Bath Disenchantment Walk

A message from Richard White:
Hi folks,

Here’s an instant write up of the walk on Sunday. Thankyou to the intrepid Kathryn for joining me if only for part of the way…it got worse but then it got better!

https://rswpost.wordpress.com/2016/01/04/a-journey-to-the-edge-of-the-enchanted-city/

This is an open project, I am really keen to develop it further looking for some points to stop and think about walking out of necessity, poverty, dreams, memorialising and enchantment/disenchantment.  I hope we can develop this together, share thoughts, ideas and information….it would be good to weave into this stories of individuals, families etc. In this walk I want to draw attention to the Bath Union Workhouse burial ground…seems wrong to me that all those people, all those lives, are not memorialised in some way in a city where the great and the ‘good’ are so well memorialised however short their stay! I am indebted to John Payne for helping get this started….check out his contribution on the burial ground to the Honouring Esther walk in Somerset here

The plan is to come back to this later in the year and I hope you will join me then.

Meantime its full on for our  Forced Walks:Honouring Esther project in February, if you are thinking of taking part on foot it is time to get organised!

If you would like to join in online you will be able to do so via facebook and twitter I will email an update on that. If you would like to find out more and join the conversation come along to the session at 44AD on Sunday 17 Jan at 16.00. More details here

best wishes
Richard

 

Richard White
mob: 07717012790

web: www.walknowtracks.co.uk

Bath Disenchantment Walks 2016 Programme

Hi folks,
I walked out to Saltford yesterday and the tow path is really muddy with one section impassable so I propose to have a go at finding a way up to the Workhouse burial ground on Sunday. Its a recce for something I would like to explore later in the year the route from the National Trust picturesque view across the city from Widcombe fields to Odd Down.
Its a loop walk but there is a bus service back down into town from the Red Lion roundabout.
As ever meet outside 44AD Gallery 10.00 Sunday.
The walk offers some great views, spaces to imagine the enchanted city; thinking about who built it and worked it and the economic migrants it attracted we may see another enchantment, thinking about the productive and the unproductive poor we will reach the former workhouse and go looking for their unmarked graves.
I hope you can join me, come prepared for mud and a few hills! Back in town by 16.00 at the latest.
best wishes for a happy, healthy New Year on foot and on line!

Richard

A message from Richard White:
‘Festive greetings, walkers!
Walkout Sundays continue into next year….walking and talking a bit further as the days lengthen.
Here is an outline plan:

In the first few walks I want to explore more on the slave trade and the legacies of slavery and empire…the focus is on the Brass MIlls on the Avon, one of which survives at Saltford. Brass goods were made here for trading in West Africa for slaves… I am interested to explore an idea about goods traded in the first leg of the triangular trade were made using the energy of the river Avon….what went down the river, what came back…attitudes to fellow humans, trade, sweat etc. I have a thought that the currency of the slave trade was manufactured along the river just outside Bath..but that maybe over egging it.
We will walk through the remains of early industrialisation, a coal field and ghosts of Bath’s engineering past all now smoothed, concealed perhaps, in a romantically landscaped valley…how does it feel and what stories will start to surface….how can we tell them…

Sunday 3 Jan: Saltford loop….out on the tow path and back on the old railway line ( or back on the bus if you prefer…)
Sunday 7 Feb: No walk. I will be travelling back from Germany from the Forced Walk: Honouring Esther we walk on the Thursday and Friday 4 and 5 Feb…why not join us…on foot or online.
Sunday 6 March: Saltford loop reversed
Sunday 3 April: Bath to Avonmouth on the River Avon Trail
As the days get longer I want to explore an idea around the memorialising and the treatment of poor people and those unable to work in Bath, in particular I want to start to develop a walking route from Chewton Mendip into Bath finishing at the Bath workhouse burial ground by the Red Lion at Odd Down. Walking, talking and the undeserving poor?

Sunday 1 May: A walk via the ornate Victorian graveyard at Smallcombe to the unmarked graves at the Workhouse burial ground
Sunday 5 May: Bath to Chewton Mendip
Sunday 3 July: Chewton Mendip to Bath
Sunday 7 August: tbc
Sunday 4 September: tbc

The common theme in all this is enchantment/disenchantment and I really hope you would like to contribute to capturing throughts and ideas in some form or another. The walks are participatory and any information, stories, myths or rumours that you can bring to this the better. Please share! From October onwards I hope to be able to offer some of these walks more formally on the basis of what we have developed over this year of walking out!
Have a good festive week/weekend and I look forward to seeing you outside 44AD at 10.00 on Sunday 3 Jan.’

Walking the River Frome from Source to Confluence with the Severn

From the source of the Frome to its
confluence with the Severn

November 2013 – Midsummer’s Day 2015
“We shall
not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive
where we started and know the place for the first time.”
T. S. Eliot
From Climperwell
Springs to Miserden
From
Miserden to Edgeworth
From Edgeworth
to Sapperton
From
Sapperton to Rodborough
From
Rodborough to Ebley
From Ebley
to Eastington
From
Eastington to Framilode
“For there we have the
confluence of two springs, determined by the shape and content of sky and
landscape, dropping down to Caudle Green. Here on a delicately balanced
watershed, on the finest of lines, gravity’s scales of justice direct some
water west via the Frome, to the Severn and the Bristol Channel; other droplets
drift eastwards via the Churn to Cricklade, then on to the Great Wen and the
English Channel. Conjoined droplets of water, slipping apart to opposite points
of the compass, yet still conjoined by history and language: the Celtic ‘fra’,
denoting a ‘brisk’ river; the Celtic ‘chwern’, indicating a ‘swift’ flow.”
“When I saw Framilode
first she was a blowy Severn tidy place under azure sky…Adventure stirring the
blood like thunder, With the never forgotten soft beauty of the Frome, One
evening when elver-lights made the river like a stall-road to see …”
Ivor Gurney
We
shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to
arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Eliot

Walking the Five Valleys at Night

From the source of the Frome to its confluence with the Severn
November 2013 – Midsummer’s Day 2015

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

T. S. Eliot

From Climperwell Springs to Miserden
From Miserden to Edgeworth
From Edgeworth to Sapperton
From Sapperton to Rodborough
From Rodborough to Ebley
From Ebley to Eastington
From Eastington to Framilode

“For there we have the confluence of two springs, determined by the shape and content of sky and landscape, dropping down to Caudle Green. Here on a delicately balanced watershed, on the finest of lines, gravity’s scales of justice direct some water west via the Frome, to the Severn and the Bristol Channel; other droplets drift eastwards via the Churn to Cricklade, then on to the Great Wen and the English Channel. Conjoined droplets of water, slipping apart to opposite points of the compass, yet still conjoined by history and language: the Celtic ‘fra’, denoting a ‘brisk’ river; the Celtic ‘chwern’, indicating a ‘swift’ flow.”

“When I saw Framilode first she was a blowy Severn tidy place under azure sky…Adventure stirring the blood like thunder, With the never forgotten soft beauty of the Frome, One evening when elver-lights made the river like a stall-road to see …”

Ivor Gurney

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

T.S. Eliot

Walking and Talking and William Hazlitt

Walking and Talking William Hazlitt

Where do you stand on walking and talking?
On rambling and ranting?
On orating and hiking?
I’m more of a Hazlitt strider myself:

‘One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room, but out of doors, Nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone … I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time … “Let me have a companion of my way, “ says Sterne, “ were it but to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines.” It is beautifully said: but, in my opinion, this continual comparing of notes interferes with the involuntary impression of things upon the mind, and hurts the sentiment … ‘

I know what Hazlitt means:
Wordsworthian pantheism,
Or William Blake flights of fancy,
Or psycho-geographical musing,
Or Zen-style footfall mindfulness,
Are often inhibited by the clang of voices,
And the din of conversation;
But on other occasions, it’s true
That the knowledge of a companion
Can act as a stimulus to a new understanding,
Or a novel re-creation of a landscape;
And, sometimes, of course, we need to catch up
On ‘news’ with friends or family –
It is all, I suppose, a matter of balance:
A dynamic harmony of opposites
Helps make for an enriching walk in company –
Sometimes alone, and sometimes alive
To conviviality and congeniality,
And sometimes finding empathy,
Shared meanings and understanding
When exploring the land in shared silence –
Followed by a post-ramble sharing
Of individual and collective experience
In mutual discourse on how we read our walk,
A deconstruction and re-creation
Of how we made sense of it all;
For as William Hazlitt put it:

‘I am for the synthetical method on a journey in preference to the analytical. I am content to lay in a stock of ideas then, and to examine and anatomise them afterwards. I want to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns …’

Sheepscombe to Slad November Walk

It was the time of year when winter walked
Hand in hand with autumn: sere russet leaves,
Many more bare branches than the day before,
Increasingly wet and muddy underfoot,
The first frost forecast for the coming night –
But fifteen of us gathered at Sheepscombe,
Late November at the war memorial,
To recreate its 1921 opening:

‘The people of Sheepscombe and the district assembled on the hillside near the Parish Church on Sunday in memory of the men of the village who did not return from the Great War, and witnessed the simple ceremony of the unveiling and dedications of their Wayside Cross. Those who mourn the loss of the eleven men whose names are inscribed on the Cross, and practically every resident in the village joined in the service, and in the hope that their sacrifice has not been made in vain.’

We then discoursed on Cider with Rosie,
‘Public Death, Private Murder’
(While standing by Albert Birt’s gravestone):
The Christmas attack on the returning
Newly wealthy ‘Vincent’, (colonial boy
Done good) beaten senseless and left to freeze to death,
After a boozy night at the Woolpack.
The truth?

Stroud Journal, April 11th, 1919, microfiche:
‘A man named Albert Birt, a discharged soldier living at Longridge, Painswick, died at Stroud Hospital at 11.45 on Thursday morning. The deceased was admitted to the hospital on April 1st, suffering from severe injuries to the head and in an unconscious condition. He never recovered, and died as stated. The police are making inquiries concerning the case. It appears that Birt and a companion left the Woolpack Inn, Slad, on the night of March 29th. They were both sober, but the next morning Birt, who was 42 years of age, was found lying in the road in an unconscious condition. He was taken to his home and medically attended, and later he was removed to the hospital on the advice of the doctor.’
Albert Birt was not only not Vincent, not only not a Christmas death, but he was no wild colonial boy either – he appears on the local census returns: aged 4, Longridge, 1881; 14, wood turner, Stroud and Slad Road, 1891; 24, wood turner, Longridge, 1891; 34, wood turner, Longridge, Bull’s Cross, 1911.
He married Elsie Hogg in 1918 and was killed a year later, after that night at the Woolpack. He has an Imperial War Grave as ex-servicemen were entitled to such if dying before April 1921.

It seems a crime that would be impossible not to solve …
But we visited the empty parish church, before
Caroline read Sassoon’s ‘The General’:
‘Good-morning; good-morning!’ the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack’,
Just by Sheepscombe’s hillside Baptist Church
(‘Amazing! It’s not been turned into a home.’),
While Dave Cockcroft gave us a vivid talk
On Albert Birt’s trade, in a woodland clearing:
The job of a wood turner and bodger before the Great War,
An itinerant life among the local beech woods,
Around Bull’s Cross, Sheepscombe, Longridge and Slad –
Did he make enemies on his travels?
Who did for him with his plan of attack?
We heard more poems from Sassoon and Carol Ann Duffy,
Passing poetry posts, deadly woodshade and giant toadstools,
Before reaching Slad’s war memorial,
Where we pondered on that deserter in the first chapter
Of Cider with Rosie:

Hiding in the woods at the end of the war, he could not possibly have been one of the three men of the Glosters who mutinied at Malvern Wells in 1915; could he possibly have been one of the many men who objected to the slow pace of demobilisation after the end of the conflict, and took his action one step further? David Adams in his recent book on FW Harvey has written: ‘ In January 1919 700 men of the 3rd Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, refused to parade, drill, train or work, and marched and demonstrated about work, pay and food conditions – part of a nationwide series of strikes and mutinies hidden by the government from the public.’

Could he have been one of these?

Whatever. Whoever. Whosoever. Whomsoever.

We marched down to the Woolpack,

Platooned at the table outside,

Drinking ginger beer and Uley Bitter:

How many men had a last drink here or at the Butcher’s or the Plough,

Before marching away from these sequestered villages and cottages,

To clock-in at the world’s first industrial war?

And did someone’s experience of that war

Result in Albert Birt’s death at Bull’s Cross in 1919?

Somebody knew.

Or even knows.

Whatever. Whenever. Whoever. Whosoever. Whomsoever.

Wiltshire walking with Edward Thomas

Years ago, when cycling along the lanes of mid-Wiltshire, truly, deeply, madly in love, I stopped to ‘phone Trish at a call box opposite an old pub which had just been closed down. When I came out of the phone box I heard not just all the merry sounds of a public bar, circa 1935, but I could also smell stale beer and strong cigarettes. It was as weird and inexplicable an experience as I have ever had. I looked at my mate Andy Beck and asked him if he had heard and smelled what I had heard and smelled.
He had.
That memory came back to me today when ambling around Avebury, with the ghost of Edward Thomas for company on the Ridgeway. A few lines from Aspens passed through my mind:

‘All day and night, save winter, every weather,
Above the inn, the smithy and the shop,
The aspens at the cross-roads talk together
Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.

Out of the blacksmith’s cavern comes the ringing
Of hammer, shoe and anvil; out of the inn
The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing –
The sounds that for these fifty years have been. ‘

I had been reading Gurney and Will Harvey the night before, so it was hardly a surprise that Edward Thomas became a comrade on my walk: he, too, imagined mysterious and elusive partners accompanying him on his walks; just like Harvey (married in Swindon, lived at152 Goddard Avenue), Thomas had Swindon connections; Ivor Gurney composed music for some of Thomas’ poems; my mum and dad were, of course, married in Swindon and Thomas wrote For These on the day he enlisted – on the day my mum was born.

Thomas loved these ancient high hill tracks and this is where I developed a thirst for long distance walking: up on the Downs and on the Ridgeway. When I got out of town, I walked the big sky treeless chalklands of Berkshire and Wiltshire. This was the landscape I loved: so much so, that I initially found the steep, wooded hills and valleys of Gloucestershire utterly claustrophobic when I moved there. Now I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

But I went back ‘home’ a couple of weeks ago, however, with my brother, to visit my sister and her husband, Rod, who had been admitted to hospital in Swindon. Rod had quite an impact upon me as a boy; he read widely, he painted and he walked. He was also a lover of Edward Thomas, a lover of Wiltshire, a keen historian, a photographer and an observant recorder of his walks. (He still is.)
But the biggest impact he had upon me was when he and my sister, Fliss, took me up to the Tower of London when I was nine. It was there that I had an odd and powerful ‘red shift’ moment – it was then that I first became conscious of the power of historical imagination and recreation. I realised that we could re-envision past time in whatever space we trod. This was, needless to say, a bit of a turning point in my young life.

Small wonder then that I could see Edward Thomas’ ploughman today, down in the valley:

As the Team’s Head-Brass

As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn
The lovers disappeared into the wood.
I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm
That strewed the angle of the fallow, and
Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square
Of charlock. Every time the horses turned
Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned
Upon the handles to say or ask a word,
About the weather, next about the war.
Scraping the share he faced towards the wood,
And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed
Once more.
The blizzard felled the elm whose crest
I sat in, by a woodpecker’s round hole,
The ploughman said. ‘When will they take it away? ‘
‘When the war’s over.’ So the talk began –
One minute and an interval of ten,
A minute more and the same interval.
‘Have you been out? ‘ ‘No.’ ‘And don’t want to, perhaps? ‘

If I could only come back again, I should.
I could spare an arm, I shouldn’t want to lose
A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so,
I should want nothing more…Have many gone
From here? ‘ ‘Yes.’ ‘Many lost? ‘ ‘Yes, a good few.
Only two teams work on the farm this year.
One of my mates is dead. The second day
In France they killed him. It was back in March,
The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if
He had stayed here we should have moved the tree.’
‘And I should not have sat here. Everything
Would have been different. For it would have been
Another world.’ ‘Ay, and a better, though
If we could see all all might seem good.’ Then
The lovers came out of the wood again:
The horses started and for the last time
I watched the clods crumble and topple over
After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.

But this is 1830 Captain Swing country, too: threshing machines were hated rather more in this county than any other – and they were hated enough anywhere else. Farm labourers rioted all over southern England, demanding winter work and higher wages, burning hayricks, sending threatening letters to farmers: ‘This is to tell you that if you don brake down yor threshing masheens then we wil do it for you. You have bin warned. Swing.’
When you walk around here, don’t be surprised to hear horses’ hooves on the air. The yeomanry were out and about and all around these villages in the winter months of late 1830; in consequence, transportation was particularly attractive to Wiltshire JPs. The hearts of many villages were ripped out in 1831 – it wasn’t just the Tolpuddle Martyrs who suffered from vindictive injustice.

A generation later, Richard Jefferies wrote about the Wiltshire farm labourers around Coate and Hodson, near Swindon: ‘Hodge’ had become much more quiescent by then. Giving the vote to farm labourers in the mid 1880s hardly changed anything in terms of squirearchical control either: cottages remained tied and damp; wages remained scant and low; the workhouse still loomed large for the elderly. But all would shift thirty years later.
The landscape changed dramatically in North Wiltshire in 1914: Chisledon army camp opened. A railway halt followed on the Midland and South Western Railway; tents were succeeded by barracks; trench systems were constructed to replicate the western front; in short, over 10,000 troops were accommodated and trained at any one time, in the rain, clay, mud and chalk of Chisledon.
The camp not only did a job in WW2; it lingered on until the Cold War and 1962. I remember walking there in my youth, staggered to be walking through a camp with street names referencing the Somme, Ypres, Passchendaele, and so on. It is perhaps unsurprising that there have been many sightings of a wounded ghost-soldier on the road between Chisledon and Ogbourne St. George. He stands with one foot on the grass verge and one foot on the road, gripping his rifle, motionless, staring at the passing traffic.

Small wonder then, that I could see A Private known by Thomas:

‘This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors
Many a frozen night, and merrily
Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores:
“At Mrs Greenland’s Hawthorn Bush,” said he,
“I slept.” None knew which bush. Above the town,
Beyond `The Drover’, a hundred spot the down
In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps
More sound in France -that, too, he secret keeps.’

No small wonder either, that I conclude with the remaining lines from Aspens:

‘The whisper of the aspens is not drowned,
And over lightless pane and footless road,
Empty as sky, with every other sound
No ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode,

A silent smithy, a silent inn, nor fails
In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom,
In the tempest or the night of nightingales,
To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room.

And it would be the same were no house near.
Over all sorts of weather, men, and times,
Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hear
But need not listen, more than to my rhymes.

Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves
We cannot other than an aspen be
That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves,
Or so men think who like a different tree.’

Radical Stroud Comes To Town: London Pub and Literary Walk, November 29th

London Walks, Psychogeography

Radical Stroud Comes To Town: London Pub and Literary Walk

We are not sure when we shall make this trip (WE DO NOW: NOV 29th), but I thought I might post it for others to enjoy, recce and navigate. The walk takes in pubs with noteworthy interiors as well as two or three short literary pilgrimages.  If half-pints of beer were to be slowly consumed at the pubs on our trail, together with soft drinks too, then memory should be active and, inebriation, as well as bladder, controlled. We recommend an early train: all these precautions should avoid any spoonerism on the return journey. No town drain for our party. Alternatively, if you don’t trust yourself, take two days over this public house peregrination.

  1. Assuming you arrive from the West Country and into Paddington, then let’s take the Bakerloo Line to Oxford Circus and a trip to the Argyll Arms, Argyll Street (by Oxford Circus tube):

‘The interior dates from 1895 and has been described as ‘one of the most magnificently decorated pub interiors in England’; it has unusual small cubicles in the front bar, with cut glass screens, decorative mirrors and elaborate mahogany. The Luftwaffe as well as Modernity managed to miss this example of fin de siècle social stratification.’

  1. Next up: the Tottenham in Fitzrovia, 6 Oxford Street. It’s going to be busy but early doors might allow us to enjoy the Victoriana in this grade 2 listed building.
  1. We then walk past old haunts around UCL to get to 7 Roger Street and the Duke of York. ‘A grade 2 listed art deco treasure.’
  1. It’s now time for a pub break and a bit of culture and so we then walk to 48 Doughty Street and Charles Dickens’ house and museum.
  1. After that, we toddle off to High Holborn to sample the delights of the Cittie of Yorke (1920s) (number 22) and the Victorian Princess Louise (208-9).
  1. Next, a visit to Clerkenwell Green for both a literary and historical pilgrimage. It is here where the Artful Dodger and Fagin led Oliver Twist into pickpocketing; it is here where radical Lollardy thrived: ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then he gentleman?’ It is here where Chartism was nurtured in the 19th century and it is here where Marxism was also fostered: we’ll look at 37a Clerkenwell Green, the Marx Memorial Library, as well as the Crown Tavern at number 43 (where legend has it that Lenin and Stalin had a chinwag in 1905).
  1. We’ll also make a trip to Spa Fields behind Exmouth Market in Clerkenwell. This was the site of the radical meeting for extension of the vote in 1816, when Henry Hunt spoke in favour of a peaceful widening of the franchise. Revolutionary followers of Thomas Spence marched on to the Tower, robbing a gunsmith’s en route. The Spenceans were a revolutionary group dedicated to equality, but were infiltrated by agents provocateurs. Executions occurred after the Cato Street Conspiracy (meeting place near the Edgeware Road) of 1820, when the group planned to assassinate the Cabinet.
  2. Now it’s time to go to Fleet Street and the Old Cheshire Cheese at 145. Rebuilt after the Great Fire and no natural lighting inside today; lots of gloomy rooms; lots of 19thcentury paneling; cellars possibly 13th century (site of a Carmelite Monastery); regulars have included Goldsmith, Twain, Tennyson, Conan Doyle, Chesterton, Dickens (a scene from A Tale of Two Cities also set here) and possibly Johnson.
  3. Talking of which, it’s now time to visit Dr. Johnson’s house just over the way in 17 Gough Square, off Fleet Street. Then off to:
  4. Blackfriars Pub, 174 Queen Victoria Street; Art Nouveau pub; saved from demolition in the 1960s with support from John Betjeman.
  5. Then a walk to the Old Mitre Tavern, Ely Court, Ely Place, Hatton Garden, Holborn Circus: ‘There’s a sense of discovery when you find the Old Mitre Tavern. It’s hidden down an alleyway between 8 and 9 Hatton Garden, marked by an old crooked street lamp and a small sign in the shape of a bishop’s mitre, the arched alleyway entrance has a sign above stating “Ye Olde Mitre 1546”. Despite these clues many who work in the area don’t know it exists. This tiny pub is a real hidden gem. ‘
  6. Now to Bunhill Fields Cemetery, City Road EC1:

‘This old burial ground, shaded by mature plane trees, is situated on the edge of the City. Bunhill Fields was first set aside as a cemetery during the Great Plague of 1665. The ground was never apparently consecrated and twenty years later it became a popular burial ground for Nonconformists, who were banned from being buried in churchyards because of their refusal to use the Church of England prayer book. Bunhill Fields was soon known as ‘ the cemetery of Puritan England’. Although much is now cordoned off, it is still possible to walk through and find monuments to John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe and William Blake, as well as to members of the Cromwell family. John Milton lived in Bunhill Row, on the west side of the cemetery, from 1662 until his death in 1674. Some of Milton’s greatest works were written here, including ‘Paradise Lost’. Across the road from Bunhill Fields is the Methodist Museum and John Wesley’s House. ‘

  1. And so to the Salisbury, 90 St Martin’s Lane, Covent Garden:

The building went up in 1892, a restaurant by the name of the ‘Salisbury Stores’ (see the double ‘S’ in the windows); it was converted into a pub in 1898, hence the massive mirrors, eye catching fitments and art nouveau ambience.

  1. Now on to the Hand and Shears, Cloth Fair, 1 Middle Street, EC1:

‘This delightful little pub is a good example of an early nineteenth century alehouse. Its plain and simple interior has matchboarded walls and an oak floor. Although small, it is divided into four bar areas, each served from the central bar island. One snug is so small, it can hold only about eight customers.
A 12th century alehouse stood here, in the precincts of St. Bartholomew’s Priory. In August 1133, the first cloth fair was held at Smith Field nearby. Tailors and drapers came from all-over the country to ply their trade. By Tudor times the Cloth Fair had taken on an official role for Merchant Tailors, whose officers would check cloth with a yard stick. Offenders caught giving short measure, were brought to the alehouse and their case heard in a court upstairs. The guilty were put in stocks or whipped.

Eventually the alehouse was officially adopted by the Merchant Tailors of London and was allowed to display the guilds sign, the ‘hand and shears’. The Lord Mayor opened the fair from the steps of the pub. The last one was held in 1855. Poet John Betjeman who lived nearby was a regular.’

  1. Next stop: Viaduct Tavern, 126 Newgate Street – ‘This impressive corner pub faces its famous namesake, Holborn Viaduct. Queen Victoria opened it in 1869, the Viaduct not the pub, although they were both opened in the same year. Holborn Viaduct was the world’s first flyover, connecting Holborn with Newgate Street, avoiding a deep dip in the road caused by the River Fleet. Although this striking Victorian pub has a large curved frontage, the interior is surprisingly small. Many of the original features have survived. On one wall, three paintings of wistful maidens represent agriculture, banking and the arts. The ‘arts’ was attacked (some say shot, others bayoneted) by a drunken First World War soldier, and she still bears the scar.’
  1. Now to the Dog and Duck, Bateman Street, Soho:

‘Many famous historical figures have enjoyed the hospitality of The Dog and Duck, including John Constable, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and George Orwell. The pub was originally built in 1734 on the site of the Duke of Monmouth’s home. The present building was built in 1897, and is considered to have one of London’s most exquisite interiors of the period, characterised by thousands of highly glazed tiles.’

  1. Next up: The Red Lion, St James’s:

‘One of London’s most magnificent pubs, a real must on any visitor’s list. From the outside it looks pleasant enough, plain brick with some ornate ironwork, typical of many in town; inside there’s a wonderful and surprising contrast.
Dazzling ‘brilliant-cut’ mirrors cover the walls, their intricate patterns sparkle as they catch the light, giving the impression of a much bigger space. This pub is really quite small and it seems remarkable it was once divided into several smaller bars. The island counter made from rich polished mahogany adds to the glare. Glass and mirrors were very fashionable in the late 1800’s and as the technology improved, the designs became more ornate and intricate. To modern tastes it may seem almost too garish.
Built in 1821 on the site of a previous pub, the Red Lion was redesigned in the 1870’s. It is often described as a ‘gin palace’ but was refitted long after the ‘mother’s ruin’ gin era. This pub was designed to impress and create an aura of opulent respectability. It served the staff of the surrounding grand houses and, in its own way, provided some of the sumptuous ‘above stairs’ living for those ‘below stairs’.’

Addendum:

The below could be a bolt-on or it could be part of a separate journey; it involves London’s lost rivers, together with Highgate , Kentish Town and Hampstead.

Nicholas Barton’s ‘The Lost Rivers of London’ is, of course, a watery mine of information: the River Fleet rises in Highgate and Hampstead and those sources fuse at Camden Town (old prints show it flowing between what is now Camden Tube station and The Mother Red Cap pub – but then, the tube station was the site of St. Pancras Workhouse). The river now winds its way below Kentish Town Road, St. Pancras, under the Regent’s Canal, King’s Cross, then west of King’s Cross, under Farringdon Road, Holborn Viaduct (Holborn = Hole-bourne = stream in the hollow) and so to the Thames.

The River Tyburn has two sources in Hampstead and Belsize Park. It flows down through Swiss Cottage to Regent’s Park, across the Regent’s Canal by aqueduct, with its old eastern bank denoted by the winding line of Marylebone Lane (St. Mary by the bourne); then along Baker Street to Piccadilly (Tyburn Road is now Oxford Street); then east of Grosvenor and Berkeley Squares, below Lansdowne Passage, under Piccadilly, down Green Park towards Buckingham Palace and so to the Thames (btw, the Tyburn Tree gallows were near what is now Marble Arch and Tyburn Lane is now Park Lane).

We can pick up some of this on our pub walk but we may also want to visit Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery (close by social-Darwinist Herbert Spencer’s grave: Marx and Spencer) and have a walk around Kentish Town and Hampstead to see John Keats’ house and that nightingale tree.

This might necessitate a visit to the wonderful Holly Bush in Hampstead.

Finally, when we are out east, we have to think about the River Walbrook, flowing into the City (have a look for Bloomfield Street and Curtain Road) and when we return to Paddington, we have to reflect on the River Westbourne and the prevalence (eleven) of street names in the Paddington area denoting that lost river, whilst there is also a Bourne Street in Chelsea, near the river’s destiny at the Thames.

Walking around Wotton May 17th 2014

Walking around Wotton May 17th 2014

A lot of things happen on a walk around Wotton,
When seventeen people gather together,
They:
Congregate at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin,
Listen to UA Fanthorpe’s poem: ‘Wotton Walks’,
Examine the sites of old cloth mills,
Search for songs of water wheels and millstones,
Ponder by an old mill leat at Holywell,
Climb up ancient holloways,
Discuss the exactitude of sundials,
Amble through shadowed woods of wild garlic,
Wander past an Iron Age forested hill fort,
Remember how to gauge the age of hedgerows,
See Aubrey Beardsley’s Wotton retreat,
Discuss textual analysis of the Laurie Lee trilogy,
Discourse on Lollardy, the medieval wool trade,
Catholicism, the Reformation and Hughenots,
Highlight the Civil War in the Stroud Valleys,
Link the Tyndale Monument with Cider with Rosie,
Gaze at the blue remembered hills of half forgotten school trips,
Sing our favourite songs from musicals, along cow parsley lanes,
Remember the Spanish Civil War,
Descend into Wotton by Poor Law almshouses,
Sit together for afternoon tea,
Once strangers, now friends,
Wishing Derby County good luck for next week,
At the end of our criss cross path,
That was both Pilgrim’s Progress and Canterbury Tales.

Walking a metaphor

Walking a metaphor
(With thanks to Jacqui Stearn)


From Purgatory to Paradise 
   a company of artists, poets, writers,
    young and old, walked in discourse and delight.
 
In Purgatory woods through, which our human line snaked,
  and before emerging onto the hill of swifts, 
   dainty paths were picked through pungent wild garlic, 
    bluebell and delicate points of debate.
Nettles and propositions were beaten down, 
   care taken to avoid snagging legs or ideas 
on trailing blackberry shoots and thorny questions.
 
On the hill we grouped, imagined the fields spread below
  draped scarlet with wool cloth drying, then 
    a step of two more, and a pause by Elcombe’s spring, 
    after which our ribbon widened in the lanes
       then trailed tracks much deepened by iron wheels, hooves, shod feet.
The tree-canopied tunnels, holloways, descended
   to streams and rivers whose flow held stories
of mills and weaving; we pooled human knowing.
 
The place names evoked images: Bulls Cross 
   where the gibbet stood near Longridge – which it is – 
      then the Cockshoot to Damsells  Cross and so to Paradise
        and Charles’ rest, where our modern tribe gathered, 
           warmed by sunshine, replete with tale telling and discovering.
Spirits freed from the daily round and round by metaphorical footsteps
   flights of imagination and poetic Indulgences.
                                                                                                                        June 1st

From Purgatory to Paradise