Cut Throats, Saints, Angels and Slavers

And so I found myself on Cut Throat Lane. No, not the St Werburghs one ... another one, little over a mile away in Stapleton. Which is a bit alarming until you realise that probably most ancient byways have had murders committed in them, and drunken fisticuffs, first kisses, proposals of marriage, sexual transactions, sudden deaths. 

The murder attached to this place is of Mary Lewis, killed by her son-in-law, Charles Bartlett, on 10th September 1863. There's a lively account of the event and Bartlett's trial here. The most obvious problem with this attribution is that Bartlett shot Mary in the back of the head. Also, this lane doesn't lead to the River Frome, as stated in the account linked to above.  

All I had to kill was a bit of time, so I followed the cat that might have been a fox or a wildcat or a dreamt thing through sunlight and frost, delighting that I was in a very familiar part of the city, yet in a spot I'd never trodden before. 

Can you see it?

There it is, that dark speck disappearing down hill.

I'd decided the previous evening to visit the Church of Holy Trinity at the top of Bell Hill. It's one of those places I've passed all my life without ever entering. Time to put that right.  

I wasn't expecting marvels, it being modern (1857) in comparison with the ancient churches I like poking around in ... 

... but I'd done my homework and I knew there was an Arts and Crafts stained glass window in there and a venerable old font, both of which needed visiting. 

First a wander around the tiny island of land the church sits on these days.

No graves remaining, apart from this one.

A reminder that the nearby Colston's School used to be the Bishop's Palace?

Inside, a few Christmas cards that had failed to get themselves collected ... 

... and some nice slanty sun, and yes, that must be the Charles Kempe window over there, the greenish one in the middle, I'm getting good, I've spotted it straightaway ... 

... but first some orientation. 

Ooh and the font - no, not this Victorian interloper ... 

... this one. Dating from 1000AD and tucked away in the west porch with a laminated sign blu-tacked to it. (I removed the sign briefly to take a photo but couldn't pick off all the tack) 

What a shame. I can't help thinking they might as well have left it in the Bell Inn, where it was re-discovered at the turn of last century, being used as a plant pot for geraniums. 

Anyway, here's the Kempe window, which dates from c1888. At least I assumed it was, as I couldn't find any guide books or helpful laminated signs.

It depicts Saint Margaret of Antioch with Satan in the form of a dragon on a chain; Saint Catherine of Alexandria with her wheel, the grain of which is beautifully executed (sorry); and St Agnes of Rome with her lamb.  

There was another window next to it depicting Saints Giles, Augustine and Lucy, which threw me for a moment, but this was forty years later in date and nowhere near as subtle in its colour and detailing. Plus there was a cobweb in the corner, denoting it as the work of Geoffrey Fuller Webb, a mere disciple of Charles E Kempe. 

No, I had found the one true Kempe window! 

Except ... oh bloody hell, here's another window with the Angel Gabriel sporting peacock feathers! How gorgeous - and how typical of Kempe's work - is that?! 

Dammit. Which is the Kempe window? Which? Which?

I fell into conversation with a parishioner who came into the church. He told me about the roof appeal, and we agreed it's awful that the burden of funding such renovations is left to congregations by a Church whose estates are said to exceed £2 billion in value. Especially in these straitened times. But he didn't know anything about the windows. 

I left, feeling confounded. Cheered up on noticing that whenever you think you've stepped through a portal and are in some bygone time, something pops up to disabuse you. 

There were still 20 minutes or so before I had to pick up Son the Elder, so I decided to wander down towards the Frome. 

This is Colston Hill, named after the city's most infamous - and inexcusably still commemorated - slave-trader. The aforementioned school he founded moved to Stapleton in 1861, after which, presumably, the lane acquired its regrettable name. 

As I wandered past cliffs of blood red Pennant sandstone, so typical of this part of Bristol, I wondered what it was called before. The lane mentioned in the account of the death of Mary Lewis is Tebbutt's Lane, which doesn't seem to feature on modern maps. 

And we're only a five minute walk from the Mason's Arms, which exists to this day, where Mary and her son-in-law, Bartlett, had been seen drinking together earlier.

Hmm. The moving of the school predates the murder by two years, but it would be a while, wouldn't it, for locals to stop using a familiar name for a place in favour of the new one? Assuming that it was renamed immediately.

Could this be where poor Mary Lewis met her end?

I had to be getting back, so hurried up Wickham Glen.  

After depositing Son the Elder at his place, and a quick trip to the tip and the library, I hit google. Two Charles Kempe windows in the church, if I had bothered to do my homework in a less desultory fashion.

No much more information about the location of the murder, however - just a long shadow. 

A One Red Kite New Year

Today I made a 205-mile round trip east to deposit an offspring, and then immediately back west again. As excursions go, it was pretty dull. I saw few lorries, which was good, Windsor Castle twice, and one red kite picking over the carcase that is Berkshire in winter. 

I tend to gauge my joy quotient in birds - choughs, ravens, and red kites mostly, although sometimes there's delight like a bushful of spadgers or a clatter of jackdaws in a churchyard. But the same scale also measures melancholy, and to be honest, a whole red kite felt rather over-optimistic for such a drab day. I can't say this coming year fills me with anticipation either.

In fact, the best I can wish anyone is Happy New Peaky Blinders. Or Game of Thrones. Or possibly - hopefully - People's Vote. 

There's always poetry, of course. Here's a poem I wrote about red kites a few years ago. It was recently published by The Blue Nib, in their latest issue. (If you're reading this and you're a poet, do submit to them, they're great.) It has an air of alienation about it that seems to suit this shabby little island right now. 

Red Kites Over High Wycombe

I know they’re here before I see them

my eyes on the road, the car in front

then snatching at sky for that russet

skirl, daubs of white underwing,

riffled pinions, twisting tails.

There must be eight – no

wait – a dozen overhead.

The first time I saw one swoop

as I stood at the window of your room

I thought it an omen.

Now I know they can’t be owned, won’t be

diminished to fit my need

I’m a visitor here, shifting boxes and bags

from one drab impromptu lodging

to another,

and unfamiliar with this town,

the suburbs these natives survey

with ferocious intimacy.

When my job’s done I’ll travel back home

where red kites are rare and the air

trembles at their whistle.

  

Photo of a red kite by Dru Marland

This poem will be published by Indigo Dreams in my 2019 collection, The Shadow Factory.

A Wander on Chittening Warth

As I'm still juggling pain relief to ease my joints, and the Northerner twisted his knee on the stairs, we decided against scrambling over sand dunes at Berrow and settled for a wander along the top of the flood defences at Severn Beach instead. 

It was misty when we arrived.

Since there were small children  with bikes, trikes and toy pushchairs aplenty, and since we had a slightly enervated holiday collie with us, we headed for Chittening rather than the more frequented route to the old Severn bridge. 

In fact, I was a bit astonished to realise that I hadn't walked down that way before. 

The industrial estate there looked quite Dark and Satanic, though, so I suspected the Northerner would feel at home. 

'I am the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water, ready to trap the unwary, the showoff, the fool - '

We were sensible, though, and stayed on the causeway ...

... but not for long, for who can resist a track (with teasels)?

It was high tide, so there weren't that many birds about. 

A few ducks and oyster-catchers ...

... crows ...

... herons, and somewhere way overhead, a raven.

Very early flowering butterbur

Warth is a local word for salt marsh or flat meadow covered by tidal water. It sounds Viking* to me ...

... and it did feel as if a boatload of bearded, helmeted raiders could disembark and come running out of the mist at any moment. 

I wondered if, much more recently, some other invaders might have been expected.

I haven't found out anything about World War II defences in here, but there is mention of a decoy to lure German bombers away from oil installations at Avonmouth, so maybe these constructions are to do with that.

Once last glance towards Avonmouth and a very mistily distant North Somerset coastline, and it was time to retrace our steps. 

Now that the tide was receding, we walked some of the way along the warth itself.

As the sun burnt through the mist, the vegetation turned all shades of green and gold and beautiful.

It's always good to go home with your eyes full of colour. 










* though my knowledgeable friend, James, says it's from an Old English word 'waroth' meaning 'shore', so probably isn't Norse in origin.

The Blue Nib no 36

It was great to get our copy of the Blue Nib plopping through the letterbox, on a Sunday of all days. What a treat. 

The Blue Nib is a Dublin-based publisher of poetry, fiction, essays and reviews, all of which are represented in the current edition, no 36. 

One of the even betterer things about it is that it's also available online, so you can read Bob Beagrie's reimaginings of historical characters on blasted heaths, and Chris Hardy's crystalline observations, and the review of Claire Williamson's 'Visiting the Minotaur'. And amongst all the other poems, five of mine from my forthcoming collection The Shadow Factory. 

An Arising from the Settee of Suffering

I've spent a lot of time reclining lately, mainly because sitting upright is too agonising. When I hobble round to the surgery, my GP wonders if it could be fibromyalgia that is causing this widespread pain, as well as the increasingly well documented arthritis. Am I under a lot of stress at the moment? 

I wonder if he's come up with this by himself or whether he's swayed by the notes from the physiotherapist. It seems to me that fibromyalgia is treated much the same way as depression was in the 1970s - something women get, and just keep necking the valium, love. And anyhow, I don't really care what they call it; all I care about is that it hurts. 

Maybe, I concede.

I decide my strategy of resting up and only going out when I have to - which is most days anyway - isn't working. Alice Oswald is appearing at the Bristol Poetry Institute and I've missed hearing top poets read their work in Bristol since the demise of the poetry festival. Moreover, the last time we heard her, she was astounding. That evening remains the best reading I've ever been to.








Alice's latest book is 'Nobody', ostensibly about a bit-part player in the Odyssey: the poet who was charged with guarding Clytemnestra by Agamemnon, and subsequently marooned on a rocky island in the middle of the Mediterranean by the queen's lover, Aegisthus. Really it's a paean to the ocean, and as Alice recites it by heart in darkness, I find myself drowning in it. There's not so much as a cough to break the spell. Not a shuffle or a shifting, and when, after an hour, we can finally move, I find I can't. I can barely walk back to the car. Perhaps I should try swimming.

Saturday it's off to the Floating Market on the Kennet and Avon canal at Bradford-on-Avon with Hazel Hammond. I'm delighted to see that despite the manky weather, Dru Marland is doing a roaring trade in art on the tow path. She squeezes in a quick coffee with us between sales, and we repair to the pub for lunch with a haul of thirteen 2019 calendars of boating life between us. Twenty per cent of the profits go to the Floaty Boat Fund, which helps boaters keep their homes afloat when hit by unexpected problems.  You can get yours here.

As we leave the canal, a pair of ravens croak overhead. Hazel hasn't been inside the tithe barn so we drift through its cavernousness in almost darkness.

Back up on the tow path there's a lot of shantying going on, and the lights of the market seem to float through the twilight. 

Twenty days till the year turns and it starts getting lighter again. Not long to go.