Category Archives: Scrapbook

Edward Thomas writing about the state of the land and rights of access

southcountryEdward Thomas writing about the state of the land and rights of access taken from ‘The South Country’ (1906).

You can buy a lovely edition of the book from Little Toller here – http://littletoller.co.uk/bookshop/nature-classics/the-south-country/ or see a digital version here – https://archive.org/stream/southcountry00thomuoft/southcountry00thomuoft_djvu.txt

CHAPTER XVI

255-7 THE END OF SUMMER KENT BERKSHIRE — HAMPSHIRE SUSSEX THE FAIR

The road mounts the low Downs again. The bound-less stubble is streaked by long bands of purple-brown, the work of seven ploughs to which the teams and their carters, riding or walking, are now slowly descending by different ways over the slopes and jingling in the rain. Above is a Druid moor bounded by beech-clumps, and crossed by old sunken ways and broad grassy tracks. It is a land of moles and sheep. Continue reading →

Private Eye piece on land and housing in the Cotswolds

Remember, we don’t have a ‘housing crisis’, we have a distribution of land and housing crisis.

private eye cirencester

 

Private Eye

No. 1384 23 January — 5 Feb 2015

FINE AND GRANDEE

LAST month Cotswold district council (CDC) published its long-overdue local housing plan. Four years late, the draft was put together with the help of external planning consultants, costing the Tory council £321,594.

It reveals that the district’s entire housing shortfall will be resolved by building 2,350 homes on 300 acres of grade II arable land on the edge of Cirencester, owned by local Tory grandee the 9th Earl Bathurst (“Allen” to his chums). Allen owns 15,500 acres in total, so is unlikely to miss a few hundred. With planning permissions expected to be a mere formality from the Tory council, a multi-million-pound windfall beckons.

This plan to expand the area of Cirencester by 43 percent has not been greeted with universal delight by the citizenry. With accusations of Tory cronyism being bandied about, it was timely that the local Conservative Association abolished Allen’s role as honorary president in October.

When Lib Dem opposition councillors revealed that council leader Lynden Stowe had met the earl on six occasions before publication of the local plan, Allen told the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard loftily: “It is not as if I am going for dinner with Lynden Stowe every night of the week.”

Perish the thought. Far too oiky!

Origin of the phrase ‘piss poor’ and other historical trivia

A comical and interesting snap shot of some historical facts and trivia…

“They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & Sold to the tannery…….if you had to do this to survive you were ‘Piss Poor’

But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot……they “didn’t have a pot to piss in” & were the lowest of the low”

See more at http://www.thisblewmymind.com/origin-piss-poor-popular-sayings/

Ask the Fellows That Cut the Hay (60 mins)

fellows-hayIn this BBC Archive On Four, historian Alan Dein celebrates the centenary of his mentor George Ewart Evans, collector of Suffolk farming tales. Evans began by chatting to his neighbours over the fireside in the 1950’s and transcribing stories about poaching, shepherding, smuggling and ditching.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rv8yk

The talk was of a hardscrabble life, of leaky roofs and meals of pea soup and pollard dumplings and beef only at Christmas with occasional festivities like the Whitsun fair.

Evans came from a Welsh mining village and he sympathised with the labourers’ stories about the tyranny of the trinity of the parson, squire and farmer. He was a sympathetic listener who asked allowed his community to speak for itself and he captured the stories of people whose traditions had been unbroken for generations, who worked on the land before mechanisation and who believed in magic and folk wisdom and had intuitive understanding of working with animals.

Evans’ eleven books about the working lives and folk stories of Blaxhall are a portrait of every facet of his village and paved the way for books and programmes, both fiction and not fiction, about British agricultural life.

Fields of Gold (20 mins)

Short documentary about EU farming subisidies (CAP payments) and how they are being abused by large companies to force small farmers out of business.

The website is an amazing resource – http://farmsubsidy.openspending.org/

Fields of Gold: Lifting the Veil on Europe’s Farm Subsidies from farmsubsidy.org on Vimeo.

John Ball and the Peasants’ Revolt (60 mins)

braggBBC Radio 4 hour long documentary by Melvyn Bragg on John Ball and the Peasants’ Revolt – connecting it with the English Civil War, the Diggers, the Levellers, and Blake’s words which became the song ‘Jerusalem’.

This has now been successfully cleansed from the internet so lucky I took my own backup of it to share with you here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04d8khr/melvyn-braggs-radical-lives-1-now-is-the-time-john-ball

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/voices/voices_reading_revolt.shtml

Books on Peterborough and The Fens

pboroHere are the books which Hazel Perry brought along to the workshops localising the show for Peterborough…

Free Thinkers and Troublemakers: Fenland Dissenters / Harry Jones / Published by the Wisbech Society & Preservation Trust / ISBN 0951922076

Peterborough: A Story of City and Country, People and Places / (Peterborough City Council, published by Pitkin) / ISBN 1-84165-050-1

From Punt to Plough: A History of the Fens / Rex Sly / The History Press / ISBN 978-0-7509-3398-8

Peterborough (Britain In Photographs) / Lisa Sargood / Budding Books / ISB 1-84015-247-8

Peterborough Through Time (A Second Selection) / June and Vernon Bull / ISBN 978-1-84868-990-9

The Lost Fens / England’s Greatest Ecological Disaster / Ian D Rotherham / ISBN 978-0-7524-8699-4

Peterborough / HF Tebbs / ISBN 0900891300