A journey along the Welsh Border in 1963

Wynford Vaughan Thomas and friend travel the length of the border between England and Wales in 1963.

But the tone of the commentary could come from a topographical book of 30 years before. Anything that smacks of modernity or progress is suspect and the old ways are to be supported, however silly. There's an obsession with market day, while farmers can do no wrong.

Also in line with such books, there is disapproval for visitors' buses, but the writer's own car gets a free pass.

Still it's lovely country and Montgomery is still a little-known treasure. And Knucklas Viaduct still carries trains despite what the film says about Dr Beeching.

What really interested me in the films are the remains of Victorian agricultural improvement on Long Mountain, because I once discovered them for myself.

I had stayed for the night at Colebatch, the first village south of Bishop's Castle. I set off the next morning to walk to Montgomery. At first I went cross country via Bishop's Moat and Mellington Hall to meet the Offa's Dyke Path.

In those days I sometimes carried a radio when I went walking, and I can remember sitting in the sun listening to The World at One. It was at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union and there was an item discussing how an independent Ukraine would fare.

I remember laughing because such a notion would have been unthinkable a few days before, and perhaps because I had called at a pub for a lunchtime drink. Looking at the map, I think it must have been the now-closed Blue Bell near Pentreheyling.

Anyway, I passed the turn for Montgomery and kept going because it was only mid afternoon and I felt fine. That's why I found myself on Long Mountain, and wondering what these strange Victorian remains were, before I managed to snag a bed for the night in Welshpool.

Now you could find out online, but this was 1991. Yet, by another of those strange coincidences, there was an item about them in, I think, The Times a couple of days after I got home.

But Wynford Vaughan Thomas is getting impatient, so you'd better watch the video. But after you've done so, you might enjoy my review of All the Wide Border by Mike Parker.

The March of the Elephants: A Bishop’s Castle art trail

The March of the Elephants is a project to create a trail of varied elephant-inspired artworks around the town of Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire.

Why elephants in Bishop's Castle? Visit Shropshire explains one reason:

During the 18thcentury it was home to Robert Clive, better known as Clive of India, infamous for his exploits and an Indian elephant became his emblem. 

In 1781 Robert Clive’s eldest son Edward built a Market Hall for Bishop’s Castle. 

The Hall was a two-storey building with a ‘Venetian’ or three-part window on the front elevation, above which stood the carved Clive family coat of arms. 

When the Hall was knocked down, the arms were preserved and mounted in an arched stone surround and can now be seen as the monument at the top of the Square.

The website hurriedly adds that:

It should be noted that the project is purely celebrating the Town’s heritage in respect of elephants and not the life of Clive of India or imperialism in any way.

It's on safer ground when it refers to the tradition that at an elephant lived in the town during the second world war.

I had always been a bit of an elephant sceptic, but in a post that's now10 years old, I included the video above. I also quoted a Shropshire Star article about Flicks in the Sticks' Bigger Picture Archive Project, which found it.

Elizabeth-Anne Williams from the Project said:

"An interview recorded with George Evans in 2011 and archived at Bishops Castle Heritage Resource Centre reveals that when the Second World War broke out, a travelling circus had been performing in Bishops Castle with three or four elephants in their troupe. 

"The elephants required a lot of hay for feeding and when they packed up they weren’t able to take one elephant." 

George said the elephant was kept in the Castle Hotel stables, in the present car park, and he also remembered the elephant being taken for a walk past the Boys' School in Station Street where he and others gave it a swede which it 'squashed with its foot to eat it'.

And below you can see a photograph of the little square at the top of the town where the Market Hall stood. Thanks again to Duncan Smart for allowing me to use it – the post in which it first appeared was chiefly concerned with the changing of the feline guard there.

Bill Oddie: On Ilkla Moor Baht'at

Graeme Garden was singing the praises of Bill Oddie's music for I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and The Goodies on the Through the Square Window podcast the other day. And this is a good example of how funny and accomplished it was.

The Dandelion Records label, says Dandies in the Underworld, was a labour of love run by John Peel and record company Clive Selworthy. The latter explains how the record came about:

One of the label’s most collectable singles is Bill Oddie's On Ilkley Moor Baht’at. I think I was behind that. It was another one of our jokes that nobody got. He’s a clever boy is Bill Oddie, but people thought it was a serious record, as the lyrics went unnoticed, so it disappeared without trace.

I mentioned it to John, who said he was up for it, and we managed to get most of The Grease Band, Jim Capaldi and Sue and Sally who were on the original Joe Cocker Reprise band release, and it was great. John and his producer John Walters produced it. It was a one off, and quite expensive to record, as it featured all of those amazing players. But, again, no regrets. It was worth doing and still gives us a smile.

It’s now one of the most collectable Dandelion records and was one of the records in John’s box of 50 favourite records, along with The White Stripes and Medicine Head.

The Grease Band members playing on the record are Henry McCullough (guitar) and Alan Spenner (bass).The organ player is Verden Allen from Mott the Hoople, while Jim Capaldi, of course, was the drummer from Traffic.

And the backing singers are not "Sue and Sally" but Sue and Sunny. The Wikipedia entry for Joe Cocker's album With a Little help from My Friends says Sue, Sunny, Madeline Bell and Rosetta Hightower sang on the title track, which Oddie is affectionately parodying here.

As Dandies in the Underworld also mentions Python Lee Jackson's In a Broken Dream, I'll end by sending you to my post about staying at a bed and breakfast in Bishop's Castle run by the man who overdubbed the organ on that record.

The Three Tuns in Bishop's Castle has reopened

Good news from the BBC News Shropshire pages:

A historic Shropshire pub has reopened under new ownership, five months after it shut and was branded by locals as an "embarrassment".

The Three Tuns Inn in Bishop's Castle, Shropshire, closed on 11 July due to "unforeseen circumstances", former owner Heineken Star Pubs said at the time.

Now its doors are open again under the management of The Shed, a Shropshire-based events and hospitality business.

I visited Bishop's Castle this summer and found the Three Tuns closed and the town, partly as a result, rather depressed.

As Darren Dixon, one of the new landlords, told BBC News, "It's a great pub that should never really have closed."

He said there is investment planned with the neighbouring, Three Tuns Brewery that will "reshape the image" of the pub. Its appearance has been criticised in the town, as it has fallen into a state of disrepair.

A Bishop's Castle blue plaque for the man who wrote Apache

The Three Tuns in Bishop's Castle is currently closed, as I found when I visited the town on holiday.

I also found that this blue plaque has been put up on the outside of the pub since I was last there. Jerry Lordan, who died in 1995, was obviously a regular customer.

Lordan, who had three hits himself as a singer, wrote the classic Shadows tunes Apache, Wonderful Land and Atlantis. Like the Tornados' Telstar, they capture the optimism of their era, though you suspect the wonderful land he had in mind was America.

Seeing as I suggested a few months ago that Jet Harris smoking his cigarette at the start of this Shadows video of Apache is the coolest moment in British pop, we had better see it again.

Why the road through the Hope Valley road was closed to traffic while I was in Shropshire

I went to Bishop's Castle twice while I was on holiday in Shrewsbury. Because the A488 through the Hope Valley was closed, the buses were diverted via the road that runs through the villages of Snailbeach and Stiperstones - hairpin bends and all.

This video shows what was happening in the Hope Valley. The road there was laid out in the 1830s, and heavy lorries have been taking an increasing toll of it in recent years. Heather Kidd, the local councillor who appears in it, is the Liberal Democrat leader of Shropshire Council.

A page from UK Fossils tells you what is so interesting about the geology of the Hope Valley. The woods in the valley are, of course, known for their media-savvy dormice.

Community Land Trust launches appeal to buy White Grit Meadows

Two sites owned by the Middle Marches Community Land Trust are included in the new Stiperstones Landscape NNR. Now the trust is appealing for funds to help it buy a third:

Help us acquire five acres of botanically rich meadow at the foot of Corndon Hill, where plants such as Heath Spotted Orchid, Dyers Greenweed and Devil’s Bit Scabious abound.

The area we wish to buy consists of 4 small fields totalling 5 acres, bounded by tall, thick hedgerows, with some small stands of Alder and Goat Willow trees.

The site is situated at the foot of Corndon Hill just inside Wales at an altitude of 1000 feet (300 metres) in the hamlet of White Grit.

White Grit is a small, quiet, scattered village directly on the border with Shropshire. The nearby village of Priest Weston, despite being in England, actually lies to the west of White Grit. To the east is the A488 road, and the nearest town is Bishop’s Castle.

The mining community which thrived here in the 19th century gave rise to this area of smallholdings and a series of species-rich meadows, some of which remain today. 

Read more on the Middle Marches Community Land Trust site, where this photo comes from.

Bishop's Castle: The Poetry Pharmacy and a shuttered Three Tuns

I went back to Bishop's Castle last Friday, when all the shops were open. The most important recent addition to the town is the Poetry Pharmacy which sells books (not just poetry books) and does cake and good coffee.

It's to be found towards the top of the High Street, where - as you can see - it gets really steep. 

Round the corner in Salop Street, you are met with the sad sight of a closed Three Tuns. I remember when it was boarded up in the early Nineties and then reopened by a consortium of friends led by Sir Louis Blom-Cooper.

The brewery next door is not affected, and you can buy their beers in the other pubs in the town.

The cast iron monument commemorating the Revd Hamlet Harrison in Pontesbury churchyard

Having found many Bishop's Castle businesses closed on Tuesday, I went back today and was able to visit both the Poetry Pharmacy and Yarborough House. The former has opened since I last visited the town a few years ago, but the latter was going strong when I first went there in 1989.

I broke the journey back to Shrewsbury at Pontesbury, and came across this Listed cast iron monument in the churchyard. Its page on the Church Monuments Society site says it was cast at the Baldwin Foundry in Madeley.

The weighbridge building at Bishop's Castle railway station has been restored

I went to Bishop's Castle today and found it visibly less prosperous than when I was last there eight years ago. But let's concentrate first on something that has improved out of all recognition.

When I first blogged about the plans to restore the weighbridge building that survived at the site of Bishop's Castle station, it looked as it does in the photograph below.

Today I found it restored and acting as the home for the Bishop's Castle Railway Society and some of its relics of the line. You can see it in the photo above.

There is a model of the station site in its heyday - the weighbridge building was at the entrance to it, and there was still a walk from there to the only passenger platform. And there are books for sale.

I bought an irresistible one - The Bishop’s Castle Railways That Never Were by Nicholas Harding -  on all the failed schemes to extend the Bishop's Castle Railway and make it more useful and more commercial. My favourite is the one to extend it southwards to Clun.

A tribute to three border collies I have met while walking

If you like walking you’re going to meet a lot of sheepdogs. Fortunately, I like border collies – they are serious working dogs, yet they will lie on their backs at the slightest sign of fussing and wave their paws in the air. And, while I suppose I can imagine one nipping your heels, I can’t imagine a sheepdog perpetrating serious violence.

Before the Three Tuns in Bishop’s Castle was modernised in the Nineties, I used to go there with a friend and his young daughter. There were always a couple of old farmers in the front bar with their dogs, and she would join the dogs in front of the fire and lie with her arm around the neck of one.

So here are three of my walking encounters with sheepdogs.

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These days all accommodation seems to be on Airbnb and want you to book for a week, but when I started serious walking it was easy to find places to stay for one night and a lot of farms did bed and breakfast.

Every farm seemed to have an old sheepdog, who was largely retired and spent most of its days in front of the kitchen range, and one or more young dogs, who you were told would never be as good.

One such young dog – I think this was on one of my visits to the southern half of the Offa’s Dyke path or an early holiday in the Shropshire Hills – followed me the next morning, barking. Every time I turned round, he would drop low in the grass and become quite silent.

We crossed a whole field like this before I decided the game was more fun for him than it was for me. So I pointed at the farmhouse we had both come from and said as commandingly as I could manage: “Go back!” Which he promptly did. Did I mention that border collies are highly intelligent?

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I was walking near Market Harborough, and as I passed through the village of Marston Trussell, a sheepdog decided it would walk with me.

We continued for a while companionably, and just as I was starting to worry about how far he had come with me and wondering if I should take him back to the village, we reached a drive that led to a farm. He hared off up the drive: this was clearly where he lived.

The next thing I knew, the sheepdog had returned with a friendly young foxhound who he clearly wanted to introduce to me. Foxhounds being foxhounds, I left them with muddy paw prints on my chest.

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As I was descending some hill or other in Shropshire, the path I was on slowly became clearer, then wider and finally had hedges on both sides. Just at the point where it had indisputably become a lane, there was a tractor pulling a flat trailer coming out of a field.

There were several men on the trailer, and they waved a greeting as it pulled out into the lane. Just as it set off down the hill, a sheepdog jumped from it. The dog proceeded to walk down the lane, keeping pace with me, until we reached the farm at the bottom.

He was perfectly friendly about it, but I couldn’t escape the conclusion that he had been seeing me off the premises.

More good news from Shropshire: Plan to pollute the Onny dropped

Severn Trent Water has dropped plans to pipe treated sewage from Bishop's Castle to the River Onny.

The BBC News Shropshire pages report:

Severn Trent Water had proposed building a four-mile pipe to take treated sewage from its plant in Bishop's Castle and discharge it into the River Onny, which sparked a local campaign against the move.

The water company said on Friday that the plan would not proceed, as early modelling had shown it was not possible to guarantee that there would be no impact on the Onny.

This scheme was drawn up because this sewage is currently discharged in a way that eventually takes it to the River Clun, is protected by law as it is a conservation area. 

The Onny does not have the same status, yet it is home to otters, kingfishers and dippers. It also contains a strong population of brown trout and grayling, and is an important site for Atlantic salmon.

Geoff Hardy from Fish Legal said when the pipeline was proposed:

"Rerouting sewage releases from one river to another that is miles away but has less legal protections cannot be the way to solve pollution and planning problems in this country. This is illustrative of the whole mess surrounding water industry activity and regulation to protect our rivers.

'"On the face of it, this is a cynical 'gaming’ exercise by a shadowy cabal of regulators and the local council to get around current restrictions on adding more pollution to the River Clun. We want to know why other options were not prioritised and why the Environment Agency appear to have agreed to this given that their own latest fishery report recommended using the Onny as an Index river - a critical means by which fish populations are monitored."

The pipeline certainly sounded like an expensive way of getting round the letter of the law while evading its spirit.

The photo above shows the River Onny at Craven Arms. The only thing I will add is that when my mother died Severn Trent was the easiest and kindest utility to deal with.

Folk on Foot: A Shropshire Christmas with John Kirkpatrick

The latest edition of Matthew Bannister's Folk on Foot podcast takes us to Bishop's Castle in the company of the celebrated accordionist John Kirkpatrick.

It's a good listen, both on the appeal of the town and on the history of morris dancing. I do admire the South Shropshire practice of inventing ancient folk festivals to bring in visitors.

I didn't visit Bishop's Castle when I finally made it back to Shropshire this summer, but if you click on an old blog post here you will find what is claimed to be a film of the Bishop's Castle elephant.

If you've any interest in folk music or the sense of place, Folk on Foot is a podcast to cherish.

The Joy of Six 1294

"Al-Fayed died before he could face justice but imagine how many women’s lives would not have been ruined if anti-SLAPP legislation had been in place and journalists had been able to report freely on the case," Labour MP Joe Powell tells Gareth Davies et al. from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Aaron Rabinowitz says we need to talk about men: "Trump has doubled his share of Black male voters, and across all racial demographics his gains were highest among younger men. As always, problems like this are intersectional and multifaceted, but one of the crucial facets we need to discuss is clearly the persistent problem of disaffected men."

"For the last decade, the question of who gets to interrogate historical questions, and why they are motivated to do so, has become very fraught in Britain. And the topics that have become most central to this controversy are the British Empire, British imperialism, and ideas about race, identity and belonging in the British nation." Charlotte Lydia Riley reflects on recent controversies in history and the emotional register of the debate.

Octavia Randoph on slavery in Anglo-Saxon England.

"In The Secret Agent, you go from a shop in Soho into a space like Greenwich Park, where the bomb incident takes place – quite an interesting journey in itself – and then, at the end, there’s an extraordinary marching-away into the suburbs of one of the characters who walks through endless anonymous, curious areas." Iain Sinclair chooses five favourite London novels.

Tanya Lynch visits the Poetry Pharmacy in Bishop's Castle: "From the moment I stepped inside this Aladdin’s Cave, I was immersed in a world where poetry and books are the ultimate remedy for the soul. Shelves lined with carefully selected publications, pages that invite you to lose yourself in their rhythm, and beautifully designed stationery, that makes you want to pick up and a pen and start journaling your heart out - honestly this store is a bibliophile’s paradise.

Shropshire: It's more like it was now than it was then

As my Twitter followers may have gathered, I've made it back to Shropshire for a few days.

Of course, there have been changes. The Plough at Wistanstow has closed. You can't have tea in the courtyard at Stokesay Castle any more. The Land of Lost Content museum at Craven Arms really has gone.

But then I decided I was looking at things the wrong way. My memories of exploring the Shropshire hills cover nearly 30 years from the late 1980s - I first encountered Snailbeach and the Stiperstones on the day we won an important qualifying-group game against Poland on our way to Italia 90.

As a result, what I have is a jumble of memories that I sometimes struggle to put together into a single holiday or even a single day. 

Where, for instance, was I walking to or from when I discovered the little Catholic chapel at Plowden? I think it was on a walk from Church Stretton to Bishop's Castle - the first time I saw the latter town - but I may well be wrong.

So I decided to stop hankering for a past that may never quite have been and make some new memories. I went to look for Halford church on the other side of the Onny from Craven Arms. 

Not only did I find the church, I also found an agricultural village that long predated the founding of the town. I won't share the photos with your today - this is, after all, meant to be a holiday - instead, the photo above shows the Plough in its pomp

I shall leave you with a thought from the Shropshire-based sitcom The Green Green Grass. In one episode, an American returned to the county, where he had been stationed in the Sixties, and wondered if it had changed.

"Oh no," a local reassured him, "It's not changed. If anything, it's more like it was now than it was then."

Bishop's Castle is the best place in the UK to live as a single parent

This just in from the Shropshire Star:

Ranked highly for its affordability and environment to raise a family, Bishop’s Castle has been named as the best place in the UK to live as a single parent.

The ranking was conducted by family law specialists, Richard Nelson LLP which looked at seven key factors including average house price, salary, council tax rate, the proportion of Ofsted rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ schools and nurseries, cost of electricity, crime rate and amount of public green space.

I'm not planning to start a family, but I shall finally get back to Shropshire later this summer.

"Malcolm Saville made me an archaeologist"

Thank you to the reader who sent me the link to an account of a talk given at the Hay Winter Festival by the archaeologist Miranda Aldhouse-Green:

In the question and answer session, she was asked what her inspiration for becoming an archaeologist was, and she talked about the books of Malcolm Saville, especially Lone Pine Five, set around the Long Mynd in Shropshire (in fact, set so securely round the Long Mynd that a fan of the books used to lead walks to places that were mentioned in the text). One of the characters finds a Roman spoon in a cave, and that was the moment she decided she wanted to be an archaeologist.

I think that would have delighted the great man.

The account of Lone Pine Five here is a little garbled, in that Jenny finds the spoon, not in a cave, but in an auction in the yard of the 'Rose and Crown' at Bishop's Castle, which sounds like the real-life Three Tuns there.

Bishop's Castle celebrates the 450th anniversary of its charter

The Shropshire Star reports

This weekend marks the moment when 450 years ago the first Queen Elizabeth granted Bishop's Castle its charter to rule itself.

The town is now bedecked in flags and bunting, including some specially created for the event in the Tudor colours of red, white and green. ...

The culmination of the celebrations will be a street fair on Sunday from 10am - 4pm, where Queen Elizabeth I herself will make the presentation of the charter to the Mayor.

As it's Bishop Castle we're talking about, a new beer has been brewed to celebrate the occasion.

You can see scenes from the 400th anniversary celebrations in 1973 in the silent film above.

Market Harborough is one of the best places to live in the country

Not content with recently being voted the second coolest place in Leicestershire, Market Harborough has now been included on the Sunday Times's list of the best places to live in Britain.

The Leicester Mercury quotes the Sunday Times pen portrait of the town:

'With so many beautiful old buildings, it’s hard to avoid history in Market Harborough, but it’s a town with plenty of modern, practical attractions, too.

'Rail connections to London and elsewhere are impeccable, schools are good and the town centre is a good mix of useful chains and interesting independents – none more inspiring than the Eco Village, a lively hub of mini-businesses that offers an environmentally friendly alternative to supermarket shopping.'

Bishop's Castle in Shropshire and the county of Rutland are also on the list.

The Joy of Six 1104

"I believe that the leadership is making a serious mistake. Our policy on rebuilding trade and cooperation in Europe can be popular – if only we let people know about it. There is no credible answer to the challenges Britain faces without it. And, even better, it distinguishes us very clearly from Labour, which is running scared of Brexit." Duncan Brack asks why Ed Davey never talks about Europe.

Andy Boddington reports that Shropshire is to receive no 'levelling up' money to revitalise its bus services: "The operating costs of bus companies have increased significantly over the last year following the increase in fuel prices. Passenger numbers have also not recovered since the pandemic. We are in danger of losing many of our services. Two routes under threat are the 435 service between Ludlow and Shrewsbury and the 553 Bishop’s Castle Shrewsbury service."

Merve Emre fears that academia has ruined literary criticism.

Emily Brontë acted with pragmatism, courage and kindness in her last illness and the received wisdom that she was a 'stubborn', self-destructive patient is grossly unfair, says a new account discussed by Mark Bridge.

"Let me now be your guide to the five most horror-inflected Crown Court cases.  Witchcraft, demonic possession, folk horror and, er, imaginary killer robots, they’re all here (and I’ll finish up with a rundown of the series’ other mildly spooky-flavoured stories)." Ivan Kirby discovers the dark side of the afternoon programme Seventies children watched if they were off school ill.

Sarah Weinman on Sandy Fawkes, the journalist and Soho character who met a stranger at a hotel bar and agreed to a road trip across America. Her companion later turned out to be a serial killer.