Scroll down or click on the jump links below to read a short review of each of our recent 2024-25 talks.
- An Aerial Journey through the Cotswolds
- The History of Rodborough Common
- The Stonehouse Community Arboretum
- Roman Finds in Gloucestershire
- The Stroudwater History Archive
- Class Act Jazz Quartet
- A Monstrous Commotion: the Mysteries of Loch Ness
- Tales from the Potting Shed: the folklore of plants, trees and flowers
- A Gloucestershire Odyssey: the County’s History and Traditions
Kate Peake - An Aerial Journey through the Cotswolds
Kate returned to inaugurate our year’s lecture series once more. Now Chair of the Tewkesbury Movie Making Club, Kate has been creating short films with a local focus for almost a decade and in this time, justifiably, has won various awards. Now, as a registered drone pilot, she can take her camera to the skies, and so was able to show our familiar Cotswold landscape from a completely different perspective. In a series of superb short films and accompanying stories about the places en route, Kate took us from Chipping Campden to Painswick, following the Cotswold Way, via Stanway, Stanton, Hailes Abbey, Winchcombe, Belas Knap, Cleve Hill and Painswick Beacon. In taking us over the Air Balloon pub (now demolished) and the associated A417 Missing Link extension she demonstrated yet again the value of her craft in recording local history. Alongside, Angela, Kate’s Mum, provided a display of photographs of the various locations together with some beautiful cards, which were on offer.
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| Broadway Tower |
Sharon Gardham - The History of Rodborough Common
Having just completed the research for her doctorate on Rodborough Common, Sharon gave us an overview of the outcomes, which will form the main body of her thesis. She began though by reminding us of the aims and objectives of Stroud Valleys Project, for which she is an Officer, responsible for their Garden Guardians project and for leading various guided walks. The most recent of the latter, just a few weeks previously, involved a search of the Common for the last vestiges of medieval Custom Wood. Sharon told us something of that in her talk and much more about the history of the Common and the changes to the environment over the more recent centuries, with a particular focus on the involvement of the locals (even now there are over 200 Commoners with relevant rights).
Sharon traced the evolution of the Common from its geological formation in the Jurassic period, through its rich history in the Anglo Saxon and Medieval periods, to the changes in the landscape evident over the past century.
While after 1066 Rodborough was included in the Manor of Minchinhampton, in reality the area was divided into a number of manorlets, the names of which (eg Spillmans) survive in one form or another today. Much of our appreciation of these times comes from the Minchinhampton Custumal, written around 1300, which listed land holdings, the Commoners and their rights, as well as the local customs. The Common rights included that of pasturage, estover (wood collecting for fuel), pannage (at one time there were 3000 pigs foraging on the Common), and rights in the soil (quarrying etc). Then the Common was a wooded pasture, and there is still evidence of the ancient wood in the wild flowers such as wood anemone and the various bumps and dips in the topography where trees fell.
Eventually harvesting the wood for fuel and allowing sheep to graze, which became the primary use, altered the environment. Sharon displayed a photo-postcard of Rodborough Fort from the 1960s, showing a Common bare of trees. It was a time when the location was very popular for visitors, and records show upwards of 2000 cars parked at weekends.
The recognition of the value of the Common to wildlife resulted in it being gifted to the National Trust in 1937 by the keen naturalist Thomas Bainbrigge Fletcher (President of our Club 1941-42), and it is now a designated Special Area of Conservation. Albeit now with more scrub and trees, seasonal conservation grazing by cattle helps to maintain it. In conclusion, Sharon highlighted the efforts of SVP in helping to survey the Common towards best conservation of the variety of wonderful flora and fauna, such as the pasque flower, the rugged oil beetle and the recently reintroduced large blue butterfly, and skylarks.
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| On Rodborough Common, looking West |
John Parker - Growing the Stonehouse Community Arboretum
With National Tree week at the end of the month it seemed particularly fitting to welcome John Parker as our speaker. John is known locally for instigating the Stonehouse Community Arboretum (SCA) and his tree tours during the town’s Walking Festival each September. But he has also built up an international reputation. Just two years ago he was named one of the 25 Most Influential People in Horticulture. Presently John heads the Arboricultural Association, based in Standish, is UK & Ireland President of the International Society of Arboriculture, and also our representative on a number of related international groups.
Besides environmental benefits, John is particularly keen to promote the social and cultural value of trees. We felt privileged then to hear him talk to the Club about his home grown project, the SCA. He first displayed images of some of his favourite trees, an English Oak, the oldest living resident of the town, the London Planes outside the Primary School, Beech trees in Doverow Woods (which will disappear in this area as the temperatures rise) and a Sycamore. The last was a surprise to those of us who have such a tree at the bottom of our gardens, but John pointed out the environmental value of the species, their resilience to climate change, and a need for them in an urban location. As Ted Green (of Knepp fame) suggests, perhaps the Sycamore would receive better press if renamed the Celtic Maple.
The unconventional Stonehouse Arboretum includes all the trees in public spaces and private gardens, distributed about the town. While a few still survive from years ago, pictures courtesy of the Stonehouse History Group witnessed the loss of the majority consequent upon urban sprawl and the policies of the County Highways Department. It was the lack of understanding and reactive tree management, with multiple stakeholders not accepting responsibility, that lead John to develop the strategy for the SCA which was adopted by the Town Council in 2021.
Notably, there is a vow to manage existing trees appropriately by qualified professionals and, rather than a planting target, a commitment to a 95% survival rate for new trees after 3 years. (John bemoaned the current practice of carbon offset involving large numbers of saplings which receive no long term care). Involvement of the community and especially children is key, with the ethos communicated effectively, trees labelled, maps drawn up, tree walks arranged and stories created to encourage pride in the venture. So, besides keeping in mind biodiversity and the likely effects of climate change, new trees are selected to this end, such as a scion of the Ely Cathedral plane tree, originally planted in the late 1600s, and the locals encouraged to participate in looking after them, eg watering in the summer months.
The revolutionary approach and subsequent success of the Stonehouse exemplar has been recognised nationally and internationally, so John spends much of his time now spreading the word as an invited speaker at conferences worldwide, and it has attracted many interested foreign professionals to the town.
There was a unanimous request from the audience for John to extend his compelling and amusing presentation, and he finished with three further stories. These concerned the last surviving oak from the lost Stonehouse Court avenue, the mid-1800s Doverow rising which ensured public access to the Woods, and the Globe Willow (pictured below), the centre of celebrations for the initiation of the Stonehouse Community Arboretum at the centenary of it’s planting.
After a career in the Royal Air Force Air Traffic Control, Tony completed a Masters degree in his true passion, Archaeology, at the University of Bristol. While he then started further academic research towards a doctorate on the Vikings, he soon had to put this aside to focus on his new company Archaeoscan. At its heart Archaeoscan gives access to all those, perhaps like you and me, who yearn to have some involvement in the thrill of hands-on archaeology in Gloucestershire and the SouthWest, but only have time for short term commitments. In an enthralling presentation Tony told us more about his successful venture, which has now been running for over a decade and in that time has attracted nearly 2000 participants, and detailed the results so far from two nearby sites on private land, Slimbridge and Wickwar, near Yate, the first posited as a Roman port and the second as a key pottery centre.
Archaeoscan operates to professional standards; it is funded by participants fees, with the opportunity for all ages to dig for just one day or more during the finer months. (In winter, besides writing up the outcomes for publication, they host a publicly accessible, online programme of talks by other archaeologists).
The Slimbridge project followed on from the discovery of thousands of coins a few years ago during a metal detectorists rally in a field just West of the current Village. (Sadly these finds were not properly recorded). Archaeoscan began with a geophysical survey which revealed a host of Iron Age, Roman and Romano-British features. After the four years work to date, working through the overlaid layers of history, it is clear that the site has been through a number of transformations, from an Iron Age settlement with roundhouses, to an early Roman industrial unit, then a high status villa, including a substantial bathhouse, and finally a large third century AD sandstone-tile-roofed warehouse (probably built when the road system developed). Besides discovering walls to rooms, the finds have been really rich: flue and roof tiles, mosaic tesserae, domestic pottery (including Samian ware with the makers name ‘Osbimanus’, so 155-185 AD), more coins (Domitian 86 AD through Trajan, Hadrian, Faustian, to the fourth century Republic), high quality brooches (some enamelled), glass beads, spindle whorls, a lead lamp, and so on. Most touching was the find by a 12 year old, the skeleton of a small terrier, named Apollo by its finder, which is now going for radio-carbon analysis to establish the date of a water feature (unique to Gloucestershire, possibly the site of a water-wheel or water-hoist). The high status of the villa is witnessed not only by many of the above finds but also by a stylus and part of a superb bronze medical kit, including scalpel, tweezers and probe.
The flooding of the surrounding fields to the East in recent seasons together with Lidar scans of the topography demonstrate the likely position of the site on a headland projecting into the River Severn (which is now some way distant), and hence the hypothesis that it developed initially as a point of access from the water and subsequently a trading port.
Tony finished by giving an exciting glimpse into the most recent excavations at Wickwar, which have produced evidence that it is likely to be the long sought source of Gloucestershire second to fourth century Roman TF5 pottery. So far the dig has exposed one small kiln and unearthed a huge amount of pottery, including what are thought to be kiln spacers the like of which have never been seen before.
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| Slimbridge’s unusual Roman water feature |
Lois Francis - the Stroudwater History Archive
Coincidentally, in his Heritage Hub webinar on ‘the Gloucestershire Cuts’ just the week before, John Putley had given an enthusiastic reference to the specific collection in Alvin Street which was the topic of the talk by Lois Francis. Although she retired from her role as a primary school head teacher some 16 years ago, Lois continues to pursue her passion for educating young people, in particular to help them achieve a sense of place. Through the Stroudwater History Archive (SHA) she now engages folk about the influences of the Gloucestershire waterways on the environment and the linked lives of the locals. In her amusing and incredibly informative talk Lois used copies of paintings and documents and historic photos from the SHA to tell two particular stories about our waterways, the first concerning the River Severn and the second relating to the Stroudwater Navigation. In so doing she was able to reconnect us to our immediate landscape and history, as well as highlighting the further insights and excitement that await a researcher looking to tell other tales. (Incidentally the SHA is gradually being digitised and volunteers are needed).
The variety of information within the archives encompasses the landscape, geology, hydrology, commerce and so on. Lois displayed copies of documents and maps detailing, for example, the links to the Staffordshire coalfields, one of the prime reasons for trade along the Severn through to Bristol, the variety of other goods besides coal transported, the discontent over river tolls, the influence of the daily tides and two weekly cycle of high tides on the life of the river and canal folk and the amount of cargo that could be carried in the trows. Again taking data from the records, Lois also detailed the fraught beginnings of the Stroudwater, the disputes between the Canal Company and the mill owners along the River Frome, the experiments that were conducted about water flows in the river to rebut the complaints, the soil types encountered and type of brick burned along the canal during construction, the various quarries used for quoins and coping stones, and how the quality of stone was assessed for ease of shaping. Once more there were maps, which clearly showed the desire and the need to connect with the River Severn, as well as extracts from tonnage books which recorded the transport of materials and the growth of the trade through Stroud.
Lois concluded by reminding us of the amazing work underway to reinstate the Navigation from Framilode to Eastington, and the current consideration for nature, such as the incorporation of wetland scrapes near Whitminster. No doubt the Stroudwater History Archive will continue to expand with the inclusion of related contemporary records.
To find out more go to the Stroudwater History home page and follow the link to the Archives.
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| Whitminster wetlands between river and canal |
Class Act Jazz Quartet
The session from Class Act made a very special end to our meetings in 2024. The Jazz quartet was in fact composed of some very familiar faces, all having given presentations in Box, though in a different guise. After a lively introductory number John Huggins (known to us as a sculptor in brass) introduced his fellow musicians, Gareth Williams (flute), Jim Pimpernell (double Bass) and Stephen Whitcombe (guitar) and gave us the programme for the afternoon. They played from their repertoire ranging from the Bossanova to the Blues, including the tunes Clowns in Clover, Bluesette, Black Orpheus, Autumn Leaves, Satin Doll, Blue Monk and Summertime, variously written by familiar names such as Miles Davies, Joseph Cosmo, Duke Ellington, Thelonius Monk and George Gershwin. Their careful choice was used to illustrate the variety of time signatures in Jazz, as explained between each rendition by one or other of the quartet. And they gave us a further fascinating flavour of Jazz improvisation while playing Autumn Leaves. Finishing with two well known standards, it was a really entertaining and, for the uninitiated, musically eye-opening treat.
The group having got us in the Christmas swing, at the end we shared a seasonal celebration, mulled wine and warmed mince pies, which had been organised by Sue Bennett, with the Club Council offering parting good wishes for an excellent Solstice, Christmas and Yuletide and a peaceful New Year.
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| Class Act - John H, Gareth W, Stephen W and Jim P |
Gareth Williams - A Monstrous Commotion: the Mysteries of Loch Ness
Our popular speaker Gareth Williams returned to give us a talk related to another of his books , which was published just a few years ago. Gareth, who is Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Bristol and Chair of the Jenner Trust, spoke to us last year about the genesis of immunisation, and was the fabulous flautist in Classic Act, the Jazz quartet which provided the memorable musical Christmas treat for the Club. This time his ‘dodgy’ research into Nessiteras rhombopteryx had required a trip to Inverness and time at the University Library in Cambridge. According to the blurb on Amazon ‘A Monstrous Commotion is a gripping saga populated by colourful characters who do extraordinary things in pursuit of one of evolution's wildest cards’. So we knew we were guaranteed an entertaining afternoon.
Gareth lead us through the story of Nessie from the 1930s to the present, over which time there have been over one thousand reported sightings and many professional and amateur surveys, mainly in the 1960s and 70s through the Loch Ness phenomena investigation bureau, using a variety of methods. There was a scuba-diving Texan scientist with his adapted whaling harpoon, Dan Taylor and a home-made fibreglass Yellow submarine built in Seattle, 007’s autogiro flown over the Loch by Sean Connery’s double, Ken Wallace. A wealth of activity, but with no confirmation of the Monster’s existence, and with underwater searches confounded by the poor visibility caused by particulate peat. Some scientists succumbed to the lure of the myth to the extent that they ruined their careers.
Gareth amused us with the story of the original hoax in 1934, the surgeon’s photograph with the iconic image (see below) distributed worldwide, perpetrated by the disgruntled freelance journalist Marmaduke Weatherell, a one time big game hunter, with the ‘monster’ fabricated from a toy submarine. A local connection is that the glass plate camera used was borrowed from a friend in Thornbury. (Weatherell had been dismissed by the Daily Mail after the footprints he discovered previously and reported proved to have been made by the same foot, an elephant umbrella stand).
Gareth then turned to the exploits of his boyhood hero Sir Peter Scott (another connection to our area), sceptic turned believer, but finally not so sure, and his American collaborator Rob Rines, who turned out to be a somewhat disreputable character. The Latin name given by them to Nessie in their 1975 paper for the prestigious journal Nature, Nessiteras rhombopteryx, announces both the home of the monster and the apparent shape of its fin, seen in a single photograph that was taken with an automatic camera. However, unbeknownst to Scott, Rines had manually enhanced the photograph, which was otherwise quite inconclusive. In any case, the sonar devices set up nearby had detected nothing.
It was the local water bailiff (and apparent practical joker), Alex Campbell, who seems to have single-handedly retrieved Inverness from the depression of the 1930s, generating a tourist boom as a result of his supposed sightings and reports in the Inverness Courier. Even now Nessie’s popularity and associated tourism generates £60M each year for the area. But visitors beware, the MP Nicholas Fairbairn unravelled the monster’s Latin name to reveal the anagram ‘Monster hoax by Sir Peter S’. Believe it or not?
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| The Surgeon’s Photograph - Daily Mail 20th April 1934 |
Katherine Kear - Tales from the Potting Shed: the folklore of plants, trees and flowers
Katherine describes herself as purveyor of myths and legends, and promised us a light hearted look at ancient gardening traditions and fascinating folklore concerning flora. She has a distinguished background, Folklorist for BBC Radio Gloucestershire, a British Master Florist winning gold at RHS Chelsea, and now a Demonstrator, Speaker and Teacher for the National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies, appearing at various events including the Malvern RHS show and BBC Gardeners World Live. Her fascinating talk was interspersed with quotations, poems and amusing anecdotes.
Appropriately, Katherine began with some spring flowers. First the snowdrop, explaining its early association with death as the centre of the upturned flower looks like the pleats of a shroud, so doom might descend on a home if it was picked and brought inside. A similar superstition held for the Christmas Rose (hellebore), though related to quite a different story. On the other hand the daffodil, with the colour of the sun, was considered a portent of warmer and brighter days, and ensured good luck if you happened to face the trumpet of your first sighting in the year.
Why should you wash your hands before planting a tree? Why ask a plant for permission before pruning? Why shouldn’t you remove all the offenders when weeding? Does an apple a day keep the doctor away? Katherine answered all these questions and more with tales of the folklore that surrounded them.
Of course, many gardening traditions have a sound basis in long-term experience, passed down through generations: planting a row of seeds North to South to benefit from warmth and light on both sides; testing the temperature of the soil beforehand (but perhaps with an elbow rather than your bare posterior); sowing five seeds where you may expect one or two plants (one for rook, one for crow, one to die and two to grow); and companion planting eg for pest control.
Katherine ended by accounting for one of our charming traditions, that of touching wood for luck, which derives from the Celts who believed that the periods of the year were associated with different trees. Youngsters would be given a piece of wood appropriate to their birthday and if threatened would ask the spirit of that wood to help them. The pagan ritual was adopted by Christian pilgrims with ‘sacred’ wooden souvenirs.
Altogether a delightful presentation.
Katherine is organising the NAFAS show in Gloucester Cathedral, September 29-30 2025, and offers free entry to anyone who feels able to help as a steward on one of the days. Please email the Lecture Secretary (Painswick) for contact details.
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| Snowdrops at QEII Nature Reserve, Ebley |
Tony Conder - A Gloucestershire Odyssey: the County’s History and Traditions
Tony began by explaining the origins of Gloucestershire from the time of the kingdom of the Dobunni, to a client kingdom of Mercia and finally morphing towards the area we know,when Wessex and Mercia were divided between Canut and Edmund Ironside in 1016. Evidence for the shires was shown in images of shire stones, such as those near Marshfield and Moreton-in-Marsh, placed at the border points of the various counties. Stones were also used to mark meeting places within the hundreds, the judicial, military and tax areas, surviving until 1890, into which the county was sub-divided. Of course, boundaries are seldom fixed (Bristol exited in 1373) and may soon alter significantly.
Tony noted that Gloucestershire is ‘the most geological’ county in the country, a line drawn from NW to SE revealing 500 million years of history in the near surface rock. We even have our own ‘Jurassic coast’, the Garden Cliff at Westbury-on-Severn in the Forest of Dean, and a tropical reef, part of the Huntley, Longhope & Hobb’s Ridge Geology & Landscape Trail. The majority of Cotswold rivers flow South East towards the Thames, though the Frome goes West to join the Severn. Tony waxed lyrical over the springs and wells which are the sources of various of these rivers, and amused us with the associated folk tales and superstitions; also about more stones that have fascinating recent histories and amazing properties, such as the Minchinhampton Long Stone, which will cure a babe of rickets and that at Staunton which will bleed if pricked at midnight. Our landscape and geology are, of course, intimately connected, with spectacular views from the hills, such as the Haresfield Topograph, affording a glimpse of the diversity and wonder.
Tony finished by reminding us of all that is Gloucestershire: the spring flowers (snowdrops at Edge Church, daffodils in Dymock and Kempley, the bluebells), the colour of our trees in summer and autumn; our traditions, which, perhaps once forgotten, are gradually being revived, such as the Boxing Day Mummers in Gloucester, the Marshfield Paper Boys, the Randwick Wap, Cheese rolling at Cooper’s Hill, the Tetbury Woolsack race up Gumstool Hill, Pig Face day at Avening (commemorating Queen Matilda’s contrition at the death of Bitric) and Bisley well dressing; our fabulous rare breeds including the Cotswold Lion sheep and the Old Spot pig; and the rich archaeology, especially Iron Age and Roman/ Romano-British (eg the wonderful Woodchester Orpheus Mosaic).
Tony began with a poem by John Drinkwater and concluded with excerpts from FW Harvey’s poem Warning, a cautionary tale for visitors to our County not to question our much-loved, albeit peculiar, habits and customs.
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| Wild daffodils at St Mary’s Church, Kempley 15th March 2024 |