Category: Walks

Swindon and the General Strike

Swindon and the General Strike

Factory walls can sometimes feel like prison walls,

But I always thought the Factory walls in Swindon

Had a welcoming, warm and friendly feel,

Even in the low sun days of midwinter.

For this was a railway town,

A Great Western Railway Company town,

A paternalistic railway company town,

With swimming baths and a hospital,

And a blue print for the NHS;

A Park for exercise and amusement too,

And the Mechanics Institute

For education, reading and advancement.

The largest engineering works in Western Europe,

310 acres, 14,000 employees,

Two railway stations:

Over 50 million tons of coal passed through Swindon each year:

one fifth of the country’s annual output.

But when I started train spotting, aged six,

In that halcyon summer of 1958,

With my in-built respect for the GWR,

And its Western Region successor,

And all its chocolate and cream nostalgia,

How could I have known about the General Strike,

In Swindon, thirty-two years before?

When we placed pennies on the line,

To see how the Cheltenham Flyer

Would burnish and flatten those spare coins,

And when Sir Felix Pole, Castle class, 5066,

Rode rough shod over those pennies,

How could I have known that Sir Felix

Was a real person from thirty-two years before?

The vindictive GWR General Manager during the General Strike?

To a boy in 1958,

1926 was more like the nineteenth century,

…

But on Sunday, 2 May 1926, there were two contrasting events in Swindon: the Archdeacon, Dr. Talbot, preached a sermon strongly condemning a strike; the Trades Council’s second Council of Action conference worked out agreed responsibilities for the conduct of the strike in Swindon to be put to mass meetings … they moved solidly and enthusiastically into action.

 

And the strike started solidly in Swindon:

With a meeting of 6,000 in the GWR Park. ‘Telegrams from one union after another were read out’ and this resolution passed: “That this mass meeting of trade unionists pledges itself to carry out the instructions of their executive committees and any duties their local committee may call upon them to do, and to act in no way that would lead to any disturbance.”

 

Mass meetings of those on strike AND their families followed, with thousands in the GWR Park and an array of recreational and educational activities: football and cricket matches; bowls and darts competitions; concerts, socials and literary events while the Swindon ‘General Council’ dealt with the daily demands of overseeing permits, pickets, speakers etc.

 

In fact, the strike was so solid that pickets were barely needed,

And with the trams and power station municipally owned,

The mayor declared that no trams would run

And fuses would be removed from the main industrial enterprises.

But an irate Town Clerk sent a report to the Civil Commissioner for the South Midlands district, Major the Rt. Hon Earl Winterton MP who ordered an investigation ‘as the condition of affairs there was serious.’ The mayor told the official that if power were restored probably all the workers at the power station would come out and ‘the town would be plunged into darkness,’ Fourteen naval pensioners were eventually recruited from Portsmouth to break any strike if it should occur at the power station.

 

But resentment would grow in the town

After an official GWR notice was put up

At the Temple Street NUR HQ;

The notice politicised the strike

As ‘a deep conspiracy against the state’;

And as regards railway re-employment

after the strike’s eventual end:

Loss of position, status, pay,

With the threat of damages, costs, and the sack

For leading trade unionists;

A mass meeting in the GWR Park followed.

Sir Felix Pole regarded the strike meetings held in the park

And the picketing at the main entrance to the railway works

As trespassing on company land.

And he no doubt felt elated when he heard that

The Reverend K Crisford, the curate at St Marks Church by the railway line

Who preached a sermon against the railway companies

and the Government and supported the strikers.

And who after the service walked to the park in his cassock and surplice

to address a massed strike meeting.

was forced to leave his post after the strike had ended,

The only member of the established church’s clergy to openly support the miners.

And how could I have known about all of this,

When one of the first songs I learned at my mother’s knee

Followed these railway lines:

‘Down at the station,

Early in the morning,

See the little engines

All in a row,

Man with a green flag,

Blows upon his whistle,

Peep, peep, peep,

And away we go’.

There was another version in 1926,

Which lampooned the upper-class strike breaking train drivers:

Bristol Bulletin ‘To Heaven by the LMS’

Early in the morning, per broadcast from London,

See the little puff-puffs all in a row,

D’Arcy on the engine, pulled a little lever,

Expansion of the boiler – UP WE GO!’

But down at Swindon Railway Works,

There were equally extraordinary scenes,

With the famous WA Stanier, Works manager,

Wielding a hose pipe to inundate

 

Apprentices who went on strike at the tunnel entrance,

(He was the model for the Rev Awdry’s fat controller btw)

And CB Collett, Chief Mechanical Engineer,

Would issue this notice:

‘In view of the large number of men who have failed to report themselves

for duty these works are hereby closed until further notice’;

It wasn’t just the GWR, of course;

Swindon printers and tram workers were also stopped work on Monday May 3

On the first wave of industrial action;

The Co-operative Society rooms in Harding Street

Became an HQ for coordination of picketing,

And accounting of the Distress Fund, for fully 10,000 people,

By the Swindon Central Strike Committee aka “The General Council”:

‘Magnificent solidarity’ was the initial synopsis;

“United action is our watchword.”

On the other side, there stood, resolute,

The Swindon Volunteer Services Committee;

Whilst troops and police were offered to the GWR;

But Collett informed the Swindon NUR branch:

‘I don’t want them. If you gentlemen sitting here are prepared

to assist me in protecting the property,

I am prepared to do without them.’

The NUR replied:

‘We at once gave him that guarantee.’

Beyond the railway works,

Disagreement and confusion simmered

Over the withdrawal of the electricity supply,

But despite this,

The Swindon Advertiser commented on May14th:

‘The town has been very quiet and orderly.

The police have had no trouble whatsoever’:

Despite, or probably, because of

The daily round of mass meetings in the parks,

The sports matches, the tournaments,

The concerts, the readings, the entertainments …

It was a peculiarly British general strike in Swindon, too …

A few GWR trains began to run through Swindon,

partly due to the Oxford plus four brigade. ‘I say, rather.’

Only nine drivers broke the strike in Swindon.

Fireman Taylor had the idea of treating them as though they were dead, having a mock funeral procession and cremation on the Corporation rubbish tip.

And so, in a Swindonian version

Of the old Skimmington cavalcade,

Whereby transgressors of a local moral code

Were lampooned in effigy and with rough music,

Some strike breakers were honoured with a procession:

A mock funeral cortege that wound its way

To the council rubbish tip for ‘cremation’;

The coffins, made by firemen, were embellished,

By wives, mothers, daughters, grand-mothers and aunts,

With curtains or cloth, and wreaths of nettles

And dandelions for floral decoration;

The cortege was followed by some thousand people,

While every street showed its approbation:

‘Of course, when we called with a coffin all the neighbours came out.

They were delighted! We had no trouble with any of them;

almost everyone in those streets had someone on strike themselves.

We had the whole population with us in the demonstration.’

With the police granting permission

And controlling the traffic

Around ‘Manchester Road, the Centre and down by The Ship’;

Traditional rough music:

The death knell created with an iron monger’s shop sign,

a trowel and a four-foot long set square.

A mock undertaker in top hat, long tail coat,

black gloves and striped trousers led the cortège

A derisive cacophony and pandemonium,

Greeted the cortege on its way to Morris Street,

And mock funeral service and cremation:

‘At each home [of a strikebreaker] when we knocked we told them we’d come to take them for a ride, and that if they didn’t come with us we’d have the pleasure of burying them.’  ‘A woman came out of her shop to give them two gallons of paraffin for the cremation. Joe Baldwin, a train driver, borrowed a white table cloth from a lady in the street, and dressed in this as a surplice he said a burial service over the nine coffins.

As he set fire to them his last words were

‘May the wind blow their remains to the corners of the earth,

And to hell with them all’.

Cars, motor-cycles, side cars and bicycles

Were also used to transport the British Worker

And TUC strike bulletins down to Swindon,

While Friday May 7th would see a report to the TUC,

After the famous Ben Tillett addressed a large rally in the town:

‘Position at Swindon splendid.

Spirit … 100%.

Any other national leaders coming this way

we shall be pleased to accommodate.

Demand for larger supplies of British Worker.

Our lines of communication … excellent.

We have made certain arrangements for your despatch riders to obtain petrol. The CWS here have fixed us up splendid.’

‘The townsfolk got the news from the daily mass meetings of thousands in the GWR Park. It was like a Labour Fete every day.

As regards the Swindon and Wiltshire press,

The Evening Advertiser was a single-sheet,

And British Gazette in tone and some content;

The North Wilts Herald would later fulminate

About the withdrawal of the fuses at Moredon power station,

And consequent immobilisation of the printing presses:

‘a desperate step to stifle the freedom of the press’

‘an amazing action in which Swindon,

so far as we have been able to ascertain,

stands alone among all the civic authorities of the country’;

People didn’t stand alone on the Milk Bank

by the railway station, however;

Crowds would jeer as volunteers drove passing trains,

With women to the fore, aprons full of stones,

To lob at strike breaking footplatemen;

Some striking footplatemen also secretly planned to grease inclines

to make firing and driving more difficult.

But money was tight with strike pay low,

And none at all for those not called out until the second wave,

But unable to work because of the impact of the first wave,

With shortage of fuel or the removal of fuses or lack of transport

That rainy day had arrived for that money put by,

‘Feeding Centres’ and the Coop Distress Fund provided succour for some

Teachers commented on hunger facing large families.

‘Put your heads down on the desks and close your eyes:

“Hands up who didn’t have breakfast this morning?”

And some churches and chapels helped out too,

Despite the GWR notice of Monday May 10th,

Describing the strike as a ‘deep conspiracy’,

Not against the company, but ‘against the state’;

A notice as intransigent and uncompromising

As the one put up outside the NUR Temple Street HQ,

With its conditions about employees returning to work,

And consequent penalties.

In according and predictable consequence,

There was a mass meeting in the railway park,

While the government stiffened its resolve,

And, locally, the mayor was forced to give in,

With the arrival of those twelve naval pensioners,

Fuses were restored with plans for trams to go on the streets staffed by volunteers

More mass meetings followed:

At the GWR Park; and at the Mechanics Institute:

‘one of the finest meetings ever held,

the hall being packed to excess and the members very enthusiastic’.

Another meeting followed at the Princess Street Recreation Ground;

The second wave of strikes was called out,

with another ‘mass meeting of members as soon as possible

and that the wives of members be invited’.

The strike was rock solid both in Swindon and on the GWR:

20,000 men and women not at work in the town and surrounding villages. Discussions continued at the Swindon General Council about what to do about the naval pensioners and the volunteers on the trams

 

So, it was a bolt from the blue on Wednesday 12th May:

The General Strike was called off.

On the afternoon of Wednesday May 12, Bill Sargent was on Railway Clerk picket duty outside the Mechanics Institute: ‘Someone dashed across from the Park saying that they had heard on the one o’clock news that the strike was over. Of course, we knew that the employers must have given in and that we’d won the victory.’

 

Victory was presumed at first,

Until the full facts came through in the afternoon.

A meeting was called for the next day at the Park:

GWR employees would stay out

In the face of Sir Felix Pole’s obduracy …

But this talk has to stay within its 25 minutes and so will deal with the nine days only … And so, to conclude … with some personal stories …

Some strikebreakers were veterans but Harry Avern, 26 and with four children, couldn’t resist the offer of a permanent job from the running shed foreman if he would act as a fireman. He faced a hail of stones near Reading and returning from Paddington he was landed with an aristocratic driver who left them stuck in Box Tunnel devoid of steam. Harry didn’t get a permanent job, ‘all he got was an illuminated certificate for strike breaking, and a [guinea] postal order from a grateful GWR.’

And the final conclusion:

The Swindon Advertiser commented that ‘the men and women on strike whose hearts were in the strike comprised an infinitesimal proportion of the whole.’ But the veteran Swindon socialist orator, Reuben George commented that ‘Spiritual life is higher… now for Wherever the men met, the voice of the politician and sectarian was hushed. There were Liberals, Tories, Labour Socialists, Church, Chapel, Roman Catholics, Unitarians, Salvationists; men of strong political and sectarian bias and men of none whatsoever… These men and women met as one. They spoke from the various platforms. They joined in the work of organisation; and what is more and greater than all, they forgot all Party bitterness and sectarian strife. They threw themselves wholeheartedly into the question of help for the miners.’ Swindon Advertiser 18 June 1926

The GWR and the General Strike C.R. Potts Oakwood Press

The General Strike ed. Jeffey Skelley Lawrence & Wishart especially chapter 9 on Swindon by Angela Tucket

The General Strike Day by Day Keith Laybourn Sutton Publishing

 

 

 

The Bespectacled Historian and the Blue Plaques

The bespectacled historian has had a good idea.

Stuart (for it is he) said, “Why don’t we have a train ride and a bus ride and a walk and conjoin the Rev Awdry blue plaques at Rodborough and Box?”

Everyone said it was a great notion and so they made a plan.

Some would meet at Rodborough Avenue to view the first plaque and then catch the 9.34 to Swindon, change there for Bath, then catch the bus to Box. Others said that they would drive to Box and meet the throng there.

“What a splendid way to celebrate the Reverend Awdry,” Katie announced.

“And the GWR, too, of course,” Bob added.

The morning of Thursday February 5th 2026 was dark and stormy. But snowdrops lit a path to spring and a robin trilled in the churchyard as the bespectacled historian made his way to the Rev Awdry’s grave at Rodborough.

The bespectacled historian – not in shorts today – tightened his hood against the wind and the rain and descended down to Rodborough Avenue to the first blue plaque of the day.

Here he met the rather wonderful Dorcas. The only person Stuart had met with that name before was from the deep, deep past in deepest Wiltshire and when Stuart mentioned that to Dorcas, she exclaimed, “My great-grandmother was from Wiltshire and she was named Dorcas too.”

There was a pause: “It was an open-air baptism.”

This was the stuff of Thomas Hardy and Richard Jefferies, thought Stuart, as Dorcas carried on, garrulously, “I found out about this walk online and was curious to find out about it. I’m a good walker. The other day I walked from Whitminster to Stroud – I’m from Longlevens in fact – and in the shop doorway in Stroud was a Thomas the Tank Engine book. So, I thought this is a sign. This is meant to be.”

They made their way down towards the railway station through the mud and the mire. Dorcas began to think that she couldn’t face a five-mile trudge through the fields around Box as the rain continued to pour. She decided that she would spend the day in Rodborough and visit the Awdry grave.

Stuart explained how to find the grave and the stained-glass window as they bade farewell. Dorcas entered a café whilst the bespectacled historian turned the corner towards the station.

There was an ominous gathering of wayfarers there laded with suitcases and rucksacks – that augured ill, thought the bespectacled historian.

And sure enough.

Trains were cancelled every way which way.

A break-down on the line.

Not floods in Sapperton Tunnel or embankments slipping…but that might well happen again in this relentless windswept rain.

The bespectacled historian was stricken with a head-cold so perhaps this was a blessing in disguise, he thought, despite losing money on his ticket.

He informed friends and colleagues as well as he could, hoping that no-one would drive to Bath or Box in this inclement weather awaiting his arrival and feeling consequently angry at his absence.

He decided that he would reschedule the walk for later in the year when the sun might hopefully shine. And, after all, he thought, he had already led a group on the Box blue plaque walk in the late spring last year.

But what if the sun refused to shine and the rain continued to fall …

He thought again: if people followed this link, then they could walk around Box themselves without any need for the bespectacled historian’s presence …

https://www.colerne-pc.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/20200319-Box-Heritage-Trail-Interactive-Map.pdf

And so he sent this telegram.

A Stroudwater 1825 Weavers’ Riots Détournement

 

Wallbridge Mill ST 848050

Nathaniel Watts first introduced the flying shuttle here in the 1790s – the start of mechanisation.

 

 

Ham Mill SO 861032

Jennifer Tann Wool and Water: ‘Ham Mill was a focus of the weavers’ riots in 1825.’ 31.5.25 Edwin Perrin suspected of working for the Marlings at too low a price. When he was at Ham Mill, he faced the collective wrath of some 200 weavers. On June 2nd, 600-700 weavers marched to Ham Mill. One of Marling’s men ended up in the brook but the next marked man managed (with poetic (in)justice) to hide in the Counting House.

 

Vatch Mill SO 872066

June 3rd: 200 weavers, some of whom ‘held sticks over the heads of Mr Peter Wyatt and Mr George L Wyatt, and threatened to knock out their brains and to destroy the mill.’ The next day saw 3,000 gathered; unfinished cloth woven below rates seized.

 

Bliss Mill SO 893025 Tayloe’s Mill 892025 Tann: ‘Little survives of Bliss Mill, save part of the clock tower.’ The Company Arms/Coffee Tavern Chalford GL6 8NS Three gabled Cotswold stone building once linked with the East India Company. A Troop of Horse sent by magistrates after tumult at Chalford: the soldiers ‘were stationed between Blisse and Tayloe Mills and their horses were stabled by the Coffee tavern/the Company’s Arms.’ Weaving in the Stroud Valley during the 19th Century by A. Phelps.

 

Longfords Mill ST 867992

  1. Jones Graeme, Major 10th Royal Hussars, Bristol ‘…William Playne, Longfords Mill, Minchinhampton from Stroud visited on me this morning to report serious event outrages which had occurred near Stroud … I think it is my duty to make this communication to you, Sir, and to request that you should let me be furnished with instructions on the subject from His Royal Highness the Commander in Chief …’

 

Cainscross The lake at the lawn opposite Tricorn House?

‘The cessation from labour commenced on Friday 29th April and on the Monday following the weavers assembled in considerable numbers at Cainscross where they were met by several of the Manufacturers: but not coming to any satisfactory arrangement shuttles to the amount of several hundred were instantly collected’.

 

Break Heart Hill Stinchcombe Road Dursley GL11 6ER and Stinchcombe Hill and Nympsfield

Meetings of more than 3000 weavers were held on subsequent days on Break Heart and Stinchcombe Hills and on Monday last they congregated on Selsley Hill to the number of not less than 6000 … On each of these occasions several of their employers agreed to advance the prices but a number sufficient to satisfy the weavers not having yet consented to their terms another meeting was held on Wednesday last at

Nympsfield when deputations of workmen from several parishes attended and it was strenuously urged that they should resume their labour for those Gentlemen inclined to accede to the new prices. The majority however obstinately resisted this reasonable proposition until the whole of the Manufacturers had expressed their compliance and the business consequently remains unsettled. But it is justly due to the weavers to add that their conduct throughout has been orderly and respectful to their superiors and they gained general approbation by their quiet and peaceable demeanour even when assembled in the greatest numbers.’

‘Manufacturers presented a written request’ to Justices of the Peace for an address to the Home Secretary for ‘a body of Military to be stationed in the Neighbourhood to assist the Civil Power in protecting their property.’

 

Stafford Mill SO 859038 Hyde Court (Chalford) Brimscombe Mills SO 866024 Henry Wyatt & Co Vatch Mills Bowbridge Mills ST 857043 Ham Mills.

The ‘Woollen Manufacturers’ who signed this representation were William Stanton & Sons Stafford Mill SO 859038 Robert P Pelly Hyde Court (Chalford) Harris Stephen & Co Willam Lewis Brimscombe Mills SO 866024 Henry Wyatt & Co Vatch Mills Geo. Lewis Brimscombe Mills Jos. Partdidge & Co Bowbridge Mills ST 857043 Wm. Jn. Wood Chas. Glover Wm. Marling & Son Ham Mills.

 

Spillmans Court Rodborough GL5 3RU

Letter from the Justices of the Peace, Henry Burgh and Peter Hawker, to the Home Office. ‘…the weavers are soon become so violent that we think it almost impossible to have an Offender lodged in safe custody without military assistance … Manufacturers consider all their property in most imminent danger…’

June 15th: Henry Burgh’s letter to the Home Secretary: “on Tuesday the 7th large quantities of weavers, masons and others assembled and proceeded to many acts of violence, which obliged me to read the Proclamation against tumultuous assemblies.” The assembly did not disperse, however, “and having thrown stones at the Military as well as those who had come forward to assist the Civil Power,” the troops were “requested” to “disperse” the assembly “which was effectively done in a short time in as humane manner as possible.” Several were arrested and some “committed to Gloucester Gaol.”

He went on to say that he had printed a notice “to convince the People that the Combination Laws are not repealed and I have put it into execution against several Weavers and Masons for intimidating Workmen. The county is now quiet …” He adds that appeals for help, sent by the weavers to Wiltshire, the districts around Wotton-under-Edge, Dursley and Uley, have received no support.

 

Stroud

4.6.25 P Wyatt of Vatch Mills was ‘assaulted by a mob’ in front of the Magistrates Office. (Old Town Hall, The Shambles)

7.6.25: ‘the mob was as great as on the preceding day and committed many acts of violence. Some acts of intimidation were also committed by Masons towards others of their trade who had not struck for wages.’

Bristol June 7th 1825

‘Sir … I received orders yesterday morning … to detach one squadron of the regiment under my command to Stroud which was immediately carried into effect. I suppose it arrived at Stroud by 8 o’clock last night.’ T. Jones Graeme, Major 10th Royal Hussars

 

June 8th 1825 J.C. Wallington, Captain commanding detachment Royal Hussars: ‘the squadron under my command was called out yesterday evening to disperse a mob collected in the town, which proceeded to acts of violence. We accomplished this object with some trouble including the slash of the sword only. We made prisoners of some of the most disorderly, no accident occurred.’

 

“On the 10th of June a paper was vended at Stroud signed ‘The True British Weavers’ purporting to be a relation of events that had lately occurred in the Neighbourhood respecting the Weavers and the Clothiers – the paper had no Printer’s name on it – the vendor of the paper (Henry Beeseley) was apprehended and committed to prison as a vagrant.”

John Williams D.D. Minister of Stroud, Gloucestershire to the Home Secretary asking for clemency to be shown to William Fitting, serving three months imprisonment at Horsley with hard labour:

‘On the Saturday preceding the arrival of the Cavalry, there were about 2,000 weavers assembled in the Town, and a very large concourse of them, before the door of the Clerk of the Magistrates, demanding the release of prisoners … On enquiring, I found that the prisoners were dismissed respecting whom the tumult was made, as the aggression was on the part of the Master rather than the Men.’

Mr Holbrow’s fish pond Badbrook mill pond was Mr Holbrow’s fishpond in 1825. The road and bus station by cinema and Five Valleys shopping centre are there now

4.6.25 members of the ‘mob’ ducked a number of their opponents ‘in Mr Holbrow’s fish pond’‘

Saint Monday’, June 6th ‘at Stroud a mob of about 2,000 continued to duck persons in Mr Holbrow’s fish pond’.

 

Chalford

‘I despatched Lieutenant Dent with 20 men to Chalford … to protect a factory which the mob had threatened to destroy … This morning I have sent another party with the High Constable to execute warrants against some of the ringleaders. The town seems perfectly quiet today … The Clothiers met yesterday and agreed to give the weavers the increase of price they demanded. The Masons, Carpenters and Millwrights have also struck for more wages.’

13.6.25 The Gloucester Journal

‘JOHN RUDGE weaver OBADIAN GARDINER weaver ENOCH WEAR weaver NATHAN PEARSE weaver ENOCH STEPHENS weaver JAMES BAXTER jun weaver JOHN TURK weaver SAMUEL GARDINER weaver JOHN STEPHENS weaver JOSEPH HUNT weaver THOMAS HUNT weaver THOMAS STEPHENS jun weaver JAMES CROOK weaver AMOS HUNT weaver JOHN BARTLETT weaver JANO CORNISH weaver WILLIAM POULSON weaver

The above persons are charged upon Oath with having on Thursday 2nd June and on several successive days riotously and tumultuously assembled together at Chalford in the Parish of Bisley and Minchinhampton in this county and in Company with many others at present unknown committed acts of violence whereby several Individuals were much injured and the Peace of the Neighbourhood greatly disturbed.’

 

The Brook Nailsworth Bridge Street? The deepest part after the three steams have joined?

‘Saint Monday’, June 6th, saw weavers who undercut ducked in ‘the Brook in Nailsworth bottom by a large mob’.

 

 

 

Horsley Gaol (site at Priory Fields, Horsley)

George Fletcher Riot and assault 3 months Luke Robins ducked William Fletcher 3 months William Fitting aged & Peter Workman Riot 3 months Thomas Weir Riot and assault 3 months

 

Northleach House of Correction

Thomas Osbourne Who ducked William Clark, Also riot and assault 2 years William Pickford Riot and assault 12 months Isaac Nutt Riot and assault 12 months Joseph Mint Riot and assault 12 months

George Heskins Riot and assault 9 months Richard Preene Riot and assault 6 months

Radical Stroud is grateful for the support of UNITE 007 Gloucester Branch in putting on this and associated events, exhibitions, research, leaflets and more discursive or creative  writing. So grateful. Past and Present conjoined.

Rodborough Fields Ridge and Furrow

Rodborough Fields Ridge and Furrow

When you walk down the footpath towards Kwik Fit,

You can see a clear pattern of ridge and furrow

(‘Like corrugated fields or waves in a land-sea’),

Particularly on frosty midwinter days:

A glimpse of a world before enclosure

Parcelled up and privatised the landscape

With fences and gates and hedgerows.

But there’s nothing in the landscape to tell you

Just what this pattern of ridges and humps

In grassland, sward and pasture implies,

Or connotes: no plaque or information board

To let us know that where we tread

There was a whole different way of carrying on

From what we regard as normality today:

The tyranny of the clock and the pursuit of profit;

Instead, there was a community

Based upon sharing and mutuality.

It wasn’t just the sharing out of the strips

Of arable land in the open fields,

Or the gleaning.

The tending to and milking of a cow.

The looking out for rabbits.

The gathering of fruits, berries and nuts.

The being satisfied with that you have.

The exchanging of surplus so as to just get by.

The lending or borrowing of tools.

It wasn’t just the fuel – wood, turf, furze, bracken,

Or the crops, gleaning or grazing that gave sustenance,

It was also the community of reciprocity;

The sharing, the mutuality

That fashioned a community,

And the arranged or happenstance meeting

In field, lane, pathway, holloway, baulk or common,

And the ensuing conversation

And sharing of the time of day

(‘Good morrow, Gossip Joan,

Where have you been a-walking? …’);

And ‘wasting time’ didn’t mean laziness,

It might have been incomprehensible to the elite,

But the lower orders could have an eye for the picturesque too,

You didn’t have to be educated to have an eye for the sublime:

John Clare textualized what many saw and felt:

‘How fond the rustics ear at leisure dwells

On the soft soundings of his village bells

As on a Sunday morning at his ease

He takes his rambles just as fancys please …’

And, in a way, we carry on this tradition

On Rodborough Glebe allotments:

‘Social events, plant and seed swaps, surplus produce for food banks,

local history events, a wildflower and wildlife area’

But now we have a chance to expand this vision and practice

With the community ownership of Rodborough Fields

So, when you have a spare moment,

Follow the footpath down to Kwik Fit

Through Rodborough Fields

And glance to your right:

Let your imagination run free

As you pass the ridge and furrow

Frozen in time and space in the pasture;

Walk with the ghosts at their toil

And at their joyful recreation,

Then, if you can, contribute to the future,

Both for yourself and the community;

Keep the continuity going

That runs from medievalism to modernity:

The community ownership of Rodborough Fields.

 

 

 

 

 

An August Sunday at Rodborough Fields

Sunday August 10th 2025

You know that picture of Stroud scarlet cloth

Stretched out on tenterhooks in Rodborough Fields,

The one in the museum,

The one on the information board at the canal at Wallbridge,

The one on the information leaflets used in this campaign by this group?

This cloth I have in my hands in almost the very spot depicted in that picture,

Went all around the world: traded with the Iroquois in Hudson Bay;

Used by the East India Company in its depredations;

Known as ‘Strouds’ by First Nations Peoples

Way out west beyond the Mississippi

Long before the wagon trains started to roll out way out west to California;

The colour that clothed the British Army as the map of the world turned red,

And the sun never set on the British Empire;

The colour favoured by many enslavers on the plantations in the West Indies,

To symbolise their control and authority and to deter resistance …

And so, this cloth I have in my hands doesn’t symbolise NIMBYism:
‘Not in My Backyard’,

Instead, it symbolises a site which links the local to the national

And the local to the global:

For where we stand here, is, as it were, and so to speak,

A hub of Britain’s history that for two hundred years coloured the globe red.

But now for one final piece of local history:

This summer, 200 years ago, saw the Stroudwater Riots,

When thousands of weavers combined together

To protect their standard of living,

For red not only symbolises the wealth and prosperity of this area,

It is also a symbol of resistance,

And we remember all of those traditions today as we stand here,

And we hope to protect them too

With the community ownership of these fields.

Thank you everyone for coming today.

Thank you to all who help and contribute in the future:

The future of Rodborough Fields is now in our hands.

 

Our Next Walks

Our Next Walks

Jill Shankleman’s Weavers, Mills and Child Labour Walk on November 9th followed the canal from Ebley down to Brimscombe, with a fine attendance of over twenty rapt walkers. The enthusiasm generated there has led us to think about our next walks. We’ll confirm dates over the next few days but we are thinking about:

Weavers and Workhouse Walk in Stroud – A Christmas Carol readings too-

Saturday December 21st

Woodchester Sunday December 22nd

Weavers and Workhouse Walk in Stroud  Saturday January

Berkeley Poachers Walk in January

William Blake London walk in the spring.

More details to follow.

Stroud Walking Football and the Heavens

Ye Stroude Walking Football and Ye Heavens

 It is reported that members of Ye Stroude Walking Footballe intend to gather for a ramble of Ye Heavens on Sunday October 27th (the happie daye when ye sun dialles go back an houre) at eleven o’clocke of the morning for an houre’s strolle and disquisition on ye historye of Ye Heavens before retiring to ye publicke house knowne as Ye Crowne and Sceptre. Althoughe footballe matches have been utilised by ye labouring classes to expresse their oppositionne to enclosure’s march of progresse by ye tearing downe of hedges and fences, the purpose of Ye Stroude Walking Footballe’s meetinge is for an antiquarianne perigrinationne and ye raising of ye fundes for the purchase of shares so as to save Ye Heavens for ye Publicke. Maye Godde preserve such goodlie kickers of the pigge’s bladdere.

It is reported that ye goalkeeper of Ye Stroude Walking Footballe has said that he shall rewarde those who showe their faces by ‘buyinge ye firste rounde.’ And maye Godde save suche generous custodians of ye onione bagge.

 

The Diggers at Slimbridge

The Slimbridge Diggers

Every Age Rewrites History

But not always textually

And the History may not even have been textual

To begin with tbh

 

‘Every Age Rewrites History?’: well, that takes me right back to 6th form scholarship-level history (yes, I did get a distinction); and now, rereading Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down, that adage seems ever more relevant, as we try to discover the site of that mysterious, elusive Digger settlement at Slimbridge.

 

Thus wrote the magisterial Christopher Hill in 1972: ‘History has to be rewritten in every generation, because although the past does not change the present does; each generation asks new questions of the past, and finds new areas of sympathy as it re-lives different aspects of the experiences of its predecessors. The Levellers were better understood as political democracy established itself … the Diggers have something to say to twentieth-century socialists. Now that the protestant ethic itself … is at last being questioned … we can study with a new sympathy the Diggers, the Ranters, and the many other daring thinkers who in the seventeenth century refused to bow down and worship it.’

 

And here we are in the twenty-first century, in the age of the Anthropocene, or Capitalocene (call it what you will): a new age of climate crisis, and here we are ready to try and discover the possible location of the possible Digger community at Slimbridge. And I imagine you are thinking as you read this: Why Slimbridge? Slimbridge? Somewhere on the edge of nowhere? That seems literally incredible. And why only ‘possible’ Digger community? And how did you find out about this possibility? What’s fact and what’s conjecture? (And so on and so on and scooby dooby do …)

 

I’ll try and answer some of these questions – and also, perhaps, provoke some more.

 

I first came upon the Slimbridge reference over ten years ago in the online Utopia Britannica: “Diggers Colony 1649-50? One of a series of ‘other’ Diggers colonies. (See St George’s Hill, Surrey, for more details) GRID REF: Possibly on Slimbridge Waste. REF: World Turned Upside Down.”

 

And then followed this up by going back to Christopher Hill and running my fingers down the index. And we read thus on page 90: “It has been suggested that the unknown Digger community in Gloucestershire may have been at Slimbridge, where in 1631, during the Civil War, and again in 1650, ‘rude multitudes’ were ‘levelling enclosures.’ The waste of Slimbridge, John Smyth of Nibley had said in 1639, could yield £1500 a year but was not worth one-fifth of that now. On the contrary, it draws ‘many poor people from other places’ and burdens the township with ‘beggarly cottages … and ale houses and idle people’.”

 

The very knowledgeable local historian Owen Adams messaged me after I asked him his view on where the site might have been in Slimbridge: ‘Hi Stuart, all I know about it is that it gets a very brief mention in one book Brave Community as a possible site, however there was a long history of enclosure riots and disputes against the Berkeley family and their steward John Smyth in preceding decades over the new grounds, now the site of the wetlands centre … Also seems Slimbridge was known as Slymbridge, pronounced slime, as there was an industry of collecting alluvial river mud, quicksand known as slime, for spreading on agricultural land and improving it … I have a fair bit of information on an attempted Skimmington riot in June 1631 at Slimbridge New Grounds, which I will mention when I do a talk at Yate in June.’

 

(How this made me think about that old phrase used in my parents’ generation about the looked-down-upon: ‘common as muck’ … but here we can see a very different meaning involving the spread of muck on a common … one phrase implying social hierarchy … another implying equality … more on this later from the quill of Gerard Winstanley).

 

The next stage in wider research came in the spring this year when Bob Blenkinsop (‘Blenko’) lent me The Lefties’ Guide to Britain after a visit to the Cragg Vale Coiners trail when on a different mission: ‘Slimbridge Waste. A Digger community was set up on the Waste around 1650; the precise location, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, is unknown.’

 

A fruitless search of my bookshelves for Nigel Costley’s West Country Rebels (who did I lend that to?) meant buying another copy. Nigel wrote on page 11 about the 17th century Skimmington riots against enclosures and de-forestation in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire (the Western Rising). His succinct description of the skimmington tradition will serve us as well as any other we could use: “A ‘Skimmington’ was a public shaming of individuals” who transgressed local community values, with the transgressor mocked in effigy with rough music. “The term was used for other actions that caused the community’s displeasure including enclosures … Riots were reported against the ‘new-gained grounds of Lord Berkeley’ at Frampton and Slimbridge …”

Nigel writes further about Slimbridge on page 25: ‘A Digger settlement was established on Slimbridge Waste by the River Severn in Gloucestershire. Little is known of the community and it is likely that it was brutally suppressed.’

 

So where was the Waste? Presumably an area of uncultivated land. Who defines an area as Waste? Definitions could vary according to wealth. Common land may not be waste from the lower orders’ point of view: it offers subsistence and a possible roof. But a landowner in pursuit of profit … might have a very different lens (see John Smyth above). So where was that Slymbridge Waste? The Moors? On the battle ground of the New Grounds? At the Warth (meadow land by a river)? Lost in the lands and waters of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust?

 

Buchanan Sharp wrote thus on page 111 in his In Contempt of All Authority

Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586-1660: ‘When the Berkeleys came to consider enclosure at Slymbridge in Gloucestershire in 1639, the main argument in favour of it was that the open common drew people from other places who lived in beggarly cottages, erected alehouses, and led lives of idleness and petty crime. Division into severalty would support honest husbandmen who could pay rents, instead of useless beggars and other such lazy and idle people.’ This was eight years after the offer from the other side of the river to assist in the skimmington destruction of enclosures. And seven years before the ‘order for Lord Berkeley’s quiet possession of the enclosed newly gained ground at Slymbridge’: Buchanan possibly points our way and compass with this sentence on page 156: ‘During the first Civil War the inhabitants finally rioted and destroyed the enclosure of 300 acres of ground new-gained from changes in the course of the River Severn.’

So, although John Gurney in Brave Community writes on page 185 that ‘Nothing is known of the location of the Digger colonies in Gloucestershire and Nottinghamshire. Enclosure riots took place in the Gloucestershire parishes of Slimbridge and Frampton in June 1650, and the Forest of Dean was the site of agrarian conflict later in the decade, but again no evidence has been found to link the Diggers to these places’, you might say there certainly seems to be a good deal of circumstantial evidence.

 

Circumstantial evidence: ‘Circumstantial evidence is indirect evidence that does not, on its face, prove a fact in issue but gives rise to a logical inference that the fact exists. Circumstantial evidence requires drawing additional reasonable inferences in order to support the claim.’

 

And on that basis, we shall walk along Moorend Lane, past Berkeley Court, and Shepherd’s Patch, over the canal towards the Warth and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, then return and walk along the towpath towards Gloucester, glancing towards the Severn and the New Grounds.

 

Why 1649-50?

Times were particularly hard in the decade before the putative settlement at Slimbridge: war; high food prices; poor harvests; and times were especially hard between 1647 and 1650, when, as Hill commented, ‘food prices rose steeply above their pre-war level; money wages lagged badly behind, and the cost of living rose significantly’. Corn was seized in the Severn valley, while away from Slimbridge, the Levellers were active within the army, and then in the spring of 1649 poor labourers began to dig the waste land at St. George’s Hill near Windsor.

The total number of people involved there – male labourers, women and children within families, numbered under one hundred; ‘we know the names of seventy-three of them’(Hill). Like Slimbridge, that area had a tradition of radical direct action – and traditions of agrarian communism may well have revived in the 1640s. (For evidence of these traditions, see Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, Book 2, canto 9, stanza 13; Book 4, canto 1, stanza 28; Book 5, canto 2, stanza 35-52; canto 11, stanzas 57-9; Shakespeare’s Coriolanus Act 2, scene 3; Henry 6th, Part 2, Act 4, passim.) In short, although the numbers of people involved in Digger experiments in England in 1649-50 may have been few, St. George’s Hill was far from unique: the support for people whom the Levellers would have disenfranchised (servants, labourers, the indigent etc.) spread through Digger pamphlets penned by Winstanley – and through word of mouth. Digger ‘ambassadors’ would have been few in number wandering the parishes of southern England and the midlands, but wander did they did.

 

The fact that Digger ideas did spread through word of mouth (‘oral culture’) means that we should not be surprised to find it hard to pinpoint the exact spot of Gloucestershire’s Digger experiment. Out of all the Digger communities in 1649-50, St. George’s Hill is the best documented but if any of those involved in other short-lived experiments, such as Gloucestershire, could read and write, the speedy destruction of these essays in egalitarianism would have resulted in the burning, loss or destruction of Digger-penned documents. And, anyway. Why would you pen something that might incriminate you?

 

But back to Winstanley and Christopher Hill: ‘In the years 1649-50 Winstanley issued a series of pamphlets … and some at least seem to have borne fruit. Other Digger communities appeared at Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, Cox Hall in Kent, Iver in Buckinghamshire, Barnet in Hertfordshire, Enfield in Middlesex, Dunstable in Bedfordshire, Bosworth in Leicestershire, and at unknown places in Gloucestershire and Nottinghamshire. Not enough local work has been done on most of these places, but we know something about Wellingborough.’ (This was written in 1972.)

 

Hill outlines Wellingborough’s Puritan, Quaker and Leveller background – and its level of poverty: and, in consequence, the poor started to ‘dig up, manure and sow corn upon the common waste ground’. (We can see how Slimbridge fits into part of this template with its history of direct action and its poverty – and contested common waste ground.) Hill further comments: ‘So from Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire to Gloucestershire and Kent, Digger influence spread all over southern and central England … intensifying ill-feeling between landlords and tenants … they may have contributed to the class consciousness of Fifth Monarchists and early Quakers …’

 

Locally, the Quakers were a notable presence in not-so-far-away Painswick; the spirit of freedom was alive and smoking in the illegal tobacco plantations around Winchcombe, and there was the tradition of direct action in the Forest of Dean and along the eastern banks of the Severn too. Slimbridge sits between these places. Perhaps we can imagine itinerant ambassadors, or local Diggers and preachers, with Gerard Winstanley’s message, spreading the Digger gospel through valley and over the wolds. And as Hill pointed out: ‘a Quaker of the early 1650s had far more in common with a Leveller, a Digger or a Ranter than with a modern member of the Society of Friends.’

 

The next section of this disquisition will follow in the word-steps and thought-footsteps of Winstanley. We shall walk in these word-steps when in Slimbridge and we shall call this section A Light Shining in Gloucestershire.

 

‘If the waste land of England were manured by her children, it would become in a few years the richest, the strongest and flourishing land in the world.’

‘Work together; eat bread together.’

 

‘He that works for another, either for wages or to pay him rent, works unrighteously … but they that are resolved to work and eat together, making the earth a common treasury, doth join hands with Christ to lift up the creation from bondage, and restores all things from the curse.’

 

[I must] ’go forth and declare it in my action’ [to organise] ‘us that are called common people to manure and work upon the common lands.’

‘True religion and undefiled is to let everyone have quietly earth to manure.’

 

‘the bondage the poor complain of, that they are kept poor by their brethren in a land where there is so much plenty for everyone, if covetousness and pride did not rule as king in one brother over another.’

 

‘in the beginning of time the great creator, Reason, made the earth to be a common treasury, to preserve beasts, birds, fishes and man, the lord that was to govern this creation … Not one word was spoken in the beginning that one branch of mankind should rule over another … But … selfish imaginations … did set up one man to teach and rule over another. And thereby … man was brought into bondage, and became a greater slave to such of his own kind than the beasts of the field were to him. And hereupon the earth … was hedged into enclosures by the teachers and rulers, and the others were made … slaves. And that earth that is within this creation made a common storehouse for all, is bought and sold and kept in the hands of a few, whereby the great Creator is mightily dishonoured, as if he were a respecter of persons, delighting in the comfortable livelihood of some and rejoicing in the miserable poverty and straits of others. From the beginning it was not so …’

 

Ye Lords of the Manor: ‘The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the heads of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out the land.’

 

‘The poorest man hath as true a title and just right to the land as the richest man … True freedom lies in the free enjoyment of the earth … If the common people have no more freedom in England but only to live among the elder brothers and work for them for hire, what freedom then have they in England …’

‘Whilst this kingly power reigned in one man called Charles, all sorts of people complained of oppression … Thereupon you that were the gentry, when you were assembled in Parliament, you called upon the poor common people to come and help you … That top bough is lopped off the tree of tranny, and the kingly power in that one particular is cast out. But alas, oppression is a great tree still, and keeps off the sun of freedom from the poor commons still.’

 

‘wheresoever there is a people … united by common community of livelihood into oneness, it will become the strongest land in the world; for then they will be as one man to defend their inheritance … Whereas on the other side, pleading for property and single interest divides the people of a land and the whole world into parties, and is the cause of all wars and bloodshed and contention everywhere … But when once the earth becomes a common treasury again, as it must, … then this enmity of all lands will cease, and none shall dare seek dominion over others, neither shall any dare to kill another, nor desire more of the earth than another.’

 

‘…they tell the poor people that they must be content with their poverty, and they shall have their heaven hereafter. But why may not we have our heaven here (that is, a comfortable livelihood in the earth) and heaven hereafter too …’

 

‘Oh ye hearsay preachers, deceive not the people any longer by telling them that this glory shall not be known and seen till the body is lain in the dust. ‘

 

Here endeth A Light Shining in Gloucestershire

 

 

There is, then, a compelling argument for placing the Gloucestershire Digger experiment at Slimbridge, while simultaneously accepting that we might have got it wrong. But, so what? We are walking in a liminal landscape: the storm surge of 1607 would have turned the world upside down too. We are also walking through a liminal time-scape, rescuing ‘the poor and anonymous from the enormous condescension of posterity’, following our practice of ‘footsteps and footpaths not footnotes’; indeed, exemplifying that practice.

Perhaps there’s something of William Blake about our practice too:

‘To see the world in a grain of sand

And a Heaven in a wild flower

To hold Eternity in the palm of your hand

And Infinity in an hour.’

 

Conclusion

Jonathan Meades on page 3 of An Encyclopaedia of Myself:

‘Every time I write once upon a time I am, anyway, already exhuming the disputable, conjuring a photocopy of a faded print made from a detrited negative. I am striving to distinguish the original from its replays. So why add to the store of the provisional? The forms and shades of what used to be are already hideously mutable, every act of recall is both an erosion and an augmentation. I remember therefore I reshape.’

 

So here we are contributing both to a history and a mythology.

We may be in the wrong place in Slimbridge. Perhaps it’s not the New Ground. Perhaps it’s not on the site of the Wetlands Centre. Perhaps, it is or isn’t on the area called the Warth. On top of that, Slimbridge may not even be the right place.

But does that matter?

John Gurney wrote on page 180 in Brave Community that “Winstanley’s claim that digging ‘is the talk of the whole Land’ may not have been too much of an exaggeration, for it is evident that the Digger experiment did have an appreciable impact in radical circles.”

Perhaps it had an impact down here in Slimbridge. Perhaps a Digger experiment here, was, as Nigel Costley suggested, ‘brutally suppressed.’  Perhaps there might be a record somewhere in the Berkeley archives. Perhaps there isn’t.

But perhaps no record survives anywhere because this Digger experiment was more performative. A 17th century ‘happening’. A short-lived carnival of misrule possibilities to show how the world could be turned upside down. Which is what we are doing today: ‘it is evident that the Digger experiment did have an appreciable impact in radical circles.’

 

Every Age Rewrites History

But not always textually

And perhaps we are contributing to a mythology

 

MYTHOLOGY: a quick google search: ‘A mythology is a collection of myths or stories about a specific person, culture, religion, or any group with shared beliefs.’ The as it were and so to speak common-sense definition is that ‘Most people don’t consider mythology to be entirely true, but they still take it seriously.’

A slightly loftier definition: ‘Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term “myth” that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the veracity of a myth is not a defining criterion.’

 

Talking of which, when we carried out a Slimbridge recce in late May, Bob spotted a poster pinned to a post:

 

Vale Friends of CRUK presents

A MURDER MYSTERY EVENING

In collaboration with Slimbridge Variety Showgroup

MURDER AT THE AGM

It is 1963 and the 40th anniversary of “Diggers” Allotment & Gardening Society.

The committee is making the AGM a celebration evening … it will be a night to remember!

Do come dressed in 1960s costume,

there will be a prize for the best dressed male and female.

Saturday 1 June 2024

7.30 pm at Slimbridge Village Hall

Tickets £15 to include Supper

 

 

ADDENDA:

Hello Stuart,

  1. I saw in Radical Stroud you are planning a walk to Slimbridge on July 2nd, to look for a Digger settlement. That sounds interesting! But what info do you already have about where it is, and what happened there? I live in Paganhill, Stroud, and im a fan of the Diggers but i never heard of this before. It would be useful to know what route and length you were envisaging this walk to be.

 

  1. Good morning Stuart,
    Apologies for the delay in getting back to you on this one. Our colleague kindly contacted the Slimbridge Local History Society and sent over the below and recommends that you speak to the Berkeley Castle Team. Do you have a contact for them? We can provide one if not.
  2. ‘I did come across this when researching a religious seal found on the Slimbridge Dig site, which was connected to Beckford Priory and probably lost here whilst visiting the Berkeley Minster area.
    There was a Digger Settlement in 1649 at St George’s Hill in Surrey and one here in Slimbridge – if this were on the site at WWT – I would expect it to be recorded within the Berkeley Castle Archives.
    Here is what I found when researching the seal – it’s in old English, but understandable when you get your eye in!

“I was a good pupile ande hearkened Ezekiel to make me learnne the Digger words of Gerard Winstanley offe by my hearte. I have them stille close bye me nowe by my bedde side. ‘Every one shall lookke upon each other as equalle in the creationne. We are all the sonnes and daughterres of Gode and Adame and Eve.’ ‘Governmente that gives liberty to the gentry to have all the earthe, and shutte out the poore commoners from enjoying any partte, ruling by tyrannical laws. This is the governmente of the Antichrist.’
Whenne I hearde that the Diggers had commenced the creationne of the rule of Godde with a commune at Slimbridge downe by the Severne, I made my waye alonge the Frome to reache the widde river and thence to Slimbridge. It was a welcome to meete with so manye fellowe Diggers. We tore down fences and enclosures so as to sow, till, ploughe and harveste in commone.
Just as the true borne leveller soldiers were shot down by Cromwell’s armie at the church in Burforde, so our Eden was to be laide waste bye his menne too.
I escaped with a bloddied heade ande made my waye to the Quakerres at Painswicke. Here I knewe I woulde receive succourre. The Grande Juryye of the Countyye spoke of our communitye as ‘Ranters, Levellers and atheists, undere the name of Quakerres’. This to uss was praise. I stayed some goode yeares there and witnessed the praiseworthie practicse of namelesse internmente. The beliefe was in equalityye in deathe as in life. We used noe titles. Alle were thou to a goodlye Quakkerre.

Esau Bingham”’

(My initial sense of exhilaration that we had nailed it was subsequently followed by a guilty sense of embarrassment when , shame-faced, I remembered that I had written this piece some ten years ago when playing around with documentary fiction …)

 

  1. ‘I have just checked the book “Frontiers of a Barony” which covers the history of the New Grounds, but there is no reference to the diggers.’

 

  1. Hi Stuart,

Thank you for contacting me and please accept my apologies for the slow response.

Please visit the Archives page of our website https://www.berkeley-castle.com/archives here you will find lots of helpful information / contacts / faq section, which will hopefully answer any questions you may have and further your research.

Kind regards,

Helen

Helen Berryman

               Visitor Business Coordinator

The Berkeley & Spetchley Estates, Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, GL13 9PJ

T: 01453 810303  F: 01453 512995

www.berkeley-castle.com

www.spetchleygardens.co.uk

  1. Flooding in early modern England: Cultures of coping in Gloucestershire and Lincolnshire John Emrys Morgan’s PhD thesis University of Warwick has some interesting observations for us in our Slimbridge quest. He looks at areas like the fens and the eastern banks of the Severn which, in the 17th century, ‘were increasingly seen as places of potential profit’ whilst simultaneously and in opposition, ‘the challenges of agricultural production on floodplains’ generated ‘communal action’. And in this Slimbridge context, John Smyth appears again; this time as regards warths (‘lands that lie directly on the shore of a body of water’). He moans about warths “used as common pasture”, for then, they “yeild not the 5th part of their true value” and “drawe many poore people from other places, burden the township with beggerly Cotages, Inmates, and Alehouses, and idle people; where the greater part spend most of their daies in a lazy idleness and petite thieveries and fewe or none in profitable labour.”

Morgan pointed out how warth land on the upper Severn offered opportunities for seasonal grazing; whilst recurrent floods left clay deposits that helped the soil retain nutrients and so improve the grasslands for subsequent grazing. So, in general terms, warth lands were very much a liminal shapeshifting world; and using our Slimbridge lens, we can imagine the area from the Warth (on today’s OS map) running through the Wetlands Centre and on to the New Ground as a formerly liminal shapeshifting contestable landscape.

Here’s John Emrys Morgan again: ‘Warths that accreted naturally were often held in common, whereas deliberate attempts to create warths by “inning” or “warping” usually led to the resultant land being privately owned. “Warping” involved driving stakes into or erecting fence on the foreshore, so that at each inundation sediment would be retained and land would accrete faster.’

Disputation between privatisation and commonality seems to be a constant theme – and further local evidence for this comes just upstream from that elusive possible Digger settlement at Slimbridge and just afterwards too: Frampton, Saul and Fretherne in 1653. Surveyors examined 112 acres and reached the conclusion that if the lands were “improved” then rents could be increased nearly twentyfold.

Now all this improvement of land suggests improvement of pastoral rather than arable farming. But the Diggers and ambassadors, with their experimental innovations in the south and midlands, broadcast the planting of crops (with roofs over heads too) in their assertions of agrarian communism. Does that then argue against Slimbridge as our locale?

Not necessarily. As I have said elsewhere, perhaps the Digger settlement at Slimbridge was more performative.

Or perhaps the local Diggers at Slimbridge were following their long tradition of asserting communal grazing rights in the face of landlord encroachment. For example, the Slimbridge Warth (owned by the Berkeley Manor which had itself fought a suit against the Crown over land rights) had grown by 300 acres since the 13th century through ‘successive increments’ of reclamation. In 1596, a hundred tenants from Frampton and Slimbridge brought a case against ‘wealthy local yoeman’ at the Court of Chancery. The villagers had enjoyed rights of common on the warth since medieval times: at “all tymes and seasons of the yeare with all manner of Beasts at their pleasure.”

But we note that those same communities also ‘sought to restrict access to the landless’: in 1613, cottagers (who grazed sheep); those on rack-rents (lacking an annually determined rent), and lodgers faced exclusion. These are people at the bottom of the pile. This appears to be a contestable landscape throughout the social hierarchy: but with the poor at the bottom suffering the most, needless to say.

Morgan again: ‘David Rollinson has referred to early modern rural landscapes as “memory palaces”, in which certain places and landmarks were invested with meaning beyond their immediate practical utility or aesthetic qualities.’ Perhaps we are evoking that image and metaphor – turning the world upside down with a ‘memory palace’ for the lost and elusive Diggers of Slimbridge.

 

 

So, I almost conclude with a memory from childhood –

the tune from Bill and Ben:

‘Was it NEW GROUND,

Or was it WARTH,

Where the DIGGERS sallied forth,

Which one is it on our walk,

Was it NEW GROUND or was it WARTH?

It was both, children.

Or, children, it was it neither.’

 

So, what do we know and what do I know? I’m hardly an authority – just read a few books, talked to a few people, cycled out for two recces, and yet I have been asked to give a talk at the Gloucester Heritage Centre. What on earth would Prospero say? ‘We are such stuff As dreams are made on …’

 

 

Plot and Conspiracy!

A focus on anarchy within Gloucestershire collections

 
Saturday 7 September 2024, 1pm-4pm

 

 

 

Talk and film: [booking essential due to room capacity limits]

  • 15pm – The Digger Experiment in Gloucestershire: Was it at Slimbridge, 1649-50? by Stuart Butler of Radical Stroud

 

  • 30pm – Showing of the community film, ‘Days of Hope – the Chartists in Stroud’ introduced by John Bassett, of Spaniel in the Works Company

 

  • Document display of records relating to anarchy and insurrection taken from collections held at Gloucestershire Archives

 

  • Free refreshments throughout the afternoon.

 

  • Up in arms or hiding from trouble? Discover your personal heritage at the Gloucestershire Family History Resource Centre, open from 10am

 

[Main event starts at 1pm]

 

Booking essential for the talks. Heritage Hub, Clarence Row, Alvin Street, Gloucester GL1 3DW. Parking on-site.    For more information see our website at www.heritagehub.org.uk.

 

Now, for what will absolutely be my tautologically speaking, conclusion, for as T.S. Eliot said, “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploration Will be to arrive at where we started. And know the place for the first time.”

 

Every Age Rewrites History

But not always textually

And the History may not even have been textual

To begin with tbh.

 

For even though my historical practice involves footpaths and footprints rather than footnotes, the thrust of this disquisition points at the necessity of research in the Berkeley archives. But what if nothing is there about the Slimbridge Diggers? Would that mean ‘End of Story’, as Louis Armstrong said at the end of High Society?

‘It aint necessarily so.’

Is it?

 

After the Civil War

At Slimbridge Waste
A ragged band of Diggers came to settle with good haste,
They defied the landlords
They defied the laws
They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs

We come in peace they said to dig and sow
We come to work the lands in common and to make the waste grounds grow
This Earth divided we will make whole so it will be a common treasury for all

The sin of property we do disdain
No-one has any right to buy and sell the Earth for private gain
By theft and murder they took the land
Now everywhere the walls spring up at their command
They make the laws to chain us well
The clergy dazzle us with heaven or they damn us into hell
We will no worship the God they serve
The God of greed who feed the rich while poor women starve

We work we eat together
We need no swords
We will not bow to the masters or pay rent to the lords
We are free people, though we are poor
You Diggers all stand up for glory stand up now

But all has gone and disappeared
Even though the Diggers stood firm and upright without fear
Where were their cottages, where was their corn
They were dispersed but still the vision lingers on
You poor take courage you rich take care
This Earth was made a common treasury for everyone to share
All things in common, all people one
The Diggers’ heritage still lingers in this song.

So, when you walk by Severn’s grace

Make sure you visit what was Slimbridge Waste

And stand around and sing this song

All things in common and all the people one.

Another addendum:

Chas Townley September 2024: The Digger Movement 1649 Leslie S. A. Jones

1650: ‘In June there were serious riots at Slimbridge and Frampton … where “rude multitudes” were “levelling enclosures”.

 

Child Labour Walk November 9

Child Labour in the Woollen Mills of the 1830s – November 9

5km one -way along the canal From Ebley Mill to Brimscombe Mill. Meet at Ebley Mill at 11am.
Refreshments are available from The Long Table (fingers crossed), The Ship Inn or The Felt Cafe.
Return by Bus 67 from Brimscombe or back along the canal. (Note new and improved bus timetable from 1 September).

Amidst agitation nationally for shorter working hours in the textile industry, scandals about children crippled and killed in the cotton mills and the extreme poverty of handloom weavers, government inquiries collected extensive data from clothiers and some workers in the wool industry of the Stroud Valleys on child labour, wages and working hours. Most started work
aged 9, but some as young as 6. Stops along the way will highlight the work that children did in the mills and how this changed during the 1830s. We might also want to consider how conditions here 200 years ago are matched nowadays in the clothing industry.

Contact js@shankleman.com for further information.

Berkeley Walk July 16

Times were hard in the early nineteenth century for country people, with the effects of the war with France, enclosures, the Corn laws, the Game Laws and the high-handed attitude of some landowners. This led to events in our county that resulted in 4 young men losing their lives, others being transported and families left destitute. Join us for a fascinating walk on 16th July as we explore the Berkeley Poaching Affray of 1816, an intriguing and truly tragic rather than romantic tale. We suggest meeting at 10.30am in Berkeley on Marybrook Street which is between the 2 public car parks. We shall take a walk through Berkeley and into open country, exploring the story and its relevance to the present day and approaching the site of the affray itself. On our return we may be treated to tea at Dr Jenner’s House –  he and his nephew both having had some involvement. Bring some lunch, some water, and appropriate footwear. We hope to see you there.