- Gloucestershire Events and Traditions
- Textile Conservation
- Tales of a Sussex Family Farm
- Backstreet Bronze Casting: don't try this at home!
- the SouthWest Film and Television Archive
- the Berkeley Estate in the 18th Century
- Tales of a Country Auctioneer
- Stroud Workhouse: a danger to sick people
- the Land Girls
- Restoration of the Cotswold Canals
- Edward Jenner: a man who changed the face of the World
- The Radical History of Stroud and the Five Valleys in the 18th and 19th C
- the Gloucestershire Orchard Trust
- Road Travel and Transport in Georgian Gloucestershire: the Turnpikes and the Improvement of the Roads
- Nature Conservation
Kate Peake - Gloucestershire events and traditions
While Kate describes herself as an amateur videographer, her series of short films were of professional quality, carefully edited and with some stunning shots, certainly justifying the variety of awards she has received. Besides the time filming, by hand and with a drone, she reckons that a finished five-minute video with voice over can take another six hours or more to prepare. Amongst those she played were the Tewkesbury Civil War re-enactment, Brockworth Cheese-rolling, and the Gloucester Tall Ships. The particular historic value of recording such events was brought home to us when, after showing the 2019 Wassailing ceremony in Stroud, she mentioned that it had not been repeated since. Kate has made a number of other short films and we look forward to inviting her back to see her work on the Cotswold countryside from a completely new perspective.
Alison Lister – Textile Conservation
Visiting National Trust and other historic houses, Churches, Museums and Galleries, we may be unaware of the vast amount of background work required to maintain the fabric of the buildings and preserve their contents to continue the memories. We were given a fascinating insight to an important part of this. Alison moved to the SouthWest 20 years ago, having begun her training in conservation some years before with Dame Karen Finch at the Textile Conservation Centre, then based in Hampton Court. Progressing through internships and then leading the TCC’s MA course, she joined the Textile Conservation Studio, now Bristol’s Textile Conservation Limited, of which she is the owner and director, employing a permanent staff of two and a variety of other freelance conservators as needed. Alison’s enthusiasm was evident as she took us through the training and knowledge required before describing the breadth of work undertaken by her team, from the interventive restoration of embroideries, through the stabilisation of World War II flags to the cleaning of huge tapestries, such as Graham Sutherland’s Christ in Glory at Coventry Cathedral. Along the way Alison enumerated the many challenges faced in her work on the practical side of conservation, and concluded by highlighting the challenges faced by her small business, competing for contracts in our uncertain times.
Angela Lerwill - Tales of a Sussex Family Farm
It is not often that one of our own members features on our programme, so it was a particular pleasure to hear from Angela Lerwill. Recently turned author, Angela self-published her first book ‘Tales of a Sussex Family Farm’ in June 2023. Her writing was a product of Lockdown during the Covid pandemic, and she began by telling us how she progressed from short accounts in a local newsletter to the completed book, and how her style was influenced by James Rebanks’ writings about Cumbria. After leading us through family life with her parents Berns and Counsello and her elder brother and sister during the latter part of the 20th C, Angela then talked about the changing face of agriculture during this time. Despite the challenges, mixed farming at Frithwood in the Arun valley remained true to the old fashioned ways, and so all the better for the welfare of the pigs, the beef cattle, and the 1400 free range Christmas Bronze Turkeys. Reading a small selection of tales from her book Angela, with some emotion, highlighted happy, sad and funny episodes on the farm. Sadly the farmhouse is now a weekend cottage and the fields taken over by others. An inspirational presentation from Angela and her husband Brian, which evoked fond memories for us all.
John Huggins - Backstreet Bronze Casting: don't try this at home!
In 1976 John forsook his career in teaching to become a full-time sculptor, working in bronze. So, on a tight budget, he set up his own garage studio, recycling and repurposing second-hand equipment to build a kiln and furnace. Over the last 50 years, while remaining close to his roots in Gloucestershire, John has developed immense skill and craftsmanship, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors, and is now a mentor of his art. During his move to Frampton eight years ago he rediscovered a number of boxes of slides and prints, recording his sculpting life. His talk, from ‘Bronze Casting Marshfield 1979’, allowed us a fascinating insight to Cire Perdue, the lost-wax casting process. He lead us from preparation of the wax former, incorporating the piece, through mould building with plaster grog, onto draining the hot wax and then pouring in the molten bronze (often recovered gas taps). Despite the last being a potentially explosive experience if all the wax has not been removed, John has survived to tell us his amusing tale. (Perhaps because he favoured running shoes for a fast escape, rather than expensive leather protective gear). After allowing the bronze to cool, he accounted for three to four days of cutting out the piece, cleaning and polishing, and perhaps patination. Following a barrage of questions from a much enthused audience, John passed around two small abstract sculptures, both, as usual, inspired by natural forms. The earlier piece, from his bird series, was polished bronze, while the more recent, the representation of the head of a woman, had a wonderful speckled olive green/brown patina. The second was also surprisingly light, being a thin bronze (and so the better surface), just a few mm depth, formed in between the mould and an inert, readily removed core. Though now well past the normal age of retirement John continues sculpting, and offers his pieces through two agents, one nearby in Bristol, Clifton Fine Art. John proved a superb raconteur and received much warm appreciation.
Lecture Secretary - the SouthWest Film and Television Archive
As the planned speaker was unable to attend, at short notice, a presentation about the SWFTA was given, to inform members about films featuring the more recent history of our region, which might be included in a future Club programme, as well as highlighting an outstanding location for a Club visit.
The SouthWest Film and Television Archive, founded in 1993, is the regional film archive for the SouthWest of England (covering the area from the Isles of Scilly to Gloucestershire in the North and as far East as Bournemouth). In 2020, as part of the Plymouth History Centre Project, the Archive found a new home at the wonderful Museum and cultural hub, the Box, in Plymouth. Their moving image collection is recognised nationally as the largest and one of the most valued regional heritage film archives in the UK. It comprises over 250,000 titles; the originals are conserved in a specialist cold store within the Box. The films date from 1898 (a travelogue from Ilfracombe to Barnstaple), though the core collections are the Television SouthWest Film and Video Library (which includes all Channel 3 material for the area from 1961 to 1992 for the ITV franchises Westward TV and TSW) and the BBC SouthWest Film Collection (dating from 1961 onward). There are also many other amateur and professional collections, such as the Major Digby collection, recording the changing life of Cornwall in the 1930s through the lens of a Truro shopkeeper, and the Page collection, showing the travels in a caravan and home life of Bristol-based Frank Page from the 1930s to the 1950s. While much of the collection can be viewed at the Box, many films are now digitised, so there is a wealth of material to hire on DVD; and there are also some online resources, the Box on Screen, conversations about film clip compilations, such as ‘Women on Film’, which includes items from the 1930s to the 1990s.
Jim Pimpernell - The Berkeley Estate in the 18th Century
Jim gave a riveting account of his PhD research into the nearby Berkeley Estate, which he completed recently following his retirement from a career in IT. Whilst beginning with a broader remit concerning the landscape, discovering little had changed in the 18th and 19th centuries he refocused on the business side of the Estate during the lifetimes of the 2nd to the 5th Earls. The Estate archives at Berkeley Castle hold a wealth of material including the Stewards’ accounts (rather less legible during the middle of the chosen period) and some revealing Estate maps. The current owners, who can trace their residence in the Castle back to the 12th Century, gave Jim free access to digitise the necessary documents, and he ended up with over 11,000 images to study at his leisure. He soon narrowed down his interest to the changes in the rental income from the agricultural land from1699-1809. Hidden in what at first sight seemed a simple graph that he had drawn of income plotted against year(see page 7 the Autumn 2022 Berkeley Buttress), he was able to tease out a fascinating tale of social and family fortunes and catastrophes. Because of the nature of the tenancies and the way they changed in type over the period there was a different story emanating from each Earl’s stewardship. The income over the lifetime of Charles, the second Earl, was reasonably constant bar frequent spikes; it turned out these reflected the deaths of tenants and the levying of a substantial ‘fine’ for the renewal of a tenancy. Jim’s sleuthing showed how the profligacy of subsequent incumbents, or their young age could be read from the graph, as, for example, the need for extra funds leading to lifetime tenancies being renewed early, though at favourable rates. Frederick Augustus, the 5th Earl, almost bankrupt the Estate with debts of over £60,000 in 1790. It was thanks to his wife, Mary Cole (22 years Frederick’s junior, and who bore him 5 illegitimate and 7 further offspring after their marriage), that the Estate was saved for the Berkeley family. She was responsible for having new, precise maps drawn up, changing all the leases to annual rents and charging the market value. Clues were encoded in the graph and Estate maps too on the rise of ‘fines’ such that the leases could only be afforded by investors who would sub-let to the farmers, and eventually reversion to direct lease by the farmers on Mary Cole’s intervention in the Estate management. Who could not help but be enthused over such intriguing research into our local history by Jim’s amazing account?
Philip Taubenheim – Tales of a Country Auctioneer
Philip gave an excellent and amusing talk which was very well attended. Starting with his father in 1945 who was defending Berlin for the Germans while the Russians, Americans and British were closing in. He was taken prisoner by the Americans and handed over to the British. He was then taken to a camp in Minehead (later a Billy Butlin’s camp). While there he worked as a farm labourer and was released in 1948.
He was offered the choice of returning to Germany but chose to stay in England. He carried on working as a farm labourer and to improve his English he used to buy books by the box full from local auctions. He found he could make money selling some of the books at a profit. He married a farmer's daughter. After seeing an advert in The Lady magazine for a couple to run the grounds and garden and a retreat for a convent, with a tied cottage included, they moved to Oxfordshire. Three children later they moved to Burford where they lived and opened a book shop.
When Philip got to 16 and couldn’t decide what he wanted to do, his father gave him the Yellow Pages and told him to go through them and see if there was anything he fancied doing. He got as far as Auctioneer and decided he would like to try that. He had work experience, unpaid, for a whole summer in Cirencester. There was not a vacancy at the end but the following year they offered him a post, so he started at the bottom and worked his way up. He now has a thriving business Auctioneering in Wotton-under-Edge.
Fifty years ago the role of an auctioneer was very different from today. They were also estate agents and valuers. Building societies started buying the estate agency side and auctioneering took on a separate roll. Before the advent of modern technology, the auctioneer knew a lot of the buyers and worked a room to get the best prices, but now it is not unusual to sell to just phone and internet bidders.
Chas Townley - Stroud Workhouse: a danger to sick people
Since relinquishing his roles as a social housing manager and a District and Town Councillor for Stroud, Chas has been busy pursuing his other interests in local social history (Rodborough House, Margaret Hills - the secret Suffragist from Stroud, the lives of Stroud servicemen from World War I etc) and public rights to access. Chas began his talk with a brief overview of the Open Spaces Society, for which he was recently appointed a Cotswold champion, before telling us the story of Stroud Workhouse, from its inception through to closure.
The Open Spaces Society began its existence as the Commons Preservation Society in 1865, and as such is the oldest national conservation organisation in the UK. (Its founders included Sir Robert Hunter and Octavia Hill, who, 30 years later, went on to help set up the National Trust). The Society campaigns for, assists and defends local open spaces and rights of way, initially just in London, but now nationwide. Chas’ initial involvement was in saving the common at Sneedhams Green, Gloucester, while his current focus is on recording the forgotten rights of way in and around Stroud before the Government registration deadline of 1st January 2031. According to the Ramblers’ Association there are over 1000 miles of missing paths in the County.
In the second part of his talk Chas turned his attention to the history of Stroud Workhouse, putting its evolution in the context of the changes to the Parish, County and National provision for the poor and infirm. Some Parishes, such as Rodborough, founded workhouses or poor houses after a 1602 edict, which made them responsible for the poor in their communities. Stroud Workhouse began in Silver Street in the early 1700s, but moved to larger purpose built premises on upper Bisley Road around 1840; this was consequent on the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act which nationalised the welfare system and lead to the Poor Law Union for Stroud, which incorporated several Parishes. In the 1851 census the list of the 295 inmates, covering 14 pages, included elderly paupers, unemployed cloth workers and weavers, children and the mentally ill. From the beginning, the regime was harsh and dehumanising with wives, husbands and children separated, belongings confiscated, and draconian rules enforced. The building was extended in 1899, but by the early 1900s, according to the social reformer Charles Booth’s survey of Workhouses and the poor, there were just 128 inmates over the age of 65 with a further 602 receiving welfare relief in the community and a further 50 medical relief, so no longer was support dependent on entering an institution. In the 1930s the National Coalition Governments’ policies were for modern hospital provision alongside that of residential care for older people, and of around 250 Stroud Workhouse inmates, the majority were sick or infirm. The Workhouse was now seen as not fit for its revised purpose, but the proposal to demolish and rebuild in Leonard Stanley was eventually turned down by the County Council. A subsequent plan to simply remodel the existing building was also abandoned after the County Medical Officer declared it unfit for nursing sick people. So the Workhouse was closed at short notice in 1939, with the remaining patients scattered to the four corners of Gloucestershire with no thought to their family ties. Demolition was scheduled, but World War II intervened. After the War the building served as the Museum store before the Council sold it for redevelopment in the 1970s, ironically this lead to its preservation as a residential complex, Stone Manor.
Fiona Warin - the Land Girls
While in the late 1930s Britain was self-sufficient in some staples like milk and potatoes, the country imported half or more of others such as meat and wheat. Overall only 30% of our food was produced domestically. Increased food production was going to be critical in a time of conflict. This could only be achieved by bringing back farmland that had fallen into disuse over fallow times in the previous decade, but with former farm labourers having joined up 10,000 women were now urgently needed to work on the land. In 1941 the Government brought in the National Subscription Act requiring 20-30 year old women to do some war work.
So Fiona set the scene for her highly original presentation in which she took the part of an Officer of the Women’s Land Army, with the audience as prospective recruits hearing about the jobs, the digs, the uniform, pay, and the social life of a Land Girl. Some were selected for a light-hearted interview, all passed and were accepted. Joan, a pacifist, was keen to work on a farm; Doris fancied wearing the uniform, especially the breeches; Patricia, rather well-to-do, thought it might involve just a spot of gardening; Jean liked the idea of working alongside the lumber-Jacks; while Shirley just wanted to do her bit, although just over 17 she could volunteer. While all in the WLA faced pretty hard labour, many found camaraderie, but a few, like Shirley, were abused and treated no better than slaves.
There were three sections to the WLA: agriculture, timber cutting and forage. After a few weeks agricultural training, including how to milk a cow, and gaining a proficiency certificate, the Land Girls were sent to live on farms to begin work which was varied and gruelling, rooting up thistles, clearing ditches, driving awkward tractors, harvesting crops such as potatoes and sugar beet, tending to the livestock, etc. Subsequently it was recognised that larger groups of women could work more effectively on some tasks, for example in clearing a field, so dormitories were set up, each for around 30 Land Girls, and every working day (Monday to Saturday morning) the group set off by charabanc to the allotted farm.
Initially lumber-Jills were involved in less physical tasks, identifying trees that had been specified for felling to make pit props and aeroplane parts, and ensuring the timber was cut to size. Later on in the War, as even lumber-jacks were called up, women also took over their role.
The above precis does little justice to the wealth of humorous content of Fiona’s talk, which she concluded in fine voice with her patriotic rendition of the Women’s Land Army song (with audience participation).
The WLA was finally disbanded in 1950, by when the area of land in cultivation had more than doubled. However, the Land Girls’ contribution to the War effort was then completely forgotten until the 1980s when it was highlighted in a BBC documentary series. Not before time, service medals were awarded in 2008 and memorials to the 240,000 Land Girls and Lumber-Jills from both World Wars were unveiled first in Clochan, Moray in 1912 and then at the National Arboretum, Staffordshire, in 2014.
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| Recruiting poster (WWI) |
John Newton - Restoration of the Cotswold Canals
Just the week before our March talk in Painswick the go ahead was given by Stroud Council for reinstating a waterway along the missing mile at the M5 near Eastington. So it was particularly timely to hear from John Newton about the restoration of the Cotswold Canals. An amazingly ambitious venture firmly placed at the heart of our community that has attracted major funding and already won a host of awards. John is Vice-Chairman of the Cotswold Canals Trust (CCT), one of the key partners involved (besides the Canals and Rivers Trust, Gloucestershire County Council and Stroud District Council). While retiring to Frampton just over 12 years ago, John explained that his enthusiasm was first kindled as a student at Birmingham University and the flames fanned by family holidays on a narrowboat. With a background in Environmental Engineering and management of multi-million pound budgets, he was ideally fitted to also volunteer for the role of Project Director for the current stage of restoration.
John gave us a brief history of our canals and CCT followed by a look back at the first phase of restoration (1a) from the Ocean at Stonehouse through Stroud to Thrupp, which opened in 2018. He then took an overview of the current phase 1b, from Saul Junction to the Ocean, before addressing the many formidable challenges for the future, including funding and the recruitment of volunteer manpower. There are a variety of opportunities to become involved or otherwise lend support.
The Cotswold Canals were constructed in the late 1700’s, the last stages being the connection of the Stroudwater Navigation at Wallbridge to the Thames at Lechlade via the Thames and Severn Canal. Tunnelling through Oolite and Fuller’s Earth for over two miles to create Sapperton tunnel at the summit was a major feat of engineering. After abandonment in the first half of the 20th century the two Canals became derelict. However, after a successful citizens protest in 1972 to stop the Stroudwater being infilled at Ebley the move to recover our local navigation heritage was underway.
While exciting, it is a formidable undertaking in many ways. New sections of canal need to be cut, an underpass at the M5 constructed, a WWII oil pipeline relocated, towpaths upgraded and new edible hedgerows planted, and wildlife, such as rare water voles, protected. (Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust is much involved, for example, creating new wetland diversity near Whitminster). And when complete there is still the upkeep, especially continual dredging of the Navigation to remove silt brought down the Valleys. Immense financial support is needed for all this; for example, considering the 57 locks along the waterway alone, the cost for restoration approaches £0.5M each. For Phase 1b a successful Heritage Lottery bid brought in £10M matched by an equivalent contribution by the four partners; their mission statement ‘for people and for nature’. The local monetary input is then readily justified by the transformation of the environment, the advantages to our health and wellbeing, and the consequent £250M inward investment forecast through tourism etc. Iconic kingfishers and otters are now flourishing along the restored sections.
John ended his excellent account by mentioning the potential for a water transfer scheme from the Severn to the Thames using the Canals. If adopted, rather than a proposed pipeline, funding might then be assured for the complete restoration with major benefits to our communities and ecology along the route.
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| 1a The restored Navigation at Ebley |
Gareth Williams - Edward Jenner: a man who changed the face of the World
Gareth is now Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Bristol and Chair of the Jenner Trust. He originally trained in both Medicine and Pharmacology, and amongst his many publications is the book ‘Angel of Death: the Story of Smallpox’, which, a few years ago, was shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize. So our speaker was ideally qualified to treat us to an absorbing story of Edward Jenner and the genesis of immunisation.
Jenner was born nearby in Berkeley in 1749, and, apart from time away for education, spent his life in the Village. Sent away to boarding school, he was subjected to variolation as there was an outbreak of the dreaded smallpox near his School. At that time there was a one in four chance of dying from the disease, and those that survived were often left badly scarred. Variolation was itself an early form of immunisation, though since it involved scratching the skin with a needle dipped in smallpox puss, could prove fatal. However, it reduced the chance of dying to just one in fifty. The technique was introduced to England in the 1720s, originally advocated by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British Ambassador in Constantinople, who had observed it there. Though the process she had seen was very quick, Jenner’s treatment as a boy was more severe, being subjected to blood letting with leeches and purgatives for a few weeks prior to inoculation. A traumatic and debilitating experience that Jenner never forgot.
Having survived School though, Jenner went to Chipping Sodbury as a medical apprentice, and thence to St George’s Hospital, London, spending two-and-a-half years under the tutelage of John Hunter FRS, Surgeon Extraordinary to King George III. Finally he returned to Berkeley as a gentleman physician, and, not requiring to earn his keep, could indulge his passion for enquiring into the scientific background to medicine, besides other pursuits (as a bon viveur, musician and ‘bad’ poet). Without the need to further his medical career and with his diverse interests, he was slow to follow up his medical theories, despite continued encouragement from his mentor, Hunter. So his admission to the Royal Society came out of a non-medical paper he submitted concerning the methods used by cuckoo chicks to rid their host’s nest of eggs and nestlings. Finally though, some thirty years after noting that milkmaids infected with cowpox never succumbed to smallpox (a common folk understanding), he carried out a salient experiment (though nowadays we would find it unethical). He inoculated his gardener’s son, James Phipps, with the juice from a cowpox blister (donated by Sarah Nelmes who had contracted the disease from Blossom the cow). Some weeks later Jenner inoculated James with smallpox puss and the lad proved completely immune. After further validation Jenner submitted his findings to the Royal Society, only to have his paper rejected. He resorted to publishing privately in 1798 ‘An inquiry into the causes and effects of the cowpox’. The pamphlet was an instant sensation, and vaccination against smallpox was soon taken up globally. By 1806 Thomas Jefferson could confidently predict that ‘Future generations will know by history only that the loathsome smallpox has existed’. Nonetheless, it was 1975 before the WHO could announce that the disease had been eradicated after their final 20 year programme.
There is insufficient space for all the fascinating details that our speaker presented, but much of these can be gleaned at the Jenner Museum, a building that, in his concluding remarks, Gareth suggested should be a World Heritage site.
Photo credit: Edward Jenner vaccinating a boy Oil painting by E-E Hillemacher 1884, Wellcome Library, London. Link to licence
Stuart Butler - The Radical History of Stroud and the Five Valleys in the 18th and 19th C
Stuart stepped in at short notice to give his presentation, which had been postponed from December 2023. A man of many interests as a local historian that, following detailed research, he has developed into guided walks, for example about Blackbeard the Pirate whose grandfather was curate at St Cyr’s Church, Stonehouse, and talks.
For the afternoon’s presentation Stuart introduced us to a variety of local history at odds with the ‘Moral Economy’, the foundation for the protests in our area, interspersing his interpretation of events with readings from contemporary writers. He began by reminding us of the inextricable links amongst the Clothiers, Stroud Scarlet (military uniform) [and Uley Blue and Berkeley Yellow], the East India Company and the iniquities of enslavement and the opium trade in the 18th and 19th centuries. Stuart then took us through a timeline of unrest during this period in the Five Valleys, consequent upon pitiful wages, unemployment and starvation for the mill and agricultural workers. ‘The people are so oppressed…’ (Col. Wolfe 1756). Stuart highlighted the key visit to Chalford and Nailsworth by the radical John Thelwall, ‘the most dangerous man in England’, an ardent reformist and supporter of the workers. Nonetheless, hard times persisted for decades and protests continued over wages and eventually the right to vote. Gloucestershire was high on the list for the numbers sentenced to transportation during this time.
A fascinating account with a wealth of absorbing, if sometimes disturbing, historical information. Clicking on this link will take you to the revealing Radical Stroud website and some of Stuart’s related musings.
While the Gloucester Orchard Group was formed 40 years ago, it transformed into a Charitable Trust some 30 years later. GOT now has around 250 volunteers who work variously on their own orchards, support other orchard owners, maintain the Gloucester fruit collection and provide training in orchard care.
The Trust owns three traditional orchards; the one near Brockworth is devoted entirely to Perry pears, the other two are at Longney, and adjacent are two new orchards with 300 trees and 85 apple varieties, constituting the Gloucestershire apple collection. David lauded Gloucestershire County Council who have given the Trust around 800 trees over the last two years which have now been planted in some 80 orchards.
Of the 2500 varieties of UK apple 5% originated in Gloucestershire, though 50 of these such as Beeches Green, Rissington Redstreak and Haywood Kernel are now extinct. Two each of the surviving heritage varieties, with wonderful appellations such as Ashmeads Kernel, Dymock Red, Foxwhelp, Hens Turd, Leathercote, Lodgemore Nonpareil, Pedington Brandy and Yellow Willy, are planted in the GOT Longney orchards. New varieties such as the cider apple Kempley Red are also represented. Though some are excellent eaters or cider makers, like Foxwhelp, others such as Longney Russet are at best nondescript. David pointed out that Shakespeare was aware of the Leathercote apple, referencing it in Henry IV part II as an indicator of setting the scene in Gloucestershire, so it must have been renowned across the land.
David was also keen to emphasise the wider value of traditional orchards for our environment, especially when appropriately managed with trees planted in grazed pasture to encourage wild flowers, organically grown, and allowed to decay as nature intended. Standing in a traditional orchard you will see the plethora of pollinators and other insects, hear the birdsong, maybe spot an owl or muntjac, and certainly benefit from green therapy.
David has his own small cider making concern, the Cotswold Fruit Company, whose website Bushel+Peck has oodles of information on orchards, apple varieties and biodiversity gain. After his presentation he treated us to tastings of some of his latest cider (the Privateer was very tasty), perry and apple juice; truly delishus, if quite potent 😵💫, which might account for the particularly lively subsequent socialising.
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| Blandford cider orchards, Dymock |
From 1970 Nick was Editor for ‘the Victoria History of Gloucestershire’ and was responsible for five volumes covering Gloucester City, the Forest of Dean, and Stroud and the Five Valleys. He also contributed numerous village, parish and town histories. In retirement Nick has continued to satisfy his enthusiasm for Gloucestershire history, researching and publishing a variety of local projects. We were fortunate to benefit from his further endeavours as he took us on his Georgian road-trip of the county.
He began by describing the ancient pattern of high exposed ridgeways, deeply-banked lanes through the clay Vales, and sunken ways worn deep into the limestone of Cotswold hillsides that road travellers would encounter in the early part of the Georgian period. At that time the routes were designed particularly for packhorses, so sometimes quite narrow, while some were drove roads and wider, all though usually unsurfaced and frequently steeply sloped. John Ogilvy’s 1675 Road atlas, Britannia, showed just five major routes in Gloucestershire, but these tended to bypass our major towns to avoid delays. Stagecoach travel was awkward and slow, for example it took three days to get to London in wintertime, with some roads impassable in bad weather. In the absence of signposts trees often formed waymarks, elm trees in the lower vales (Mauds Elm outside Cheltenham) and ash higher on the Cotswolds.
Nick went on to trace the improvement of the roads from the 1720s carried out under the Turnpike Trusts, a system that was at first slow to achieve results, hampered by parochialism and administrative inexperience, but eventually revolutionised the state of the roads. Now road maintenance, rather than being the responsibility of the Parish, was taken over by designated gentry and tradesmen who were empowered to borrow large sums to effect improvements and subsequently levy tolls. New routes of wider statutory width were forged, now more easily traversed as they followed valley bottoms and with appropriate bridges (many still used such as the bridge over the Thames at Lechlade) and by the mid 1750s connecting the market towns such as Cheltenham, Cirencester and Stroud. At the end of the 18th century there was then a network of professionally-engineered roads (John MacAdam worked as a travelling consultant) in the locale, enabling the towns to better fulfil their economic and social roles in the county.
The Turnpike era came to an end in the late 19th century when local authorities took over. Nick concluded by showing extant reminders of the period, including various Tollhouses; that at Butter Row in Stroud, built in 1825, still has its charges board with the rate of 3p for a horse drawing a coach, but 1s for a carriage propelled by mechanical means (at that time a traction engine).
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| Poolway Tollhouse, Coleford, in the last days of the Turnpikes |
Kathy Meakin - Nature Conservation
Kathy first highlighted the ever increasing threats faced by Nature from climate change, new housing estates, food production and so on. On a more positive note she then mentioned the 2021 global review by Prof. Sir Partha Dasgupta on the Economics of Biodiversity, which emphasised the value of Nature to the country’s economy, our livelihood and wellbeing. Conservation on its own is not sufficient, it is essential to recover some of what has been lost. The ambitious legislation enshrined in the 2021 Environment Act looks for a national-landscape-scale Nature recovery network. Developers are now required to demonstrate a 10% biodiversity net gain for new estates, and sustainable farming is incentivised. Locally the Cotswold National Landscape has been set up to deliver nature recovery, for example creating a wetlands mosaic in the Severn Vale as part of the Eelscapes project and supporting the Northeast Cotswold farm cluster to extend chalk grassland corridors, which takes advantage of virtual fencing to aid conservation grazing.
Kathy then gave an account of wilding initiatives, highlighting Knepp Estate in West Sussex. She stressed that success was dependent on the key role of natural ecosystem engineers, especially bovines, which had been transforming the landscape since the Neolithic period. European wild bison are even set to be reintroduced in Kent to control the woodland ecosystem. Kathy went further to extol the virtues of small-scale, regenerative agriculture, which heralds the end of chemical-based farming (the pre-wilding, unsustainable status quo at Knepp), and will result in much improved, absorptive soil with higher productivity. In conclusion, Kathy urged a holistic view for the sake of the environment, Nature and our planet.
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| from Rodborough Common (connected chalk grasslands) to the Severn Vale (Eelscapes and wetland mosaics) |