COTSWOLD WAY RANDOM TRAVELOGUE
We at last arrived at Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers ‘Ba -ath’, And Jane Austen’s too, of course: ‘They arrived in Bath. Catherine was all eager delight, – her eyes were here, there, everywhere, as they approached its fine and striking environs …’
Regency Bath!
So overwhelming is the postmodernist hyper-reality Regency Disneyfication: That it’s easy to forget that Hannah More lived at 76 Great Pulteney Street, And William Wilberforce stayed at number 36. They must have had a reason.
Jane Austen did, of course, have some familial plantation connections – She lodged at 25 Gay Street, and lived at 4 Sydney Place: ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a slaving city
in possession of a good reputation must be in want of the truth’, I lodged on Chiwetel Ejiofor’s words: ‘We don’t really investigate what Bristol and London
and Bath would be without the slave trade’ … But at the moment, Bath is a Quality Street tin’, ‘All spring muslin and “oh la sir.”’
Time to leave.
Day 2 Thursday October 5 Cold Ashton to Old Sodbury 9 miles Sunrise 7.06 Sunset 18.29 Carbon Count 418.37 Pre-industrial base 280 Safe level 350
‘Potatoes were found throughout the county … But there was a special concentration in the south of the county where the demands of Bristol led to a steady expansion of their cultivation. Similarly with peas and beans, which were used as provender in the Bristol inns or as food for the negroes in the Guinea ships making the passage from Africa to the West Indies.’
Local Government in Gloucestershire 1775-1800 Esther Moir
We have to remind ourselves ‘of how we as a nation have sanitised, obscured and neglected racial capitalism and racial terror as foundational narratives of our modern history.’ Robert Beckford: lecturer/broadcaster – descendant of the people enslaved by William Beckford
A walk through a cankered coin landscape: glocal history: the local and the global: Dyrham Park and Dodington Park: a disenchanted landscape: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/search/
Today’s haiku is how Dodington Park’s history over the past three centuries echoes that of this country as a whole: Loathsome enslavers, Then Brexit vacuum cleaners, Next stop Singapore.
Day 3 Friday October 6 Old Sodbury to Wotton. 13 miles Sunrise 7.08 Sunset 18.27 Carbon Count 418.37 Pre-industrial base 280 Safe level 350
Medieval Strip Lynchets at Cold Ashton
A shrunken medieval village at Tormarton
And the Tyndale Monument at Wotton
Pasture and turbary, Estovers and piscary; Pannage and housebote, Shack and ploughbote.
‘It is the custom in England … for the nobility to have great power over the common people, who are serfs. This means that they are bound by law and custom to plough the field of their masters, harvest the corn, gather it into barns, and thrash and winnow the grain; they must also mow and carry home the hay, cut and collect wood, and perform all manner of tasks of this kind.’
‘When Adam delved
And Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?”
And after the Peasants’ Revolt?
‘You wretches, detestable on land and sea; you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live. Give this message to your colleagues. Rustics you were and rustics you are still: you will remain in bondage not as before but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live, we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity. However, we will spare your lives if you remain faithful. Choose now which you want to follow.’
Let’s imagine that this part of Gloucestershire was home to a community of Lollards (the word possibly comes from an old Dutch word meaning “to mutter”). Lollards rejected papal authority and various beliefs about the sacraments, transubstantiation, confession and the elevation of saints. They also placed an emphasis upon preaching rather than liturgy; they objected to the wealth and what they saw as the greed of the Church. The Lollards emphasised the importance of individual interpretation of scripture rather than priestly ceremony: this had radical freethinking implications. Archbishop Courtenay of Canterbury (who succeeded Archbishop Sudbury, murdered in the Peasants’ Revolt) decided to extirpate this movement by banishing followers of John Wycliffe or forcing them to recant. The movement was linked in the eyes of many to the Peasants’ Revolt: hence its persecution. It was strongest in the west of England and the heresy continued here, as it were, underground. Professor Christopher Hill saw a direct link between the Lollards and William Tyndale over a century later. He argued that the cloth trade with its links with London and the continent helped foster the spread of heterodox opinions. Gloucestershire was unusual, he said, for its Lollard survival; it was a key county in the continuity of belief stretching from the Middle Ages to the Tudor Reformation. The Wycliffite innovation of translating parts of the Bible into the vernacular would reach its destiny through this county.
Day 4 Saturday October 7 Wotton to Stroud
17 miles Sunrise 7.10 Sunset 18.25 Carbon Count 418.37 Pre-industrial base 280 Safe level 350
Today’s haiku:
We walk through hedgerows In pursuit of autumn’s show Time and space aglow.
England’s class system Hierarchies of power: Pheasants and peasants
Ridge and furrow crests: Medieval palimpsests: Hateful enclosure
Also remembering the 1825 Weavers’ strikes and riots and the 1839 Chartist meeting on Selsley Hill
1825: The next big congregation was in Stroud at the end of August. We called for the release of our friends in prison. But that was nothing compared to what was going on in Wotton-under-Edge. The leader of the weavers there mocked the Hussars by calling himself ‘General Wolfe’. He led several congregations in the open air and in the Swann. Then they set cloth and loom beams ablaze. Stones were thrown and windows smashed. The clothiers replied with muskets.
1839:
‘I’ll never forget last Tuesday, even if I live to seventy.
We all woke up so excited, never eaten porridge so fast.
We put on our best blouses, aprons and hats,
The men shaved their chins, put on their caps,
Moleskin trousers and fustian waistcoats,
And out we strode into the lane.
Such a sight you never did see!
The men and women and children,
All marching in an orderly line past our cottage;
Then when we got to Stroud, we couldn’t believe our eyes:
Serpentine lines climbing up every valley side,
There must have been thousands!
All laughing and cheering, but sore determined,
To get our rights and right our wrongs.’
Day 5 Sunday October 8 Stroud to Painswick 7 miles
Sunrise 7.21 Sunset 18.31 Carbon Count 418.37 Pre-industrial base 280 Safe level 350
Remember the Puritan/Parliamentarian graffiti in the church etched in a pillar by the imprisoned prisoner, Richard Foot: ‘Be bold, Be Bold, But not too bold’ (lines from Spenser’s Faery Queen). Painswick was an important spot in the Civil War:
So, there was Charles with his HQ at Oxford
(Having been turfed out of London at Turnham Green),
And if he were to retake London,
Then the Royalist armies in the West
Would have to advance towards Oxford,
And thence east to the capital:
Taking Parliamentary cities that stood in his way:
Exeter fell, then mighty Bristol,
And so Gloucester was next on the Royalist list
In the year of our Lord,1643.
But there was much ado around these parts,
Even before the Siege of Gloucester.
Archbishop Laud’s High Church reforms of railing off of altars
Led to Puritan complaints in Stroud.
Then in February 1643,
Prince Rupert wrote to his uncle, the king,
About Stroud and Minchinhampton
(Together with other cloth towns),
“Great quantities of cloth, canvas and buckrams were to be had”
for uniforms.
This appropriation was meant to be peaceful but it was said that
“They took away cloth, wool and yarn, besides other goods from the clothiers about Stroudwater, to be their utter undoing, not only of them and theirs, but of thousands of poor people, whose livelihood depends on that trade.”
With Gloucester on the Royalist shopping list,
Parliament took preventative action,
Encircling Gloucester with garrisons
at Stroud, Frocester, Sapperton and Beverstone.
There were other garrisons at Painswick, Miserden, Cirencester, Tetbury, Wotton, Dursley, Berkeley, Thornbury, Hampton Rd., Eastington, Frampton, Slimbridge, Arlingham and Brookthorpe.
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