Adelstrop & the Cotswolds

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England….

  

King Æthelstan the Glorious, the first Ruler of the whole of Britain, died on October 27^th, 939, in Gloucester, and was buried somewhere under his home town of Malmesbury, Wiltshire.  In the Abbey, or strictly, in the Parish Church, which is all that remains of one of the great Abbeys of medieval England, there is a fourteenth century tomb which commemorates King Alfred’s Glorious grandson, but it is void, and his remains have yet to be unearthed…..  

Æthelstan lived in the tenth century, a so-called age of darkness, but he quelled rebellion and became the greatest ruler in these islands since the Romans, with all the diverse tribes of mainland Britain accepting his lordship, following his victory over Scots, Danes, Norse and Irish at the Battle of Brunanburh.

Malmesbury is a pleasant town, situated on top of a flat hill encircled by the River Avon, on the southern edge of the Cotswolds.  Excavations have revealed the remains of an Iron Age Fort here dating from 500 BC. A gentle walk around the meadows surrounding the town crosses and recrosses two branches of the river Avon.  Teenagers play in the water and parents perambulate their infants, while in the centre of the town by the fifteenth century market cross Japanese tourists pause with their guides in their exploration of this sceptered isle.  I am not sure why the Japanese, in particular, have such an interest in this area, but along the fourteenth century Arlington Row by the river Coln, in William Morris’s most beautiful village in England (Bibury), coach-loads of Japanese vie with each other to photograph this quintessential England.  As http://www.the-cotswolds.org/  puts it:

コッツウォルズは東京都程の大きさで、英国人はもとより世界各地からの旅行者が訪れる大変人気のある観光地です。コッツウォルズは穏やかな丘陵地帯　('wolds'), 寂な村々、そして「イングランドを象徴する地域」としても有名です。

Which translates as:  Cotswolds is about the size of Tokyo, the British is a tourist destination with a very popular that travellers visit from the well around the world. Cotswolds gentle hills ( 'wolds'), quiet villages, and is also famous as the "region a symbol of England."

Which sums it up rather nicely…..

The Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is, at 790 square miles, the largest of 38 such designated areas in the UK.  

It ranges 80 miles from north to south, covering an area of gentle hilly countryside between Cheltenham, Gloucester, Bath, Oxford and Stratford-Upon-Avon.  There are a good number of picture-postcard towns and villages, such as Bibury, Bourton-on-the-Water, and Chipping Campden, all dressed in colourful Cotswold limestone, and there are numerous attractions, such as Westonbirt Arboretum, Chedworth Roman Villa, Dyrham Park, and Broadway Tower.

Æthelstan was/is not the only royal to have passed through…..  

Although Berkeley Castle is not technically in the AONB, it is a prime attraction in the area, and proudly displays the cell where Edward II was imprisoned, and, supposedly, murdered in a most foul way, sandwiched between a table and a mattress, his innards burned out with a red-hot poker inserted through a horn up his backside….  Probability is, however, that Edward actually disappeared from Berkeley and made his way to the Hermitage of Butrio, in Italy, where a stone commemorates his eventual death.

More recently, the Cotswolds have attracted modern royalty, with first the Princess Royal, Princess Anne, at Gatcombe Park in the Parish of Minchinhampton, where her daughter Zara also now resides, and notably the heir to the throne, the 67 year old Prince of Wales, Prince Charles, whose Duchy of Cornwall acquired Highgrove, or more properly Duchy Home Farm, near Tetbury, in 1980.  According to the Highgrove website, the Prince chose to live in Gloucestershire because of its easy access to London, Wales and other parts of Britain including the Western counties where the Duchy has most of its properties.  All very well, good ‘business’ practice, but surely it is also a very appealing area?

The Cotswolds are peppered with fine houses, and great farms.  Once the wool trade enriched the inhabitants, and great estates rose and fell with sheepish fortunes.  It was also a favoured area for hunting, and the vicinity of Ozleworth was a playground for Tudor aristocrats, so much so that Sir Nicholas Poyntz built Newark Park (now National Trust) as a hunting lodge in 1550.  Over the years it was enlarged and modified into a residence, but then fell into disrepair until a Texan architect ‘discovered’ it in the 1970s and restored it to sufficient glory to provide the interiors of Sandbourne House for the 2008 TV miniseries of Tess of the d’Urbervilles (blood dripping through the ceiling).  From the garden terrace the views towards Bristol are wonderful, falling away into woods and farmlands, then rising up to the scarp slope near Hawkesbury Upton, where the Somerset Monument pierces the sky.

This 100 foot Ashlar pillar was built in 1846 by Lewis Vulliamy, to commemorate a nephew of the 6^th Duke of Beaufort, Lord Robert Edward Henry Somerset, who had been a general at the Battle of Waterloo.  The Grade II listed erection is now in a perilous state, but the ailing 11^th Duke, the 88 year old David Robert Somerset, holds it dear, and won’t let anyone near.  According to the kind lady who lives in the custodian’s cottage at the foot of the tower, this cousin of the Queen now keeps to himself and his hounds at nearby Badminton.

One of my favourite haunts in the Cotswolds is Owlpen Manor, nested in a fold just outside the village of Uley.  

It is neither ‘great’ nor ‘magnificent’ but the estate is nearly a thousand years old and the manor dates from between 1460 and 1616.  In 1894 the poet Swinburne wrote to William Morris that Owlpen was an incomparable paradise and referred to it as a kind of sleeping beauty as it had fallen into romantic decay.  In 1925 it was acquired by architect Norman Jewson, who lavished enormous care over its restoration employing local workmen and materials, including handmade nails and locally wrought iron.  In 1930 artist and conservationist F L Griggs said of the place that it was a paradigm of the values of English civilisation for which his generation was prepared to fight….

In 1974 it was acquired by Nicholas and Karin Mander, who continued the restoration, including the church (also used in Tess of the d’Urbervilles) and nine rental properties on the estate.  

As I mull over a pint of Uley Bitter in the nearby Old Crown Inn I imagine being welcomed over the polished flagstones into the low-ceilinged Great Hall from 1540, sitting in the eighteenth century panelled Little Parlour, or pacing the floorboards in the Oak Parlour.  Upstairs I would admire the painted-cloth hangings of the story of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colours, before settling down in the Flemish four-poster in the solar.  Outside I would hear a blackbird, singing out the day in the yews that Vita Sackville-West said make rooms in the garden with walls taller than any rooms in the house; dark, secret rooms of yew hiding in the slope of the valley…..

Walking in the quiet valleys here or up on the tops, where ancient barrows and forts hide stories of war and peace, is to delve into the intermingling of human and natural history.  Several hundred people used to live at Ozleworth, where now remain an eighteenth century manor house, a scattering of modernised cottages and a fine rectory around the remarkable Norman Church with a central hexagonal tower.  

Wealth, and work, sprang here from the now disappeared woollen mill.  Currently the manor house is being refurbished…..

At Edgeworth, the seventeenth century manor house was uninhabited in 1971, but new money has entered the valley, and now the church is under restoration, the estate properties all have new carved stone name plates, and contractors are busy installing super-fast broadband (something that is yet to come to Uley….) while up on the hill a young woman is being coached on the Polo Fields…..

Across the Frome valley, down the ominously titled Dark Ride, and just beyond a delightful pond, lies Pinbury Park, which was originally a sixteenth century monastic property.  It was later redeveloped by Arts and Crafts Movement architects, and was used as a summer house between 1902 and 1928 by Lord and Lady Bathurst, of Cirencester Park, during which time guests included Queen Mary, and Rudyard Kipling.  From 1932 until 1940 it was the residence of poet laureate John Masefield, the longest serving laureate since Alfred Lord Tennyson and a great figure in English letters at the time, though now he is barely remembered for having to go down to the sea again…..

Poetry slips in and out of these valleys and over the hills, hiding under beermats in olde worlde pubs, and engraved on glass panels on the Laurie Lee Wildlife Way.  

For many people, Laurie Lee, and Cider with Rosie, epitomises the Cotswolds, though the world has moved on and the Slad that Laurie grew up in is definitely no more (please see http://www.richardpgibbs.org/2014/05/laurie-lee-26-june-1914-13-may-1997.html)

To the north of the area, however, near where the Swindon to Gloucester train line now runs, there was once a station at Adlestrop, where on June 23^rd 1914 an express train from London made an unscheduled stop.  On board was the 36 year old writer, Edward Thomas, on his way to visit his friend Robert Frost at Leddington near Ledbury.  Thomas wrote in his diary, thro the willows cd be heard a chain of blackbird songs at 12.45, and one thrush and no man seen, only a hiss of engine letting off steam.  The train restarted, and subsequently he composed the sixteen line poem named after the station, though it was not published until after his death in 1917 (for more about Edward Thomas, please see: http://www.richardpgibbs.org/2016/03/edward-thomas.html) :

Adlestrop, by Edward Thomas

Yes. I remember Adlestrop—

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop—only the name

Adlestrop has not changed much.  In fact, apart from the coming, and going, of the railway (Dr Beeching closed the station in 1966 and all that remains is one of the name boards, thoughtfully sheltered under an oak tree) little has changed here since Jane Austen stayed here with her cousins in the Leigh family, later basing Thornton Lacey in Mansfield Park on her visits.

And, apart from the Post Office moving a hundred yards up the lane, and mains water replacing the village tap, the eighty or so inhabitants don’t really want to see more changes.  When my ‘train’ stopped here, briefly, the village seemed to be worshipping quietly in the Church of St Mary Magdalene, the West Door open to the morning,

though one of them was enjoying some hay overlooking the gentle scenery…..

On my way home from the enchanting world of the Cotswolds, I pause for refreshment at the late Presley-fan Debo Mitford (Duchess of Devonshire)’s pub, The Swan at Swinbrook.  This is where local MP David Cameron (who he? Ed.) entertained the 24^th President of France, François Hollande, to a ‘working lunch’ in February 2014 – so it must be good for entente cordiale…..  And just up the road, at Swinbrook Church, not only do layers of the Fettiplace family repose in regal splendour, 

but so three of Debo’s sisters, who grew up round here, also lie:  Nancy, Unity Valkyrie, Diana….

And, with a nostalgic glance over my shoulder, this is where I first came to the Cotswolds, as a boy scout, some fifty something years ago (for more on which, please see: http://www.richardpgibbs.org/2012/06/on-breast-of-river-of-time.html). 

And this, for the moment at least, is where I shall leave this blessed plot, this realm….. 

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Adlestrop

Edward Thomas

And to-day on the downs, in the winds,the hawks, the grasses,
In blood and air,
Something passes me and cries as it passes.
On the chalk downland bare.

Up on the Downs

John Masefield

Rock of Ages

Shelter from the storm

I’m in the doldrums.  Brexit has cleft us all in two.  In Burrington Combe, not far south of Bristol, I stop for a bacon roll and a mug of tea.  Brown sauce stains my shirt.  The limestone walls of the gorge rise precipitously above me.  On one slab of near vertical rock there is an inscribed slate which bears the words:

Rock of Ages

This rock derives its name

from the well known hymn

written about 1762 by the

Rev A M Toplady

who was inspired whilst sheltering

in this cleft during a storm

Lucky Toplady!  He had somewhere to hide, though 'Twas in another lifetime (one of toil and blood, when blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud….)  and, to a certain extent, times have changed.    

This was not a good day.  Everything up to that point had been left unresolved, so I Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm. 

Unlucky me.  The chills of the insular Brexit wilderness surround me, a creature void of form, and I am up on the Mendips, slogging up to Beacon Batch, the highest point on Black Down, aptly named for my current mood.  People lived here in pre-historic emptiness.  Who knows what they felt in the darkest hour, before dawn?  Now, the sweeping views over Blagdon, and across the wild uplands, give me little solace. 

I trek across the watery tracks to Rowberrow Warren, and down through the forest, where seeing wood from trees is a pathetic joke.

Then I rise up over the flowery slopes of Dolebury Warren, with church bells tolling the knell of another wedding in the folds below.  The fort atop the Warren is traceable in dips and rises, piles of stones and grassy mounds.  To think that this was once London, or Brussels, to the people then.  To think that once mighty royal assent was dispatched from places such as this.

I slip down through the ash woods, as yet defying the disease that is sweeping across the continent.  I seek comfort in a cottage at Churchill Batch, ironically named The Crown, though no sign currently gives this away.  

Here an unseasonal fire cheers the small gathering of locals.  Conversation trips around the heady matters of the day, but no one is celebrating.  Temporary though this cleft may be, at least there is still some shelter from the storm.

Then I follow the contours back along the edge of the hills, passing the derelict Lookout, where no one sees what’s coming, and by Mendip Lodge Wood.  Near Bos Swallet I pass a group of young people, toiling along the Limestone Link.  I would like to think they were enthusiastic, but it wasn’t easy to read their tea leaves.  At Sidcot Swallet I cross a stream and mistake my path, soon finding myself rising high away from Whitcombe’s Hole and Burrington Combe, losing my way in the dense bracken above West Twin Brook, and I am on Black Down again. 

Will it never end?  I don’t want to go back.  I seek shelter, but not in retreat.  The reality of being lost squelches beneath me, and Toplady’s words resound in my mind:

While I draw this fleeting breath,

When mine eyes shall close in death,

When I soar to worlds unknown….

It is beautiful on these hills.  If I were to fall into Goatchurch Cavern, or stumble into darkness in Lower Ellick Wood, the world would move on regardless.  But I want to leave the world a better place, I don’t want to see it cleft in two, eroded into chasms into which my children might fall.  I don’t want to think it is hopeless and forlorn.

I am in the bottom of Burrington Combe again, one of the great clefts riven in our rocky uplands.  On the one side is water, on the other, blood.  One side is power; the other guilt…..   At the bottom of this cleft, somethin's been lost…..  I feel that we took too much for granted. The leaders, elected leaders who should have known better,  got their signals crossed. Those despicable individuals who, for various reasons of personal aggrandisement, persuaded many of my compatriots with their silver tongues and golden lies to vote for a completely unplanned future, have now disappeared. Leaving nothing but blood on [their] tracks.

The trouble now is nothing really matters much, it's doom alone that counts. 

Yesterday I received an email from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which stated that:

The EU Referendum Act received Royal Assent in December 2015. The Act was scrutinised and debated in Parliament during its passage and agreed by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Act set out the terms under which the referendum would take place, including provisions for setting the date, franchise and the question that would appear on the ballot paper. The Act did not set a threshold for the result or for minimum turnout.

As the Prime Minister made clear in his statement to the House of Commons on 27 June, the referendum was one of the biggest democratic exercises in British history with over 33 million people having their say. The Prime Minister and Government have been clear that this was a once in a generation vote and, as the Prime Minister has said, the decision must be respected. We must now prepare for the process to exit the EU and the Government is committed to ensuring the best possible outcome for the British people in the negotiations…..

As the Prime Minister has said.... the decision must be respected....

Why?

Is this Prime Minister, who set up this farrago, and who didn't see through the selfish desire to quash disrespect within his own party, or vitriol from UKIP (United Kingdom Implosion Party).... the spineless Astoroid (sic) who has since jellyfished out of all responsibility.... Is this Primo Ministro to be respected? Should every person within what currently goes under the title of the United Kingdom (soon to be dissolved),  and practically everyone within Europe, suffer the degradation that will follow this vanity and egoism?

Well, I offered up my innocence I got repaid with scorn…  But, now I feel that I'm livin' in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line…..  If I could only turn back the clock.

I am at the bottom of Burrington Combe again, with brown sauce and ketchup on my shirt.  In 1762 the Reverend Augustus Montague Toplady found shelter from the storm here, and thanked his God. 

Not the labour of my hands

Can fulfill Thy law's demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears forever flow,

All for sin could not atone;

Thou must save, and Thou alone.

In my fear and despair I wish I could place my trust in someone.  I wish there was a God who would strike the discredited and the departing down, but if there is a God, then He must have ordained this situation, and sent the plague to test us.  Just to think that it all began on an uneventful morn….

Instead of going home, I drive to the village of Priddy, where I chance upon a cavalcade of tractors raising money for Air Ambulances.  

On Priddy village green there is a thatched shelter, which houses a stack of wooden hurdles.  An inscription explains that These hurdles are a symbolic reconstruction of the original collection.  They were stored here to form the Pens for the Sheep Fair which moved from Wells to Priddy in 1348 at the outbreak of the Black Death…..   The stack was destroyed in an arson attack on April 28^th 2013.  Volunteers rebuilt it that August….

I wonder how many symbolic reconstructions of things we will live to see?  How much of our history will be lost?  What else will we have to move to avoid the plague?  How many of the things we take for granted will be stranded without love? 

The village phone box now houses a defibrillator.....  No harm in that (Times have changed);  only perhaps that is what the whole nation needs?

If only someone would say Come in….  I'll give ya shelter from the storm....

Back in Bristol, on the edge of the Avon Gorge, looking for peregrines, the ground starts to shake.  I am almost run down by women in pink....

Suddenly I turned around and she was standing there....

"Come in" she said

"I'll give you shelter from the storm"

Is there hope yet?

(If you get close to her, kiss her once for me....)