Day 6 Monday October 9 Painswick to Birdlip 10 miles
Sunrise 7.13 Sunset 18.20 Carbon Count 418.19 Pre-industrial base 280 Safe level 350
The Stroud-water Food Riots
Prologue:
Gilbert White, August 1st 1786:
‘The poor begin to glean wheat. The country looks very rich, being finely diversified with crops of corn of various sorts, and colours.’
John Keats, To Autumn – 1819:
‘Who hath not seen thee oft amid they store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook… ‘
Chapter the First:
Bread of Heaven, the Staff of Life,
A biblical motif of justice
For the miller who grinds so small –
And should thee not eat thy bread,
‘By the sweat of thy brow’?
Chapter the Second:
Thus, the Stroudwater food riots of the 18th and early 19th century
Have a provenance ground in Time Immemorial,
Hence the banner:
‘We might as well be hanged as starved’,
When poor harvests, high food prices,
Dealers, middlemen, speculators, and ‘corn-jobbers’,
All conspired to exploit shortages for private profit,
As local labourers, shepherds, spinners, weavers, smiths and so on,
Observed the transport of local grain to far-off markets
(Such as Lechlade, bound for London),
With a perturbed sense of injustice.
Chapter the Third:
So horns were blown, banners raised, flags waved,
Crowds gathered with their chosen ‘regulators’,
Gathering in lanes, fields and inns,
No malice aforethought,
But a spontaneous reaction after arguments over prices,
Hunger, want, profit and justice –
A crowd swelling
To determine prices at market,
In the city of Gloucester, the towns of Stroud and Cirencester,
Calling at village, hamlet, granary, mill, baker’s, huckster’s, factor’s, and warehouse,
Taking stocks of food such as corn, flour, bread, bacon, cheese, butter,
Paying a ‘fair’ price, for redistribution,
Sometimes destroying the flour of speculators,
As at a mill at Painswick.
Cranham Woods Haiku for the day:
Umbrageous woodland:
A sun-dappled holloway,
And dry-leaf shoe-shod.
Where Holst saw music
In the deep Midwinter’s wood,
And Rossetti’s eyes.
Day 7 Tuesday October 10 Birdlip to Lower Dowdeswell 9 miles
Sunrise 7.15 Sunset 18.18 Carbon Count 418.53 Pre-industrial base 280 Safe level 350
General View of the Agriculture of the County of Gloucester
Drawn Up for the Consideration of the Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement
By Thomas Rudge 1807
Enclosure:
‘On the Cotswolds, the general mode of fencing an inclosure, is with stone walls; plenty of materials for which are to be had with little trouble. This is an unproductive fence, and continually in need of repair, as generally being put up without lime or other cement.’
Village Labourers:
‘The gardens of the village labourers exhibit various instances of industry; and the character of the inhabitant may usually be determined by the appearance of cultivation without. Most of the cottages in the county possess, in a greater or lesser degree, this useful appendage; few, however, in a quantity sufficiently large to effect any great advantage … they ought not to be so far extended as to occupy too great a portion the labourer’s time; his attentions being wanted elsewhere.’
Wastes:
‘About 10,000 acres now remain in a state of waste in this county; a small part of which is in sheep-downs on the Cotswolds.
The common or waste lands in the Vale, are seldom stinted to a definite quantity of stock, in proportion to the number of acres occupied; but the cottager claims by custom to stock equally with the largest land-owner. It is justly questioned whether any profit accrues to either … since the waste commons, being under no agricultural management, are usually poisoned by stagnated water, which corrupts or renders unwholesome the herbage, producing rot, and other diseases, in the miserable animals that are tuned adrift to seek their food there.
The supposed advantages derived by cottagers, in having food for a few sheep and geese on a neighbouring common, have usually been brought forward as objections to the inclosing system … If it could even be proved, that some cottagers were deprived of a few trifling advantages, yet the small losses of individuals ought not to stand in the way … Besides, the augmentation in demand for the cottager’s labour, will much overpay his loss by this trifling privation.’
A Dairy:
‘Much of the credit of a dairy depends on the neatness of its oeconomy. A good dairy-woman will keep every part perfectly clean, the floors cool with cold water, and all the utensils scalded after every making. In these particulars, the county of Gloucester is exceeded by none.’
At ten past ten this morning when we’d done an hour or so, it was 10.10.10.10 23
Day 8 Wednesday October 11 Lower Dowdeswell to Winchcombe 12 miles
Sunrise 7.16 Sunset 18.16 Carbon Count 418.33 Pre-industrial base 280 Safe level 350
When you think of rolling a fag, You might well think of Golden Virginia or dear Old Holborn, Rather than Old Cotswold or Golden Winchcombe, But it could have been so much different… Four centuries ago, tobacco thrived Around Winchcombe and the Cotswold hills, Smallholders grew illegal cash crops; Stuarts and Cromwell alike tried to ban This illicit but hardly secret cultivation, In their support for the American colonists.
The leaves were dried in Cotswold gardens, Then short-stored in Cotswold cottages, Before making their smuggled secret way Along holloways and old pack horse tracks, Contraband Nicotiana Rustica, Edging its way towards the Smoke, Disorienting, hallucinogenic, But labelled as Best Virginia ‘bacco; Charles Stuart’s law demanded arrests: Arrests demanded Cotswold resistance.
This pattern was repeated under Cromwell, But bumper Commonwealth harvests knew no laws, And so, once more, in 1658: ‘I got together 36 horse… found an armed multitude guarding the tobacco field. We broke through them… The soldiers stood firm and with cocked pistols bade the multitude disperse but they would not and 200 more came from Winchcombe.’ And so, later in that same year: Colonel Wakefield, Governor of Gloucester, tried again… ‘But the country did rise… in a great body, to the number of 500 or 600… the tumult being so great he was constrained to draw off and nothing more done.’
And so, once more, the courts were tried again: The accession of Charles the Second saw huge fines, Followed by further Restoration threats in 1662, Which were ignored as usual, Despite some ‘spoiling’ of crops and harvests by the authorities, In this Robin Hood outlaw tobacco land, That constituted the late 17th century Cotswolds; No wonder Samuel Pepys commented in 1677: ‘It seems the people there do plant contrary to law, and have always done, and still been under force and danger of having it spoiled, as it hath been oftentimes, and yet they will continue to plant.’
But as so often, the market spoiled what the law could not, Market forces and ‘modernity’ destroyed a whole way of life (‘To Progress we must all submit, A sorry plight I do admit’); As colonial production increased, so prices went down, As prices went down, so demand increased, Leaving Cotswold tobacco an expensive and ignored anachronism; But sometimes, even today, when you walk through some field, You might just catch the rustle of Nicotiana Rustica, Defiantly asserting its freeborn constitution.
So the next time you strike a light, Then strike a light to light the strike Of the Cotswold tobacco growers, For who knows how different history could have been, If those freeborn Cotswold men and women Had been allowed to break that exotic link, That link between tobacco and the coffee house – Who knows how many thousands of Africans Might have been spared the middle passage And a life of plantation enslavement? Old Cotswold and Winchcombe Gold instead of cold Bristol slavery.
With thanks to Will Simpson and Jim McNeill for their Bristol Radical Pamphleteer #9 ‘Nicotiana Britannica’
Day 9 Thursday October 12 Winchcombe to Stanton 10 miles sunrise 7.18 sunset 18.14
General View of the Agriculture of the County of Gloucester
Drawn Up for the Consideration of the Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement
By Thomas Rudge 1807
Rabbits:
‘The agriculturist will look with a jealous eye on the appropriation of any land to any other purpose than the raising of the necessaries of life; and on this principle, rabbit-warrens are generally considered … Warrens are, however, fast decreasing, and will more so as inclosures increase.’
RURAL ECONOMY: Labour:
‘The price of labour and rate of wages vary in different parts of the county, and, in the neighbourhood of large or manufacturing towns, of course are highest. Everything which the farmer can do to reduce the “great,” or piece, he does …
The general price of agricultural labour per day, through the year, except during harvest, is 1s. and 6d. and about a gallon of drink. This will hold as an average through the greatest part of the county, except on the Cotswolds, and in part of the Forest district, where it is somewhat less, and in the neighbourhood of Bristol, and in the manufacturing country, where it is more with the same allowance of drink. In the time of harvest, when hands are much wanted, almost every working man will put a price on his labour, agreeably to the emergency of the case; but, generally speaking, he has 2s. a day, with three dinners in the week, and six quarts of drink. The women at the same time receiving the same allowance of victuals, with three quarts of drink, and from 10d. to 1 s. a day.’
Fuel:
‘To the poor who live on the Cotswolds, the dearness and scarcity of fire-fuel is of great importance. Before the inclosure of the downs, they got a tolerable supply from the furze, which grew in abundance, but this resource is now lost …’
Day 10 Friday October 13 Stanton to Chipping Campden 12 miles sunrise 7.20 sunset 18.11
Remembering the Gloucestershire & Warwickshire Railway – not too far from Addlestrop. Nice to get a ticket at an office. Hope the below doesn’t happen.
Stroud Railway Station
Yes. I remember Stroud Station –
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat, the express-train broke down there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
My phone broke. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left in the ticket office
Or the bare platform. What I saw
Was Stroud Station – only the name
And no one, no one there, no staff,
Just a broken-down ticket machine
And my broken phone where I swear
And stare at the rain clouds in the air.
And for that minute a revenant cried,
Close by, and around him, mistier
Farther and farther, all passengers
In Stroud’s Five Valleys in Gloucestershire.
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