Category: Walks

A Ghost Pub Pilgrimage

A Ghost Pub Pilgrimage through Stroud and the Five Valleys
Raising funds for the Trussell Trust in September

Walk and/or bicycle your way through this list of pubs.
Tick them off.
Keep a diary or a record if you wish.
Take photos for the archive.

Let these pub names and addresses
Come alive again
(‘Have another?’
‘I don’t mind if I do.’)
And help us all out in these hard times;
Let’s find them and toast them with imaginary pints
On a series of Ghost Pub Pilgrimages on foot or on bicycle,
And if you know of any other ghost pubs or inns,
Please send them in …

Do the list in any order.
On your own and/or in a group.
And raise funds in any way you wish for the Trussell Trust.

Perhaps you have personal or family memories
Of old times spent in some of these inns:
Got stories to tell? Please send them in.
Perhaps draw pub sign for these lost gathering places,
Or perhaps write a poem about the pub name,
Or have a group rendition of The Listeners by Walter de la Mere.

With thanks to Geoff Sandles
and his invaluable and necessary
Stroud Valley Pubs Through Time
And his wonderful website
https://www.gloucestershirepubs.co.uk/
And Pubs of the Old Stroud Brewery,
By Wilfred Merrett

Painswick
Adam & Eve, Paradise, (formerly The Plough Inn), A46
The Bell, (bombed 1941) Bell Street
Bunch of Grapes, Cheltenham Road
Cross Hands, Stammages Lane
Fleece Inn, Bisley Street
Golden Heart, Tibbiwell Street
New Inn, St Mary’s Street
Red Lion
Star Inn, Gloucester Street
White Horse, Vicarage Street

A Ghost Pub Pilgrimage through Stroud and the Five Valleys
Raising funds for the Trussell Trust in September

Walk and/or bicycle your way through this list of pubs.
Tick them off.
Keep a diary or a record if you wish.
Take photos for the archive.

Let these pub names and addresses
Come alive again
(‘Have another?’
‘I don’t mind if I do.’)
And help us all out in these hard times;
Let’s find them and toast them with imaginary pints
On a series of Ghost Pub Pilgrimages on foot or on bicycle,
And if you know of any other ghost pubs or inns,
Please send them in …

Do the list in any order.
On your own and/or in a group.
And raise funds in any way you wish for the Trussell Trust.

Perhaps you have personal or family memories
Of old times spent in some of these inns:
Got stories to tell? Please send them in.
Perhaps draw pub sign for these lost gathering places,
Or perhaps write a poem about the pub name,
Or have a group rendition of The Listeners by Walter de la Mere.

With thanks to Geoff Sandles
and his invaluable and necessary
Stroud Valley Pubs Through Time
And his wonderful website
https://www.gloucestershirepubs.co.uk/
And Pubs of the Old Stroud Brewery,
By Wilfred Merrett

Painswick
Adam & Eve, Paradise, (formerly The Plough Inn), A46
The Bell, (bombed 1941) Bell Street
Bunch of Grapes, Cheltenham Road
Cross Hands, Stammages Lane
Fleece Inn, Bisley Street
Golden Heart, Tibbiwell Street
New Inn, St Mary’s Street
Red Lion
Star Inn, Gloucester Street
White Horse, Vicarage Street

Sheepscombe
Crown Inn (now private residence: Church Orchard SO 892104)

Pitchcombe
Eagle Inn (now Eagle Cottage), A46

Ruscombe
George Browning’s off-licence

STROUD
Walbridge
Anchor Inn/Linton Inn, Anchor Terrace
The Bell,
Kings Arms, (Butts site), Lower George
Ship Inn/Ship and Anchor, Walbridge

Lightpill
The Cyprus Inn, Bath Road
Fleece Inn
Kite’s Nest, Bath Road

Bowbridge
Canal Tavern
New Inn

Dudbridge
Bridge Inn
Railway Inn , Dudbridge Road
Victoria Tap

Cainscross
Alpine Lodge (The Stratford) Stratford Road
Clothiers Arms
Hope Inn, Cainscross Road
White Horse Inn, Westward Road
White Lion, High Street
Henry Robbins & Son, Cider Licence (off sales)
Alfred Cratchley’s off-licence (Godsells Brewery)
Mrs Haden’s Off-licence

Paganhill
Stag & Hounds
Spring Inn, Paganhill Lane (now called Spring House – residential)

Cashes Green
Gardeners Rest, Harper Road

Ebley
Bell Inn, Ebley Wharf, Stroudwater Canal (by Oil Mills Lane)
Coach & Horses 260 Westward Road
Lamb Inn, Westward Road
Old Crown, Chapel Lane SO 827048
Malakoff Inn, Westward Road

Whiteshill
Star Inn, Star Green
Bird in Hand, on the road to Edge: now residential Bird in Hand Cottage SO839082
Bell Inn, Bell Pitch (now residential Bell House) SO 840072, Woodcutters Arms

In Town
The Railway Station
The Imperial.

Russell Street
Bricklayers Arms
Foresters Arms (just up from the Railway Hotel)
Railway Hotel

Gloucester Street
Masons Arms
Ye Old Painswick Inn

King Street
Chequers Inn
Golden Heart (junction of Oxfam and the betting shop in Stroud. In the 19th century, the Golden Heart had a skittle alley, and the famous Chartist, Henry Vincent, spoke near there before the Selsley Hill mass meeting in 1839.
The Greyhound; Green Dragon 43 King Street
Kings Arms
Royal George Hotel

High Street
Corn Exchange Hotel (45 High Street)
Dolphin
George Inn,
Nelson Inn 46/47 High Street.

George Street
Post Office Inn
Woolpack Inn

John Street
True Briton

The Shambles
Butchers Arms/Corn Hall Hotel

Union Street
Market Tavern
Plough Inn
Swan Inn
Union Street
Union Inn (The Pelican – Market Tavern)

London Road
Sundial Inn

Near the Cross at the top of the High Street
Bedford Arms
Kings Head
The Lamb
Corn Exchange
The Crown
Orange Tree, (Hill Street?)
White Hart

Nelson Street
New George
New George Inn/Horseshoes Inn
Rising Sun
Wellington Arms

Acre Street area
Butchers Arms, 42 Acre Street
Cross Keys
Chapel Street off-licence
White Horse, Old Chapel Street
Swann Inn, Old Chapel Street

Parliament Street and beyond
Butchers Arms, Parliament Street
Cross Hands
Half Moon Inn, 62 Hill Street
Leopard Inn (stood just below Cotswold Playhouse)
New Inn, Silver Street (now Parliament Street)
Star in Tower Hill, Parliament Street
Oddfellows Arms, Summer Street
Red Lion Inn (Summer Street)
Middle Street off-licence
New Inn, Lower Street
Star Inn, Tower Street (prob near Orange Tree)
Weavers Arms, Meeting Street

Bisley Road
Target Inn
Spread Eagle, Bisley Old Road (north side – demolished 60’s part of road widening)
The Bisley House.

The Leazes
Globe Inn, Lower Leazes
Horse and Groom, Upper Leazes.

Slad Road
Prince of Wales

Callowell
Plough Inn (just to the north of Callowell Farm).

Rodborough
The Lamb Inn, Butterrow Hill
Princess Royal, Butterrow
Off-licence, Spillmans
Woolpack, Inn (Woolpack Cottage), Butterrow
Golden Cross Inn, Bath Road
Boot Inn, The Street, Kingscourt, SO 845033
Nags Head, Bowl Hill, Kingscourt (just possible to read the name), Golden Fleece, The Butts
Edward Barradine’s off-licence (Spillmans Pitch?)
White Lion, Dudbridge Road
Princess Royal, Butterow (about 50 yards from The Prince Albert), Duke of York

Avening and Cherington
Sawyers Arms 71 High Street
Nags Head, Nags Head Lane
Farriers Arms/Horse & Farrier Avening,
Barn House, Cherington
Yew Tree Inn, Cherington.

Uley, Dursley, Cam, Coaley, Berkeley, North Nibley, Wotton-under-Edge, Arlingham, Framilode, Cambridge, Slimbridge, Saul, Sheppardine, Elmore, Longney

White Lion, 49 The Street, Uley, Nags Head, Uley, Lower Crown Inn, The Street, Uley (was next to the village hall), Shears Inn, Uley (residential: houses: The Shears), Swan Inn, Coaley (now Old Swan Cottage), Heart of Oak, Ham Hill, Coaley (now residential: Oak House), White Hart, Wotton Road, North Nibley, Apple Tree Inn, Wotton-under-Edge, The Ram, Wotton-under-Edge, New Inn, Kingshill Lane, Cam, Lamb Inn, Chapel Street, Cam, Foresters Arms, 31 Chapel Street, Lower Cam, Butchers Arms, Lower Cam, White Lion, Market Place, Dursley, White Hart, Long Street, Dursley, Star Inn, Silver Street, Dursley, Railway Inn, Long Street, Dursley, New Bell, Long Street, Dursley, Lamb Inn, Long Street, Dursley, Hen & Chicken, Woodmancote, Dursley, Crown Inn, 41 Long Street, Dursley, Cross Keys, Union Street, Dursley, Apple Tree Inn, Cam, Bull Inn, Bull Pitch, Dursley, Broadwell Tavern, Silver Street, Dursley, Boot Inn, Silver Street, Dursley, Bell Inn, Cam, Bell & Castle Inn, Parsonage Street, Dursley, Bell Inn, Berkeley Heath, Bell Inn, Arlingham, Old Bell, Arlingham Bell Inn, High Street, Arlingham (just off Passage Road), Yew Tree Inn, Woodfield Road, Cam, Berkeley Vale Hotel, Stone A38, Spread Eagle, Newport, nr Berkeley, Off-licence, Alkerton? Newport nr Berkeley, Newport Towers Hotel, Newport, Darrell Arms, Upper Framilode, Junction Inn, Framilode, Drover’s Arms, Bristol Road, Cambridge, Fox Inn, Woodford, Stone, near Berkeley (now a private residence Foxley House ST 692958), Crown Inn, Stone (just off the A38 on the road to Lower Stone – private residence, Crown Cottage), George Inn, Berkeley, George Inn, Bristol Road, Cambridge, Bell Inn, Bristol Road, Cambridge, White Lion, Bristol Road, (now residential) Cambridge, Shepherds Patch Inn, Slimbridge (now Patch Farm), Drum & Monkey/Junction Inn, Saul (now Junction House), Saul off-licence, Windbound Inn, Sheppardine, Stonebench Inn, Elmore, New Inn/Plate of Elvers, Longney, Swann Inn, Coaley, White Hart/Stagecoach Inn, Newport, near Berkeley, Star Inn, Heathfield (A38), near Berkeley, (now a private residence Star Inn Cottage ST 702984), Apple Tree Cider House, Halmore Lane, Hamfallow, near Berkeley (now a private residence the Old Cider House).

Stone, North Nibley, Wotton-under-Edge
White Hart, Wotton Road, North Nibley
Apple Tree Inn, Wotton-under-Edge
The Ram, Wotton-under-Edge

Berkeley Vale Hotel, Stone A38
Fox Inn, Woodford, Stone, near Berkeley (now a private residence Foxley House ST 692958)
Crown Inn, Stone (just off the A38 on the road to Lower Stone – private residence, Crown Cottage)

Berkeley
Spread Eagle, Newport, nr Berkeley
Off-licence, Alkerton? Newport nr Berkeley
Newport Towers Hotel, Newport
George Inn, Berkeley,
White Hart/Stagecoach Inn, Newport, near Berkeley
Star Inn, Heathfield (A38), near Berkeley, (now a private residence Star Inn Cottage ST 702984)
Apple Tree Cider House, Halmore Lane, Hamfallow,near Berkeley (now a private residence the Old Cider House).
Bell Inn, Berkeley Heath
Crown Inn, Bevington (2 miles SW of Berkeley).

Arlingham, Framilode, Cambridge, Slimbridge, Saul

Bell Inn, Arlingham
Old Bell, Arlingham
Bell Inn, High Street, Arlingham (just off Passage Road)

Darrell Arms, Upper Framilode
Junction Inn, Framilode

Drover’s Arms, Bristol Road, Cambridge,
George Inn, Bristol Road, Cambridge
Bell Inn, Bristol Road, Cambridge
White Lion, Bristol Road, (now residential) Cambridge

Shepherds Patch Inn, Slimbridge (now Patch Farm)

Drum & Monkey/Junction Inn, Saul (now Junction House)
Saul off-licence

Sheppardine, Elmore, Longney

Windbound Inn, Sheppardine
Stonebench Inn, Elmore
New Inn/Plate of Elvers, Longney,

Sharpness and Purton
Sharpness Hotel & Dockers Club
Severn Bridge and Railway Hotel, Station Road, Sharpness
Plume of Feathers/Lammastide Inn, Brookend, near Sharpness (on Lip Lane on OS map)
Pilot Inn, Purton (now a private residence, ‘The Pilot’)
Berkeley Hunt, Canalside, Purton
Berkeley Arms, Purton
Waifers Arms, Halmore, near Purton
Fox & Goose, Halmore, near Purton

Horsley
Bell and Castle, The Cross
Boot Inn (next to the village shop)
Yew Tree Inn, Nupend (just before Cox’s Farm on the B4058 W-under-Edge road – private res now)
White Hart Inn, Downend (now a private residence, the Old White Hart SO 835983)

Chalford/Frampton Mansell/France Lynch/Bisley/Oakridge Area
Bell Inn, Chalford (used for Chartist meetings in the 1830s)
Company’s Arms, Chalford
The Crown, Waterlane
Company’s Arms, Chalford
Duke of York, Queen’s Square, Chalford Hill

Oak Inn, Thames & Severn Canal, Frampton Mansell
White Horse Inn, Cirencester Road, Frampton Mansell (at top of Cowcombe Hill)
Oak Inn, Frampton Mansell

Court House, France Lynch (to the south of the village on the hill leading up to Avenis Green)

George Inn, Bisley

Nelson Inn, Far Oakridge (junction of the Daneway and Far Iles Green Road)

Stonehouse and vicinity

Brewers Arms, Gloucester Road
Cross Hands Inn, nr the Midland Railway station
Crown and Anchor, High Street
Nag’s Head, Regent Street
Royal Arms, Bath Road
Royal Oak
Royal Arms, Burdett Road
Ship Inn, Bristol Road
Spa Inn, Oldends Lane

The Anchor Inn, Ryeford Wharf, Stroudwater Canal
New Inn, Roving Bridge, Newtown (Stroudwater Canal)
Victoria Inn, Foundry Lock, Upper Dudbridge, Stroudwater Canal

Ryeford Arms, Ebley Road, Ryeford
Haywardfields Inn, ‘Nowhere’, Ryford, (on main road from Ryford to Ebley – hardly anyone lived there GL10 2LQ)

Fleece Inn, Stanley Downtown, nr Stonehouse

Off-licence, Nupend, nr Stonehouse

The Stanleys and Eastington

Britannia, High Street, (just south of the Kings Head – now residential: Britannia Cottage), Kings Stanley
Crown Inn (western edge of southern village green), Kings Stanley
Lamb Inn, Leonard Stanley
Middle Yard, Kings Stanley,
Nelson, Kings Stanley
New Inn, Church Street (residential property called the Old New Inn) Kings Stanley,
Old Castle, Inn (now a private residence), Kings Stanley
Old Crown, Kings Stanley
Red Lion, 3 The Green, Kings Stanley
Royal Oak, Shute Street, Kings Stanley (on road corner where the street meets roads to Middleyard and Selsley (Broad Street – now a private residence)
Star Inn, Kings Stanley (now a private residence in Broad Street, on the western side, opposite the rec., next building south down from the Kings Head)
Weavers Arms, Middleyard, (now a private residence) Kings Stanley, White Hart Leonard Stanley.

Britannia, Eastington
Castle Inn, Mill End, Eastington (prob the private res Castle House SO 783055)
Fox Inn, Bath Road, Eastington
Kings Head, Alkerton Cross, Eastington

Selsley

Nags Head, Selsley (opp the village school in School Square and the Bell), New Inn, Selsley Common

Nailsworth Area
Clothiers Arms, Nailsworth
Crown Inn, The Cross, Nailsworth
George Hotel, Nailsworth
Red Lion, Nailsworth

Crown Inn, Inchbrook
New Inn, Cow Lane, Inchbrook (next door to the Crown on a bend of the A46)

Jovial Forester, Star Hill, Forest Green
The Rock and Fountain, Star Hill, Forest Green
The Star, Star Hill, (a few yards from the Jovial Forester), Forest Green The Upper Star, Star Hill, Forest Green

Kings Head Inn, Forwood

Kings Head Inn, Dunkirk
Nag’s Head Inn, Dunkirk

Rising Sun Inn, Shortwood

Yew Tree Inn, Atcombe Road, South Woodchester (private residence: Yew Tree House)
Ten Bells Inn, Convent Lane, Frogmarsh, South Woodchester
Ram Inn, South Woodchester
Plough Inn, Bath Road, Little Britain (A46), Woodchester
Cross Inn, High Street, South Woodchester SO 840023

Minchinhampton

Crown Inn
White Hart

White Lion
Salutation Inn
Trumpet Inn

Box and Burleigh

The Box Inn, Box, (Box Inn Cottage)
Halfway House, Box
Bell Inn, Burleigh
Red Lion, Swells Hill, Burleigh,

Brimscombe and Thrupp

Brimscombe:

Kings Arms, Bourne, Brimscombe
Nelson, Brimscombe
Port Inn, Brimscombe
Victoria Hotel, Brimscombe
Port Inn, Brimscombe

Thrupp:

Forester’s Arms, Thrupp
Fountain Inn, Middle Pitch, Thrupp
Malakoff Inn, London Road, Thrupp
Phoenix Inn, London Road, Thrupp
Barley Mow/Railway Tavern, Brownshill (a few hundred feet above Brimscombe station; opposite the footpath which went down through Brownshill Banks to the main road by the Victoria Hotel
Red Lion, Eastcombe
King & Castle, Waggon & Horses, London Road, Thrupp
Foresters Arms, Claypits
Thrupp off-licence (Thrupp Lane?)
Brewers Arms, Thrupp Lane
Bourne off-licence
Waggon & Horses, London Road, Thrupp.

Randwick and Ruscombe

Rising Sun, Randwick, Rising Sun (SO 831066 approx – nr the closed Methodist Chapel)
New Inn, Randwick nr the centre of the village SO (827066 approx) Ludlow Green Inn, Ludlow Green, Ruscombe,(tiny hamlet s of Ruscombe nr Randwick)

Slad

Star Inn
Riflemans Arms, The Vatch
Barley Mow (now a private house near the Woolpack)

East India Company Walk

The information boards at Chalford intrigue,
Because of the lack of information:
At Chalford Vale and along the canal,
We are told about the local links
With the East India Company,
But we are not told about the practice
Of the East India Company;
The information boards are products of their time …
Times change and context is needed.

We start this contextualisation
Revealing a hidden colonial history
Within this leafy Cotswold landscape,
With a heat-wave peripatetic.

We start at Seville’s Mill in Chalford,
‘Today I would like to acknowledge
The Tory new mantra for History:
‘Retain and explain’,
Coupled with their ‘Culture Wars’ assertions:
‘You can’t change and airbrush history’,
And ‘The British Empire was a Good Thing’,
By letting the ‘Past Speak for Itself’,
From the pages of Jack P. Greene’s erudite tome,
Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism
in Eighteenth-Century Britain’:

The information boards at Chalford intrigue,
Because of the lack of information:
At Chalford Vale and along the canal,
We are told about the local links
With the East India Company,
But we are not told about the practice
Of the East India Company;
The information boards are products of their time …
Times change and context is needed.

We start this contextualisation
Revealing a hidden colonial history
Within this leafy Cotswold landscape,
With a heat-wave peripatetic.

We start at Seville’s Mill in Chalford,
‘Today I would like to acknowledge
The Tory new mantra for History:
‘Retain and explain’,
Coupled with their ‘Culture Wars’ assertions:
‘You can’t change and airbrush history’,
And ‘The British Empire was a Good Thing’,
By letting the ‘Past Speak for Itself’,
From the pages of Jack P. Greene’s erudite tome,
Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism
in Eighteenth-Century Britain’:

The East India Company?
‘those shameful triumphs over unwarlike and defenceless nations, which have poured into the laps of individuals the wealth of India … and driven us to plunder and destroy harmless natives fixed so deep a stain on the English name, as perhaps cannot be expiated.’

‘changed, contrary to the intentions of its institution, from a commercial, into a military corporation’, so that India – a ‘country, late so famous for its commerce, whose rich manufacturers brought to it immense wealth from every corner of the tributary world, and whose fertile plains supplied millions of its neighbours with grain’ is ‘unable now to yield itself the bare necessities of life. The loom is unemployed, neglected lies the plough; trade is at a stand, for there are no manufacturers to carry it on’; multitudes are ‘perishing for want of food.’

‘a revenue of two millions in India, acquired God knows how, by unjust wars … their servants came home with immense fortune obtained by rapine and oppression.’

‘and indeed it is clearly proved, that the East India Company is rotten to the very core. All is equally unsound; and you cannot lay your finger on a single healthy spot whereon to begin the application of a remedy. In the east, the laws of society, the laws of nature, have been enormously violated. Oppression in every shape has ground the faces of the poor defenceless natives; and tyranny has stalked abroad. The laws of England have lain mute and neglected and nothing was seen but the arbitrary face of despotism. Every sanction of civil justice, every maxim of political wisdom, all laws human and divine, have been trampled underfoot, and set at nought.’

‘Pride and emulation stimulated avarice, and the sole contest was, who should return to that home … with the greatest heap of crimes and of plunder.’

‘Asiatic plunderers’, ‘they had for many years been disgracing us as a nation and making us appear in the eyes of the world, no longer the once-famed generous Britons, but a set of banditti, bent solely on rapine and plunder.’

‘executions, oppressions, blood-shed, massacres, extirpation, pestilence and famine.’

‘Instead of our fleets crowding our ports freighted with the precious commodities of the East … we have … the importation of the fortunes of splendid delinquents, amassed by peculation and rapine.’

Parallels with the Roman Empire?
‘the dominions in Asia, like the distant Roman provinces during the decline of the empire, have been abandoned, as lawful prey, to every species of peculators; in so much that many of the servants of the Company, after exhibiting such scenes of barbarity as can be scarcely paralleled in the history of any country, have returned to England loaded with wealth.’

Clive of India?
‘utterly deaf to every sentiment of justice and humanity … this insatiable harpy, whose ambition is unparalleled, and whose avarice knows no bounds.’

America and India Conjoined?
‘We have abused and adulterated government ourselves, stretching our depredations and massacres not only to the Eastern, but Western world … the guilt of murder and robbery … now crying aloud for vengeance on the head of Great Britain.’

‘How melancholy is the consideration to the friends to this country that in the East and in the West, in Asia and America, the name of an Englishman is become a reproach’, and in ‘Europe we are not loved enough to have a single friend … from such a situation there is but a small step to hatred or contempt.’

We make our way up and through Chalford Bottom,
Remembering the great radical John Thelwall,
Who stayed here in the summer of 1797:
‘Therefore I love, Chalford, and ye vales
Of Stroud, irriguous:[i] but still more I love
For hospitable pleasures here enjoy’d,
And cordial intercourse. Yet must I leave
Your social haunts …’

And so, we made our way to Hyde and Minchinhampton,
Collectively reading from this link:
https://radicalstroud.co.uk/stroud-and-a-hidden-colonial-landscape-number/

We then processed by lane and footpath to Box,
And then descended to Longford’s Mill,
Where we had a reading from Amplify Stroud:
https://amplifystroud.com/2021/02/18/clothing-colonialism-stroud-and-the-east-india-company/
Then it was past Iron Mills and the Weighbridge Inn,
With an unhappy glance back at the Great War:
https://radicalstroud.co.uk/archibald-knee-and-dorothy-beard/
And so, along the lanes and through the woods
To reach Nailsworth and another reminder
Of the local landscape and a colonial history
(See towards the end of this link):
https://radicalstroud.co.uk/stroud-and-a-hidden-colonial-landscape-number/

We started the day with the bus to Chalford
And we end this peripatetic with a bus back to Stroud.

Stuart Butler 22nd July 2021

Stroud Scarlet and William Cuffay: An Exploration

We have written before about Stroud Scarlet, the slave trade, and triangles of conjecture. (See point 5 at https://sootallures.wixsite.com/topographersarms/post/a-community-curriculum )

But what of William Cuffay?

William’s mother, Juliana Fox, was born in Kent, whilst his once enslaved father, Chatham Cuffay, made it to Kent from St Kitts. William Cuffay, of mixed-heritage, born in 1788, became a famous Chartist leader in the mid nineteenth century and then an activist after transportation to Tasmania. ( See https://sootallures.wixsite.com/topographersarms/post/william-cuffay for an imaginative reconstruction of William’s life.)
William is one of the first working-class leaders of colour, and possibly the most famous. There is a campaign for a memorial to honour him in the Medway area of Kent:

‘Hi Stuart …
We are working with Medway Afro-Caribbean Association to get a plaque for Cuffay in Medway, hopefully in time for Black History Month. They need at least £3000 and have been talking to Medway Council who have only offered them £1500. This is something the Trade Union Movement could (and should) easily pay for and we will be approaching local branches and national unions for support. It might even encourage them to think about some sort of memorial to Cuffay in London.

There is much more to Cuffay’s story than can be put on a plaque so we are also looking to organise some sort of annual event so that Cuffay and the Chartists, a key part of both Black and working-class history, become much better known.’

We have written before about Stroud Scarlet, the slave trade, and triangles of conjecture. (See point 5 at https://sootallures.wixsite.com/topographersarms/post/a-community-curriculum )

But what of William Cuffay?

William’s mother, Juliana Fox, was born in Kent, whilst his once enslaved father, Chatham Cuffay, made it to Kent from St Kitts. William Cuffay, of mixed-heritage, born in 1788, became a famous Chartist leader in the mid nineteenth century and then an activist after transportation to Tasmania. ( See https://sootallures.wixsite.com/topographersarms/post/william-cuffay for an imaginative reconstruction of William’s life.)
William is one of the first working-class leaders of colour, and possibly the most famous. There is a campaign for a memorial to honour him in the Medway area of Kent:

‘Hi Stuart …
We are working with Medway Afro-Caribbean Association to get a plaque for Cuffay in Medway, hopefully in time for Black History Month. They need at least £3000 and have been talking to Medway Council who have only offered them £1500. This is something the Trade Union Movement could (and should) easily pay for and we will be approaching local branches and national unions for support. It might even encourage them to think about some sort of memorial to Cuffay in London.

There is much more to Cuffay’s story than can be put on a plaque so we are also looking to organise some sort of annual event so that Cuffay and the Chartists, a key part of both Black and working-class history, become much better known.’

We intend to raise funds for the memorial by taking some Stroud cloth alongside the Stroudwater Navigation from the slavery abolition arch at Paganhill to Framilode; thence alongside the Severn to Bristol Docks.
We will then ‘sell’ the cloth to ship owners before its imagined eighteenth century journey to north-west Africa.

We shall create triangle poems to leave on our journey so as to recreate the possible consequences of this cloth’s voyage to Benin. These reconstructions of the triangular trade will reflect voyages to Benin, the Americas and thence back to Bristol – and Stroud. The triangles are below.

And who knows? Perhaps Stroud cloth enslaved Chatham and William’s ancestors and took them from the Door of No Return across the crimson-splashed Black Atlantic Archipelago.

So, perhaps you would like to sponsor us on our sixty-mile trip to Bristol?
We would forward the money straight away to Medway Trades Union Council as explained above.
In Solidarity,
Stuart Butler and Bob Blenkinsop

The
Stroudwater
Canal and Navigation

A link
Betwixt Stroud
And the River Severn at Framilode

The
River Severn,
A link from Framilode to Bristol Docks

Was
Stroud Scarlet
A cloth-link betwixt
Stroud and Bristol Docks?

Was
Stroud Scarlet
A cloth-link betwixt
Bristol and north-west Africa?

Was
Stroud Scarlet
A cloth-link betwixt enslavement,
Africa, the West Indies and the Americas?

Was
Stroud Scarlet
A cloth-link betwixt enslavement,
Tobacco, sugar, cotton, rum, the West Indies,
Bristol, Clifton, Bath, refinement, and the Age of Elegance?

Stroud
Scarlet,
A cloth-link from
Bristol Docks and on to Stroud?

The
River Severn,
A link from Bristol Docks to Framilode.

From Framilode,
The Stroudwater Navigation,
The canal, wends its way to Stroud,
Past Stroud Scarlet stretched on tenterhooks.

And so
Triangles of speculation
Complete their conjectural voyage,
Where they began, at the slavery arch in Paganhill.

‘All
Ship-shape
And Bristol fashion’:
With river, canal and turnpike,
Cloth could be carried down to Bristol, bound for
Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, Guinea, Benin, Angola, Gambia.
 Then
The Door
Of No Return:
 The Middle Passage,
 Nevis, Barbados, Jamaica,
Virginia, Haiti and South Carolina.
They fill the hold with sugar, cotton, tobacco:
Commodities that still cast a ship-shape shadow. 

From
Where else
Did this nation’s
18th century boom time come?

War,
Slavery,
Enclosure,
Exploitation
Mechanisation,
And the British Empire,
But the most lucrative of all
Was the shark’s feeding frenzy. 

And
Stroud lies
Hidden within the
Long decayed ledger books
Of Bristol merchants at their quayside,
Stroud Scarlet bought and sold in the damp
Teasled mill air of the tenter hooked Five Valleys,
Before exchanging use and life for human life and death
On the Middle Passage for the West Indies and the Americas.

WALKING THE THAMES TO LONDON #6

Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust
In association with the cyclists’ group from The Prince Albert
Newbridge to Oxford 14 miles
The Windrush joins the Thames at Newbridge,
Flowing beneath the elegant Taynton stone bridge,
Once a port of call for honeyed Burford quarried stone
On its way to Oxford and London,
As well as a defeat for the Parliamentarians …
Yet today,
So many swans gliding on the waters,
So close to King Charles’ Oxford,
With their mute depiction of feudal hierarchy:
These birds are for monarchs old and new, not
‘Yoemen and husbandmen and other persons of little reputation’;
A heron interrupted the flow of my thoughts downstream
To Hart’s Weir footbridge – more English quaintness:
The weir has gone, but a right of way remains to Erewhon;
Then Northmoor Lock, before reaching literary Bablock Hythe:
Matthew Arnold’s scholar-gypsy,
‘Oft was met crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hythe,
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,
As the punt’s rope chops round’;
None of that now at the Ferryman Inn and its chalet purlieus,
Instead a meander inland before returning to the waters
At Pinkhill Weir, before another short roadside detour,
And a boatyard and chandlers and a stride to Swinford Bridge
(Swine-ford),
Where feudalism and modernity meet:
A toll bridge, built at the behest of the Earl of Abingdon in 1777,
Where a company still charges drivers today
(But not pedestrians!),
Then on to the now invisible Anglo-Saxon cultural importance
Of Eynsham, and Eynsham Lock,
Evenlode Stream and King’s Lock
(King denoting kine),
Underneath the Ox-ford by-pass
(You’ve heard its constant roar for over an hour),
To Godstow: ‘Get thee to a nunnery!’;
‘The use of detectors is strictly forbidden’;

Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust
In association with the cyclists’ group from The Prince Albert
Newbridge to Oxford 14 miles
The Windrush joins the Thames at Newbridge,
Flowing beneath the elegant Taynton stone bridge,
Once a port of call for honeyed Burford quarried stone
On its way to Oxford and London,
As well as a defeat for the Parliamentarians …
Yet today,
So many swans gliding on the waters,
So close to King Charles’ Oxford,
With their mute depiction of feudal hierarchy:
These birds are for monarchs old and new, not
‘Yoemen and husbandmen and other persons of little reputation’;
A heron interrupted the flow of my thoughts downstream
To Hart’s Weir footbridge – more English quaintness:
The weir has gone, but a right of way remains to Erewhon;
Then Northmoor Lock, before reaching literary Bablock Hythe:
Matthew Arnold’s scholar-gypsy,
‘Oft was met crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hythe,
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,
As the punt’s rope chops round’;
None of that now at the Ferryman Inn and its chalet purlieus,
Instead a meander inland before returning to the waters
At Pinkhill Weir, before another short roadside detour,
And a boatyard and chandlers and a stride to Swinford Bridge
(Swine-ford),
Where feudalism and modernity meet:
A toll bridge, built at the behest of the Earl of Abingdon in 1777,
Where a company still charges drivers today
(But not pedestrians!),
Then on to the now invisible Anglo-Saxon cultural importance
Of Eynsham, and Eynsham Lock,
Evenlode Stream and King’s Lock
(King denoting kine),
Underneath the Ox-ford by-pass
(You’ve heard its constant roar for over an hour),
To Godstow: ‘Get thee to a nunnery!’;
‘The use of detectors is strictly forbidden’;
Fair Rosamund, Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson,
Glide past the astonishing free grazing common lands of Port Meadow:
Horses gallop free, while a train passes in the distance,
Kine, countless, standing in the waters,
Swans gazing at the stationary herds,
Port Meadow, a feudal gift to the burghers of Oxford,
Courtesy of Edward the Confessor,
Honoured by William the Conqueror;
But enough of this medievalism and feudalism …
The industrial revolution is calling:

A boatyard, a footbridge, Osney Bridge, a canal,
And a train back to Stroud.

STATE OF HUNGER RESEARCH:
PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN
REFERRED TO A FOOD BANK
ARE VERY LIKELY TO HAVE HEALTH ISSUES
WITH NEARLY 75% REPORTING
AT LEAST ONE HEALTH ISSUE

Rodborough Allotments gave over surplus rhubarb to the Long Table at Brimscombe and we collected from all over the plots and delivered two wheelbarrows’ full.

Hi Stuart,

Sorry, I did mean to email you yesterday, but the day ran away with me! Thank you so much for the rhubarb, the chefs will turn it into something delicious! We love using fresh surplus food, especially fruit and veg grown locally as the basis of our meals. If you do have any further surplus fruit and veg from your allotments do let us know- we would to turn it into delicious meals.

WALKING THE THAMES TO LONDON #5

Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust
In association with the cyclists’ group from The Prince Albert
Lechlade to Newbridge 16 miles

I walked past Shelley’s Close by the Church …

Where Shelley wrote his ‘Summer Evening Churchyard’,
Crossed the bridge and turned left for London,
It was just the sort of light I like for a riverine walk:
Waves of silver rippling through the dark waters,
Moody clouds above Old Father Thames’ statue,
Once of Crystal Palace, now recumbent at St John’s Lock –
But the nineteenth century was soon forgotten:
It all got a bit Mrs Miniver and Went the Day Well?
After Bloomer’s Hole footbridge:
I lost count of the pillboxes in the fields and on the banks
(‘Mr. Brown goes off to Town on the 8.21,
But he comes home each evening,
And he’s ready with his gun’),
As I walked on past Buscot, with its line of poplar trees,
Planted to drain the soil in its Victorian heyday of sugar beet
And once with a narrow gauge railway dancing across
A lost Saxon village at Eaton Hastings;
Then on past William Morris’ ‘heaven on earth’
At Kelmscott Manor (‘Visit our website to shop online!’),
Walkers occasionally appearing beyond hedgerows,
Like Edward Thomas’ ‘The Other Man’;
Then to Grafton Lock, and on to Radcot’s bridges and lock
(The waters divide here with two bridges:
The older, the site of a medieval battle after the Peasants’ Revolt;
A statue of the Virgin Mary once in a niche in the bridge, too,
Mutilated by the Levellers, before their Burford executions;
The newer bridge built in the hope and expectations
Of traffic and profit in the wake of the Thames and Severn Canal),
Past Old Man’s Bridge, Rushey Lock and Rushey Weir:
A traditional Thames paddle and rymer weir
(The paddles and handles, called rymers,
Dropped into position to block the rushing waters).
Now it’s on to isolated Tadpole Bridge on the Bampton turnpike,
Now past Chimney Meadow – once a Saxon island,
Then Tenfoot Bridge – characteristically,
Where an upper Thames flash weir sed to pour its waters,
Until Victorian modernity silenced that;
Then past Shifford Weir and the hamlet of Shifford,
Once a major Wessex town, where King Alfred
Met with his parliament of
‘Many bishops, and many book-learned.
Earls wise and Knights awful’.

Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust
In association with the cyclists’ group from The Prince Albert
Lechlade to Newbridge 16 miles

I walked past Shelley’s Close by the Church …

Where Shelley wrote his ‘Summer Evening Churchyard’,
Crossed the bridge and turned left for London,
It was just the sort of light I like for a riverine walk:
Waves of silver rippling through the dark waters,
Moody clouds above Old Father Thames’ statue,
Once of Crystal Palace, now recumbent at St John’s Lock –
But the nineteenth century was soon forgotten:
It all got a bit Mrs Miniver and Went the Day Well?
After Bloomer’s Hole footbridge:
I lost count of the pillboxes in the fields and on the banks
(‘Mr. Brown goes off to Town on the 8.21,
But he comes home each evening,
And he’s ready with his gun’),
As I walked on past Buscot, with its line of poplar trees,
Planted to drain the soil in its Victorian heyday of sugar beet
And once with a narrow gauge railway dancing across
A lost Saxon village at Eaton Hastings;
Then on past William Morris’ ‘heaven on earth’
At Kelmscott Manor (‘Visit our website to shop online!’),
Walkers occasionally appearing beyond hedgerows,
Like Edward Thomas’ ‘The Other Man’;
Then to Grafton Lock, and on to Radcot’s bridges and lock
(The waters divide here with two bridges:
The older, the site of a medieval battle after the Peasants’ Revolt;
A statue of the Virgin Mary once in a niche in the bridge, too,
Mutilated by the Levellers, before their Burford executions;
The newer bridge built in the hope and expectations
Of traffic and profit in the wake of the Thames and Severn Canal),
Past Old Man’s Bridge, Rushey Lock and Rushey Weir:
A traditional Thames paddle and rymer weir
(The paddles and handles, called rymers,
Dropped into position to block the rushing waters).
Now it’s on to isolated Tadpole Bridge on the Bampton turnpike,
Now past Chimney Meadow – once a Saxon island,
Then Tenfoot Bridge – characteristically,
Where an upper Thames flash weir sed to pour its waters,
Until Victorian modernity silenced that;
Then past Shifford Weir and the hamlet of Shifford,
Once a major Wessex town, where King Alfred
Met with his parliament of
‘Many bishops, and many book-learned.
Earls wise and Knights awful’.

But you finish your waltz through a Saxon landscape:
(The honeystone bridge at Newbridge is in sight)
Buscot, Eaton Hastings, Kelmscott, Radcot, Shifford;
And along the Red Line of resistance from the summer of 1940,
The skeins of geese and ducks no longer calling,
There’s an evening mist gathering over the river:
‘The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman plods his weary way
And leaves the world to darkness and to me’;
It’s time for an imaginary pint

At the Maybush (the Berkshire bank),
And another imaginary pint …

At the Rose Revived (the Oxfordshire bank) –
The bridge is actually 13th century, and only called Newbridge
As it’s newer than the original 12th century bridge at Radcot:
‘The Thames Path 40 miles to the Source 153 to the Sea.’
‘In 1644, the Battle of Newbridge was fought on the banks of the river.
Parliamentarian William Waller attempted to cross in order to surround Oxford and capture King Charles, but was defeated.’
I rather like the use of the word ‘but.’

STATE OF HUNGER RESEARCH:
PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN
REFERRED TO A FOOD BANK
CANNOT AFFORD TO BUY THE ABSOLUTE ESSENTIALS
THAT WE ALL NEED TO EAT,
STAY WARM AND DRY, AND KEEP CLEAN –
WITH 94% FACING REAL DESTITUTION

It seems certain that in the next few months there is going to be growing pressure on the food banks. At the same time ,the collection points at supermarkets are nearly empty as people shop for their families. Can the supermarkets make provision for those that can afford it to make a monetary donation when they pay for their goods. ?

Each week the Food Bank managers could find out how much is in the “pot” and buy goods to that value by ” click and collect”. In this way they can get the food and other goods they are most short of. It also cuts out multiple handling . A simple sign in each Supermarket in front of the tills would be sufficient to remind shoppers to help the Food Banks in these difficult times.

Mike Putnam
Stroud

WALKING THE THAMES TO LONDON #4

Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust

In association with the cyclists’ group from The Prince Albert

Day Two: Cricklade to Lechlade 11 miles

William Cobbett visited Cricklade in 1826 on his Rural Rides: ‘the source of the river Isis … the first branch of the Thames. They call it the “Old Thames” and I rode through it here, it not being above four or five yards wide, and not deeper than the knees of my horse … I saw in one single farm-yard here more food than enough for four times the inhabitants of the parish … the poor creatures that raise the wheat and the barley and cheese and the mutton and the beef are living upon potatoes …’
Plus ca change …

A haiku exploration:
Ridge and furrow fields,
Once beyond the river’s reach,
Now puddled and drowned.

Peasants till the fields,
Barefoot ghosts and revenants
Follow in our steps.

Silhouetted trees,
Pewter sky and silver clouds,
The water’s canvas.

Swans glide the field-flood,
A limitless lake’s expanse,
Burnished willow boughs.

And at Inglesham,
A medieval village,
Lost to Time’s waters.

Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust

In association with the cyclists’ group from The Prince Albert

Day Two: Cricklade to Lechlade 11 miles

William Cobbett visited Cricklade in 1826 on his Rural Rides: ‘the source of the river Isis … the first branch of the Thames. They call it the “Old Thames” and I rode through it here, it not being above four or five yards wide, and not deeper than the knees of my horse … I saw in one single farm-yard here more food than enough for four times the inhabitants of the parish … the poor creatures that raise the wheat and the barley and cheese and the mutton and the beef are living upon potatoes …’
Plus ca change …

A haiku exploration:
Ridge and furrow fields,
Once beyond the river’s reach,
Now puddled and drowned.

Peasants till the fields,
Barefoot ghosts and revenants
Follow in our steps.

Silhouetted trees,
Pewter sky and silver clouds,
The water’s canvas.

Swans glide the field-flood,
A limitless lake’s expanse,
Burnished willow boughs.

And at Inglesham,
A medieval village,
Lost to Time’s waters.

While we ooze and splash
Through rising water tables,
To a drowned future.

Postscript from Kel Portman

walking through water
in winter’s delicate light
so many more clouds

From field to wetland
Submerged ridge and furrow fields
Only geese rejoice

Newbuilds encroaching
On ox-ploughed ridge and furrow
Built on old floodplains

Connecting pathways
Link old fields and new town
Concrete covers soil

Hungry water floods,
Transforming land into lake.
Soil becomes mirror

Across old-ridged fields
Footpaths lead dogwalkers home
To flood-prone newbuilds
New rugby pitches

All fresh-white-lines and mown grass.

Lost, the ancient fields

Two new waterscapes
Made by this flooded river
Which of them is real?

Trees stand in water,
Surrounded, up to their waists.
Waiting for summer

Threat’ning Iron grey skies
Bring more rain to fill the Thames.
Filling forlorn fields

Lechlade where time and paths confluence
At the young wander of Thames.
Neolithic cursus monuments
ghost lines hinted in the plough soil,
the spectral signs of people here four thousand years before.
Always people returned
to Lechlade’s river land
where ways went from oolitic Cotswold upland
or towards chalk hills over claggy bottom vale.
All took the Thames track where fish tremble like strange sonnets
to seek further: teased by the twists of Thames.
There is much promised here for a life of ample gains,
Yet why halt now with paths and ways leading on?
Thames is a coming and going,
Lechlade wavers beside its bank.
Perhaps Britain is not an island,
but hundreds of flowing rivers carrying us all to the Sea.
Robin Treefellow

STATE OF HUNGER RESEARCH:
PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN
REFERRED TO A FOOD BANK
HAVE AN AVERAGE WEEKLY INCOME
AFTER HOUSING COSTS OF JUST £50

“Beating the Bounds” of Rodborough Parish

Radical Stroud
Terminalia Walking Festival
Sunday 23 rd February 2020

“Beating the Bounds” of Rodborough Parish

In honour of the Roman God of boundaries we will walk around the limits of the parish of Rodborough.

Parishes were once very important administrative areas and ceremonially walking the boundaries of a parish (known as “Beating the Bounds”) was a significant local custom in many places. Important boundary landmarks such as trees or stones would be ceremonially beaten with birch or willow rods. Sometimes young boys (typically choir boys) would also be ceremonially beaten at key places (supposedly to ensure that they would remember the parish boundaries!).

On this walk we intend to revive certain aspects of this custom for one day. Specifically, walking the boundary and beating key landmarks, but most definitely NOT beating young boys. As we progress there will be discussions and performative celebration of local matters, historical, political, industrial, cultural, geological, ecological and mythological. The boundary of Rodborough parish follows canals and disused railway lines, makes steep ascents and descents of beautiful Cotswold valleys and crosses the limestone grassland of an ancient common.

Radical Stroud
Terminalia Walking Festival
Sunday 23 rd February 2020

“Beating the Bounds” of Rodborough Parish

In honour of the Roman God of boundaries we will walk around the limits of the parish of Rodborough.

Parishes were once very important administrative areas and ceremonially walking the boundaries of a parish (known as “Beating the Bounds”) was a significant local custom in many places. Important boundary landmarks such as trees or stones would be ceremonially beaten with birch or willow rods. Sometimes young boys (typically choir boys) would also be ceremonially beaten at key places (supposedly to ensure that they would remember the parish boundaries!).

On this walk we intend to revive certain aspects of this custom for one day. Specifically, walking the boundary and beating key landmarks, but most definitely NOT beating young boys. As we progress there will be discussions and performative celebration of local matters, historical, political, industrial, cultural, geological, ecological and mythological. The boundary of Rodborough parish follows canals and disused railway lines, makes steep ascents and descents of beautiful Cotswold valleys and crosses the limestone grassland of an ancient common.

Approximately 8 miles. Allow 6 hours. Bring refreshments and food. Towpaths and footpaths and some very steep climbs / descents. Several stiles to cross.

The walk will start and end at Stroud Railway station.
Map ref SO 84973 05124. Meet in the forecourt for a 10.00 am start.

Contact Bob Fry threemthree@icloud.com

Beating the Bounds of Rodborough
A free verse Perambulation by Stuart Butler

The origin of beating the parish boundaries
Is, of course, lost in the proverbial mists:
The Roman festival of Terminalia,
Anglo-Saxon affirmation of place,
The Christian ceremony of Rogation-tide …
But I think you can beat the boundaries
Whenever you like, with whoever you like,
At the drop of a Rodborough bobble hat.

You could start at the watery history
Of mill and factory Dudbridge,
Then walk past street names like Spillmans,
As you progress along the Bath Road turnpike,
Past the ghost sites of old toll houses,
And thence to Walbridge to skirt the canal,
Or River Frome or Great Western Railway,
To gaze up at Woodhouse, Rodborough Common,
Butterow Hill and Bagpath.

Then ascend Swells Hill, past Bownham;
On past Houndscroft, above the Nailsworth Valley,
To Rooksmoor and Kingscourt;
Your bounds direct you through Lightpill,
No ifs but The Butts above high above you,
And so back to Dudbridge.

On the way, you could say a prayer
In a couple of churches,
Bless the crops in a couple of allotments,
Have a pint in a couple of pubs or a hotel,
Have an ice cream at Winstone’s,
Or even write a record of your parish walk,
Your own beating the bounds act of heritage.

But remember:

‘The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ (T.S. Eliot)

And the End of all our Exploring around Cirencester

The end of all our exploring

The day started auspiciously and unusually:
A chat at the bus stop with a direct descendant of Tom Paine:
‘My father maintained that we were related.
We did have first editions, in fact:
The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason’;
The 54A took us to Cirencester,
Where we congregated by the church,
Overhearing a conversation,
‘Hello. Pleased to meet you. I’m John the verger’;
Near where, in the aftermath of the Peasants’ Revolt,
‘Divers of the king’s lieges of Cirencester … assembled
And gone to the abbey … done unheard-of things
To the abbot and convent and threatened
to do all the damage they could’;
Fifteen years later they beheaded
The Earl of Salisbury and the Earl of Kent –
But we walked out through the Bathurst estate,
A colonial landscape for those with eyes,
To turn right by Alexander Pope’s seat,
Past vast polo grounds,
To reach a lambent pocket of arable land,
Hard by a bronze age tumulus,
Where ploughed field tesserae,
And nearby Ermine Way
Suggest a sumptuous Roman villa,
And where we processed along a gleaming pathway –
Like so many genius loci,
Hooded like cucullati against the rain,
Until a rainbow arch summoned Robin Treefellow
To declaim his hymn to Cuda,
Goddess of Cotswold fertility,
There by the fossil-full ploughed fields,
Where Penda of Mercia,
The last pagan king of England
Once held his crimson sword aloft in victory.

Spring waters trickled their music,
Rivulets reflected storm threat light
In the growing puddles of a rising water table,
While the ghosts of Welsh drovers silent stood,
In the elemental alchemy of autumn.

The end of all our exploring

The day started auspiciously and unusually:
A chat at the bus stop with a direct descendant of Tom Paine:
‘My father maintained that we were related.
We did have first editions, in fact:
The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason’;
The 54A took us to Cirencester,
Where we congregated by the church,
Overhearing a conversation,
‘Hello. Pleased to meet you. I’m John the verger’;
Near where, in the aftermath of the Peasants’ Revolt,
‘Divers of the king’s lieges of Cirencester … assembled
And gone to the abbey … done unheard-of things
To the abbot and convent and threatened
to do all the damage they could’;
Fifteen years later they beheaded
The Earl of Salisbury and the Earl of Kent –
But we walked out through the Bathurst estate,
A colonial landscape for those with eyes,
To turn right by Alexander Pope’s seat,
Past vast polo grounds,
To reach a lambent pocket of arable land,
Hard by a bronze age tumulus,
Where ploughed field tesserae,
And nearby Ermine Way
Suggest a sumptuous Roman villa,
And where we processed along a gleaming pathway –
Like so many genius loci,
Hooded like cucullati against the rain,
Until a rainbow arch summoned Robin Treefellow
To declaim his hymn to Cuda,
Goddess of Cotswold fertility,
There by the fossil-full ploughed fields,
Where Penda of Mercia,
The last pagan king of England
Once held his crimson sword aloft in victory.

Spring waters trickled their music,
Rivulets reflected storm threat light
In the growing puddles of a rising water table,
While the ghosts of Welsh drovers silent stood,
In the elemental alchemy of autumn.

We followed a Christian path to Daglingworth,
To Anglo-Saxon wall carvings of the crucifixion,
And a sundial whose gnomon shadow,
Danced to the music of time,
As Robin sang the Dream of the Rood;

Thunder and lightning alarmed a flock of rooks,
Their silhouettes flashing across the western sky,
While we surveyed the vast abyss of time
At Daglingworth Quarry: dinosaur footprints
Once imprinted at the top of these rocks,
Far above the fossils of oysters, scallops and sea urchins,
Deep down in the quarried recesses
Of this revelation of eternity.

We carried on, fording our way through torrents,
The swelling River Churn and the Dobunni
By our side, the oppidum melding
The Cotswold hills with the Vale of the Thames,
Here in the high big sky country,
Betwixt the magic of Sabrina,
And the ancient tracks of Wiltshire.

Gilded cumulus climbed high in the west,
While lustrous moss on drystone walls,
And shining woodland lichen led us on
Past Bagendon, to follow a trail
That arrowed through medieval greensward,
Straight towards the tower
Of Cirencester’s church,
Past Roman and medieval gateways,
Mute sentinels of time.

And there by the cross was a friend,
Covered in dust and flakes and shards of masonry,
After a day spent carving saints for niches;
She told us of her endeavours,
A lone woman carving her art
In a masculine fellowship of masons.

We wished her well and bade farewell,
Knowing once more that,
‘the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time’.

John Thelwall: Radical thoughts on Slavery, Empire and Landscape

A Pedestrian Excursion Through Several Parts of England and Wales

John Thelwall’s account of his rambles
Between the years of the naval mutinies
of 1797 and the 1801 Peace of Amiens:

‘The cottages in general, are small, wretched and dirty. Some of them are built of brick, others are plastered and may exhibit nothing but miserable mud walls, equally naked without and within. They are wretchedly and scantily furnished; and few have even the advantage of a bit of garden. To complete the catalogue of misery, there is a workhouse in the parish, in which a number of deserted infants are consigned to captivity and incessant application…’

And even though Citizen John was being pursued,
Followed and shadowed by spies,
With consequent anxiety,
Thelwall could still write that …

‘The vivacity of conversation made the miles pass unheeded under our feet. We canvassed various subjects of literature and criticism, the state of morals and the existing institutions of society. We lamented the condition of our fellow-beings, and formed Utopian plans of retirement and colonisations. On one subject, and only one, we essentially differed – America. I cannot look towards that country with all the sanguine expectations so frequently cherished. I think I discover in it much of the old leaven. Its avidity for commercial aggrandisement augurs but ill even for the present generation; and I tremble at the consequences which the enormous appropriation of land may entail upon posterity.’

A Pedestrian Excursion Through Several Parts of England and Wales

John Thelwall’s account of his rambles
Between the years of the naval mutinies
of 1797 and the 1801 Peace of Amiens:

‘The cottages in general, are small, wretched and dirty. Some of them are built of brick, others are plastered and may exhibit nothing but miserable mud walls, equally naked without and within. They are wretchedly and  scantily furnished; and few have even the advantage of a bit of garden. To  complete the catalogue of misery, there is a workhouse in the parish, in  which a number of deserted infants are consigned to captivity and incessant  application…’

And even though Citizen John was being pursued,
Followed and shadowed by spies,
With consequent anxiety,
Thelwall could still write that …

‘The vivacity of conversation made the miles pass unheeded under our feet. We canvassed various subjects of literature and criticism, the state of morals and the existing institutions of society. We lamented the condition of our fellow-beings, and formed Utopian plans of retirement and colonisations. On one subject, and only one, we essentially differed –  America. I cannot look towards that country with all the sanguine expectations so frequently cherished. I think I discover in it much of the old leaven. Its avidity for commercial aggrandisement augurs but ill even for the present generation; and I tremble at the consequences which the enormous appropriation of land may entail upon posterity.’

A visit to Wilton House led to musing
On art, gardens, the classics, literature,

And …

‘Our walk over the house and gardens had already cost us six shillings; and we flattered ourselves, that we had no more exactions to encounter. But, as we were going past the porter’s lodge, a servant stopped us with a fresh demand, informing us, in plain language, that they were all stationed there for their fees, and nobody could come in or out without paying. We  accordingly submitted to be fleeced once more. I am told, that this kind of tax upon the curiosity of travellers is peculiar to this country; and surely it is somewhat surprising, that the pride and ostentation of greatness should not spurn the illiberal idea of supporting its servants on the alms of curiosity. But there is a nobleman in the county of Derby, who is reported not only to save the expense of wages by this expedient, but absolutely to make a bargain with his housekeeper for half the vails collected by exhibiting his splendid mansion.’

Before we hear of Thelwall in Wiltshire again,
Here’s another radical topographer,
Philip Alston, from the United Nations,
Commenting on the pauperisation
Of 20% of the UK population,

In the spring of 2019:

‘I think breaking rocks has some similarity to the 35 hours of job search for
people who have been out of work for months or years’:
‘A digital and sanitised version of the workhouse’,

And, here, Citizen John:

‘The daily toil of these little infants (who if they are ever to attain the vigour and healthful activity of manhood, ought to be stretching their wanton limbs in noisy gambols over the green)…’

John Thelwall and Slavery
It goes without saying that John Thelwall
Would be a committed abolitionist,
An activist, who also used his pen against slavery,
In his Jacobin novel The Daughter of Adoption,

And in this poem:
The Negro’s Prayer

(1807, commemorating the abolition of the slave trade)
‘O SPIRIT! that rid’st in the whirlwind and storm,
Whose voice in the thunder is heard,
If ever from man, the poor indigent worm,
The prayer of affliction was heard,-
If black man, as white, is the will of thy hand –
(And who would create him but Thee?)
Oh give thy command –
Let it spread thro’ each land,
That Afric’s sad sons shall be free!

…

If while in the slave-ship, with many a groan,
I wept o’er my sufferings in vain;
While hundreds around reply’ to my moan,
And the clanking of many a chain;-
If then thou but deign’st, with a pitying eye,
Thy poor shackled creature to see,
Oh thy mercy apply,
Afric’s sorrow to dry,
And bid the poor Negro be free!
If, here, as I faint in the vertical sun,
And the scourge goads me on to my toil,
No hope faintly soothing, when labour is done,
Of one joy my lorn heart to beguile;-
If thou view’st me Great Spirit! as one thou hast made,
And my fate as dependent on thee,
O impart thou thy aid,
That the scourge may be stay’d,
And the Black Man, at last, may be free…’

Here we see three of the four (sometimes five) stanzas –
The tone doesn’t do justice, perhaps,
To Thelwall’s ability to see slavery
As part of an imperial nexus –
He would have noted the links between war,
Empire, colonies, slavery, and Stroud Scarlet,
In his stay here with radical clothiers,
After his ten days at Nether Stowey
With Coleridge, Wordsworth, and a watchful spy,

In the summer of 1797…

‘Had the Maroons and negroes never been most wickedly enslaved, their masters had never been murdered.’

How he would have enjoyed walking past Capel’s Mill,

Reflecting on coincidence,
For as Michael Scrivener has written:

‘In 1793, trying to circumvent the political repression, Thelwall spoke at a
debating club, The Capel Court Society’;

But as regards the hidden colonial landscape around us:

‘That great family of human beings, every one of which, whatever be his name, his colour or his country, is the brother of all the rest, and ought to enjoy with them a community of rights and happiness’;
‘It would be a happy thing for the universe in general, and for Britain in particular, if there were no such thing as a colony or dependency…’

Citizen John’s visit to Stroudwater
Obviously had a profound impact on him –
This landscape is remembered,
Possibly subliminally, in his slavery novel,
With the names of two of the protagonists –
He met with radical dyers and clothiers –
The Partridges at Bowbridge Mill;
The Newcombes at Bowbridge House,
And the Nortons at Nailsworth,
On that excursion from Nether Stowey,
In the summer of 1797:

There is a Newcombe in the novel and a Captain Bowbridge, too…

Conclusion

John Thelwall, the ‘Jacobin fox’,
Pursued by William Pitt’s spies,
Puts William Cobbett in the shade
With a rather more radical typography,
Straddling, as EP Thompson said,

‘The world of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the world of the Spitalfields
weaver’ –

But he straddled the ways of Socrates too,
For as Michael Scrivener has said:

‘Socrates was found, as usual, in the places of public resort – in the workshops of the artists, among the labourers in the manufactories, uttering seditious allegories, and condemning the desolating tyranny of the Oligarch’;

Or in Thelwall’s words:

‘Hence every large workshop and manufactory is a sort of political society, which no act of parliament can silence, and no magistrate disperse’…

But there is also something of the Rimbaud
About him too – something almost synesthesic
About the motto for The Tribune:
‘To paint the voice, and fix the fleeting sound’;

His imagery also possibly
Subliminally influenced William Blake –
Blake’s ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ seem to echo
These words of Thelwall:

‘For it is better, according to my judgment, – ten times better, to be immured oneself in a Bastille, than to have the Bastille put into one’s mouth to lock up one’s tongue from all intercourse and communication with one’s heart’;

Which is partly why,
In 1832, at the age of 69,
He was the sole eulogiser
For his old LCS colleague, Thomas Hardy,
His voice carrying to some 30,000 people,
Gathered at Bunhill Fields,

For this public ceremony and act of remembrance,
A reminder of the days forty years before,
When he lectured to audiences in their hundreds…
A reminder of the time when ‘pedestrian’
Meant wandering beyond accustomed paths,
Rather than its current meaning…

‘I have been rambling, according to my wanted practice, in the true democratic way, on foot, from village to village, from pleasant hill to barren Heath, recreating my mind with the beauties, and with the deformities of nature’

(ITLIC Tribune speech, 1795),
A pedestrian who could talk readily with anyone,
A writer whose mixed-genre The Peripatetic

Would influence Wordsworth’s rather more conservative The Excursion;
An activist who connected Nether Stowey with Spitalfields,
Spitalfields with Socrates and with Stroudwater too,

And Stroud scarlet with Empire;

He challenged the cultural hegemony of the classics,
He challenged aristocratic assumptions
About culture, hierarchy, and enlightenment:
The point of reading for Citizen John,
Was not to be elegantly learned and cultured,
But – to use the idiom of our age –
To empower and give agency
To the voices of the dispossessed,
In the triumph of Democracy over the Gothick,
In the triumph of a democratic sublime

Over that of Edmund Burke,
And in the triumph of collective walking
Over the solitary subjectivism of William Hazlitt:
A radical topography based on observation,
Discussion, inquiry and critique,
In language more lyrical than Wordsworth’s.

Post-script:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

‘We were once sitting in a beautiful recess in the Quantocks when I said to him – ‘Citizen John! This is a fine place to talk treason in!’ – ‘Nay! Citizen Samuel, ‘ replied he, ‘it is a fine place to make a man forget that there is any necessity for treason!’

Ghost Mills Walks

Free, but just a few places left only – contact me if you wish to go: 9.45 – approx 13:00 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 13TH
A leisurely walk along the towpath follows past old mills to Bowbridge and thence Stroud.
Uncovering a colonial landscape whilst in the footsteps of that ‘Jacobin fox’, ‘the most dangerous man in Britain’, John Thelwall, who left London, fed up with William Pitt’s prying spies, and walked to Nether Stowey. He stayed with Coleridge and Wordsworth for ten days, in that hectic summer that would lead to the Lyrical Ballads, before walking to Stroudwater.
Here he stayed with sympathetic clothiers and dyers, visiting Chalford, Uley, Nailsworth and Bowbridge, writing poems on the hoof.
We recreate his stay in that annus mirabilis of 1797, with a performative walk from Chalford to Bowbridge, whilst uncovering a colonial landscape.
John Thelwall was a colleague of THOMAS SPENCE – and we have a show about Thomas as part of the Stroud Theatre Festival in the evening.

Free, but just a few places left only – contact me if you wish to go: 9.45 – approx 13:00 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 13TH
A leisurely walk along the towpath follows past old mills to Bowbridge and thence Stroud.
Uncovering a colonial landscape whilst in the footsteps of that ‘Jacobin fox’, ‘the most dangerous man in Britain’, John Thelwall, who left London, fed up with William Pitt’s prying spies, and walked to Nether Stowey. He stayed with Coleridge and Wordsworth for ten days, in that hectic summer that would lead to the Lyrical Ballads, before walking to Stroudwater.
Here he stayed with sympathetic clothiers and dyers, visiting Chalford, Uley, Nailsworth and Bowbridge, writing poems on the hoof.
We recreate his stay in that annus mirabilis of 1797, with a performative walk from Chalford to Bowbridge, whilst uncovering a colonial landscape.
John Thelwall was a colleague of THOMAS SPENCE – and we have a show about Thomas as part of the Stroud Theatre Festival in the evening.
There is an early bus to Chalford FROM STROUD at 9.30
Meet at the bus shelter in Chalford at 9.45
As there are limited numbers, booking is essential:
email: stfc12@hotmail.com
part of Walking the Land’s #GhostMills exhibition, taking place at SVA’s John Street gallery in early September as a part of Stroud’s #woolandwaterFestival. SIT select The Museum in the Park Lansdown Hall & Gallery SVA Good On Love Stroud – What’s On Paper: Stroud Events Stroudwater Textile Trust