It’s likely the cracking will have been caused by differential thermal expansion and contraction with the iron changing its dimenions rather more than the ceramic glaze.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click images to enlarge
This is one of the old brewery plaques, once numerous across Britain. This example is in Castle Street, outside The Brewers Arms, not far from the junction with Querns Lane and Lewis Lane.
Arkell’s Brewery
The brewery originated in 1843, the year on the plaque. It was founded in Swindon by John Arkell, remains family-owned and operates as one of the oldest remaining brewery companies in Britain.
The plaque is probably of cast iron with enamel decoration and apart from some cracks seems to be in almost perfect condition. It’s likely the cracking will have been caused by differential thermal expansion and contraction with the iron changing its dimenions rather more than the ceramic glaze. The plaque has seen more than 180 day/night cycles in its time!
Brasso
The image is of Noah’s ark with a large capital letter ‘L’, so a play on Arkell (‘arkL’). There’s a long history of businesses advertising their presence with logos and other illustrations, it happens in all nations and cultures, sometimes the themes, names and images employed can become quite famous and long-lived. When I was a young child, Brasso (a British brass polish) was sold in steel containers with blue and white rays coming out in all directions. It’s still available today in cans with the same design. And it probably looked just the same in Victorian times as well! When I was young it was fitted with a low-profile, steel screw-cap, today it has a much larger, plastic cap. Otherwise, it looks identical to me.
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The simplest and cheapest way to travel would have been to walk, and people often did exactly that. For an example look no further than the old story of Dick Whittington.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click images to enlarge
This photo was taken in Cirencester, peering in through an entrance to a courtyard beyond. If you are familiar with the town, I wonder if you know where this is? *The answer is at the bottom of the post.
There’s an invitation in this photo
That’s why I called it ‘Come right in!’ There seems to be an unspoken welcome here. What appeals to you most in this picture? Is it the warmth of the light? Or perhaps the sparkle of the decorative lights at the far end? Or the open doors beckoning you to enter? In days of yore, this double doorway might have allowed a horse to be brought inside for stabling, feeding, watering and grooming to recover for use the following day. The carriage would have remained on the street outside.
‘Days of yore’, this funny old expression is a poetical way of saying long ago. ‘yore’ is an Old English word closely related to the modern word ‘year’. So the sense is ‘in the days of years ago’. There’s a large garden at the back of the hotel, with a lawn scattered with tables and chairs, a lovely place to eat and drink with friends or family in the summer months. I imagine the horses sometimes being turned out to graze in a grassy field here, what a treat for them!
Shelter for travellers
Travelling on horseback or by horse and carriage was a slow affair, requiring regular stops for meals or to shelter for the night, and that’s why the old routes between towns in Britain are liberally scattered with pubs, inns and hostels. Practically every village of hamlet would have had one and towns would have had many more. They’re not hard to spot, although these days many have been converted to other uses.
It wouldn’t always have been necessary to pay for accommodation, friends or family along or near the route would have made travellers welcome and on dry, warm, summer nights it would have been possible to pull off the main roads and sleep outside or in the carriage. The simplest and cheapest way to travel would have been to walk, and people often did exactly that. For an example look no further than the old story of Dick Whittington. In Roman times there were parallel systems for official/military and public use. Every 30 to 50 km (a day’s journey) there were mansiones or official stops with good accomodation, fresh horses, dining areas, and perhaps even baths. And between these were mutationes, (literally ‘changes’) for a brief stop, a fresh horse, and perhaps some refreshments but without overnight facilities. Non-official, privately run facilities included cauponae and tabernae, some of these were a bit rough and disreputable, some were well appointed with courtyards, kitchens, and decorated dining rooms. Several modern English terms come from these words – mansion, mutation, and tavern are notable.
The Bible is usually regarded as a religious book, but it’s also a good historical source as well. Read the book of Acts, for example, to get a good idea of what travel by land and sea was like 2000 years ago. See for example Acts 28:11-16 where a place near Rome called ‘Three Taverns’ is mentioned (Tres Tabernae).
* It’s the Corinium Hotel in Gloucester Street, once the Corinium Court Hotel.
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I was admitted to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital (GRH) for six days of investigation including CT and MRI scans. I started off on a trolley in a corner of Acute Medical until they could find space in a ward (2025).
October 2025 (3 months before publishing this article)
Click pics to enlarge
View from my hospital trolley
This was an unusual month during which I suffered a small bleed in my brain (a subarachnoid haemorrhage). The effects were weird and quite sudden, I began having seizures, in my case quite mild symptoms of muscle weakness in my left leg and numbness in parts of my left leg and head; curiously my left arm was not affected. These symptoms lasted for a few minutes and then faded away. This happened three or four times a day to begin with but quickly reduced in frequency.
After nine hours in A&E I was admitted to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital (GRH) for six days of investigation including CT and MRI scans. I started off on a trolley in a corner of Acute Medical until they could find space in a ward. And much of my time was spent in Gallery Wing, Ward 1C. I was interested to see that all the medical and ward staff used their staff badges to log in to any hospital computer to see their own desktop with all the icons and applications they needed to do their work. Efficient and well-thought-out. The computer in the photo is displaying the login screen.
My symptoms were mild and were completely suppressed by low doses of Levetiracetam prescribed by my consultant. And my GP here in Cirencester can see the consultant’s notes as well as her own. I’ve had no seizures at all since 1st November. No surgery was required, but until I have six months clear of seizures, I’m not allowed to drive. There are more details in an article I wrote at the time.
From 4th to 7th we took Donna’s Mum, Isobel, for a short holiday at a Warners Hotel near Hereford. We visited Great Malvern and struggled to get the wheelchair up and down some of the very steep footpaths in the town.
The Small Group I meet with on Tuesday evenings gave me an opportunity to work through part of JDMC with them. This was encouraging and successful enough that Al suggested we work through some more of it next week.
In our back garden I added some more turf to a path I’m rerouting. We visited our neighbour George who’s in hospital in Dursley.
JHM: I wrote about the apostolic gift; and about the complex water flows in Cirencester. World events: The International Court of Justice ruled that countries can sue each other over historical emissions of greenhouse gases and the effects of climate change; and clashes erupted in southern Syria between armed Druze and Bedouin groups.
I walked out in the evening twilight and took this photo near the footbridge from The Beeches to Cricklade Road opposite Aldi. In the south-western sky you can see a waxing crescent Moon and the planet Venus near the top of the image. You may need to click the image to enlarge it to see Venus.
Moon and Venus again
Here they are again the following evening (3rd January) seen from Stratton north of Cirencester, see how far the Moon has moved along its orbit in just a little under 24 hours!
Chimney repair
The builders came to fix our leaking chimney, it was good to have that job done. In the bad old days when I was young the builders would have nonchalantly walked over the roof as if it was at ground level. But these days scaffolding is a must as the safety standards have been changed. It costs a little more, but it reduces the risks considerably.
JHM: I wrote about Knightstone Causeway; and my breakfast. World events: Bulgaria and Romania removed their EU land border controls having joined the Schengen Area; while Ukraine halted the flow of Russian gas following the expiration of a five-year transit deal and became a state party in the International Criminal Court.
After a great deal of effort and trying several different ways, I was finally able to get the Paul Young videos live on YouTube from the House2House meetings CDs. I then wrote to my friends, the Dales, who hold the copyright to the recorded sessions from the meetings back in 2008.
Having got that task done I was then able to group them into a playlist and anyone can now watch them online. The video titles are Grace, Tradition and Soul; together they explain how Paul came to write The Shack, how he came to understand the grace of God working in people’s lives including his own, and the shame-based fear so many people face in our Western culture and just how crippling it can be. Paul wrote the book for his children and its amazing success as a book in 2007 and as a film in 2017 has changed the trajectories of so many lives ever since. The book remains available as a paperback and an ebook from Google Play, Amazon, and others, and the film is still available to view on YouTube, Amazon and elsewhere (here’s the trailer). The three talks Paul Young gave at the House2House conference must have been one of the first times he spoke about it publicly to a large audience, and they’re still well worth watching.
Two of them have been seen by the Small Group that I meet with most weeks, we really should try to see the third one too in the coming year.
This was the view from our window on 24th January! A relatively heavy fall of snow and still coming down when I took the photo.
A newish Moon
Earlier in the month, on 15th, I was able to get a lovely photo of the crescent Moon, just a day or two after New Moon. The sun had recently set below and to the right of this image. There was still enough light in the sky to prevent the sunlit side of the Moon from flaring and there’s enough contrast to just see the nightime part of the Moon, sometimes poetically described as ‘the old Moon in the New Moon’s arms’.
Stratton Meadows
The later part of the month was wet and the River Churn broke its banks and flooded fields and meadows in low lying areas. the final image for this month shows Stratton meadows inundated. The village of Stratton is on the higher ground beyond the flooded area. This land, now used to graze cattle in the summer was used to grow willow rods 150 years ago. They would have been harvested in the autumn and bound into bundles for local basket making businesses.
World events: Supporters of US President Donald Trump attacked the US Capitol; and the global death toll from COVID-19 passed 2 million.
We had daffodils in flower by the end of January, surprisingly early and evidence that global warming was already beginning to have practical effects. The photo shows a row of them along the roadside in St Neots. We welcome them in springtime, but in January I’m not sure they are quite as welcome, though very lovely.
One of my friends from the coffee shop Bible study group, Kevin, was suicidal, I took him to A&E at the hospital in Huntingdon and stayed with him until he could be seen. It seemed a wise and necessary precaution.
We had Peter and Dadka staying with us as they were unable to afford anywhere of their own. They were both from Slovakia. Peter received a message on 9th to say that his parents had been involved in a road accident and his father had died in the collision. He flew back home to be with the family for a week or two and help make the necessary arrangements. This must have been a terrible shock for him.
On 30th I enjoyed a coffee and a great chat with a friend, David Pacini.
World events: The IAEA announced that Iran has adequately dismantled its nuclear weapons program, allowing the UN to lift sanctions; and the WHO announced an outbreak of the Zika virus.
In the garden the snowdrops were in flower and our rhubarb was beginning to grow with buds bursting and the first, crinkled leaves beginning to unfold. We bought a new HP LaserJet colour printer to replace our old Samsung laser printer.
I was involved in several different meetings at this time. There was the Open Door Small Group once a week on Tuesdays, I was meeting with the coffee shop crew at least once a week and quite separately with Jim, Sean and Kevin on Thursday evenings. On Thursday mornings I met with Roger and Ruth at their home in Offord d’Arcy. With the coffee shop group we discussed ideas around not going to church because we are the church, and how our focus should be to plant Jesus, plant disciples, and plant the gospel.
On 7th we had a sixth Cornerstone Meeting, not just directors this time, but staff as well. Paul has written off the setup costs of £81k and planned to run on a break-even basis in future. He also thought he might move to fried food and reduced prices. Paul declared that there would be no directors from now on, just a management team. Some of us foresaw problems, mainly because Paul wanted things all his own way and some of his ideas were somewhat controversial; but he was putting up all the money, and if he didn’t want ideas and thoughts from others, that was, of course, his choice to make.
Following Mum’s death at Cheltenham General Hospital on 1st January, Dad was pretty busy getting the news out to friends and relatives and making initial arrangements for the funeral. I worked up an initial draft for the service sheet, and I discussed it with Dad and my three sisters before revising it.
Debbie sent me a scan of her unborn baby, and I felt sad that Mum would not see the birth of two great-grandchildren (Beth was also expecting a baby, probably a little before her sister, Debbie).
Gayna, Donna and Ken
Towards the end of the month, we enjoyed visiting the National Trust’s Anglesey Abbey with our friends Ken and Gayna. It was a lovely, sunny day and the gardens at Anglesey are always a delight at any time of the year.
World events:A panicking crowd during the Stoning of the Devil ritual on the last day of the Hajj in Saudi Arabia, killed at least 362 pilgrims; and NASA launched the first interplanetary spacecraft to Pluto, New Horizons.
I began redecorating the stairs, hall, and landing. I fitted an electrical box with wiring for an extractor fan in the bathroom, repaired the plasterwork where necessary, and painted emulsion on the walls and gloss on the woodwork. It was quite a long job, but we got it completed in the end.
Conservatory
We decided to buy a conservatory, our garden was large enough to take one and it would extend our living space quite a bit. Also, we thought it would fit well against the long brick wall of the kitchen, airing cupboard and the old laundry room and we could easily replace the dining room window with a small bi-fold opening using the existing lintel; so just a matter of cutting through the lower brickwork, making good, a bit of plastering and decorating.
We began visiting conservatory suppliers to look at what they had to offer and get some idea of price. The one in the photo was the sort of shape and size we thought might work well for us.
A further improvement at home was the removal of the very old bathroon suite and its replacement with a new bath, shower, loo and sink in white to replace the worn out avocado bath, loo and sink. Times had moved on with bathroom colours!
Colworth badge
And finally at Unilever Research Colworth, we all received brand new security badges which opened gates and doors automatically for all the areas each member of staff had access to.
World events: Greece became the 12th country to join the Eurozone; and Apple launched iTunes, software that acted as both a media player and a media library.
on 1st January Beth, Paul, Jenny and I went to see Apollo 13 at the cinema in Weston-super-Mare. It seems a strange thing to have done just after losing Judy, but at the time it seemed to make perfect sense. Debbie, would, I think have been preparing to go back to study for her teaching qualification at Newport in south Wales. I certainly enjoyed watching the film.
I returned to work at Long Ashton on 3rd and started to pick up the threads that had been temporarily abandoned, or taken over by Pete Moody or Mike Truman while I’d been away. Peter Shewry invited me to join the Computing Strategy Review Meeting, and I continued developing the Microscopy web pages in the evenings at home.
Judy’s funeral was on 5th January and the day did not begin well. I woke up in the morning to the sound of dripping water and found it coming through the top of the bedroom doorframe. An emergency plumber came out and soon got things sorted for me. When the house was built, the overflow pipe was never connected so instead of a pipe dripping outside the house, the system was dripping inside! That lost me two hours at the start of a rather busy day, but everything else went well.
About 160 turned up which was astonishing, Judy was much loved not only by the extended family but by her pupils and colleagues at Cotham Grammar School, and many LARS staff had come along too. Bev was great, he said all the right things and was appreciated by everyone, I think. But only around 80 to 90 came to the buffet afterwards at Horsecastle chapel, so we had far too much food and donated what was left to the Horsecastle youth groups.
Rachael and Neil witnessed a horrendous event on their way back to Rugby later that day. A man jumped from a motorway bridge just as Rachael was approaching it. She had managed to swerve and miss him, but two cars behind her were unable to avoid him and caught him full on. Neil and another man had made their way back to the area of the incident and saw what happened.
World events: Serious fighting broke out on 9th January between Russian soldiers and rebel fighters in Chechnya; and France undertook its last nuclear weapons test.
We visited Nana and Grandad (Judy’s parents) at their home at 14 Belland Drive, Charlton Kings, Cheltenham. The photo shows Nana, Beth and Debbie playing a game on the dining table, perhaps one of Beth’s Christmas presents.
Cleaning the guinea pig run
On 13th we were back at home in Yatton, Debbie and Beth were out in the cold cleaning out the guinea pig run. When it was particularly cold we used to bring the guinea pigs into the house for protection, but they were quite good at managing cold days, the three of them would huddle together to keep warm.
World events: The US Congress authorised the use of force to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait; and in South Africa, Nelson Mandela and Mangosuthu Buthelezi agreed to end the violence between the ANC and Inkatha.
I was busy at LARS constructing a user-friendly menu system for the EDAX X-ray microanalysis software on the scanning electron microscope (SEM). I also produced a series of step-by-step instructions for using the SEM. The instrument in the photo is similar to the one we had at Long Ashton, but with a different X-ray microanalysis system.
Debbie and Beth remained at school in Yatton and we were living at 80 Stowey Road.
World events: Spain and Portugal joined the European Community; while the United Kingdom and France announced plans to construct the Channel Tunnel.
I couldn’t find anything for January 1981. Debbie would have been five-years-old, turning six in March. Beth was two and would become three in May.
John Jefferies and Son would have been clearing surplus stock from the shop in the January sales but would also have been starting to consider how best to dispose of the business since the four brothers were approaching or beyond retiring age. My cousin, Tim, was young enough to carry on for some time but it was far too much for one person to manage. My Dad would be able to help out a lot but for relatively few years. The options would have been to shrink the business very considerably by selling off much of the land, or finding a buyer to continue it as a going concern. I suspect a decision was made to sell and hope to keep Tim employed by the new owners. There would have been no great urgency at this stage, but the clock was certainly ticking and something would need to be done.
World events: Greece joined the European Economic Community; and Iran released the remaining 52 American hostages, minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President, ending the Iran hostage crisis.
The photo is from February 1976 as I could find nothing for January. It shows Cindy with Gavin and Rebecca walking towards the front door at Churnside.
Debbie was 10 months old in January and we were regularly meeting our friends Tony and Faith for prayer and to explore ways to go deeper in our knowledge and experience of meeting and living non-denominationally. Others were beginning to join us too, but just in ones and twos at this stage. Judy and I were still regularly at Horsecastle Chapel on Sundays too. There was a certain tension about this as the Horsecastle elders worried that we might come off the rails meeting without oversight with all these other odd people (from their point of view).
Judy’s temporary Christmas job at a Bristol department store came to an end once the January sales finished. She began her new job as a lab assistant in the Woodland Road Biochemistry Lab at Bristol University. I think the photo shows the same building in 2008, though I can’t be certain. She worked for Dr Mike Tanner who was doing research on a human erythrocyte membrane protein. They used out of date donated blood from Bristol Royal Infirmary, prepared erythrocyte ghosts (empty cell membranes) and extracted the proteins. I think they were studying Protein D as it was then called, and assembling amino acid sequences. It involved a lot of acrylamide gel chromatography although the lab was the proud owner of an early amino acid sequencer that could analyse short peptides automatically. The short sequences had to be manually matched and assembled into longer sequence maps.
Our bed-sit was cramped and very basic, but it was home. We still had our first car, ‘Pumpkin’, a Ford 100E sidevalve engine with a 3-speed gearbox. In the mornings I’d drive to the top of Park Street and drop Judy off near the Wills Building, then drive to Long Ashton. I forget what the evening arrangement was, probably I parked on Woodland Road and we drove from there to the bed-sit at 59 Linden Road. We were saving money now and starting to look at the possibility of an unfurnished flat and we might have made the move later in the year.
World events: In the Ibrox disaster, 66 people died and over 200 were injured in Glasgow during a spectator crush at a football match; and the Aswan High Dam was officially opened in Egypt.
The Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard, one of the local newpapers in the area, published a story on 7th January about The Corals, a local pop group who hired Cirencester’s Corn Hall on New Year’s Eve to attempt a world record of playing popular music without repeating a tune. They played for 11½ hours so did indeed smash the previous record of 10 hours.
What was not reported (because nobody knew) was that the drummer, Colin Flooks, would later become world famous as Cozy Powell, playing with bands like Black Sabbath as well as with Brian May and other famous performers. Colin was in my class (1B) when we started at Cirencester Grammar School in 1959.
World events:Indira Gandhi was elected Prime Minister of India and was sworn in on January 24; and the Radio Caroline ship Mi Amigo ran aground on the beach at Frinton-on-Sea.
I was studying a range of subjects in Class 2B, including Latin for a second year. The photo shows the cover of one of my exercise books. We began in years 1 and 2 with a wide range of subjects, but these changed after the second year, I was not doing well with Latin so discontinued it at the end of the summer term in 1962.
The third year of my time at Querns School continued into its second term. Christmas and New year were already done and we were starting to look forward to Easter, and beyond it the long summer holiday.
I was in the third year at Querns School (my junior school). I was excited as I was seven-years-old now and feeling much more confident with school work, the environment and my fellow pupils. But it was still good to go home at the end of the school day to eat a meal with Mum, Dad and Cindy (we called it tea, dinner was the midday meal). Sometimes before bedtime we’d have a cup of hot chocolate or Ovaltine as a bit of a treat. If you had something to eat in the evening it would be supper. Perhaps if we’d been out all day we might have fish and chips in newspaper. Now that was a treat!
Whirlybirds
Fridays were special because they were followed by Saturday and Sunday when there was no school at all. All day to play in the garden with Linda and Graham Watts from next door, or walk to the little shop near the Golden Farmer pub to buy bacon or a loaf of bread for Mum and perhaps some sweets. Mr and Mrs Watts had a TV and often we’d go round to watch Whirlybirds or The Lone Ranger. Click on the link, choose an episode, and watch!
The Korean War was in full swing, and I remember Dad getting his RAF kitbag out of the loft and going away to Kent for a week or two to train on the latest Radar systems. I don’t know when this happened, of course or even if it was in 1951. The Korean War ran from June 1950 to July 1953 and it seems to me that Dad’s absence for training was before Cindy was born in October 1951. It makes sense that if they were going to retrain people they’d have done it early during the war.
In January, Dad was receiving tobacco from Lilias as well as from Bob and Betty (Mike’s brother and sister-in-law). His Uncle Herbert (his Father’s brother) had left him a £50 legacy in his will. He had a bad dream about Lilias on 3rd/4th.
On 7th he had a second flight in the Avro Anson and photographed the runways from the air. By 10th he was worried because he’d had no recent letters from Lilias, a letter came on 11th to say she’d been ill. He had a further hour in the Anson and this time was given a chance to try the controls (he would have so loved that!) On 16th he heard that his friends Joe and Dorothy were engaged to be married. He watched quite a few films during January as well. Mike also took photos of the Anson, a Stirling, and his garry (lorry).
World events: The first meeting of the United Nations was held, at Methodist Central Hall Westminster in London; and Project Diana bounced radar waves off the Moon, measuring the exact distance between the Earth and the Moon, and proving that communication is possible between Earth and outer space.
There’s not enough information to write something for every month in the 1940s. Mike’s diaries start in January 1943, so for January 1940 to December 1942 I’ll write about things I know, or draw on dated photos and documents. Sometimes I might use a photo or document with a guessed date.
US Embassy in Japan, 1931
Mike would have been 15 and still at school, possibly at Cirencester Grammar School or perhaps already at Rendcomb College just north of Cirencester. His older brothers were all serving with British forces in the Second World War. His father was managing the family business (John Jefferies & Son Ltd) on his own with help from some paid staff, but even these would have been in short supply due to the need for fighting men. It must have been a difficult time.
World events: Australian and British troops defeated Italian forces at the Battle of Bardia in Libya; and the US ambassador to Japan, reported to Washington a rumour overheard at a diplomatic reception, concerning a planned surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Anything that appears in this section will have some connection with the 1930’s but may extend beyond the decade to follow a meaningful topic more fully.
Cirencester traditionally had a town carnival every August. These petered out and were discontinued, I think in the 1970s. The photo shows the Carnival Queen and her attendants in the 1939 Carnival.
The Carnival procession made its way through the Market Place and along Dyer Street and then Victoria Road to a field at Watermoor where there would be tents, amusements and fairground rides.
This photo taken 95 years later in December 2025 is seen from the same angle. I thought there’d have been no mill here in the 1930s, but the photo was made from a footbridge that’s still there and is in daily use as part of Riverside Walk. There is no mill here today, though, so there’s a fuller story to discover if and when anyone has the time and inclination to dig a bit deeper.
World events (January 1931): The cyclotron was invented (used to accelerate sub-atomic particles to study nuclear physics). (January 1936):Radium E (bismuth-210) became the first radioactive element to be made synthetically.
As with the 1930s material, everything in this section will have a connection of some kind with these two decades.
Ted and Mike
Mike (my father) was born on 4th June 1926. The photo shows him with his father, my grandpa, Ted. The album holding this photo probably belonged to Mike’s older brother, Dick and this page is clearly marked 1927. The trees in the photo are leafless, so we can date the photo to wintertime which would put Mike at around 18 months old.
At Churnside
The second photo was on the same page so is also from 1927. It might have been a warm day in October, perhaps, and was taken in the back garden of Churnside, 37 Victoria Road.
This month I thought I’d provide a pen picture of Alice Freeth (later Jefferies) who married John Jefferies . Alice was born in 1810 in the village of Minety and baptised on 5th August 1810, her parents were Robert and Elizabeth Freeth. I do have some photos of her, but can’t find them right at this moment. I’ll add one later as and when.
Family connections
Parents – Robert and Elizabeth Freeth of Minety
Born – July/August 1810 (baptised 12th Aug 1810)
Died – 29th December 1893
Married, around 1842 or 1843) – John Jefferies of Somerford Keynes
Siblings – Unknown
Children – William John (1844), John Edwin (1845), Alice Mary (1847), Edward (1849), Julia Anne (1851), Henrietta (1854), Agnes Henrietta (1855)
John and Alice moved to Cirencester, perhaps when John took over the Gregory Nursery business or maybe before that while he was still employed by Richard Gregory. In any case, the census for 1881 records them as living at Minerva Villa in Cirencester. Although we don’t have a marriage date, Alice and John’s first child was born in June 1844 so it’s likely they married in 1842 or 1843 when Alice was in her early thirties and John about 30. Henrietta died as an infant aged just one month, so that would have been a time of great difficulty and sadness for them both.
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It might have been William who requested and obtained the title ‘Royal Nurseries’ This was a forerunner of the later ‘By Appointment to’ designation denoting high status businesses (1800s).
September 2025 (3 months before publishing this article)
Click pics to enlarge
Al and Phil at Stonehouse
Small Group got started again after the summer break. This is a discussion group, part of CBC but run by my friends Al and Chris Booth. I’m not part of CBC but I am part of the Small Group and that suits me just fine.
I did a short canal walk with Phil and Al, both friends from the Small Group. The weather was a bit mixed but we enjoyed the walk with coffee and a light lunch at the half way point at Ebley Mill.
The Lion Trail
Donna and I walked around the centre of Cheltenham as she wanted to do the Lion walk. Some of those lions are amazing!
We visited Blenheim Palace, in part to look at the flower show that was on, and in part to explore aspects of the palace that we’d not seen before. We took a good look around the Winston Churchill exhibition (Churchill was born in the palace and spent a lot of time here, it was one of his favourite places).
But we also explored the parkland around the house, a wide expanse and very beautiful too as you can see from the photo.
Donna ran a 10 km race at Westonbirt School; she was among the final finishers, but she did it. With a large field of experienced club runners, she did really well and deserves plenty of kudos for all the training and effort she put in!
The start date for our heat pump installation slipped to 6th January, so we’ll have to manage without central heating until half way through January. We still have the gas fire in the lounge, of course, and we have several convector heaters too.
Kingfisher
A bonus this month was that I got a photo of the kingfisher perching on the barbed wire outside Cirencester’s outdoor swimming pool. Although it’s a little fuzzy, it’s the best image I’ve obtained of the kingfisher so far.
Sadly, it was no longer possible to keep Erin alive any longer and I buried her in a carefully recorded spot in the garden (one of her favourite summer sleeping spots).
Chastleton
We visited Chastleton House, partly because we wanted to see the house and grounds, but particularly as we wanted to look at the amazing plaster ceilings for which the old house is so famous. We were not disappointed! The photo shows the largest of these extraordinary ceilings.
Narrow escape
Shortly before Christmas a huge lime tree fell across the Gloucester Road between Cirencester and Stratton, demolishing a section of the Cotswold wall on the west side of the road, taking out a big chunk of the hedge on the east side, and almost crushing a passing car. The driver must have had a very narrow escape.
Walking in Cirencester Park near Barton Farm, I passed this medieval dovecote, the oldest building still standing in Cirencester apparently. What a delightful and wonderful old structure!
I had a really good phone chat with my friend Jim who lives near St Neots. His daughter Bethany has completed training as a nurse, following in her mum’s footsteps.
During a heavy storm on 23rd, we had leaks through the dining area rooflights, but a local builder, Trevor Rowlands, was exceptionally helpful and covered up the rooflights with waterproof sheeting, weighing it down with heavy timber and brick which worked well as a temporary fix.
Elephants!
Donna and I walked into Cirencester park to look at the elephants. There’s been a whole herd of a hundred of them in London, but three are currently on loan to the park.
We drove to York to spend some time with Debbie, Beth and their families. As always, it was great to see everyone and exchange presents, now a long-standing tradition. There was the annual Nativity play in Thorganby, Sara was Mary this year.
In Broadstone
And, of course, we also drove down to Broadstone to see Donna’s parents and meet Paul and Vanessa with more presents to exchange.
Wedding
And on 28th, Ele and Jonathan tied the knot in grand style, so December was a really busy month one way and another. Three long journeys for us, but all of them well worth the time and effort.
World events:OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research company, was founded; and SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 rocket, the first reusable rocket to successfully enter orbital space and return.
On holiday in Gran Canaria, we drove up into the central mountains on 1st December; the scenery was amazing. We were surprised to get a view of Mount Teide about 120 km across the sea on Tenerife.
I finally made the move from Windows to Ubuntu on 13th December. No more Windows licence fees, no more expensive software, everything I need in one free installation – the operating system, office suite, image editing, everything, all at zero cost. I was well pleased. Then, a few days later we had a heavy snowfall.
Snow!
We set off in the snow to drive to York, but most of the way the roads were completely clear of snow.
The 5th Cornerstone Directors’ Meeting was held on 7th November. It wasn’t clear if Paul wanted to have directors or not, our advice and suggestions seem to cut across his own plans, but he’s in difficulties and could do with help and advice. We decided he needs to be clear about his wishes.
We drove down to Broadstone to Visit Donna’s Mum and Dad just before New Year’s Eve and Paul and Justine who were also there at the time. It was good to see Paul again, he’s always been one of my favourite people.
An extra Unilever Portal page was needed for Colworth, so I was working on that, but also I’d been tasked with managing the spreadsheets involved with the costs of Colworth mobile phone calls and that was proving much more difficult. Not only was I unfamiliar with Microsoft Excel, but the systems for charging departments were not easy either.
I’d been travelling down to visit Mum and Dad, often on a Friday, and not long before Mum’s Hospital admission Dad had asked me to pray with them. I think he knew Mum had little time left. I knelt down between them as they sat in the front sitting room at Churnside and each held one of my hands and we prayed together, I think for safety, blessing, peace and Jesus’ guidance. Then I left to drive home, and that was the last time I saw my Mum while her mind was still active.
Shortly afterwards, Mum had a couple of major strokes and was in Cheltenham General Hospital on 30th December, though she seemed to be no longer conscious or aware. The photo shows the hospital with Cleeve Hill in the background. Dad was of course distressed by this and the entire family rallied round. Donna and I made our way down to join them all. The hospital was very helpful, finding a room we could all rest in and even stay overnight to be with Mum and Dad as much as possible.
World events: Scientists announced the creation of mice with small numbers of human neurons to model neurological disorders; and an extra second was added (23:59:60) to resynchronise calendar time to atomic clock time, last required in 1998.
We had a WebForum meeting in Amsterdam. The photo shows Phil Briggs (Briggsy) reading a newspaper on the plane, probably from Cambridge Airport to Rotterdam. We’d have completed the journey by train from Rotterdam to Amsterdam. Pete Keeley also came with us on this trip. My initial development of a temporary WebForum for Unilever Research sites was going to be replaced with a much improved version to be developed for us by INFO NL, a software developer in Amsterdam. INFO NL demonstrated their web site development software and we discussed early mock-ups of the appearance and functionality we would require.
Data Science’s Christmas Party.
Donna and I both worked for Colworth’s Data Sciences group. I was in the Knowledge Systems Group (KSG) while she was in Statistics. Data Sciences held a Christmas Party each year and anyone working there in 2000 will recognise the people in the photo.
This was a difficult month for all of us as Judy became weaker and weaker and was unable to do anything for herself. She was stuck in bed and quite unable to get downstairs, even with considerable help. The exceptions were when Tony, Faith, Paul and Jenny visited for a meeting. Judy protested that we should continue meeting downstairs no matter what, so Tony and Paul carried her down in the wheelchair for the meetings and back up afterwards.
Reading through my journal entries during the last week or two of December reminds me of many details I’d forgotten. Judy tried to hide her pain, not only from me, Debbie and Beth, but also from Dr Boyles and the nurses. But once we understood this Dr Boyles was able to keep her comfortable without knocking her out entirely – a good outcome.
Our friend, Bev Foster agreed to take the coming funeral service at the crematorium when the time came, and Judy was pleased about that. On 26th Judy woke me several times to say she needed the loo, but it was far too late every time. This provoked a decision to insert a catheter. Judy died at two minutes past midnight on 28th December with my Mum and Dad, me, Debbie and Beth all gathered around the bed. In the end she just stopped breathing. I phoned the on-call GP who certified the death, and then called Britten’s Undertakers to collect the body. None of us felt like sleeping, so we watched the newest Wallace and Gromit film, A Close Shave, which Judy would have absolutely loved. we were in bed by 02:00 and slept like logs until the morning.
On 29th I drove into Clevedon to register the death and later began phoning round to make arrangements for the funeral and everything that needed to be put in place. It all came together quite easily and very satisfactorily.
World events: NASA’s Galileo Probe entered Jupiter’s atmosphere; and the Dayton Agreement was signed in Paris, officially ending the Bosnian War,
Debbie had a major role in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Backwell School on 15th December.
Beth and Judy
We spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day with Judy’s parents in Charlton Kings, then on 27th we visited Cirencester to see my Mum and Dad. We tried to ring the changes a bit, sometimes spending Christmas in Cirencester, sometimes in Cheltenham, but rarely at home in Yatton. Before leaving for Cheltenham, on 23rd December we’d spotted goldcrests and bluetits in our back garden in Yatton. Hungry birds in the winter often appear in gardens where food may be more available.
World events:Channel Tunnel workers from the United Kingdom and France met 40 metres beneath the English Channel seabed; and Slobodan Milošević was elected President of Serbia in the first round of voting.
Judy made and decorated a cake for her Mum and Dad’s 40th wedding anniversary and we drove up on the day to give it to them.
Around this time (I’m not sure exactly when) it was clear my gibberellin localisation work was not going anywhere, and Long Ashton management decided I’d be better employed helping with the electron microscopy lab supporting Richard Pring who needed an assistant. My extensive background in light and fluorescence microscopy made me a promising candidate and I was happy and relieved to take on the role. We had a Philips 505 scanning electron microsope (SEM) with a cryo attachment for work with frozen samples, and a Hitachi transmission electron microscope (TEM). Staff from other departments at Long Ashton, and visiting workers would often need microscopy work done and would either want help and advice with using the instruments or perhaps need someone to do the work on their behalf. So it was an interesting job socially as well as technically.
Debbie and Beth remained at school in Yatton and we were living at 80 Stowey Road.
World events: The first Unabomber victim, Hugh Scrutton, died in Sacramento; and the naturalist, Dian Fossey, was found murdered in Rwanda.
I couldn’t find anything for December 1980. This photo is believed to date to 1980 based on its position in Judy’s photo albums, it looks like a dull but warm day in summertime. There’s a for sale sign in the garden which is puzzling because we moved house in August 1985 and Beth looks far too young. In summer 1980 she would have been two. Perhaps the sign was for Mike and Mary Low’s house next door at the end of the terrace. I’m pretty certain they moved some years before we did.
As with all the shops in Cirencester, John Jefferies and Son’s would have been busy leading up to Christmas with customers buying gift vouchers, pots of Hyacinths forced for Christmas flowering, and Christmas wreaths for front doors, and of course, the essential bare-rooted Christmas trees in a range of sizes, also local people ordering Interflora deliveries to far-flung friends and relatives.
Judy and I were busy collecting suitable things to put in Debbie and Beth’s tights to hang up on Christmas Eve. We didn’t pretend that Father Christmas was real, we explained that it was all a bit of fun, and it was mums and dads who filled the children’s socks; but we also told the girls that some of their friends might think he was real and they shouldn’t disappoint them as that was OK too.
I remember being about three or four myself and walking along the footpath between Queen Anne’s Road and St Mary’s Road with Dad and my younger sister Cindy. I said to Dad, ‘Father Christmas isn’t real, is he Daddy?’ Dad just put his finger to his lips and said, ‘Shh, we’ll talk about it later’, and we did. It didn’t occur to me to ask, ‘So… who eats the mince pies and the carrot, and drinks the sherry, then?’
Debbie turned 9 months old and by now we were well settled in our home in Rectory Drive, Yatton. We bought a twin tub washing machine that could be rolled out from under the kitchen worktop (it made washing nappies far easier), and our old cooker, fridge and double bed came with us from the flat in Bristol.
On the swings
We were in Cirencester visiting my Mum and Dad on the day after Boxing Day (27th December). Probably we had been in Cheltenham on Christmas Day with Judy’s parents, perhaps splitting Boxing Day between the two families.
I have no photos for December 1975, but the two shots here in Cirencester’s Abbey Grounds were filed by Judy in one of her photo albums around that time. But, as Debbie pointed out to me, they must be a few years later than 1975.
World events: Wreck of HMHS Britannic (sunk by a German mine in 1916) was discovered by Jacques Cousteau; and six people kidnapped delegates of an OPEC conference in Vienna.
Judy began her temporary work at a Bristol department store during the Christmas/New Year rush when they needed additional help. The photo shows Broadmead as it was in 2005, the two large buildings near the top were Jones’s (left) and Lewis’s (centre) in 1970.
By this time we were well settled in our bedsit in Linden Road and saving as much as possible so we’d be able to buy some furniture once we moved to an unfurnished flat. We would need quite a lot, dining table and chairs, a sofa, easy chairs, a cooker, fridge, washing machine, kitchen stools, a TV and something to stand it on, the more we thought it through the more it seemed to add up. Most of it would have to be second-hand.
At work I was looking into the possibility of starting on a higher degree. It seemed possible I could do an MSc by research and write it up as a thesis; and one of the most promising lines would be pollination of a fruit tree other than apples which were already well-covered by Ray Williams and his team. One early contender seemed to be plum. My boss, Ken Stott was beginning to reduce his willow and poplar work in favour of helping with the pollination studies and it seemed we were going to buy an ultraviolet fluorescence microscope similar to the one being used to track apple pollen tubes growing in compatible and incompatible apple flowers. That would be perfect.
World events: The U.N. General Assembly supported the isolation of South Africa over its apartheid policies; and Paul McCartney sued to dissolve The Beatles legal partnership in the UK.
The 6th Form went carol singing around the town. Judy and I shared a hymn book (the photo shows a similar version) so we could both keep one hand warm in a pocket. Judy put her school hymn book in my right jacket pocket and I held mine in my right hand so we could both see the words in the lamplight.
At the end of the event we all made our way home, but Judy forgot to recover her hymn book. I found it, of course, immediately after setting off for home (as soon as I put my hands in my pockets). I ran after her to hand it back but in the distance saw her disappear through the front door of her parent’s home at 69 Chesterton Drive. I walked on down and rang the doorbell. Her Dad answered the door, I explained that I was returning Judy’s Hymnbook, he thanked me, and I headed home. This was my introduction to Judy’s Dad; I already knew he was in the Police and had been a sergeant in Filton but was now newly promoted to Inspector, he seemed approachable and very matter-of-fact.
World events: The Glasnost Meeting in Moscow became the first spontaneous political demonstration in Russia; and Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 performed the first controlled rendezvous in Earth orbit.
December saw the end of my first term in Class 2B at Cirencester Grammar School. Mum and Dad would have been preparing for Christmas, the cake was probably baked by now and it would have been undergoing regular drenching from below with sweet sherry (aided and abetted by numerous holes created by one of Mum’s knitting needles. Dad would have selected a well-balanced Christmas tree. Bonfire night had long since come and gone, the end of the school term would come next, and then it would be Christmas followed by New Year and then in January the second term in my second year at the Grammar School.
World events: A Soviet satellite containing the dogs Pcholka and Mushka, other animals, and plants was launched into orbit. Due to a malfunction, it burned up during re-entry; and Peter Pan was presented as a two-hour special on NBC in the United States. Rather than being presented live, it was shown on videotape, allowing repeats.
I was in the third year at Querns School (my junior school). I was excited as I was seven-years-old and Christmas was getting close. Christmas was always fun, a decorated tree, presents from parents and grandparents, Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, sausages wrapped in bacon, a holiday from school. And, if you were lucky … snow!
The tree in the image was decorated in typical 1955 style. Tinsel hanging down like icicles, coloured balls, and early designs of electric lights, small but not tiny like today’s LEDs, often with moulded coloured glass in shapes of Father Christmas, reindeer, little pine trees, lanterns. And the presents stacked below – what would be inside those paper wrappers?! So exciting!
Approaching 2½-years-old, Christmas must have been a huge surprise for me. I would not have retained many memories of the previous Christmas, and my understanding of all sorts of things would have improved dramatically as well. Christmas 1948 would have effectively passed me by, but Christmas 1950 would have been a revelation; presents to unwrap, the sound of tearing paper, the stickiness of sellotape, the smells of fruit cake, sherry, and the sounds of Christmas carols outside the front door must have been really striking! A tree with lights on it, tinsel, shiny balls hanging on the tree with miniature reflections. All the adults chatting and laughing would have seemed very different from their usual serious calmness.
World events: Isaac Asimov published his science fiction short story collection I, Robot; and Richard Nixon took office as a U.S. Senator from California.
December was a busy month. In addition to writing and receiving many letters and cards to and from family, friends, and of course Lilias, Mike watched some ENSA shows, and also films. Meanwhile he was taking part in an amateur Christmas play. He had a collision with an Indian army truck on 3rd and also was able to drive an Austin 10 Staff Car.
He went to communion on Sunday 9th and heard a service broadcast by the BBC from Cirencester Parish Church! He was picking up some local words in the Marathi language spoken in the Mumbai area, gadi sounds like ‘garry’ and was the word for a lorry, pani gadi sounded like ‘parny garry’, pani meaning water, and pani gadi was a boat (literally a water lorry).
By 18th December they were rehearsing their Christmas play ‘Round the Bend’ right through from beginning to end and everything was coming together. He had a chance to examine an American B-24 Liberator bomber with his friend Paddy. Christmas dinner was served by the CO and other officers. On 30th December he went swimming at Juhu Beach with Paddy, noting in his diary ‘water lovely and warm’.
World events: The United States Senate approved the entry of the USA into the United Nations by a vote of 65–7; and twenty-one nations ratified the articles creating the World Bank.
There’s not enough information to write something for every month in the 1940s. Mike’s diaries start in January 1943, so for January 1940 to December 1942 I’ll write about things I know, or draw on dated photos and documents. Sometimes I might use a photo or document with a guessed date.
The top floor of John Jefferies & Son’s shop and office in the Market Place was entirely occupied by the Landscape Design Department. It was the domain of my Uncle John, born in 1907. I remember it in the 1960s as a large, open space filled with beautifully drawn plans of proposed gardens, some pinned on drawing boards, and many more rolled up and stored in cardboard tubes. John, and his assistant Desmond Walker, did the survey and design work, while a team of practical workers converted the designs into real gardens. Each site had to be cleared, the hard landscaping done first (building walls, laying paving, fitting gates, constructing rockeries), then trees, shrubs and herbaceous borders planted, lawns seeded and so forth.
From 1939 until 1945 or later, this work would have stopped. John joined the army as an officer and was away from home for a number of years. World War II was an unavoidable interruption for British businesses of all kinds. The armed forces required a great number of men and women, and inessential things like building gardens had to wait.
John was thirty-two-years-old in 1939 so he’d have done some garden design work before the war began, perhaps enough to become competent but not an expert. I remember helping him build a rockery somewhere south of Cirencester, probably in the Blunsdon/Highworth area north-east of Swindon from what I recall. This was much later, perhaps during a summer holiday while I was a Sixth Form student. I had thought for a time that I might consider the Landscape Architecture course at Pitville Pump Room in Cheltenham, but in the end studied Horticulture at the University of Bath instead. I remember the care and precision with which Uncle John manouevred large blocks of Costwold stone so that they aligned just so with their neighbours to give the impression of being part of an underlying natural outcrop. The angle of repose had to be just right.
I also remember that at one point his left wrist got trapped between a stone we were moving and one that was already in place. His watch glass was shattered though he was unhurt.
World events: British forces in North Africa began their first major offensive, attacking Italian forces at Sidi Barrani, Egypt; and Plutonium was first synthesised in the laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.
Anything that appears in this section will have some connection with the 1930’s but may extend beyond the decade to follow a meaningful topic more fully.
This time we’ll take a look at an aspect of the town rather than my family history. This is Barton Mill in the 1930s according to the OldCiren Facebook group where I found a copy of this photo. The mill burned down in 1926 and I had assumed it was never replaced, although the mill pound still exists in 2025.
The same view today
This photo taken 95 years later in December 2025 is seen from the same angle. I thought there’d have been no mill here in the 1930s, but the photo was made from a footbridge that’s still there and is in daily use as part of Riverside Walk. There is no mill here today, though, so there’s a fuller story to discover if and when anyone has the time and inclination to dig a bit deeper.
World events (December 1935): The German Lebensborn program in support of Nazi eugenics was founded by Heinrich Himmler. (December 1930): All adult Turkish women were given the right to vote in elections.
In 1900, Watermoor was a recently but rapidly growing industrial area. It included the Cirencester Arm of the Thames & Severn Canal ending at Cirencester Wharf, Watermoor Railway Station, and an ironworks with its blast furnace, noted for its ability to cast large iron structures without cracks forming on cooling. Famously, the huge gear wheel for the rotating stage at the London Palladium was cast here. I wonder how they moved it to London?
The photo shows Watermoor Church in astonishingly open countryside. In the photo, the road ahead points the way north to Cirencester, becoming Cricklade Street at or near the junction with Lewis Lane and Querns Lane. In the other direction, it rejoined the old Roman route of Ermin Street heading towards Cricklade, Blunsdon near Swindon, and on to Marlborough. In this view Ermin Street would be a few tens of metres out of sight to the right
This time we’ll take a look at William John Jefferies, born in Cirencester 0n 8th June 1844 and my great-great-Uncle William. He married his wife Frances in 1894 and died in 1929 at the age of 84.
William had a huge role in building and expanding the family business he inherited from his father, John Jefferies. He was a real entrepreneur, someone with considerable drive, determination, and focus. He was a businessman through and through and he developed what was already a locally respected nursery business into a nationwide and even internationally renowned company. I suspect it might have been William who requested and obtained the title ‘Royal Nurseries’ This was a forerunner of the later ‘By Appointment to’ designation denoting high status businesses approved by and supplying royalty. It may also have been William who built the Warehouse (now flats) on what was then Tower Street Nursery and much later became the Forum Garden Centre. And it was likely William who developed the Garden Design Department and was behind the company’s presence at both local and national flower shows.
William built two houses in the Avenue. They were a semi-detached pair, he and Frances (Fanny) lived in the left half and his sister Julia in the right half. There was an interconnecting door between the two homes. On William’s death, Fanny moved in with her sister-in-law Julia. The houses still exist, William’s half is now The Avenue Surgery, part of Cirencester Medical Practice, the right hand property remains a private residence.
As William and Frances (Fanny) had no children, he took on his nephew, Edward Arthur Jefferies as his main assistant in running the company and Edward (often known as ‘The Governor’ or just Guv) continued managing the company on his Uncle William’s death.
Family connections
Parents – (John and Alice Jefferies [nee Freeth])Jefferies)
Born – 8th June 1844
Died – 1929
Married, 1894 – Frances (Fanny)
Siblings – John Edwin (1845), Alice Mary (1847), Edward (1849), Julia Anne (1851), Henrietta (1854), Agnes Henrietta (1855)
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At Vale Road in Stratton on the northern edge of the Cotswold town of Cirencester, residents (and one in particular) put a lot of effort each year into decorating their homes and gardens with all sorts of coloured and illuminated decorations. And they invite the people who come to look to make a contribution to Macmillan Cancer Support.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click images to enlarge
People love Christmas lights and decorations, and people hate illness particularly if there’s no cure. So can Christmas lights help people with incurable illness? Yes they can! But…how?
Well, one way is to use the Christmas decorations to raise money for charity, and that’s what one street in Cirencester has been doing every year for some time now.
There’s more inside – a model village!
At Vale Road in Stratton on the northern edge of the Cotswold town of Cirencester, residents (and one in particular) put a lot of effort each year into decorating their homes and gardens with all sorts of coloured and illuminated decorations. And they invite the people who come to look to make a contribution to Macmillan Cancer Support. This charity provides care, help, nursing and support for cancer patients and their families right at the time when they need help most. They will help families care for a mum, a dad, or a grandparent at home.
The heart of the action
If you live in Cirencester or the local area, why not drive out to Vale Road and park in a nearby street like Vaisey Road, Tinglesfield or Park View? (But please don’t block any driveways or park near junctions.) Then walk the short distance to Vale Road. You can pay for a tour of the best of the lights, delight your children (or grandchildren), and help support a great cause all at the same time. What could be better than that?
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The business had phone extensions to each office but also, and very unusually, to each of the nurseries out in the countryside within and beyond the town. (1930s)
Blast from the past… 36
Similar exchange to The General Office Jump to 1930s
August 2025 (3 months before publishing this article)
Click pics to enlarge
Kevin, Lariana, and Ruben
Kevin, Lariana, and her son Ruben (friends from St Neots) came to stay with us for a few days. They wanted to visit ‘The Farmer’s Dog’, so we sat outside and ate some of their excellent burgers.
Farmer’s Dog
We visited some of the Cotswold sights, walking in Cirencester, looking around Lower Slaughter and Bourton-on-the-Water.
Skiddaw and sheep
Later in the month we spent a week on our family holiday in the Lake District. We had a grand, old house in Braithwaite just west of Keswick and enjoyed the local countryside and some lovely places to eat and drink coffee right in some of the best spots in this lovely part of England. And towards the end of the month we stayed near Tiverton with Isobel for a week – it was a busy August with a lot of holiday one way or another.
JHM: I wrote about some very small Police stations; and added a fifth part to the series on my journey to faith. World events: OpenAI’s GPT-5 was released; and Donald Trump met Vladimir Putin in Alaska, to discuss a plan for resolving the conflict in Ukraine.
It was Fern’s 16th birthday in May, and she’s our youngest grandchild. Sara expects to begin A level courses in September. They are all so grown up now! At the end of term, Mero will complete her first year at university, and Aidan took a year out to travel in South America and will start at York University when the autumn term begins.
Paul and Isobel on the Weston seafront
At the end of the month we visited Donna’s brother Paul and his wife Vanessa in Weston-super-Mare, taking Isobel with us for the day. The entire summer seemed to have been fine and sunny, and sometimes just a little bit too warm.
It seemed like a good idea to rearrange my family history files by date instead of by topic, so I reordered everything and created virtual file and folder links for everything so that the data can be viewed in both ways. This seems to work well and will make it easier for other members of the family to find everything.
With colder weather on the way we needed to keep frost out of the greenhouse, so we ran an extension cable from the cabin to the greenhouse, put a plastic bucket over the reel to prevent water reaching it, and connected a heater set to just a few degrees above zero. This worked really well and even the more sensitive plants survived through the winter.
Donald Trump won the US Presidential Election, we found this hugely depressing and annoying. It seemed to us that at best he’s a loose cannon, and at worst he might become dictatorial. It’s not a great prospect so now we await February with some trepidation.
And we had water getting into our loft space from a leak around the chimney. It only happened in heavy, driving rain during storms from the south-west, at other times the roof space remained dry.
JHM: I wrote about the curious Spilhaus map projection; and a beautiful rose in the rain. World events: Justin Welby announced his resignation as Archbishop of Canterbury; and the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) was rediscovered in southeast Egypt, 5,000 years after it had been though to have died out.
We drove over to Cotswold Airport for lunch at AV8, always a fun thing to do!
Ken Hudson’s funeral was on 15th, Ken was Donna’s Uncle, her Dad’s older brother. It was quite an occasion with a lot of family members turning up on the day.
SpaceX’s Starship had a good second test flight. It made significant progress over the first flight, with all 33 booster engines firing successfully for the full expected duration.
Erin
Donna’s cat, Erin, suffering with cancer, was still doing well on a second slow-release dose of steroids; this gave her a good and normal life for the time being. She was very much her old self, coming and going through the cat flap, and even play fighting with Donna again. A remarkable (and very welcome) thing to see.
JHM: I wrote about Chuck Pfarrer’s reporting on Russia’s war in Ukraine; and about Yaroslava Antipina’s very personal writing on the same topic. World events: The first AI Safety Summit was held in the United Kingdom, with 28 countries signing an agreement on how to manage the riskiest forms of artificial intelligence; and The Beatles released ‘Now and Then‘, the band’s last ever song.
We returned Tom Holme to Rugby for a scheduled MRI scan (he’d been living with us for a while) and we visited Westonbirt Arboretum on 12th, a sunny wintery day with some lovely autumn colours.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden was elected President of the USA.
Frost on nettle
Phil Reynolds and I did a long circular walk from Sapperton, taking in a nature reserve site where large blue butterflies are breeding successfully. I got a pretty photo of frost on stinging nettle leaves, and we also visited the Sapperton Portal of the Thames and Severn Canal tunnel.
We took a short holiday in Somerset in late October and early November We stayed in ‘Ian’s Cottage’, visited Tyntesfield House near Clevedon (and recently given to the National Trust) and the lovely old town of Frome. We visited Bristol as well.
Wind damage
Our back fence blew down in strong winds, despite being sturdy and in quite good condition.
Newforms
Over the weekend of 27th-29th I was at a Newforms Gathering in Lichfield’s Whitemoor Lakes Centre where I had a chance for a brief chat with Alan Hirsch. I don’t think I took full advantage of the opportunity, but he was kind and helpful despite being a bit jet-lagged (in the photo he’s just exiting on the right).
JHM: I wrote about science and religion. World events: Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet on the Turkish–Syrian border; and COP21 was held in Paris.
The 4th Cornerstone Directors’ Meeting was held on 1st November. We considered ways to reduce food waste and increase profits. We decided to increase customer numbers in the mornings and afternoons, and advertise the meeting rooms. Paul reported gross takings of £2000 per week, he also feels the kitchen is too small and volunteer staff are leaving, the reasons being the cramped and dirty kitchen and the tiring workload. I agreed to make documents available in a single place and our MP, Jonathan Djanogly would unveil the plaque on 12th November.
The Circus arrived in St Neots on 3rd (see the photo above taken through the window from Cornerstone).
Sara and Debbie
We visited Yorkshire to see the family on 6th and 7th, going along to the fireworks display in Thorganby
JHM: I wrote about a wind-up torch; and fireworks and soup. World events: The G-20 summit was held in Seoul, South Korea. South Korea became the first non-G8 nation to host a G-20 leaders summit; and the European Union agreed to an €85 billion rescue deal for Ireland from the European Financial Stability Facility.
Unilever Colworth’s Knowledge Systems Group (KSG) had moved to a new office upstairs in the New Foods Building. As I was part of KSG I had a desk in the new office, inside the glass partition on the right of this photo. It was a lovely place to work, the main entrance at the front opened onto a short, paved road and a view onto the park’s lawn and trees with the rear of the old house visible on the far side. It was like working in a modern office on a National Trust site!
At this time, KSG was in the throes of migrating all our websites to pages and portlets on Unilever’s new Portal intranet site.
PCW magazine
I began moving my blog from Google’s Blogger platform to Squarespace, but in the end I didn’t get on well with the new software and reverted to Blogger. I redesigned the appearance in Blogger and was content with that new version until I made the switch to WordPress in July 2016. I was keeping up with current PC developments by buying PCW every month. Twenty years later all I need is a web browser!
I spent some time reading about Cirencester’s post-Roman history in the book ‘Town Origins and development in Early England’ by Daniel Russo. It seems that Romanised life might have continued here well after Roman forces were recalled from Britain.
On 19th we visited our friends Geoff and Dawn for dinner, other good friends were invited too, including Ken and Gayna seen in this photo. Geoff and Dawn were always very hospitable, and Geoff cooked amazing roast dinners.
Pete working on my computer.
We were both working for Unilever Research at their Colworth Laboratory in Sharnbrook, north of Bedford. Here, Pete Doe from the IT team is fixing something on my work desktop computer in Building 27, demolished later during my time at Colworth. My mobile phone and Psion palmtop are both visible on my desk, typical items of turn-of-the-century technology.
It was clear to all of our family and friends that Judy was nearing the end of her life. During November she was finding it hard to get downstairs, even with help. And her mind was being affected by the doses of morphine she was starting to take to control pain. This was sometimes quite amusing. One day I walked into the bedroom to find her tracing patterns of stems and leafy shapes on the duvet cover, talking about how they went round and round. Beth took her Oxford entrance exam on 13th, and when she had a letter confirming that she had a place as an undergraduate, Judy didn’t believe it, thinking instead that it had been forged by some of her school friends!
We had a lot of help from our friends, Tony and Faith, and Paul and Jenny, but also increasingly from our parents; my parents and Judy’s were both coming for a day once a week, making it far easier for me to get to work more often at Long Ashton.
Scott Russell at the University of Arizona, set up a mirror of my Microsopy web site on a sever there to reduce the load on the LARS server. I gave him FTP access to the folder on the LARS Windows NT box so he could set up a daily automatic file transfer.
At Long Ashton, we were considering a move to PC-TCP for networking our desktop PCs.
World events: The Indian government officially renamed the city of Bombay, restoring the name Mumbai; and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv.
Judy’s Mum and Dad visited us on 10th November and we exchanged Christmas presents. We gave her Dad a copy of the giant book ‘Chronicle of the 20th Century’ and he said he’d ‘look forward to reading it in bed, a day a night’!
Sinclair QL
Our computing system at home was a Sinclair QL with a Sony green screen monitor, a basic ink-jet printer, and a twin 3½ inch floppy-disk drive. This was Sinclair’s follow-on from the Spectrum, it came with with a quite capable office software suite of word processor, spreadsheet, a functional database and a graphics package. I used it for programming and keeping track of finances, and we all used it for word processing.
I was working in the Plant Science Division at Long Ashton Research Station in a rather futile attempt to locate the plant hormone gibberellin in frozen sections of plant tissue. It had been my idea to make the attempt, but I’d made little or no tangible progress. Judy was thriving as a biology teacher at Cotham Grammar School in Bristol (now Cotham School), especially enjoying teaching A Level and running field trips, often to Slapton Ley National Nature Reserve.
Debbie was 10 and Beth was 7, and both were doing well at school in Yatton where we were living at 80 Stowey Road.
World events: U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev met for the first time; and Microsoft released Windows 1.0 in the USA.
John Jefferies & Son published their Christmas Hyacinth Gift Pack leaflet and order form (one of the last few years before closing the shop and selling the garden centre to Country Gardens). Here’s the order form that was circulated with the leaflet.
We were living at 22 Rectory Drive, Yatton. Debbie was five and Beth was two. Judy was at home with the girls on weekdays and I was still researching pollen and pollen tube growth at Long Ashton Research Station. We still had no car at this stage and I was cycling or motor cycling to work during the week.
World events:Ronald Reagan of California defeated incumbent President Jimmy Carter and was elected the 40th President of the United States; and the NASA space probe Voyager I made its closest approach to Saturn.
This photo of Debbie was taken on 1st November 1975. You can also see one end of the basketwork crib Judy made before Debbie’s birth, and the toys include film canisters, other jars, boxes and bottles, and some interlocking plastic shapes from Mothercare.
By this time, I was typing up the Horsecastle Chapel newsletter using waxed stencil sheets, and duplicating them on a hand-cranked Gestetner copying machine. This was a job previously done by one of our friends, Joe Stickland, and eventually we moved the machine to our loft to save moving it backwards and forwards.
Later, I began buying extra wax stencils and A4 paper and printing off copies of our own newsletter, ‘Community Spirit’, with announcements about Fountain engagements at local churches, larger meetings in the area that we wanted people to know about, and so on.
Making curtains
Judy often made her own clothes by buying patterns, buying the fabric and cutting out and sewing dresses to save money. In the photo she’s making curtains for our lounge/diner at 22 Rectory Drive in Yatton.
The photos are in black and white because colour film was expensive, but I could buy 35 mm B&W film in bulk, cut it to length, fit it into old film cassettes, and develop it myself to produce negatives. Then at work there was a darkroom with an enlarger so I could also buy photographic printing paper, processing chemicals and stay at Long Ashton in the evening after work to make enlargements at very little cost.
World events: The Treaty of Osimo was signed between Italy and Yugoslavia, resolving their dispute over Trieste. A majority of the land area and residents became Italian; and in the Madrid Accords, Spain agreed to hand over power of the Spanish Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania by the end of February 1976.
Dad’s radio and B&W TV licence fell due on 2nd November and I still have a copy of the new one. They wrote down his name incorrectly as Mr E J Jefferies, but the address is correct and the large fee of £6 was received (around £83 today). A colour TV licence would have been a lot more expensive.
During November we left Long Ashton and moved into our newly acquired bed-sit at 59 Linden Road in Bristol. It was a lovely part of the old city, an easy stroll from the front door to the glorious open spaces of the Downs. The bedroom had a comfortable double bed but I don’t recall what else was in that room. Presumably there was a wardrobe and a chest of drawers, and maybe some bedside cabinets.
Ken Stott was helping Ray Williams with his work on apple pollination, and I was interested in the fluorescence microscopy this entailed, so I started to take every opportunity to help with this where possible.
I mentioned the sitting room last month with its curious cupboard-cum-kitchen. I think there was a B&W TV set and Judy had brought along her reel-to-reel tape recorder so we could listen to music.
Opening the big cupboard doors in the sitting-room revealed the kitchen sink, a Baby Belling stove, and a range of storage cupboards as well as shelves in the doors themselves, so opening the doors until they stuck out into the sitting room at right angles provided a kitchen with ‘walls’ on three sides and a rectangular work area with a tiny worktop between the cooker and the sink. It was adequate – just. It was also fun because it was so weird.
The loo and bathroom were shared with the people in the bed-sit the other side of the stair well. We used the loo because, well, you have to. But we avoided the bath because the gas geyser puffed smutty blobs of soot into the bath. Instead we resorted to all-over flannel washes at the kitchen sink. It was not a great place to live, but it was all we could afford and we planned to move to an unfurnished flat as soon as we could afford it. Also in November, Judy began work at one of the department stores at Broadmead. This provided additional income and our finances began to improve little by little.
Our savings had all but vanished so the first week’s rent was a struggle and we had little to eat, but Judy was paid weekly while I was on a monthly salary so we survived on Judy’s income for four weeks and then the bank balance improved dramatically at the end of November with my first full month’s salary, and after that everything was hunky-dory.
At Long Ashton I was appointed in the first instance as an Assistant Scientific Officer (ASO) to help with growth studies in tree and basket willows. I worked with Christine Jago, (so two Chris Js doing the same work which was rather amusing). Mostly we took annual measurements of breast-height girth and height of the trees as these were standard forestry commission measures from which timber volume could be calculated. Our boss, Ken Stott, was interested in finding the willows and poplars that would put on the most volume annually. There were possibilities for using dried wood chips as a green energy source for electricity generation.
World events: The Soviet Union landed Lunokhod 1 (a surface rover) on the Moon; and The six European Economic Community prime ministers met in Munich to begin a programme of European Political Cooperation (EPC),.
Judy and I were completely devoted to one another by this time. We used to agree to meet up in town on Saturdays, often in Woolworths in Cricklade Street (now split in two as Mountain Warehouse and another shop next door). We would just happen to turn up at about the same time and would soon be in conversation while vaguely looking at gloves or possible Christmas presents for family members. The photo shows the famous PicknMix in 1975, ten years later than our visits.
I had not met Judy’s family yet, but she would often pop in to Churnside for tea and a biscuit after school before heading home on her bike. Sometimes she’d push the bike (or I would) and we’d walk up to Chesterton Park where she lived at number 69 with her parents and younger brother, Frank. I was never invited in at this stage though, I think she knew her Dad would joke about us and wanted to put that moment off as long as possible.
Granny’s 86th birthday was on 6th November, she seemed really old but was still fit and could walk from her flat to the Market Place or round to Churnside and back with no problem at all. As she walked back to her flat in The Avenue she would always turn round and wave at the corner between Victoria Road and The Avenue.
I was 17, Cindy was 14, Ruth and Rachael were 9 and 8 respectively, and I was becoming more confident driving except in heavy town traffic. At the time, Dad had use of an Austin Countryman belonging to the family business. It had a steering column gear shift which was unusual but not a problem to learn on.
World events: Martial law was announced in Rhodesia. The UN accepted the British intention to use force against Rhodesia (if necessary) by a vote of 82 to 9; and Craig Breedlove set a new land speed record of 600.6 mph (966.6 km/h).
Granny was had her 81st birthdy on 6th November, Mum and Dad were 32 and 34 years old, I was 12, Cindy was 9, Ruth was 4 and Rachael just 3. I was learning Latin for several lessons a week, definitely not my favourite subject. I was now in my second year, in Class 2B at Cirencester Grammar School. My favourite subjects at this time were maths, history, English grammar, chemistry and physics. Major dislikes in addition to Latin were English literature and PE.
There’s really little more to say about this month in my life. I took no photos that I’m aware of, and there are no diary entries or other documents in my collection.
World events: The US Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy was elected to become, at 43, the second youngest man to serve as President of the United States; and Belgium threatened to leave the United Nations over criticism of its policy concerning the Republic of the Congo.
Granny turned 76 and seemed to me to be very old indeed. As I write this I’m well on the way to 77½! I was aged 7 in 1955 and was in my second term of the third year at Junior School. We were living at 17 Queen Anne’s Road on the Beeches Estate.
Although I have no photos or documents, I can write about some things that happened regularly in those days. The Corona lorry came round once a week with bottles of brightly coloured fizzy drinks. You could hand in empty bottles to get a small reward, perhaps just a penny, and we often bought three or four new bottles, especially in the summer months. I well remember the captive porcelain stoppers with a red rubber seal that hinged out on a spring steel wire mechanism and could be reconnected with a strong push at just the right angle. And I remember the ‘pop’ emitted when a new bottle was opened. (Later, bottles with screw caps replaced the captive porcelain stoppers. Also, I recall the glass hemispheres covering the upper, sloping part of the bottles, these always fascinated me as a child.
World events: C. Northcote Parkinson propounded ‘Parkinson’s law‘; and the British Governor of Cyprus declared a state of emergency on the island.
I’m sure I would have enjoyed my second Bonfire Night on 5th November. Maybe some of the loud bangs might have made me nervous, but the brightly coloured lights in the sky would have seemed amazing.
World events: There was an attempt to assassinate U.S. President Harry S. Truman; and a U.S. Air Force B-50 Superfortress bomber jettisoned and detonated a Mark 4 nuclear bomb over Quebec, Canada. The bomb was not fitted with its plutonium warhead.
Although Mike had been assigned to a lorry driving job, he also writes that he had a chance to operate a Type 22 mobile radar and took photos of an Avro Anson twin-engined RAF plane. He also watched a number of films and attended an ENSA show. Letter writing to and from the family in Cirencester continued, as well as regular letters to and from Lilias in Coagh, and some to his friend Joe.
There was an Armistice Day church parade on 11th November. He received his driving licence and was glad to hear the news that Joe and Dorothy were to be married.
On 15th he drove to Bombay and back, and he began meeting with others about the Christmas entertainment on the base. He got a 1½ hour flight in an Avro Anson near the end of the month.
World events: The first clock radio was marketed, the model 8H59 Musalarm; and the foundation of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) was agreed at a meeting in London.
There’s not enough information to write something for every month in the 1940s. Dad’s diaries start in January 1943, so for January 1940 to December 1942 I’ll write about things I know, or draw on dated photos and documents. Sometimes I might use a photo or document with a guessed date.
This time we should take a look at Siddington Nursery, just a few miles south of Cirencester and very close to a short ladder of locks on the old Thames & Severn Canal. It’s actually quite likely that trees and shrubs from Siddington Nursery would have been despatched to more distant customers by canal in the early 1800s before Cirencester’s railways became available.
You can see from the map (click it to enlarge) that the nursery was divided into three parts by wide east to west avenues and divided again roughly at right angles by three smaller tracks. The northernmost wide avenue was planted with large specimen ornamental trees. It’d badly overgrown in 2025, but some of these trees still live and can be identified. In the 1950s and 60s when I was a child much of the original planting was still clearly visible, not just trees and shrubs, but also large clumps of bamboo and spring-flowering fruit trees too.
The central north-south track was originally planted with demonstration beds of smaller shrubs and other specimen plants, beautifully maintained. When I was young it was just a workaday route for tractors and other equipment.
Siddington in 2021
There was a packing shed with a phone extension to the company shop and offices in Cirencester Market Place and I recall a large store of straw reaching up high, almost to roof level. My sister Cindy and I used to climb up this stack and slide back down. No doubt it was intended as packing material for the bare-rooted trees and shrubs that were produced at Siddington Nursery. And at the far end of the track at the southern end of the site was another shed for the grey Ferguson 35 tractor, a hand-guided ‘Hayter’ for cutting down long grass and weeds, as well as harrows and discs and a rotovator for connection to the tractor for cultivating land before planting.
World events: In the Battle of Elaia–Kalamas at Epirus, outnumbered Greek forces repelled the Italian Army; and the Royal Navy launched the first aircraft carrier strike in history, on the Italian battleship fleet anchored at Taranto.
Anything that appears in this section will have some connection with the 1930’s but may extend beyond the decade to follow a meaningful topic more fully.
Manual switchboard
Dad’s brother Richard had the final office on the first floor, next to the General Office. His office was quite small, and the old wooden desk was large. Richard (my Uncle Dick) kept paperwork, his basic filing system was that older items were stacked below newer ones, and as he never cleared his desk, a wall of old paperwork grew higher and higher. Eventually, opening the door to see if Dick was in his office became utterly pointless as he would be hidden by the high stacks of paperwork!
Read last month’s entry for more details of the switchboard. The browser’s back arrow will return you here afterwards.
World events (November 1935): After 11 years in exile, George II returned to Greek soil as King of Greece. (November 1930): a pathologist at the Sheffield Royal Infirmary in England, achieved the first recorded cure (of an eye infection) using penicillin.
As with the 1930s material, everything in this section will have a connection of some kind with these two decades.
Perhaps it’s time to meet some of the Cirencester Jefferies family from the first couple of decades of the 20th century.
John Jefferies
John Jefferies was born and baptised in Somerford Keynes in 1818 and grew up there as a child. I suggest this photo was taken in the late 1800s, perhaps when he was in his mid to late 60s. His older brother, Bradford, would have taken on the family farm in Somerford; so John needed to find work and he took a position with Richard Gregory in Cirencester. Richard Gregory’s father started the Nursery business in Cirencester in 1795, and John was appointed to help with the practical management. Richard Gregory lost money over a bad debt and had to leave the area; John Jefferies, seeking legal advice, was told he should continue running the business and wait to see what would happen. It turned out that he not only continued running the business, but also became the new owner.
John married Alice Freeth and they had a number of children. William John was born in 1844 in Cirencester, John Edwin in 1845, Alice Mary was born in 1847 at 7 Dyer Street, Edward was born on 13th May 1849, and Julia Anne was born on 2nd January 1851. John retired in 1892 and died in 1904; you can read his obituary online (click your browser’s back button to return here). His son, William John Jefferies, ran the business after John’s retirement and inherited it after his father’s death.
The story of John Jefferies does belong partly in 1900-1929 since he died in that period. But next month I’ll add a new section to cover 1800-1899.
Family connections
Father () Mother () Siblings Children – William John, John Edwin, Alice Mary, Edward, Julia Anne
World events (November 1900):Herbert Kitchener succeeded Frederick Roberts as commander-in-chief of the British forces in South Africa. (November 1905): In a Moscow Uprising a Bolshevik-led revolt was suppressed by the army. (November 1910): The first air flight for commercial freight delivery took place in the USA. (November 1915): Albert Einstein presented part of his theory of general relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. (November 1920): In London, The Cenotaph was unveiled and The Unknown Warrior was buried in Westminster Abbey.
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Petal doubling makes flowers more showy, but often at the cost of the ‘doubled’ flowers being less interesting to pollinating insects. The additional petals may be modified stamens so less pollen is produced. Compare a wild rose to a garden rose and you’ll see what I mean.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click images to enlarge
These autumn leaves are on a purple Cotinus coggygria bush, common name ‘smokebush’. Like many trees and shrubs at this time of year, Cotinus leaves change colour in autumn before falling to the ground. The shrub will produce fresh, new leaves in the spring. But look more closely and you may see something else.
The leaves in the image have developed interveinal patches of necrotic tissue, making the plant even more striking in autumn. I had never noticed this condition before moving to Cirencester, but there’s a Cotinus in the grounds of the Stratton House Hotel and Spa that does this annually. The shrub seems healthy in the spring and summer. For a week or two at the end of October this patterned necrosis makes the autumn leaves look even more spectacular.
Irregularities of this kind are common in both animate and inanimate natural systems and not infrequently appear as deliberate ‘enhancements’. Here are one or two notable examples:
Leaf variegation – Gardeners and plant breeders select and propagate from stable variegations. Normally plants with variegation grow more slowly because the efficiency of photosynthesis is compromised.
Petal doubling – This make flowers more showy, but often at the cost of the ‘doubled’ flowers being less interesting to pollinating insects. The additional petals may be modified stamens so less pollen is produced. Compare a wild rose to a garden rose and you’ll see what I mean. How often do you see bees working garden roses?
Variations in animal characteristics – amongst cats and dogs (and also budgerigars, canaries, parrots and chickens you’ll see size and shape changes as well as behavioural, colour and pattern modifications. Compare a Jack Russell with a retriever or a blue budgie with a green one and you’ll find plenty of differences to ponder.
Frost hardiness in plants. Frost sensitive species cannot survive winter in temperate or arctic conditions, so hardiness is a prized feature of many garden plants, and plant breeders pay attention to things like this. A Dahlia or Chrysanthemum that can flower for an extra week or two in the autumn may be worth a higher price, for example.
Fruit colour and flavour components. These days strawberries are much larger than when I was child, and they are often red inside, not just on the outer surface.
Many variations of this kind are deliberately selected for by plant and animal breeders.
Certain other changes have been caused deliberately, even in humans. Lower lip enlargement, neck ringing to generate extended neck length, foot binding, and forms of male and female circumcision have been required for a variety of religious and cultural reasons. Hair styling, removal, or transplantation, piercing of ears, noses and other body parts are common, and don’t forget tattooing. And in plants; pruning, clipping, or bonsai are widely employed.
In the world of rock and stone, coloured and uncoloured crystals may be prized as jewels and fetch fantastic prices. I wrote about an example of this, a geode I spotted in an ordinary, traditional, Cotswold dry stone wall.
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The abbey’s construction was a huge project continuing throughout the 12th century. To fund the ambitious project, Henry I and his successors, Henry II and Richard I, granted the abbey revenues and privileges, such as exemption from tolls, access to commerce, and timber and stone for construction.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click images to enlarge
In medieval times there was an Augustinian Abbey in Cirencester. Like so many abbeys and monasteries in the United Kingdom it was dissolved during the reign of King Henry VIII and afterwards demolished. The outline of the walls is marked in the Abbey Grounds with small, square paving slabs, and a few of the column bases are visible too, but that is all that remains above ground where the Abbey once stood. There are some additional carved stones and other items in the Corinium Museum.
The photo shows a Lego model of the Abbey, currently on display in the Parish Church. You can see a Lego tree in the garden within the cloisters, and part of the nave of the Abbey church. The model is complete with its tower although this doesn’t appear in the main photo, but it’s there in the image below.
Construction and history
The Abbey and tower
Some of the political and practical history of the founding and later dissolution of the abbey are well described in blog articles published by the Corinium Museum. These articles, and the Wikipedia article are well worth reading. They are linked below.
Long before the Abbey was built the land where it later stood was part of the Roman City of Corinium Dobunnorum; the River Churn (in those times named Kern, Kerin or Corin) had been divided into two, one part outside the city walls as a defensive feature, the other part within the city as a source of water for drinking, washing, for industry, building and so forth. The Saxons, moving West into the still Romano-British part of what is now South-West England, took control of the area, but had no use for a derelict Roman city. However, there was a Roman church building in the area where the abbey would later be founded, and a Saxon church was built over the Roman church.
Early in the 12th century, King Henry I founded St Mary’s Abbey, building the chancel on the site of the Roman and Saxon churches. About 1130, Abbot Serlo arrived with a community of canons to set up residence .
The abbey’s construction was a massive project continuing throughout the 12th century. To fund the ambitious undertaking, Henry I and his successors, Henry II and Richard I, granted the abbey revenues and privileges, such as exemption from tolls, access to commerce, and timber and stone for construction. Henry II allowed the abbey the revenues and control of the town (or ‘vill’) of Cirencester around 1155, initiating centuries of friction with the local townspeople. The abbey church was consecrated in 1176 in the presence of King Henry II and several bishops, but building work on the cloisters, refectory, dormitories, and the abbot’s house continued for many more years.
The result of all this effort was the most wealthy and influential Augustinian abbey in the Kingdom. The abbey flourished through its ownership of very large estates in the Cotswolds and an important role in the very profitable medieval wool trade.
Dissolution
The townspeople repeatedly asked the Crown to grant them a borough charter, but this was consistently and strongly opposed by the abbots. In the end, Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries ended with the destruction of the abbey and the confiscation of much of its wealth and property. A Royal Commisioner, Robert Southwell arrived in the town on 19th December 1539 to receive the surrender from the last abbot, John Blake. There was no resistance, and the abbot and monks received pensions, but the buildings were torn down and everything of value was sold off.
Religion or faith?
As with so many JHM articles, as I write I am deeply struck by the huge gulf between religion (usually a very worldly affair as in the history of Cirencester Abbey) and faith (with its basis not so much in what we think as in who we are and how we live.) The distinction is essential if we are to live full lives, discovering who Jesus is and why he matters so much.
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The UK is a rich mix of people from many cultural backgrounds. That’s why the title is not ‘Christmas Greetings’. Please accept the greetings and replace the word ‘Season’ with whatever you like.
This great cross hangs from the high ceiling between the nave and the chancel of Cirencester Parish Church of St John Baptist.
Click to enlarge
This cross was carved and carefully gilded by craftsmen from Cirencester’s past. It hangs on stout iron chains from the heavy timbers of the chancel roof and for centuries has been the focal point for worshippers sitting in the pews of the nave. At first glance it almost seems to have been studded with jewels, but in fact it’s plain wood with gilded ornamentation.
In the centre of the cross is a lamb carrying a banner marked with the cross of St George. This lamb represents Jesus, the sacrificial ‘lamb of God’. At the top of the upright timber is a winged St Matthew, author of Matthew’s Gospel, at the extreme left of the cross beam is St Mark portrayed as a winged lion and at the right hand end St Luke as a winged ox wearing a crown. Right at the bottom of the upright timber is St John, shown here as an eagle.
More about those images
The lamb with the banner of St. George represents the Agnus Dei (the Lamb of God), symbolising Jesus Christ, and later iconography mixes symbols of sacrifice and victory. Jesus Christ was seen as both sacrificial (the lamb) and a victorious king (the banner).
The winged man represents St. Matthew because his gospel emphasises Christ’s human nature. His account begins with a genealogy of Jesus’ descent from Abraham highlighting his human, earthly origins. The winged aspect signifies divine inspiration of the gospel message and the angelic wings refer to Matthew’s task as a messenger of God’s word.
St. Mark is shown as a winged lion because his gospel starts with the roaring voice of John the Baptist in the wilderness, (roaring like a lion) while the wings refer to the four winged creatures described in the books of Ezekiel and Revelation. The lion represents the strength of Mark’s message and the resurrection of Christ, the wings speak of the four evangelists being guardians of the throne of God.
St. Luke the Evangelist is traditionally symbolized by a winged ox (or bull or calf). The symbol is derived from the four living creatures in the Book of Ezekiel and Revelation, which early Christian tradition associated with the four Gospel writers. The ox was chosen for St. Luke because it was an animal of sacrifice in the Old Testament, representing the sacrificial aspect of Jesus’ ministry, which Luke emphasizes in his Gospel by beginning with the priestly duties of Zechariah. The wings signify that the Gospel message is to be spread throughout the world.
St. John is shown as an eagle because it’s his symbol as one of the four evangelists. His gospel is seen as soaring into theological heights, also true of his visionary writings in the Book of Revelation. And the eagle is associated with divine power, heavenly vision, and spiritual insight as seen in the book of Revelation.
These medieval traditions are all very well, but the carved, gilded cross is also a distraction from the dreadful truth that a wooden cross was an instrument of torture and death. It’s easy to get wrapped up in traditions and forget that Jesus died to provide the opportunity for us to turn back from the brink. The heavy timbers to which Jesus was nailed to die were not ornate or gilded, and there were no traditions portrayed on them. Jesus (Yeshua, Isa) came in simplicity offering a simple opportunity and sharing simple truth. You don’t need a degree in history or theology to follow him, just an open, willing mind and a light touch from his spirit of love and truth.
In that vein, here’s something I add every year, I’ll offer it up to you again now. The UK is a rich mix of people from many cultural backgrounds. That’s why the title is not ‘Christmas Greetings’. Please accept the greetings and replace the word ‘Season’ with whatever you like. If you’re Hindu you could choose Pancha Ganapati, or Jewish friends might go with Hannukah in December, if you’re Muslim you might look forward to the start of the holy month of Rajab; Buddhists might consider Bodhi Day, and there are more groups of people I haven’t mentioned specifically. But whatever you celebrate, please take my greetings as a blessing for the whole of next year – spring, summer, autumn and winter. I’m not here to press you into a new and different tradition. I’m here to dismiss tradition in its entirety and offer love, peace and grace in its place. The teachings of Jesus are simple and there are thoughts about them throughout the articles on this website.
PS – If you like the photo, click the thumbnail for the full size version. Print it out, put it in a frame and hang it on the wall. Give a copy to friends if you think they’d like it; or send them a link to this message.
Entering the long gone wooden gate you would have seen the potting shed on the left and beds edged with lightweight breeze blocks and filled with crushed clinker on the right. This was the standing area for the Alpine plants propagated at Watermoor. (1940)
July 2025 (3 months before publishing this article)
Click pics to enlarge
Book cover
I was invited to share some material from my short book ‘Jesus, Disciple, Misson, Church’ (JDMC) with the Small Group I meet with on Tuesday evenings. This is a discussion group belonging to Cirencester Baptist Church (CBC). On 1st July we worked through the first two sections of the introduction, ‘Working together in six ways’. And the following week we worked through the third and fourth parts. Everyone seemed to think this was a useful exercise and I found it most encouraging.
Most weeks, Donna and I visited our neighbour, George, in Dursley Hospital. We also took Donna’s Mum, Isobel, for a four-day break at a Warners Hotel near Hereford (Holme Lacy House Hotel). And we bought a second-hand electric car which we’re calling ‘Erik’. All our cars get a name, and because this one is a Nissan Leaf the connection is ‘Leif Erikson‘.
Thames
We went for a walk along the Thames near Lechlade, starting from Buscot Weir. It was a pleasant stroll on a really nice day. Not an adventure or a long walk, but a lovely ramble. The river meanders a lot here, and so does the footpath as it stays close to the river all the way.
JHM: I wrote on the apostolic gift; and an old house in Cirencester. World events: Israeli aircraft struck the Presidential Palace and the General Staff headquarters in Syria; and a strong earthquake off the coast of Kamchatka, triggered tsunami warnings in Japan and Hawaii.
One day, walking into Cirencester along the busy Gloucester Road, we spotted this cinnabar moth having a rest on the footpath. It had no idea how much danger it was in. We might easily have stepped on it, so we moved it on and it fluttered around and settled on a nearby lime tree where it would be safe.
This was the moth’s second danger recently. It seems to have brushed against a spider’s web. The grey mass behind its head looks like tangled, sticky spider silk, so perhaps two lucky escapes in one day.
The Old Prison
We took Donna’s Mum out for coffee and a light meal at The Old Prison at Northleach. And we met Paul and Vanessa at Frampton on Severn for a circular walk. Their two black Labradors, Marple and Maizi are too old to join in these days, but they’re OK to be left sleeping at home for a few hours.
And at the end of the month we took Isobel to a hospital appointment in Gloucester and while she was waiting Donna and I visited Gloucester Docks nearby.
I had my flu and COVID jab early this month. We drove to Nottingham for Roger Owen’s 80th birthday party, Roger and Carolyn are good friends from our time in St Neots. There were many old friends from the Small Group that they ran and it was fun to meet everyone again.
It was disppointing to hear that the Internet Archive went down because of a denial of service attack. Why would anybody do that? it soon returned for searches, but it was a few weeks before data could be uploaded again. Our gas heating boiler failed towards the end of the month and would have cost almost £1000 to repair so we decided to buy a heat pump instead as there’s still a good government grant available.
Rafflesia in flower
Beth and Paz came down for an overnight visit, lovely to see them as always. At the end of the month we spent a day in Oxford, and, the Oxford Botanic Garden had a Rafflesia in flower ‘Stinking corpse flower’, though thankfully it was not in its stinking phase. The only other time I’ve seen one of these was during a forest walk in Thailand.
JHM: I wrote about the Spelga Dam in the Mountains of Mourne; and the need to go out and deep as Jesus did. World events: Iran attacked Israel with ballistic missiles; and The Europa Clipper spacecraft was launched to investigate Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter.
I started walking regularly with two friends, Al and Phil, in part this was an exercise (no pun intended) to help Al improve his fitness. On 19th we walked near Miserden in pouring rain and muddy conditions, but thoroughly enjoyed it.
Mop fair
The annual Mop fair came to Cirencester as it does every October, the streets in and around the Market Place are filled with rides, stalls, people, noise and colour as well as the familiar and evocative aroma of diesel generators, candy floss and close-packed crowds. I remember Mop as a child when warmth from the thousands of incandescent light bulbs was tangible. The name ‘Mop’ goes back to the days long ago when it was the annual hiring fair. It would have been the time and place to engage domestic servants or staff for businesses; and people would have gathered to look for work.
Donna’s Uncle Ken died this month after a long battle with Parkinsons. This left Donna’s Mum with only two remaining close family members, her daughter (Donna) and her son (Paul).
Paul and Vanessa went to Bath for a weekend break so we drove down to Weston-super-Mare with Isobel to look after the two dogs. Maizi and Marple were young in 2020 and were very ambitious in picking up sticks to carry home. As they aged later in their lives they chose smaller and smaller sticks, eventually seeming perfectly happy with a short twig.
Walking with Phil and Judith
We drove to Bibury and met our friends Phil and Judith for a short walk. We followed a stone track to Oxhill Wood, then turned right to come out near Bibury Court Hotel. Afterwards we had coffee and a bite to eat at the tent restaurant by the trout farm. COVID is getting more manageable, for example the possibility of walking with friends and eating out in well ventilated places. Businesses are beginning to explore way of working with the remaining restrictions in place.
There was a heavy hailstorm on 28th October, some of the hailstones were the largest I’ve ever seen.
Peter and Dadka were living in our spare bedroom, sharing our kitchen and shower. They were both Slovakian and had been struggling financially and in other ways as well. But things brightened for them a bit as Peter had just obtained a job driving a ready-mix cement wagon. It was hard work, but it was a secure job and reasonably well paid too. Hopefully it seemed their financial position might start to improve and they could look for a bed-sit or a small flat of their own.
East Anglia Regiment
On 20th October, the East Anglia Regiment visited St Neots to receive the freedom of the town; the band and a small group of soldiers marched with rifles and fixed bayonets from Huntingdon Street and along the High Street into the Market Square for the ceremony. I took some photos on my phone and there was cheering and clapping from the townsfolk.
JHM: I posted an article on Stone Ivy. World events: A series of suicide bombings killed at least 100 people at a peace rally in Ankara, Turkey; and Hurricane Patricia became the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.
Donna and I went along to some of the meetings at The Father’s Heart Conference at the King’s Arms Church in Bedford. There were some good things, but overall I didn’t find it particularly useful. It reminded me once more about the difficulties faced by ‘big’ church and the events that people get excited about. But life is not so much about big events as it is about the humbler things in life. All sorts of things fit this humbler category, including the very tiny garden snail moving along a matchstick in the photo with a £2 coin for scale. Click the image for a larger view, so amazing!
Meeting friends at Cornerstone
At the third Cornerstone Directors Meeting, there was a lot of talk about high costs and food wastage, and about staff requirements. Paul was rather defensive, promising that several requirements were in the pipeline but not yet fully achieved. Most of us felt everything was a bit out of control.
I helped some friends from New Zealand move house in Southgate, London. They’ve been in the UK for quite some time now and plan to return soon, some older, grown up, children live in New Zealand but a younger son and daughter are here in the UK.
We visited Southwold on the Suffolk coast. It’s a lovely little town and our friends Ken and Gayna had a house not far away in the village of Yoxford (though they lived at the time in Perry, not very far from St Neots). Athough Southwold is a delightful little seaside town with some lovely features, I always feel a little disoriented on the east coast; being western born and bred I expect the sun to set over the sea, not rise over it in the mornings!
Intranet site archives
At Unilever Colworth, I was busy archiving all the Web Team’s servers as everything was being migrated to new systems that we would not be managing ourselves. It seemed a good precaution to capture everything on long term storage first, so if there were any issues we could easily repair them. I don’t think we ever needed those archive disks.
We dropped in to see my Mum and Dad on our way to visit Beth and Paz who were living in Axbridge at the time. Paz and I went out to look around Shapwick Heath National Nature Reserve where there’s a replica section of the Sweet Track and some Iron Age buildings.
Iron Age roundhouse
An Iron Age roundhouse was easy to build but very effective in Britain’s wet, temperate climate. A series of stout poles inserted into the soil supported the walls and roof, the walls were woven from willow or hazel and then plastered with mud and straw, and smoke from the central firepit escaped through the thatch (you can see this in the photo, click the thumbnail for a clearer view).
World events: Mass demonstrations in Belgrade led to Slobodan Milošević‘s resignation; and an Intercity 225 express train derailed in Hatfield, killing four and injuring many others.
Judy was facing several issues. She was clearly retaining fluids and her feet were swollen and puffy. She was receiving great care from her GP at Yatton Surgery (today, Mendip Vale Medical Practice). I was beginning to feel she needed someone around more of the time so was planning to ask for more time away from work. Our 25th wedding anniversary fell on 3rd so we had visits from both sets of parents. Paul, Jenny, Tony and Faith came to visit too and we talked about Alan and Dorothy joining us on 6th to pray for Judy and anoint her with oil. In the end they didn’t appear, but did so at a later date.
On 12th, Judy began taking small doses of morphine to help her sleep more comfortably and there were signs of her liver struggling a bit, blood albumin levels were low as a result.
Things were difficult in the LARS Computing Section too. We were overworked, needing to get Windows 95 out to the users and working correctly with the NT server. The Institute of Arable Crops Research (IACR), of which Long Ashton Research Station (LARS) was a part, wanted to take control of our computing facilities; but LARS was also the Department of Agriculture of Bristol University, and they were offering us a different route for our networking needs.
World events: The discovery was announced of the planet 51 Pegasi b, the first confirmed extrasolar planet around an ordinary main-sequence star; and O. J. Simpson was found not guilty of double murder in a criminal trial.
Mum and Dad drove to Yatton to visit us for the day, bringing four nieces and nephews with them (Gavin, Rebecca, Dan and Rosie). We went with them to Bristol’s Museum of Transport and enjoyed a good look around, inside and out. The weather was reasonable too and it was a great day out together.
Cleaning the run
But life is not all museum visits with friends and family, there are always chores to be done as well. Debbie and Beth were always very good about this aspect of having pets. We all did our bit; Guinea pigs (Debbie and Beth), hamsters (Beth), cockatiel (Beth), budgies (Judy and me), cat – mostly feeding and grooming (Judy, Debbie, Beth). In the second photo Beth is cleaning out the guinea pig run.
World events: Tim Berners-Lee began building the World Wide Web; and the first McDonald’s restaurant in Mainland China opened in Shenzhen.
The event of the month, if not of the entire year, was Princess Anne’s visit to Long Ashton Research Station (LARS) to officially open the new Hirst Laboratory. I had an office in this building as Microcomputing Manager towards the end of my time at LARS. The photo shows an equerry or some other functionary, Princess Anne, and Professor Hirst, the retired Director after whom the Lab was named. His replacement, Professor Treharne, was out of the shot further to the right.
Part of the crowd
The second photo shows onlookers, a mix of LARS staff and their families as well as some people from the village. Debbie and Beth are in this shot too.
World events: The cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked in the Mediterranean by Palestinian terrorists; and NASA’s Space Shuttle Atlantis flew for the first time.
Mum and Dad bought a painting by Adrian Hill, these days it hangs in Beth and Paz’s home in York; unfortunately I don’t have a good photo of it to use here, but I do have a copy of the receipt so I can say that they bought it in October 1980 in Chedworth and this is the business card of the supplier.
I have very little material for this month. Judy and I were living at 22 Rectory Drive, Yatton. Debbie was five and Beth was two. Judy was at home with the girls on weekdays and I was researching pollen and pollen tube growth at Long Ashton Research Station. As I recall, we had no car at this stage and I was cycling or motor cycling to work during the week.
World events:Jim Callaghan announced his resignation as leader of the Labour Party; and the most recent atmospheric nuclear weapons test to date was conducted by China.
We visited Mum and Dad in Cirencester a little after our fifth wedding anniversary and I took a little time out to walk around the town with my camera. This is the front of the old Cirencester Workhouse, no longer in use at that time, of course. Today it’s used as the District Council offices. The photo dates to 26th October 1975 and is one of a stereo pair.
Judy and Mary
Our next door neighbours in the end-of-terrace house next to us were Mike and Mary Low, In the photo Judy and Mary are looking through some photos together.
Our wedding went well on 3rd October; I regret not being able to share a photo or two, I have them safely somewhere but I’m quite unable to locate them at present.
I can share a funny story from that day, however. We had avoided getting our car ‘decorated’ by our college friends by parking it some distance away and getting Judy’s Dad to drive us to the car after the reception. So we were already heading off for our honeymoon well before anyone was able to locate the car. With confetti down our necks and scattered all around, it seemed like a good idea to pop in to Churnside in Cirencester, let ourselves in (everyone was still in Cheltenham), get rid of the confetti, and then continue to Bournemouth where we planned to stay for a week. Unfortunately I forgot to pick up my car keys as we left the house.
I borrowed a ladder from Brian Bennett at Bennett’s Garage just a few steps along the road, got back into the house through my bedroom window, picked up the keys, returned the ladder, and we were back on the road in short order.
There was no need to book in advance in those days. We simply drove into Bournemouth until we spotted a guest house we liked the look of with a ‘Vacancies’ sign displayed. We went in, they showed us a room and gave us a price, we asked what their best price would be if we took the room for a week, and that was it. Simple! It wouldn’t work today, would it?
Corfe Castle
We explored Bournemouth fairly thoroughly, visited the famous Beaulieu car museum, spent a day on the Isle of Wight (Judy took the photo above while I was driving our car onto the ferry), and looked at Corfe Castle.
I had a message during the week to phone Long Ashton Research Station and they offered me a job in the willow department; starting on the following Monday, that was an enormous relief. So after our honeymoon, we drove to Bristol (visiting Salisbury and Avebury on the way) and visited Long Ashton on the Sunday evening. I rang the bell of the house where I’d lived with a bunch of other students during my industrial sandwich period in 1969. My old landlady opened the door and gave me a big smile when she saw who it was, but she also told me that they’d stopped taking guests. However, she kindly offered to give us a room for a few days while we looked for a bedsit in Bristol. Another big relief!
I began my first full-time job on Monday morning, while Judy took the car into Bristol to start looking for a bedsit. After drawing a series of blanks, an agency in Park Street said they had a suitable place up on the Downs, it was a big, three story house on Linden Road, number 59 I think. It was two rooms on the first floor with a bathroom and loo shared with a similar pair of rooms on the same floor. It was vacant so we took it and were able to move over from Long Ashton right away. I still remember the landlord, a Mr Bird; he came to collect the rent once a week. We had a furnished bedroom and sitting room, a big cupboard that opened out to reveal a tiny kitchen, a car, and I had a monthly salary. We felt great, and excited for the future.
Within a few days Judy had found a temporary job working at one of the Broadmead department stores, either Lewis’s or Jones’s. They needed extra staff over Christmas and the New Year period. The extra income made a big difference to our finances and we began saving, knowing that we would need a deposit for a mortgage eventually. During the next few weeks she began looking for a job as a newly graduated biochemist and soon found work as a lab assistant at Bristol University Biochemisty Department in Woodland Road to start in the spring term. Dr Tanner (Mike Tanner) was studying one of the proteins in the human erythrocyte membrane.
World events: A Khmer Republic was proclaimed in Cambodia, escalating the Civil War ; and the Soviet Union launched the Zond 8 lunar probe.
I was in the lower sixth form at Cirencester Grammar School (CGS) and it was interesting to make a start on Chemistry, Physics, and Biology A levels. I had not been able to cover Biology at O level so had some catching up to do, Physics became more mathematical than I’d expected, and Organic Chemistry was way harder than the inorganic studies at O level. But my teachers were good, especially ‘Pop’ Green who taught us Biology. He stood no nonsense, but he was a lot of fun and very helpful to anyone who wanted to learn and showed a real interest in the subject. I took these photos in 1966, but everything looked just the same in 1965.
My sister Cindy turned 14-years-old at the beginning of the month, Ruth and Rachael were 9 and 8 respectively, and I was already 17 and taking my first steps in learning to drive. It was easy in those days, I applied for a provisional driving licence and received it quite quickly, then we put L plates on the car and Dad took me out to the disused Chedworth Airfield to learn the first steps of clutch, accelerator, footbrake and steering and once he felt I was safe enough, he took me on quiet roads to get used to traffic. Meanwhile I studied the Highway Code to learn the theory aspects, the meanings of various road signs, stopping distances and their relationship to road speed and so forth.
CGS Sports Field
Judy and I continued to grow closer and spent a lot of time in free periods talking about every imaginable topic, in cold weather we would lean on one of the radiators in the Wooden Corridor to stay warm while we talked. We didn’t hold the same views on everything, but that just made it more interesting. I was also reading about science, buying the monthly magazine ‘Science Journal’ which was a UK publication similar in many ways to the American magazine ‘Scientific American’. I was very interested in electronics and the early computers, also the American and Russian space programs as well as European efforts to build a launcher. The European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) was trying to cobble together the British Blue Streak ballistic missile, the French Coralie as the second stage, and a smaller German vehicle as the third stage to reach low Earth orbit (LEO). This programme proved unsuccessful.
Judy introduced me to classical music, something that had passed me by before we met. When I was younger, Dad was into jazz, particularly the piano solos of Jelly Roll Morton, Earl Hines and most of all, those of Fats Waller. He played many of them rather well on the upright piano we had at home. And Mum liked much of the popular music of the day, especially anything by Danny Kaye. But neither of them had been into classical stuff. Judy and I both enjoyed some of the popular groups (not ‘bands’ in the 1960s) of our own day. I was very much into The Shadows and, to be perfectly honest, I still am.
World events: Fidel Castro announced that Che Guevara had resigned and left Cuba; and the 7 Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross and Red Crescent were adopted at the XX International Conference in Vienna, Austria.
This was the start of my second year at Cirencester Grammar School, my sisters were younger than me and still at junior school. The exercise book was from my first year, carries the Grammar School Crest, and the book’s been initialled by my maths teacher to show it’s full; the school office issued new books, but only if they’d been initialled by a teacher. Click the image for a closer look.
The exercise books were coloured to indicate the subject, this one is green for maths, rough books were dark blue, geography was orange, history was a dark maroon and so on.
World events:Nigeria became independent from the United Kingdom and the 99th member of the UN; and a large rocket exploded on the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, killing at least 92 staff of the Soviet space program.
My sister, Cindy, turned four at the beginning of the month, and at seven-years-old I had already begun my third year at Junior school. We were advancing to more challenging tasks, taking dictation was one of these and although the vocabulary remained simple, there were potential pitfalls. I remember being puzzled when having been careful to use a capital E for a person’s name, it was crossed out as being wrong. The sentence was something like, ‘The fair was coming to town and he had thought of little Else all day.’ Surely if her name was ‘Else’ she deserved a capital?
Jill’s message
The images show the front and back of a postcard from my cousin (also my godmother), Jill. She was grown up, about 18 or so at this time, and was teaching English to the daughter of a French family in Morocco. They were visiting Paris and she thoughtfully sent me the postcard. (Click the images to enlarge them.) (I have no images from October, the card is probably from August.)
World events:Sun Myung Moon was released from prison in South Korea; and 70-mm film was introduced for cinema projection, with the release of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical, Oklahoma!.
This photo is from the Facebook ‘Old Ciren’ group (it’s definitely October and must be a year not far from 1950). Local people, especially children and young adults, look forward to the fair and certainly have a good time. As you can see, Mop takes over the entire Market Place. My memories of Mop as a child include the sound of diesel generators, warmth from the many light bulbs in use, the mixture of smells (diesel fumes, candy floss, fried onions and so on, the noise of the crowds and the shouts of the people managing the attractions (Roll up, roll up).
I probably didn’t witness Mop in 1950, I was only 2¼ years old, but I might have been carried down or taken in the pram by Mum and Dad.
World events: China began the process of annexing Tibet, beginning by invading across the Jinsha River and seizing the border town of Chamdo; and the USA’s FCC issued the first license to broadcast television in colour.
Mike received inoculations and then visited Bombay (Mumbai) with some friends and was emphatically unimpressed. He met a sergeant he’d known from his time at Ballinderry in Northern Ireland. The toing and froing of letters with Lilias and with Dad’s family in Cirencester continued, and he had photos taken at a booth in the bazaar and sent one to Lilias.
On 10th he had a bad headache, felt rotten on 11th, and reported sick on 12th. By 14th he was feeling normal apart from some mouth ulcers that persisted for several days. He left hospital on 18th despite a temperature of 100 F (37.8 C).
Santa Cruz
On the 19th he was given work as a lorry driver – Driver Mechanical Transport (DMT). Then on 21st he was posted to Santa Cruz, a nearby RAF airfield where he met someone he knew from Ashton Keynes as well as someone from Stroud and a man from Sampson’s Nurseries! He was seeing films at the station cinema, and practising cricket while waiting to start his new role. His first driving practice was taking a 3-ton Chevrolet around the airfield perimeter track on a meals run. By the end of the month he was driving quite regularly and teaching himself to change down to a lower gear correctly.
So that was a fairly slow-paced start to Dad’s RAF service in India, and a strange way to employ an experienced radar operator!
There’s not enough information to write something for every month in the 1940s. Dad’s diaries start in January 1943, so for January 1940 to December 1942 I’ll write about things I know, or draw on dated photos and documents. Sometimes I might use a photo or document with a guessed date.
Continuing the nursery theme, this time I’ll describe Watermoor Nursery. When I was growing up Watermoor was the place where Dad spent most of his time, he was the foreman at Watermoor during those years, before taking on responsibility for all of the nurseries in due course. What do I remember about Watermoor in those days? I suspect it had changed very little from 1940 until the 1950s when I first remember it.
Perhaps the first thing to say is that before Cirencester’s ring road was built in the 1980s, Watermoor Road used to continue along what is now Watermoor End, heading south-east towards Cricklade and, eventually Swindon and Marlborough. This was the line of the old Roman Ermin Street. If you visit Watermoor End and walk right down to the Ring Road (Bristol Road at this point) you’ll notice the old pub on the right at the end stands at a strange angle (it’s marked on the map as ‘The Horse & Drill’). Cricklade Road, now the other side of Bristol Road, continues along the line of the Roman Road and you can follow it, straight as a die, past Tesco Extra and on beyond Tesco where it’s fenced off. It’s still a footpath so walk through the fence and continue. All of this was once known as the Swindon Road. You can see the details on the map.
Returning to that old pub at an odd angle, it was built to respect the line of Watermoor Road, a junction to the right off what is now Watermoor End. You can follow the old Watermoor Road from the southern side of Bristol Road, and when you reach Rose Way on your left you are more or less at the old entrance to what was once Watermoor Nursery. Entering the long-gone wooden gate you would have seen the potting shed on the left and beds edged with lightweight breeze blocks and filled with crushed clinker on the right. This was the standing area for the Alpine plants propagated at Watermoor. The main track ran ahead from the gate to the Swindon Road gate at the far end. Both sides of this track (especially the left hand side) were filled with row after row of herbaceous perennials which would be lifted and split in the winter months, packed in moist soil and straw for insulation, wrapped in sacking, and sold as bare-rooted plants to be collected from the nursery or despatched by road, rail or post to distant customers, or delivered by van along with other plants, cut flowers, wreaths, seeds, garden sundries and chemicals in Cirencester and the local villages, often by my Dad.
On the left of the track, at the Swindon Road end, was the carter’s cottage. Up until the end of the Second World War a horse and cart were used for local deliveries. The Horse was stabled at Tower Street Nursery. There was a story that the carter sometimes stopped at a pub for refreshment on his long delivery round, and that if he drank too much he would doze off afterwards while driving, but the horse knew the customary route and would plod along without any need for guidance. Companies like Tesla and Waymo are trying to perfect vehicles than can drive themselves, perhaps they just need a well-trained horse! I suppose you’d need a different horse for each route, so that might be an insurmountable issue. The carter’s cottage was still there when I moved back to Cirencester in 2016; it’s since been demolished to make way for several new houses. The carter’s vegetable garden made it a reasonable-sized building plot. You can see the cottage and its garden on the map, in the northern corner of the nursery.
I remember Miss Brown (Rosemary, I think) who was Dad’s assistant at Watermoor. And in the calm, warm days of summer time I remember thousands of butterflies making the most of the flowers on the herbaceous stock plants. The air seemed to shimmer with them – large and small tortoiseshells, painted ladies, red admirals, peacocks and much, much more. In the summer, our house always had vases of flowers, cut at Watermoor and brought home by Dad.
You can view the map in full online, the area was surveyed and mapped by Ordnance Survey between 1892 and 1947.
Siddington in 2021
World events: Adolf Hitler made a Berlin Sportpalast speech declaring that Germany would make retaliatory night air raids on British cities and threatening invasion; the Blitz began on 7th September and although tough for civilians and ruinous to cities, it probably saved the RAF from collapse and an invasion of Britain never became feasible.
Anything that appears in this section will have some connection with the 1930’s but may extend beyond the decade to follow a meaningful topic more fully.
This time I thought I might take a more general look at the Jefferies family living in Cirencester in the 1930s. The family hub was ‘Churnside’, an Edwardian semi-detatched property at 37 Victoria Road. My grandparentswere Mr and Mrs Edward Arthur Jefferies, my grandmother was born Norah Monger and had two sisters. They had the house built, probably shortly before they were married, living in the right hand part and renting out the left half. I remember Mrs Morgan who lived there when I was a child, and later Mr and Mrs Handy and their family. I believe the house was built on land once belonging to Cirencester Abbey which owned a good deal of agricultural land around the town. It might later have been owned by the Chestermaster family and/or the Bathurst estate before being sold for town expansion. Before New Road was built (later renamed Victoria Road) the land was probably used as grazing for sheep, cattle, and perhaps horses. It was low lying land with the River Churn running along the eastern edge (hence the name ‘Churnside’). When Purley Road was built in the 1920s or ’30s, the fact that ‘Churnside’ was beside the River Churn became a great deal less obvious, but the name stuck. As far as I know, this semi-detached pair of homes was one of the first properties built on this side of New Road. My grandfather, Ted or the Guv’ner, and my grandmother Nor, were quite well off. I remember they had a black Wolsley car and a chauffer, Cooper, to drive it. They also had a live-in maid to help with the household chores and not only did they have a reasonably large garden, but also a further plot, the ‘Lower Garden’ in Purley Road was purchased for use as tennis courts and later, during World War 2, a chicken run and then finally a fruit and vegetable garden. I remember helping Grandpa feed the chickens. That gives you some idea of the Jefferies family and their lifestyle in the 1930s.
Cleaning the office
The business hub was at 2 Castle Street, now the Vodafone shop in the Market Place. The phone number was Cirencester 2 (Cirencester 1 was the Post Office, also in Castle Street), with private extensions to each of the nurseries. At this time the post office was happy to provide external extensions like this for any business that asked for them. When I was a child there was a small automatic exchange in the company’s main office. Previously, one of the office staff would have connected the extensions manually. The building housed a florist’s and garden shop downstairs with storage below in the cellar, there were offices upstairs, and on the second storey the landscape design department with enormous garden plans rolled up or pinned out on drawing boards. I don’t have a photo of the shop in the 1930s, but this one shows it being cleaned in the summer of 1962.
Dad was born in 1926, almost an afterthought following his older brothers born in 1907, 1910 and 1912. During the second world war John and Robert (Bob) joined the army while Richard (Dick) signed up for the navy. All three joined as officers. Mike signed up for the RAF as soon as he was old enough (in 1944). So towards the end of the 1930s running the family business fell entirely to my grandfather.
World events (October 1935): The Turkish government abolished all Masonic lodges in the country. (October 1930): The British airship R101, the world’s largest flying craft, crashed in France en route to India, 48 lives were lost.
As with the 1930s material, everything in this section will have a connection of some kind with these two decades.
Probably few people reading this will know that there was another branch of the Jefferies family, also running a nursery business, but in Lancashire. As far as I’m aware there was no connection between the two businesses, but there is a family connection.
John Edward Jefferies was born in October 1886 and ran his nursery business in the Stockport area. His second son, also John Jefferies continued running the business though the rest of the family went into teaching, the British Gas accounts department, and research (first with Glaxo-Welcome and later at Salford University’s Chemistry Department.
The John Jefferies of Somerford Keynes and later, Cirencester, had a brother. His name was Bradford Jefferies and he was a few years older than John. Bradford had two sons also called Bradford, though one died in infancy. The surviving Bradford’s uncle was therefore the John Jefferies from Cirencester. With me so far? It is a bit convoluted.
This Bradford Jefferies had several children, and one of them (Edward) is the one who ran a nursery business near Stockport. He married and their children were born in the 1920s, one of these, John Anthony Jefferies, continued to run the business . The business was still going in 2022 but I can’t find a recent website for them. They do have an entry on Facebook, however, and various listings on other business directories, though nothing seems to be being updated. I left a message on the Facebook page and had a reply from a member of staff so the company survives. It’s lasted a good deal longer its Cirencester equivalent.
World events(October 1925): John Logie Baird successfully transmitted the first television pictures with a greyscale image. (October 1920): The Polish army captured the Soviet cities of Tarnopol, Dubno, Minsk and Dryssa. (October 1915): In WW1 France, Russia and Italy declared war on Bulgaria. (October 1910):Infra-red photographs were first published. (October 1900): Quantum mechanics began when Max Planck put forward his law of black-body radiation.
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Journeys of Heart and Mind 
