Spring 2021 Issue: 12 Funded by Englishcombe Parish Council
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Times Spring 2021 Issue: 12 Funded by Englishcombe Parish Council. Welcome to the twelfth edition of the Englishcombe Times!! 2021 has arrived and COVID 19 has been with us for over a year. But thankfully vaccinations are now being rolled out across the country, and talk of an ease of lockdown regulations fill the air- waves. Sadly in January we learnt that our Parish Clerk would be leaving us. I would like to thank Kathryn for her service to the parish since 2009, especial- ly for her help in proof reading the editions of the Englishcombe Times. Goodbye from your Clerk In an article submitted to the Englishcombe Times last year on life as a parish clerk I started by saying that after working for Royal Mail for seventeen years in a variety of sales and mar- keting roles I became Englishcombe’s parish clerk. Well I didn’t make seventeen years but after twelve years in the role it is time for me to move on. I also work as a clerk in two other par- ishes so I have made the decision to now reduce my workload to the two remain- ing parishes. Therefore I still might see some of you when you attend meetings external to the parish council including the three different chairs I have worked with during my time in Englishcombe. I wish my successor many best wishes and good luck. Kathryn Manchee Visit the Parish Website: englishcombe.net 1 Have you seen this man? This is George Cox, born in Englishcombe in 1792. He married Phoebe Ponting, born 1798, also in Englishcombe. They had a son, George. He had a son Thom- as, who had a son George, who had a son George, who had a son George, and he is my dad. George and Phoebe must have moved away, because they died in Lyncombe and Widcombe parish. George had been a farm labourer at one point. The photograph is a little spooky to me, because George looks so much like my younger brother. George’s parents, William and his wife Mary (nee Hillman), were born in English- combe, married and buried there. And there the story runs dry. I know nothing more about William and Mary. Their parents must have lived in the village; maybe their grandparents did also. How many generations of Coxes lived and died there? I read the history of the village written by Jean Manco. What intrigued me were the pictures of people with the last Cox taken in more recent times. I see Coxes living there in 1995. Could it really be that my Coxes had petered out or moved away, and a new, unrelated set moved into the village? It seems unlikely. Perhaps there are Coxes, and Hillmans, and Pontings still there? Twenty and some years ago, I moved to Texas for work. I have two sons born here in Houston. For them, and for my need to connect to my roots, I have been exploring my genealogy. There is something that is drawing me to Englishcombe. Somehow I feel it is an important part of my heritage. So I ask you; do you know George Cox? Are you a Hillman or a Ponting, or a de- scendant of them? Please reach out to me at [email protected] Russell Cox 2 Ready, steady, census Census 2021 will provide a snapshot of modern society Households across Englishcombe Parish will soon be asked to take part in Census 2021. Census day is 21 March 2021. The census is a once-in-a-decade survey that gives us the most accurate estimate of all the people and households in England and Wales. It has been carried out every decade since 1801, with the exception of 1941. It will be the first run predominantly online, with households receiving a letter with a unique access code, allowing them to complete the questionnaire on their computers, phones or tablets. “A successful census will ensure everyone from local government to charities can put services and funding in the places where they are most needed,” Iain Bell, deputy national statistician at the Office for National Statistics, said. “This could mean things like doctors’ surgeries, schools and new transport routes. That’s why it is so important everyone takes part and we have made it easier for people to do so online on any device, with help and paper ques- tionnaires for those that need them.” Census day will be on March 21, but households across the country will re- ceive letters with online codes allowing them to take part from early March. The census will include questions about your sex, age, work, health, educa- tion, household size and ethnicity. And, for the first time, there will be a ques- tion asking people whether they have served in the armed forces, as well as voluntary questions for those aged 16 and over on sexual orientation and gender identity. Results will be available within 12 months, although personal records will be locked away for 100 years, kept safe for future generations. For more information, visit census.gov.uk. 3 Padleigh Brook ‘I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.’ John O’Donohue, unfinished poem. The brook is birthed through Fuller’s earth, in the dark of Vernham Wood, hidden in the bowl of the deep valley end. This bowl is shel- tered beneath where once the Romans built their Fosse Way. I wonder whether any of the tired marching soldiers, on route from their ships in England’s south coast, marching to northern garri- sons, stopped here and slipped down into the val- ley’s hollow, for shade and to collect fresh spring water. Padleigh leaves the Romans marching north, and the later miners digging Fuller’s earth, which will line the nappies of the pampered baby’s bottoms of Victorian England, to make its journey west. Down past Hoggen’s coppice with middle wood to its south, where survivors from its pheasant farm can still be seen and to the north, Eastover cop- pice where workers from the Bath stone quarries would come to freely gather coppiced wood, for winter warmth and summer poles to grow their beans. Deeper now the river burrows under the steep slopes that divided medieval tribes. Barrowe-juxte- Inglescombe, reaches out from Woden’s dyke, the northern boundary of the seventh century Saxons. While to the north is Barrowe-juxte-Bathe, an older hill fort on the other side. Here where an 18th century manor house would catch fire in the early 19th centu- ry to be re-built in 1851 as a gothic castle home, decked out with accompanying glass houses. 1851, the year of Crystal Palace and hot house mania. Bar- row’s green houses would go on to breed new daffo- dil bulbs such as ‘Fortune’ and ‘Inglescombe’ and be- come the centre and home of Ware’s nurseries. These sent out flowers by train to London’s markets and to win medals at Chelsea flower shows. 4 Now the river gurgles under a new wooden footpath bridge, close to where a stone bridge once stood. Who crossed the older bridge, we can only wonder? Cattle, sheep farmers? Perhaps this was a route for an old drover’s track further up the hill? Padleigh then burrows deeper still between Breach wood and the new Sirius wood. Here the valley is rich with the scent of ransom with its wild garlic smell in spring, with white flowers lighting up the dark forest floor. Higher up the bank are Breach wood’s bluebells, interspersed with yellow aconites and white wood anemones. In some years in late April, St George’s mushrooms raise their head at the base of Breach’s oaks and ashes. Some trees grow out of their ancestors’ old trunks, cre- ating growing sculptures and, according to my granddaughters, houses for elves and fairies. Where Woden’s dyke runs darkly through the wood the badgers have dug their sett, deep into the bank, now adorned with small slag heaps of badger dig- gings. Along the paths run mount jack deer and through the branches grey squirrels swing. At the woodland edges bobbing rabbits run and the occasional hare can be seen running for cover as humans are spotted. Above the tall canopy fly and hover buzzards and sparrow hawks, looking for prey. Sometimes they are harried by crows and rooks, defending their homes and young. Padleigh flows out from the dark woodland glade into Padleigh ’s bottom where the pub is long closed, and the kennel’s dogs no longer bark. Padleigh flows on pass Washpool lane, where the good women of English- combe would come to wash and dry their clothes. Above the washerwomen stood the moated Culverhay cas- tle, ‘enclosure of the doves’, a reward to Nigel de Gourney, for services to the new Norman rulers, and no doubt to keep the locals in their place. 5 Here to the north once glistened in the sun, Wares Nurseries in Haycombe Vale, with acres under glass, and little railway tracks running through them. Ware’s, one of the two largest employers this side of Bath, along with Fuller’s earth works above Padleigh’s source. Above Culverhay castle lies Englishcombe, the Angle’s valley, appropriately named, as the Saxon dyke runs through St Peter’s churchyard past its Norman tower. The church’s ancient stone walls sheltering a bambini (swaddled baby Christ) and a thousand years of village voices singing hymns and carols. Nestled close by are a 13th century tythe barn, local farms and school, mill stream and mill wheel, no long- er working.