My pilgrimage started
in those dirty days of late winter,
When the wretched
rain fell incessantly,
It was just as damp
as ‘Bleak House’:
It dripped through
the branches in Rodborough Churchyard,
It dripped through
the branches of the yew trees
In St Lawrence’s in Stroud,
And slid down the ‘No
Drinking in the Street’ sign
Outside the Park in the Slad Road.
But puddles reflected
sunlight gleams the next day,
As I pedalled through
snowdrops and birdsong,
To the two war
memorials in Woodchester;
And a week later,
February crocuses bloomed
In the fields beyond Fretherne Churchyard,
While storm clouds
from the Somme
Gathered over the
Severn,
Just where Ivor
Gurney plied his boat.
Next on the list was
a bus trip to Stroud Hospital,
To take a picture of
the 1919 Peace Wing,
On a hailstorm-sunshine-rainbow
sort of day,
Before taking the
railway to Stonehouse,
And a warm March day
walk to Lower Mills,
Where I caught the
number 14 bus to Stroud,
Whose delightful
driver, Steve Burrows,
Allowed me to alight at
Leonard Stanley,
Kings Stanley and then Selsley,
To take quick
memorial photographs,
Much to the delight
of my fellow passengers,
On a Magical Mystery
Tour sort of trip:
‘Tell that man he’s
left his bag.’
‘Don’t worry’ he’s
getting back on again.’
Sunday March the 9th
was a gleaming spring day,
So I bicycled past
umpteen old cloth mills,
River liquid light
all along my way,
To Nailsworth, Avening, Minchinhampton and Amberley,
With long barrows and
a standing stone for company;
How lucky we are to
live where we live!
I sang all the way
home:
‘Why, oh why, oh why,
oh why, would you rather be anywhere else?’
I biked around Cainscross on the following Friday,
Taking in St Matthews
Church
(My grandparents were
married here on August 22nd 1914,
Before Gramp went off
to join up)
And Victory Park,
Then into a blossom
blown cut grass wind,
As I went past the
locks and sluice gates of the canal,
To Eastington’s churchyard memorial and
village hall,
Then Frocester’s memorial at the cross roads,
Before photographing
war graves in St Swithins,
July 1918, 1919 and
1920,
Deaths just before
and then after the Armistice:
Glimpse the pity of
war at Leonard Stanley.
An equinoctial bike
ride took me to BrImscombe,
Whose memorial is
tucked in by the busy A419,
And then along the
primrose path to the old signal box,
Down at St Mary’s,
Chalford,
One of the few
staffed level crossings left:
‘You must have the
best job in the country.’
‘Thank - you. I think
so too.
Time has been kinder
here than in most places.’
I then photographed
the Chalford crucifix memorial,
A traditional mythopoeic
setting at a crossroads,
But on returning to
Stroud, storm clouds gathered,
So I caught an
afternoon number 93 to Whiteshill,
Where the scaffolded
memorial stands at a crossroads,
Just up from the
churchyard,
Where two gravestones
caught my eye:
205519 Gunner A.
Perry, Royal Field Artillery,
18th
February 1917, Ubique Quo Fas et Gloria Ducunt
(Where Right and
Glory Lead),
And
In Loving Memory of
Alfred,
Beloved Husband of Ada
Louisa Berry,
Who died February 18th
1917 aged 32 years,
Peace Perfect Peace.
This juxtaposition of
state and family, love and duty,
Haunted me as I
descended by an old track
To Salmon Springs and
thence into town,
With Wilfred Owen’s
line following me in the wind:
‘We only know war
lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy’;
I trudged home, wet,
weary and cold:
‘And
in his eyes
The
cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In
different skies.’
The next day, we went
over to the other side of the river,
Into the ever
changing sky-scape of the Dean,
To look at the Dymock Poets’ exhibition in the church
(Where we had tea and
cake, whilst the choir rehearsed
For their Great War evening
concert: ‘Before Action’),
And Kempley’s war memorial beneath a
medieval wall painting,
Before visiting the
house of Lascelles Abercombie,
The homes of Robert
Frost and Edward Thomas,
With the Malverns,
May Hill and the Cotswolds,
All around us in a
big sky silver grey cyclorama,
Thinking of Thomas’
poem, ‘For These’,
Written after passing
doctor’s orders and enlisting,
On the day my mum was
born, 14.7.15,
And some of Thomas’
reasons for joining up:
‘A house that shall
love me as I love it,
Well hedged and
honoured by a few ash trees…
A garden I need never
go beyond…
A spring, a brook’s
bend or at least a pond.’
With these words
still fresh in my mind,
I got up early the
next day, before the cars woke up,
To take a Cider with
Rosie ride to Sunday Slad,
Wild garlic was
blooming by the side of a spring,
Before I reached the
memorial below Bull’s Cross,
I bicycled on past
Longridge and Windyridge,
Up hill and down dale
to Sheepscombe’s crossroads,
While a parliament of
rooks reassured us that winter had indeed ended,
As I passed Damsells
Cross and Washwell Farm,
Before descending to Painswick’s yew tree churchyard,
Just as a hailstorm
came in from No Man’s Land.
A train to
Gloucester, and a bus to Quedgeley,
Took me to St.
James’ and its memorial,
Then the next day
I explored All Saints Church,
As the wind blew me east, walking through
Stroud,
To find a memorial inside the church in Uplands,
A single candle and a wreath sufficient for
solemnity;
The number 46 bus and a walk through
Shortwood,
Tickmorend and Downend took me to Horsley,
(A memorial just by the church, the bus stop
and the school),
Before descending through Ruskin Mill’s
sluice-scape,
A heron pointing my way back to Nailsworth and
the bus,
Just before the rain came in, on a mid-day
westerly breeze.
Next, we were
out for a walk on Mothering Sunday,
Through
violets, forget me nots, nesting rooks,
And an
awakening slowworm in Toadsmoor,
To see Bisley's crossroads memorial,
Lunchtime
drinkers at the Stirrup Cup,
Enjoying the
sunshine,
Almost in
reading range of the names of the fallen,
Watching me,
watching them:
‘I’ve seen ‘em,
I’ve seen ‘em, hangin’ on the old barbed wire,
I’ve seen ‘em,
I’ve seen ‘em, hangin’ on the old barbed wire.’
A few days
later, I caught the bus up to high hill Eastcombe,
Crawling up
past old mills, races and ponds again,
With blackthorn
and horse chestnut candles
To light my way
to the churchyard memorial;
‘I’ve seen ‘em,
I’ve seen ‘em, hangin’ on the old barbed wire,
I’ve seen ‘em,
I’ve seen ‘em, hangin’ on the old barbed wire.’
My next trip
meant the number 35 bus on the 9th of April,
A two pound
forty single delight,
Gazing at the
wood anemone by the roadside,
A palimpsest of
ancient woodland by this main road,
Traveling by
bus on what was once a prehistoric track,
That once made
its way under a gloomy canopy,
But now
tarmacadam speeds south of the Cotswold scarp -
But I was on my
way to Nympsfield’s war memorial,
Just by the
shadowed wall of the Old Chapel,
A crucifix,
refashioned from one found on the Somme,
And brought
back to this Catholic village in 1917;
I walked to
Nailsworth along Tinkley Lane,
Past the
rhythmic turbine, friend and ally of the wind,
Not worried
about poison gas beneath the cotton wool clouds.
I had a blood
test the following morning,
And doing my
best to be a brave soldier by not fainting,
(What would
those names on these memorials have thought of me?)
I eventually
caught the 230 to Randwick,
£1.50 to be
transported along Foxmoor Lane,
Up through
Westrip to the crossroad war memorial,
A tree blossom
green meadow Cotswold panorama,
And then down
to Cainscross along mossy footpaths,
To collect my
bike from the timeless Cainscross bike shop,
To cycle along
the canal like an Edwardian Mr. Polly,
All under a
blue sky Rupert Brooke English heaven.
On the Friday,
I caught the number 54,
Three quid one
way to Sapperton,
To view the
memorial at the parish church of Saint Kenelm,
A memorial for
both Sapperton and Frampton Mansell
(Where my dad
lived at the end of the Great War);
I dropped down to
the Thames and Severn canal tunnel,
To see the
River Frome reappear after its dry hiding,
Turbid at
first, but quickly limpid and laughing,
A perfect
companion for me, and the heron
That acted as a
numinous guide through the valley,
Past marsh
marigold mouldering locks,
Then anemone and
bluebell woodland,
Until I
ascended to the Oakridge water trough
memorial
(‘Proud of the war all glorious went the son.
Loathing the war all mournful went the
mother.
Each had the same wage when the day was done.
Tell me was either braver than the other.’).
My path then went across fields and past
springs,
To reach St. John the Baptist in France
Lynch,
With its memorial inside the church,
And a gravestone for Private Gardiner,
Died 25th October 1918, aged 18:
It is impossible not to have your heartstrings
pulled,
When reading these bald statements in an
English churchyard,
On an English spring day, under an English
heaven,
So young, and so close to the end,
The remorseless pity of war…
I descended by weavers’ and packhorse tracks,
To reach Chalford and the canal again,
With the Great Western Railway above me,
The ghosts of Tommy Atkins at the carriage
windows,
With clouds waving their handkerchief
goodbyes.
The next day was chilly with light the colour
of pewter,
But a meeting in Stroud Library led me to the
memorial
In Bedford Street Congregational Chapel,
A bit of old Stroud right there in the centre
of town:
A good cup of good strong tea for only 80p,
An old sweet jar for old postage stamps
‘For the Leprosy Appeal’,
Marmalade for only £1.50,
And a tour of the chapel to see the wall
memorial:
‘We used to have congregations of 200, but
it’s only 25 now,
And I’m the youngest’;
It was too dark to photograph today,
So we leave that for a bright window light occasion,
As we will Ruscombe Congregational Chapel,
Having been given a contact telephone number
By the welcoming hosts in the tearoom;
So, on a sunny Palm Sunday,
I watched a tractor ploughing a large brown earth field,
With gulls gathering in its wake,
Edward Thomas again flitting through my mind:
‘“Have many gone
From here?” “Yes.” “Many lost?”
“Yes; a good few.
Only two teams work on the farm this year.
One of my mates is dead. The second day
In France they killed him…”
I watched the clods tumble and topple over
After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.’
I saw another giant ploughed-earth field the next day,
Clouds tumbling and toppling over,
After taking the 93 to Edge on a day rider:
There is, seemingly, I thought,
No memorial to see in the village,
(The church door was locked)
But it is not a blessed village,
For there is a family tribute to Major Garnegy in the churchyard,
‘He gallantly fell in action on the 3rd July 1916 in his 41st
year.’
“There is but one task for all,
And each one life to give,
Who stands if freedom fall
Who dies if England live”.
“He being dead yet speaketh.”
I tripped down the lane to Painswick,
Past bluebells, violets and lady’s smock,
To snap what must be a unique juxtaposition,
A stained glass window
‘dedicated to the glory of God & in honour of the men of Painswick
who served their king and country in the Great War’,
The gift of George Cox AD1925,
Just opposite some Puritan graffiti from 1644,
Etched by Richard Foot, enemy of his king,
A prisoner of the Royalists during the siege of the church,
A line derived from Edmund Spenser’s ‘Faery Queen’,
That could serve as wise counsel for a soldier in any war:
‘Be bolde, Be bolde…be not too bold.’
I looked at the preparations for Easter:
The iconography of the crucifix, sacrifice and resurrection,
And reflected on the iconography of so many war memorials,
So interlinked with Christian symbolism in so many conscious and
subliminal ways,
What succour this must have been for so many a century or so ago,
In a land of Christian belief and at a time both spiritual and
spiritualist,
When table tapping, séances and mediums,
Electricity and the ether might all lead to the other side.
A visit to Pitchcombe on the number 46 confirmed this.
The village stretches in a semi-circle along a suntrap valley,
But with an old orchard in full bloom for company,
I couldn’t see the church, until helpful instruction:
‘Turn left after the mill pond.’
The memorial stood in bright sunlight
Just behind a thorn entwined crucifix
(Like so much barbed wire),
Down in the shadow, just by the church gate.
I paid my respects and then walked back down the lane,
To chat with a builder, who talked of newcomers,
And how they don’t know what these cottages used to be like,
No piped water, outside privies, no electricity, even in the 60s.
I said I had to get the bus back to Stroud,
He said I should have walked straight down the main road,
It would have been a darn sight quicker,
I said I would have missed his chat then.
I asked him if he thought there might be a memorial inside the church
at Edge,
‘It’s a funny thing. I used to think there was something down on the
village green.
But there’s nothing there now.
I was born in Edge.
There’s a memorial to my Uncle Jack in the church.
He went down with the Eagle in 1941. Torpedoed.’
We bade farewell as I took the road less taken,
And so to the bus stop.
A car stopped – ‘I’m going to Stroud if you want a lift.’
An elderly gentleman opened the door -
‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less travelled,
And that has made all the difference.’
The Church of the Holy Trinity in Stroud made a
difference too,
Here there is a mural on one wall:
‘He holdeth our souls in life’,
‘To the glory of God and in memory of the men of the Thrupp
who gave their lives serving the king in the years of our Lord
1914-1919’,
‘Greater love hath no man than this that a man lays down his life for
his friend’.
These words lie above and below a fetching and surprising picture -
A curly, golden haired David, sling by his side,
Readying himself for Goliath and the Philistine army in the background
-
With the names of the fallen on each side of this allegorical representation.
Opposite this mural is a marble tablet,
‘To the glory of God and in honoured memory’,
Beneath which is a long list of names of the men
‘Of this parish who gave their lives by sea and land
in the cause of justice and honour in the Great War 1914-1919
This tablet is erected by their proud and sorrowing fellow
parishioners.’
The afternoon was strange and full of fretful foreshadowing:
The Guardian’s main obituary was for a historian of congregational
churches,
And a woman at the bus stop travelling to Gloucester Hospital,
With hot cross buns for the nurses,
Told me how wonderful they had been,
But ‘ They couldn’t do anymore for her husband’;
I offered her my sympathies
Before making my way to Ruscombe Congregational Church,
To photograph the Ruscombe Chapel Roll of Honour,
‘For King and Country,
‘Brethren Pray For Us.’
Audrey and her colleagues were giving the church a spring clean,
All ready for Easter;
‘Sometimes we’ve had congregations of five,’ she said,
But Audrey was so jolly as I used my I-pad:
‘I was a typist for 33 years but never touched a computer’;
She’d also been a taxi driver and offered to drive me back to Stroud,
But I wanted to explore the old weavers’ tracks,
So I took her photograph as a memento to send to an emigrant friend,
Said my thanks and descended back to Stroud,
Feeling humbled by the way complete strangers
Have welcomed me into their lives,
Whilst on this pilgrimage of Stroud Valley Tales.
This continued on a chilly Easter Saturday:
Ann Simmons was waiting for me at St John the Baptist at Edge,
Ready to dress the church with flowers,
She showed me the memorial and the roll of honour:
‘In Grateful Memory of the Men of Edge and Stockend
Who Gave Their Lives for their Country in the Great War 1914-1919
This Tablet Erected by their Relations and Friends’,
“They loved not their lives unto the death’,
Ann took my picture for the parish magazine,
Then drove me to Painswick,
So that I could catch the bus back to Stroud,
To catch a glance of cowslips lightening the greenery of April.
I went back to Bedford Street Congregational Church
A damp week later, lilac now in bloom, trees in full leaf,
For another jar of their excellent marmalade,
Only £1.50,
And to photograph the memorial in the vastness of the church:
“In Sacred Memory of the Men who gave their Lives in the Great War
1914-1919’,
Names are listed within a cross, centrepiece; rosettes in the corners;
Then, right and left, on folding panel doors:
‘The Following Also Served’,
With two long lists of names beneath the rubric,
One of the names of the fallen stood out in the gloom,
That of HS Park (killed in France, October 1917);
It was Herbert’s father, Sidney, who gave
Park Gardens, on the Slad Road, 10 years later,
In October 1927,
‘To the Town of Stroud for Use as Pleasure Gardens’;
It felt necessary to make my way home via that spot,
And say a silent thank you.
I thought my pilgrimage was close to its end,
But the next day in Mills Café:
‘Have you seen the screen in St. Albans? We saved it.”
‘There’ll always be another one,’ I said.
‘There’ll always be another one,’ she said.
So the delightfully named Reverend Simon Topping met me at St.
Albans,
A 1916 Anglican church, now shared with a Methodist congregation,
And told me of the Arts and Crafts influences on the building,
Before showing me the Rood screen,
With small brass commemorations behind:
‘To The Glory Of God
and in memory of
Eccles James Carter Lieut.RN
Who went down in HMS Pathfinder
September 5th 1914
These Chancel Gates were given by Lieut. John Francis Williams
His friend who himself went down
In HMS Russell April 27th 1916’;
Then on the left hand pillar:
‘To The Glory Of God
and in memory of
Eccles James Carter Lieut. RN
Who went down in HMS Pathfinder
September 5th 1914
This Screen Was Erected By His Mother.’
The odyssey was over, it seemed,
But then Simon looked at me and asked,
‘Have you been to Cashes Green
Chapel yet?’
Two days later, we continued a walk tracking the River Frome,
I photographed a war grave in Edgeworth churchyard:
‘16309 Private SA Stephens, Gloucestershire Regiment,
19th May 1916 aged 28’
And then on May Day when nattering on the way to Bulls Cross,
Becky Thomas mentioned that her family came from Edgeworth,
And that her great-uncle Stephens
‘Is in the churchyard, he was killed in the First World War.’
This was a coincidence worthy of a Thomas Hardy,
But Beck’s tales grew even more interesting:
‘The other side of my family came from Woodchester.
You know the Woodchester memorial up by the Ram.
Both my grand-father and great-uncle lied about their ages.
They were sixteen and seventeen.
After my great-uncle was killed, my great-grandmother wrote to the War
Office:
“I’ve lost one of my under-age sons. I want the other one back.”
Her son never forgave her, even thirty years later,
When in the home guard on Selsley Common.’
A few days later, I had to visit Slad again,
On a Cider with Rosie Great War mission,
The sun went behind the clouds
As I scribbled down the names from the memorial,
Before biking down to the parish church,
Past the artists outside Holy Trinity,
To photograph the colourful but doleful and ornate
Roll of Honour:
Private Edward
Hogg 1st Glosters Died of Wounds May 1914
Private Harry
Hogg South Wales Borderers
Drowned April 16th 1915
Private Albert
Geo. Wm. Brown 8th Glosters Killed in action July 5thth
1916
Private Frederick
Jesse Fern 6th Glosters Killed in action Sept 4th
1915
Private Lionel
Douglas Jack Brown 2nd Worcesters Killed in action Nov 5th
1916
2nd
Lieut D. Douglas Leicester 12th Bn. Gloucester Reg. Killed
in action May 8th 1917
May they rest in
Peace & awake to a Joyful Resurrection
So, only Cashes Green Church remained,
I biked there
after work, Simon Topping opened the door,
I photographed
the three brass memorial tablets,
Of the roll of
honour,
All lovingly
polished and shining brilliantly,
In this red
brick roadside 1901 chapel in Etheldene Road,
So cherished and
nurtured and new,
When those
deaths so soon occurred.
I talked with
Simon of all the friends made on this pilgrimage,
Of how I would
be speaking in Edge Church at their November 9th service,
Of how welcoming
and interested so many people have been, are,
And will be - we
wondered if this really would be the last one,
But for the
moment, I bicycled home along the canal,
May 19th,
the sun hot and high in the sky,
The ground hard
-earthed, cracked and dry,
Voices gently
singing with the wind,
‘We’re here
because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here,
We’re here
because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.’
I now conclude (until the next undiscovered one)
By finishing the
lines from Edward Thomas,
Lines from As
the team’s head-brass,
From a month
ago, on the way to Edge:
‘”… ‘It was back
in March,
The very night
of the blizzard, too. Now if
He had stayed
here we should have moved the tree.’
‘And I should
not have sat here. Everything
Would have been
different. For it would have been
Another world.’
‘Ay, and a better, though
If we could see
all all might seem good,’ Then
The lovers came
out of the wood again:
The horses
started and for the last time
I watched the
clods crumble and topple over
After the
ploughshare and the stumbling team.”
‘
‘
