: ‘There is a detailed inquest report which states that the man was murdered by person or persons unknown after walking part of the way home from the Woolpack.’ But was ‘the man’ Corporal Birt? Would I have to contact the Imperial War Graves Commission to discover the context of Corporal Birt’s death?
I decided to contact Sheepscombe Local History Society first (saying the tale seemed improbable) and was delighted to receive a speedy reply from Ron Paterson: ‘Improbable but true! The grave is of Albert Victor Birt who lived in Longridge and died aged 42 on 10th April 1919. As a former serviceman, he qualified for a war grave even though he had not been killed in action (This applied to all who had served in the armed forces between the outbreak of WW1 and 31st August 1921.)
His death resulted from injuries sustained in an assault on his way home and the subsequent inquest (which was reported in the Stroud Journal) concluded that he had been murdered although the killers were never found or prosecuted.’
Ron pointed me in the direction of a booklet about Sheepscombe’s war dead written by the sadly deceased Tony Reeves. At the time of writing, I have asked Karen to get me a copy and I want to look at the Stroud Journal report myself – but there seems little to add to this…apart from the fact that it seems impossible that anyone was allowed to get away with this crime.
Update: visit to Stroud Library, August 6th, 2014; here is the transcription from the printout of the Stroud News and Journal, April 11th, 1919, microfiche:
‘A man named Albert Birt, a discharged soldier living at Longridge, Painswick, died at Stroud Hospital at 11.45 on Thursday morning. The deceased was admitted to the hospital on April 1st, suffering from severe injuries to the head and in an unconscious condition. He never recovered, and died as stated. The police are making inquiries concerning the case. It appears that Birt and a companion left the Woolpack Inn, Slad, on the night of March 29th. They were both sober, but the next morning Birt, who was 42 years of age, was found lying in the road in an unconscious condition. He was taken to his home and medically attended, and later he was removed to the hospital on the advice of the doctor.’

It doesn’t matter to me that the account in CwR doesn’t tally with the historical reality; the book, after all, is a mixture of genres: autobiography, historical recreation, non-fiction-fiction-faction, prose-poetry, oral history, testament … And surely we read this book for recreation, and how can I forget my first head-teacher, worried that I was working too hard when a young teacher:’ Stuart, never forget the true meaning of the word recreation. It’s re-creation.’
Nevertheless, one question remained about this literary re-creation: was Mr. Birt a ‘wild, colonial boy’? I re-contacted Ron Paterson with a final question; did Mr. Birt appear on the 1911 census? Ron made the 1881, 1891, 1901 and 1911 Sheepscombe census returns available to me, and we see the following:
Albert Birt aged 4, Longridge, 1881; 14, wood turner, Stroud and Slad Road, 1891; 24, wood turner, Longridge, 1891; 34, wood turner, Longridge, Bull’s Cross, 1911.
He married Elsie Hogg in 1918 and was killed a year later, after a night at the Woolpack.