The Rodborough GWR Bus Service
The GWR experimented with some local bus services in the 1920s around Painswick, Cainscross, Chalford, Kingscourt and Rodborough. I recorded some residents’ memories of Spillmans off Rodborough Hill a few years ago: red brick terraces above the mills on the busy Bath Road, betwixt two pubs and with an old Co-op and a jug and bottle. More LS Lowry than chocolate box Cotswolds: a mill town in the Cotswolds.
Irene Connor remembered Old Tom
You knew all the horses,
Pulling the carts with their heavy loads
Over the cobblestones of Rodborough’s roads;
Coal and milk and spuds and beer and bread,
And, of course, the fishmonger,
With his basket on his head,
“What have you got for me today?”
They asked, whilst you watched
The horses and the dray;
But your favourite was good old Tom,
Good old Tom, loved by children –
But adults looked in horror, as Tom, once more,
Lowered his head over fence, hedge or wall,
To munch approvingly on such rich pickings,
As cabbages and lettuces and leeks
And the green tops of turnip, swede and parsnip,
Then the especial delight of a rich, ripe carrot;
All those houses with veg not cars in the front garden,
Good old Tom thought they were growing it just for him.
Irene also remembered a cobbler in a hut, below the alley-way in Spillmans,
Hammering away, nails into leather, Silver whiskers, bushy brows, Mutton chops of snow,
You’d creep by, Peer through the cracked door, Standing slightly ajar, Then tap politely, yourselves, You, the little elves, “A sprig for my top, Mister Marmot?” He’d raise his head from his hammering, Like a little gnome, himself, Rat a tat tat, rat a tat tat, This man born before the Crimean War, Still mending boots between our two wars, Tapping away as his pocket watch ticked on, Rat a tat tat, rat a tat tat, Until, one day, He was there no more.
And you were no longer elves. Catching the bus instead.
Spillmans in the 1920s
More LS Lowry
Than rus in urbe:
Steam whistle hooters,
Gas hiss in mantles,
Rain streaks on the window-panes.
Flat caps bob in unison,
Stout boots clatter on the cobbles,
Bread and marg in your pocket,
A small army on the march,
Wife at the washing,
Spillmans Pitch,
Early Monday morning.
As the bus trundles up the hill.