Jailbirds and the first Swift

On Saturday I ventured down to Somerset. Jan asked where I wanted to visit and I suggested Shepton Mallet Prison (which was the oldest operating prison in the country when it closed in 2013) because I'm going to be involved in an afternoon of readings there on National Poetry Day and I wanted to know what I was letting myself in for. 

So we set off valiantly from her home near Glastonbury, but although we'd been there together back in October, we kept missing the town altogether and ending up in nearby villages with roads too narrow to do a seven-point turn easily. It was really strange.

And then when we did get there, we couldn't find our way to the town centre and spent a long time wandering around the car park. 

We had some lunch in a cafe.

Then we set out for the prison through the labyrinth of lanes beyond the Church of SS Peter and Paul, but we couldn't find the entrance. In the end I had to ask how a passing local how we could break in. 

Eventually we located it. 

I don't get out much - at least, not to tourist attractions - so £15 each to get in seemed quite pricey. The site isn't at all commercialised either, mainly, I guess, because this is a temporary reincarnation, plans to develop it into the ultimate gated community having recently been resubmitted to the council. What historical information there is comes in the form of bits of paper stuck to the walls. In some ways this is a little disappointing, but I think it also makes going there all the more powerful an experience.

It had taken us so long to get there that we were too late for the two-hour tour by an ex-prison officer, so we wandered around by ourselves instead. 

The visitors' area

One of the treatment rooms

The morgue

I counted the kitchen utensils out and I counted them all back in again

The thing that troubled me about the windows wasn't the bars but the obscured glass. No view of the sky or the exercise yard or even the wall opposite. Imprisonment means being imprisoned inside four walls with no pictures, no decoration and the

only escape route inwards. 

I was also troubled by the fact that the executioner's guest room (he would arrive at 4pm on the day preceding a hanging) was directly across the narrow corridor from the condemned's cell. 

The condemned prisoner would be introduced to the executioner on the appointed day at the appointed time, and a fake bookcase covering a door set into the end wall of the cell would be swung aside and the prisoner marched directly into the place of execution.  

Albert Pierrepoint estimated that he would be dead between eight and twenty seconds after their hand shake. 

These rooms and those below were converted into offices, which is why there's now a ceiling beneath where the trap door was.

No view here either.

The exercise yard

Although we hadn't seen anywhere near all of it, the place was weighing heavily on my heart by now, and Jan looked a bit stir-crazy too. I didn't think I could stay there much longer. 

But when it came to it, we couldn't find out way out. It was the exact reverse of the situation we'd found ourselves in earlier.

We made it outside at last, but I couldn't help wondering how on earth anyone would want to buy an appartment in a place with such a palpably oppressive atmosphere. My heart felt as if it was in the grip of a fist. 

As we made our way back to the town centre I heard a familiar and longed-for screaming and my first swift of 2019 soared overhead. A cheering sight.

And then it was back to Glasonbury for poetry and a party and beautiful birdsong. I'll be back at HMP Shepton Mallet with poems about freedom in October.

Church-hopping in West Pennard and Shepton Mallet

The first time I went to Glastonbury to visit my friend Jan in her new home it tipped with rain all day. The week before last, the appointed day for our get-together dawned in the grip of Storm Callum, and the charm of goldfinches in the tree in her garden clung to the branches like sad little leaves. 

So, a wander up the tor was out. Instead we decided to visit a couple of local churches, the first of which was St Nicholas in West Pennard. 

There are a few fragments of stained glass from the middle ages, and plenty of garish Victorian painted stuff, of the type William Morris  rejected when he returned to mediaeval methods of manufacture, with the aim of raising ecclesiastical glass to an art form. 

I liked this more modern window, though ...

... with its wheeling crow.  I haven't been able to discover who made it (though it reminds me a little of Harry Stammers' work). 

Churchyard cross

After West Pennard we drove on to Shepton Mallet to have lunch. 

First, though, we popped into the Church of SS Peter and Paul. 

There's something very solid about the interior. The pillars are massive and were probably part of walls that were pierced, possibly Saxon in origin.

The church is famed for its wooden ceiling, carved with 350 panels of different designs, and 36 carved angels. 

'The finest 15th century carved oak wagon-roof in England', Pevsner said, though I couldn't make out any detail, even with the help of the mirror, and was none the wiser ...

... until I saw this photo by Michael Garlick, from the Geograph website. Now you begin to see what old Pevsner was going on about. It's absolutely stunning.

I was also struck by the effigies of two late 13th century knights which have been placed on window ledges at the west and east end of the north aisle.

They must have a much better view where they are now ...

... all interesting and smudgy through the old glass. 

Nipping up into the pulpit

The brass memorial to William Strode who died in 1649 (with Death taking aim at his wife). 

The sea holly on our table at lunch

2017 Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival : The Big Day Out

I have vague childhood connections with Shepton Mallet. My uncle and aunt lived there for a time when I was very young, and driving past the chamois deer that was the Babycham trademark atop the factory roof was the highlight of long car journeys to and from South Devon before the M5 was built. The deer now stands on a bank sheltering under a tree, as Dru Marland and I discovered a few years ago. 

It turns out that Shepton Mallet is also famous for its snowdrops. I didn't know the story of its illustrious son, James Allen, the first person to breed new varieties of snowdrop from ones growing in the wild, during the 19th century. So it's as well there's now a Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival to bruit his fame. 

In fact, the whole town's really gone to town on snowdrops.

I was there as judge of the first Snowdrop Festival Poetry Competition. First, though, there was a walk, from Highfield House, where James Allen lived, to his family plot in the cemetery on Waterloo Road, for the planting of extra snowdrops.  

We were accompanied by the Big Noise Street Band from Taunton.

James Allen wasn't the most fortunate of men. Botrytis eventually destroyed his collection and only two of the varieties he bred survive today. I was much luckier ... the competition produced a fine crop of poems, from Somerset and much further afield. A pleasant few evenings in January spent sifting and winnowing entries culminated in a highly enjoyable set of readings by the shortlisted poets and presentations to the prize winners, washed down with mulled cider.

Best of all, I got the chance to look at the unassuming snowdrop afresh, through the lens of all the poems entered, and it was a delight.