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.
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
Unlike life, death is stable. It’s not often that you see a dead body come alive again. That would be resurrection, it’s not something that we expect to see happening regularly (or at all)!
I’m writing about these three topics in obedience to a prompting from the Holy Spirit. I need to say that at the outset. And I think I’m going to need to create two versions, one for people who are following Jesus, and another for people who have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m going get stuck right in, please bear with me; my hope and prayer is that there’ll be something here for everyone.
For those who have no idea
We all know what life is, or at least, we think we do. Life is a metastable state. Let’s define ‘metastable’ – Imagine a pencil lying near the centre of a table; if you push it a little it will move across the surface but it won’t fall over. It can’t! (unless you push it so far that it reaches beyond the edge of the table it is always fully supported on the table’s surface. That pencil is a stable object.
Now take the pencil and stand it up on it’s point. Let it go and it will fall over. A pencil standing on its point is unstable.
Now take the pencil and stand it on the table with its point uppermost. If the pencil has a good, flat end and the table surface is even and horizontal, you will be able to do this with a little care. Now push the pencil point sideways a tiny amount and then release it, it’ll wobble a bit but then remain standing and settle down. But push it beyond a certain amount and it will fall over. That’s metastable, the pencil can cope with a tiny movement, but push it too far and it’ll fall over.
Life is like that, it’s a metastable condition. Most of the time we live day after day as the weather changes, sometimes warmer, sometimes cooler, sometimes wet, sometimes dry. Put us in a place too hot, too cold, too dry (a desert), or too wet (an ocean) and we will die. Not immediately, perhaps, but push us too far, and like the point-up pencil, we’ll fall. Life is metastable. All of us will die eventually, if not of overheating or drowning, then eventually of old age. It’s not normal to live for ever.
Unlike life, death is stable. It’s not often that you see a dead body come alive again. That would be resurrection, it’s not something that we expect to see happening regularly (or at all)!
That’s about all there is to say to the ‘No idea’ group.
For those following Jesus (or might like to)
Jesus had some really interesting things to say about life. He reminded people that life is metastable, but without using that term. He claimed that there is a different kind of life, a spiritual life parallel to biological life, a life that is stable rather than metastable, a life that has the potential to be stable as either permanent life or permanent death. And he further explained that we can choose either permanent condition.
These claims don’t make sense, do they? I’ve stated them as simply and straightforwardly as I can. I should add that these deep truths cannot be grasped by intellect or understood by logic. They are, I suspect, completely distinct from the physical world and from the rationality of mind and brain. These things are unmeasurable and indescribable, available only through faith, hope, and love.
So if you want to explore further, faith, hope and love are the tools you will need to do so. Faith is a mysterious idea, quite hard to pin down or explain. Hope is something we all have, though perhaps we all hope for slightly different things. But love is the most important and the strongest of the three, it’s the one key you truly need to unlock resurrection (a return to life) and to grasp the enormous benefit of permanent life and the desperate state of permanent death. So take love as the starting point. If you are new to all this, Henry Drummond is a good guide and companion on the exciting journey that lies ahead.
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
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.
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
Put an upturned bucket over a patch of grass in your garden. Lift the bucket every day and take a look, then re-cover the patch… How long does it take for the grass to die?
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click to enlarge
Trees provide shade, most welcome on a hot day, and they provide shelter when it rains (though this may be unwise during thunderstorms).
But notice the absence of grass beneath these conifers. Shade and shelter are exactly what other plants don’t need; they depend on plenty of light and water to enable them to grow. Light is essential as it provides the energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and water is essential as the raw material for this process. The oxygen is released into the atmosphere, while the hydrogen is bonded with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make energy-storing sugars for use at night and to build cellulose, the main support molecule that gives stems, branches and tree trunks their strength.
The lack of light and water under tree canopies creates a kind of local desert. You can see this clearly in the photo from the presence and absence of grass. So how do the trees survive? That’s a great question! Their roots spread out widely and deep, far enough to reach moist soil and deep ground water. In persistent rain, water drips from the drenched leaves above. And root, trunk and branch all contain stores of water so a tree can cope with a long, dry summer far better than the grass can.
Light
Here’s an experiment anyone can do. Put an upturned bucket over a patch of grass in your garden. Lift the bucket every day and take a look, then re-cover the patch. See how long it takes for the grass to turn yellow. How long does it take for the grass to die?
For plants, light is essential. There are some animals that live in dark caves or underground, with no light. Earthworms are a good example, but like all animals they get their food by consuming plants and other animals. But for most creatures, including us humans, light is essential nonetheless. Whether we are plant eaters (like cows and sheep) or meat eaters (like lions and wolves) or omnivores eating either or both (like humans and rats) we still need light to see in order to find and identify the things we must eat to stay alive.
Water
For plants, water is part of their ‘food’, it’s needed to make sugars. For animals water is of no value as food, but it’s essential to prevent dangerous dehydration. All animals know when they’re thirsty and they’ll find water and drink to keep themselves alive. Think of a man lost in a desert, the cartoons have him croaking out, ‘Water.. Water..’ Imagine someone unable to find water, they’d die of thirst long, long before they died of hunger. Most of us would be in danger after a few days without drinking, but we could live for several weeks with nothing to eat. And of course, if you are a fish too little water would mean you couldn’t breathe, and if you were a land animal too much would mean you would drown.
Spiritual (not religious)
The idea of essentials has been carried over into spiritual ideas too. Light and water (and food) are so clearly necessary for life that they make good analogies and illustrations. What did Jesus mean when he said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’? Or when he explained to the Samaritan woman at the well that he would provide water that never runs out, or when he told his followers, ‘I am the bread of life’ or ‘I am the light of the world’?
He was simply saying, I am essential, you can’t live without me. I’m necessary for life. Just as in the physical world, how would it feel to live in the dark, without water and without sustenance? How long would you last? How long would I last?
Many people today feel sure there is no spiritual aspect to life at all, it’s just about living your life in the here and now and then dying from accident, illness, or just old age. Others think there’s much more to life than that. At the very least there are moral and philosophical truths to consider. We should care for one another, help one another, and cooperate in helpful and kind ways.
Food for thought. Let me know below how you think about the essentials of life. Do you have any thoughts to share on this?
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
By the end of the month they were in a Bombay transit camp and able to visit the city, armed now with Rupees in place of the sterling cash they’d handed in aboard the ship. (1945)
June 2025 (3 months before publishing this article)
Click pics to enlarge
Jim and Kevin
We had a visit from our friends Jim and Kevin from St Neots. They were on their way to a meeting in Swindon and needed to pass nearby, so decided to travel early and visit us for lunch. We enjoyed the food at The Greyound in Siddington, sitting out in their garden.
Donna’s laptop failed, it booted into the BIOS but didn’t list the hard drive as present, so I assumed it was a corrupt BIOS or some faulty memory. It turned out to be a faulty memory chip soldered on the motherboard so it couldn’t be repaired and she had to replace it. She bought a Lenovo with an Intel Core i5 chip and is very pleased with it.
The flower show
We visited Avebury and checked out some EVs in Swindon on the way home, and we spent a day at Blenheim Palace to see the flower show and the Churchill Museum.
On the last day of the month we bought a 2-year-old Nissan Leaf EV from Cinch in Bristol. So we’ve finally gone electric! We weren’t able to drive away with it, but we paid the money and got the paperwork under way for collection a few days later.
Donna dropped me off at the Daneway Inn and I walked the canal from the Daneway tunnel portal to the locks at Siddington, and then back along the Cirencester arm and home. Including some diversions to see other parts of the canal, I walked about 15 miles in all.
The political situation in the world remained very strange. I was trying to come to terms with the dreadful (and very unpresidential) outburst in the White House against Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy; but on the good side, it seemed that European nations including the UK were becoming more alert to the dangers posed by Russia under President Putin and at last we were preparing to defend ourselves should that become necessary.
Colombia
Our grandson, Aidan, set out on a South American adventure and was on the north coast of Columbia by the end of the month. He flew to New York and spent a few days there, then a second flight took him to Bogota and he bussed north to the Colombian Caribbean coast where he took this photo. Much more of the continent lies ahead for him to explore.
The crazy tangle of roots after removal from our drains
Our drains started making gurgling noises and there was a bad smell in the upstairs bathroom, when I lifted an inspection cover on the patio, I found it was full of roots, but after removing them the problems were immediately resolved with even more gurgling.
Visiting Anglesey Abbey
We visited St Neots to see friends and explored Anglesey Abbey, one of our favourite National Trust sites in the area.
For the first half of the month we were in Weston-Super-Mare. We spent a fair proportion of the time in Grove Park as that’s where the dogs expect to go for exercise and a sniff around each day. Donna was delighted to see Mrs Sqirrel finishing off a banana, close up and quite unafraid. I was able to capture this photo.
With Tony and Faith
We met Tony and Faith in Clarence Park and it was great to chat with them. Dan is in Cambridge these days working as a Fellow at one of the colleges. They are such good friends from a much earlier part of my life so it was a real treat to see them again.
I collected Paul and Vanessa from the railway station in Weston following their Croatian holiday. And back in Stratton, our builder came to look at the job in advance of work starting to insert additional lintels above the existing concrete ones.
My friend Phil and I walked from South Cerney along the route of the Thames and Severn Canal and back along the old railway line. It was an enjoyable walk in good weather and with interesting conversation along the way for good measure. A thoroughly enjoyable day.
Coffee in Stroud
Confirmed cases of COVID-19 were still rising, this continued to be an alarming pandemic. On 20th we took Isobel over to Stroud, introducing her to Minchinhampton and Rodborough Commons and the ‘Lock Keeper’s Cafe’ on the canal in Stroud.
Donna and I gave Isobel a Chromebook for her birthday. These desktop devices are cheap and very easy to use but they have limited lifetimes as the Google software becomes more and more demanding. But still, we think it will be far more usable for Isobel than Windows which she’s been struggling with; it’s just too complex, but the Chromebook is simple and easy by comparison.
JHM: I posted a very amusing COVID-19 risk assessment chart; and described an encounter with an elephant hawk moth caterpillar. World events: At 93, Benedict XVI became the longest-lived Pope; and the number of COVID cases worldwide passed 25 million.
Sara’s birthday party was on 5th September this year. She had friends round to the Village Hall in Thorganby where Debbie had arranged for a series of animals to be brought in for stroking, handling and so forth by the children. This was followed by hand washing and the party food and cake with candles.
VHS to DVD
I was copying my old VHS cassettes with family videos on them to DVD to save the contents for future use. Once I had the DVDs it was easy to create ISO files from them to store with all my other family history material. The photo shows the current state of this work on 3rd September.
World events:Elizabeth II had been on the throne for 63 years and 217 days, becoming the longest-reigning British monarch in history; and Gravitational waves were detected for the first time.
We held two Cornerstone Directors Meetings in September, mainly to review the launch and consider what would be needed for the continuing catering and outreach. The meetings did not go smoothly and it became clear that the manager, Paul (who had also provided the funding for the launch) had ideas of his own that didn’t chime well with the rest of us. It was a worrying start to what we’d hoped would be a successful and long term presence of a Christian bookshop and cafe in St Neots. I began taking photos for advertising purposes (see above).
I visited Thorganby for Sara’s birthday, but unfortunately have no photos of the occasion. Jim, Sean and I began meeting with our friend David from New Zealand (working in London). We met in a pub in Watton-at-Stone.
We went on a cruise holiday with Donna’s Mum and Dad aboard the Thomson ‘Emerald’. Initially we flew to Corfu and joined the cruise from there. We left Corfu after nightfall and woke up in Brindisi, Italy. The following day was stormy and rough so we skipped our planned stop at Ravenna and reached Trieste, a truly beautiful city.
Inside a Roman building
The next stop was Venice, and then Split on the Adriatic coast. The Roman Emperor Diocletian built a palace here and the central part of the city is built inside the old palace walls. Several Roman buildings remain partially or completely intact. Next was Dubrovnik and then back to Corfu where we met our old friends Geoff and Dawn before flying back to the UK.
Mum’s arteritis seemed to be coming under control at last. She had been on regular doses of steroids to save her eyesight but now the dose levels were being slowly and cautiously reduced.
Back at work at Unilever, I was helping renew the Colworth Travel website, previously a Lotus Notes system.
World events: Israel demolished multiple settlements and withrew its army from the Gaza strip; and controversial drawings of Muhammad were printed in a Danish newspaper.
We finished redecorating our lounge in September, in a relaxing, cool, pale green colour. Now all that remained was to bring the furniture back in from what used to be the dining room. The decorating took a long time because I restored the surface of the walls first by filling scratches and holes, then hand sanding the filler. After painting it looked as good as if we’d replastered the entire room.
A group of us from Unilever Colworth travelled to Amsterdam to meet colleagues from the Vlaardingen lab and staff from Info.nl, the computing company developing the replacement for WebForum for us (probably to be called Research onLine).
Roman Londinium
At the end of the month I visited the Museum of London where Roman Londinium was illustrated by reconstructions and models. The photo shows a Roman ship at the quayside in the Roman town.
World events: The Nokia 3310 mobile phone was released; and Microsoft released the Windows Me operating system.
Judy worked hard on collating and indexing her collection of photos. The meetings with Tony, Faith, Paul and Jenny were going well by this time. on 16th the six of us ate at Tony and Faith’s, and at Paul and Jenny’s on 22nd. We hosted sometimes as well. and afterwards we always had an outstanding meeting.
Lynmouth
We met Cindy and Paul at Dyrham Park on 17th and ate cream teas in the Orangery; Judy’s NHS loan wheelchair arrived on 20th and we used it to give her an outing to Lynmouth for a stroll a few days later.
It was getting steadily more difficult to treat Judy’s pain so her GP put her on an improved pain management routine; it seemed to work really well for which we were both very grateful.
I was working at Long Ashton Research Station (LARS) in a PC support role and was just starting to look at networking Windows 95 using the Microsoft networking software instead of Trumpet Winsock. LARS was sounding enthusiastic about hosting my Microscopy web pages on the LARS web server.
World events: The Italian ex-Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, went on trial accused of Mafia connections; while The Washington Post and The New York Times published the Unabomber Manifesto.
We visited the Bristol Kite Fiesta at Ashton Gate, but it was not a good day for kites as there was insufficient wind to display them well. Everyone did their very best, but it was not quite the spectacle it might have been. Nonetheless we enjoyed our day out in the sunshine and bought a few items, Debbie bought a two-line kite.
Garden party
We also visited Cirencester to spend time with my Mum and Dad, and Bibury, where Cindy and Paul had a big garden party. Fortunately the weather was kind, if it had been wet their house would have been massively overcrowded, I think.
World events: Presidents Bush and Gorbachev meet in Helsinki to discuss the Persian Gulf crisis; and the two German states and the Four Powers signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in Moscow, paving the way for German reunification.
With our holiday over, we began working on the house and garden at Stowey Road after our move from Rectory drive in August. In the photo I’m adjusting the levels where there was a dip in the back grass. There used to be a rhyne here (the local word for a drainage ditch) and the ground had subsided over time.
Walking to school
Debbie and Beth started back at junior school, just a short walk across the road for both of them. Beth was in her first year at junior school while Debbie was already in her fourth year, moving on to secondary school at Backwell in September 1986.
World events: The wreck of the Titanic was located; and a powerful earthquake struck Mexico City killing and injuring tens of thousands of people.
Here are Debbie and Beth riding on the beach donkeys at Weston-super-Mare. Grandad is leading the donkeys. In the background you can see the Beach Hotel and, on the right, part of the grand pier.
Beth, Nana and Debbie
Beth was nearly 2½-years-old and Debbie 5½. Judy was just about to begin a teaching career having earned her qualification before Debbie was born while we were still living in our flat in St Andrew’s, Bristol. I was working at Long Ashton Research Station on fruit crop pollination, and with the Open University summer school behind me, getting back to working through the next topics and submitting assignments.
World events: The Gotthard Road Tunnel opened in Switzerland as the world’s longest highway tunnel, at 16.3 kilometres; and Iraq ordered its army to ‘deliver a fatal blow on Iranian military targets’, starting the Iran–Iraq War.
We visited Mum and Dad in Cirencester during September and went out with them for a walk at the gravel pits near South Cerney. The very poor photo is a still from some 8mm cine taken by Dad while Mum was looking after Debbie. Judy and I were walking along the bank of one of the lakes.
In addition to moving into a new house, we were also beginning to explore the village a bit, find out where to buy bread, groceries, decorating supplies and so forth, get to know our neighbours, and generally get to grips with our new surroundings. We began going along to Horsecastle Chapel at the other end of the village on Sunday mornings and get to know people there, and we began to think seriously about getting baptised.
Judy elected to stay at home to look after Debbie while I carried on working at Long Ashton, despite a promotion to Scientific Officer (SO) we were now less well off and with a monthly mortgage payment to find.
I was beginning to work more completely with Ray Williams’ Pollination Team consisting of Ruth, Myfanwy (Miv), and Val. My old boss Ken and I moved with the others into the Pollination House. Our old offices in the Wallace Lab were taken over by the Electron Microscopy Group under Dr Thomas.
Pete and Cindy went for a boat trip on the Thames, the photo shows Dad and Rachael taking photos just before they drove off from Churnside.
We were both starting to think seriously about what we would do once we were married, the date for that was 3rd October so very rapidly approaching. There were still a few remaining arrangements to make and we spent a little time on that. But our education was over and we had a BSc each. I’d written to Long Ashton Research Station (LARS) to ask if there were any posts available or likely to become available soon, and I drove down for an interview with Ken Stott who ran the Willow department. He was doing some research on growing willow and poplar as sources of biofuel for electricity generation and was looking for a new member of staff to help with girth and height measurements over a period of years to estimate the growth rates under different systems of management. It sounded promising but it would be a few weeks longer before I would hear the result. I’d done a three month industrial sandwich at LARS as part of my degree course, so they already knew me and I hoped that might help. And of course I was also keeping an eye on job openings with the Ministry of Agriculture and other horticultural businesses and organisations, but had found nothing promising so far.
Judy meanwhile was waiting to see when and where I would find work so that she could hunt for something in the same geographical area. She would take anything she could get at first, just a shop job or something like that. We couldn’t even begin looking for a bedsit or small flat until we knew where we’d be based. We’d decided to spend a week in Bournemouth for our honeymoon but couldn’t plan beyond that. Added to that, our savings were very limited.
World events:Jimi Hendrix gave his last public performance, two days before his death; and US President Nixon visited the UK and other European states.
In September my grandparents and Aunt Annabelle were visiting from Ireland. The photo list shows that Dad took some photos at the time. Click the image to read the detail. They visited Blenheim Palace and Coventry Cathedral during their visit.
Following our August adventures in Scotland, the Explorers’ Club held an evening meeting at the Grammar School for parents and other family members to hear all the details. Part of the preparation for this was to draw some very large maps to show the journeys and walks we had done with coastlines, mountain peaks and towns marked clearly. The way this had always been done in the past was to mark a grid of squares on the paper and then copy any lines or shapes we required from the grid squares on the ordnance survey maps of the area. This was time consuming, so I photographed the OS maps on transparency film and we projected the slides onto the large sheets to get more accurate maps with far less time and effort. Mr Castle who led the Explorers’ Club could immediately see the sense of this so the new method was adopted.
I became a bronze prefect at the beginning of term, and part of that role with two other prefects was checking the register every morning for a third form class upstairs in the Red Brick Building. Once the teacher arrived for their first lesson our work for the day was over and we could get along to our own first lesson or, if it was a free period, work in the prefects’ common room. One of the other prefects was Judith Hill, we really liked one another and just over five years later we were married, but that’s the story of how we first met. I have to add that the third years were incredibly hard to manage – and Judy was far better at it than I was. The third team member was Hilary Howell, one of Judy’s best friends and the daughter of my Physics teacher.
I was in the Upper Sixth while Judy was Lower Sixth, but it turned out that we were in the same Zoology classes. Because the Grammar School was only three-form entry (about 90 pupils per year) and because only 30% or so stayed on for sixth form and biology was not a popular A level choice, the A level biology classes were very small, maybe five or six pupils a year. As a result, half the syllabus was taught to Upper and Lower Sixth one year and the other half the following year as this was more efficient use of staff time. So Judy and I were learning the same topics and doing the same practicals in 1965/66. I’d already covered the other half of the syllabus in 1964/65 and Judy would cover that part in 1966/67. It was a bit complicated but it worked well and brought the class size up to ten or twelve.
When it came to practicals, we were asked to choose a partner to work with and I was quick to pair up with Judy since we already knew one another and got on well together. And it was the rat dissection that cemented our relationship, bringing us close physically (essential if you’re sharing a rat – they’re not very large and you need to examine them close up to make drawings and so forth) and bringing us closer as friends as well (doing something practical together always has that effect). So that rat has a lot to answer for! Two daughters in due course as it happens.
(Debbie, Beth, if you’re reading this, a small part of the reason you exist was a yellow-stained rat preserved in formalin! I enjoyed writing that, a hugely amusing sentence to have composed. It’ll keep me chuckling all evening, I dare say.)
World events: The Pakistan Navy destroyed the Indian port of Dwarka; and Pakistani Forces achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Chawinda, halting an Indian advance and stabilising the front.
Mum and Dad had a visit from Jim Fuller and his wife from Boston in the USA. Jim and Mum were distant relatives. Mum, Dad, Cindy, Ruth and Rachael went out with the Fullers to visit Bibury and some other places in the Cotswolds though I had to go to school (which I was not happy about). But Jim Fuller had an 8 mm cine camera and took some interesting sequences with it. The photo is a still from the film, Jim was behind the camera but you can see Figum the cat, Rachael, Dad, Mum, Cindy, Ruth and Mrs Fuller.
Maths book
The image at left shows a page from my maths exercise book from about September in 1960 (exact date unknown). I was just starting in the 2nd Form at the time.
World events: Two American cryptologists defected to the Soviet Union; and OPEC was founded by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
My third year at Junior school began in September, I was at Querns School and I think I was in Miss Millington’s class. I was a bit scared of Miss Millington, partly because she had a northern accent and I was only used to hearing three accents, local Gloucestershire, County Tyrone (my Mum and my Irish grandparents) and a slightly more upper class English from some of my fellow pupils and also an aunt or uncle here and there. So the short northern ‘a’, and the ‘oo’ in book sounded weird to me. (And weird always seemed a bit alarming.) I often thought of Miss Millington as ‘Barrel buttons’ because she sometimes wore an off-white cardigan that had black buttons like those on a duffle coat, they looked like miniature barrels to me.
This photo is from the Facebook ‘Old Ciren’ group. The Cirencester Town Station building is a Brunel design and still exists (the building’s listed), though stripped of its canopy. A small section of platform remains. The photo is listed on Old Ciren as 1950 but it may not have been taken in September.
I well remember travelling on this branch line, sometimes with my grandmother just for fun to Kemble and back to see the mainline trains hurtling through, sometimes to change to catch the Cheltenham Flyer on its way to London, Paddington with stops at Swindon and Reading.
Of course, in September 1950 I was too young to understand any of this, but I would have been running about and chatting freely with Mum and Dad and no doubt loved to see trains. I had a little clockwork engine that didn’t need rails, it just ran about on the floor until it bumped into the furniture or the skirting board.
World events: The Turing Test was published as ‘the imitation game’; and The comic strip Peanuts was first published in US newspapers.
On 6th Mike left Blackpool and boarded his ship, the RMS Orbita, in Liverpool, they sailed at 11:15 on 7th, and saw the Welsh and Irish coasts. Mike wrote a long letter to Lilias and there was a musical evening on board.
The 9th took them through the Bay of Biscay and they spotted Portuguese fishing vessels along the way. On the next day they saw Lisbon, a sailing ship, and some porpoises, passing Tangiers and Gibraltar into the Mediterranean on 11th. There were various jobs to do including standing guard duty on the officer’s stairway. They started wearing Khaki Drill Uniform on 12th.
The ship passed between Malta and Sicily and they saw both. They stopped at Port Said and then entered the Suez Canal, and at Suez the ship took on fresh supplies and water. By 21st they were sleeping on deck because of the ‘dreadful heat’. By the 23rd they were into the Indian Ocean, finally reaching Bombay (Mumbai) on 28th and by the end of the month they were in a Bombay transit camp and able to visit the city, armed now with Rupees in place of the sterling cash they’d handed in aboard the ship.
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.
Somerford map
This time I’m going to write about Somerford Nursery. This was in the village of Somerford Keynes and was originally part of the land farmed by the Jefferies family (or perhaps the Gregory’s). But when I first remember it, Somerford Nursery was a piece of land of nearly 18¾ acres (around 7.6 ha) with a house and garden for the foreman. I don’t think all of this land was in use all of the time, some was rented out for grazing, or a hay crop was taken. The foreman I remember best was Roger De Moor, Belgian, always helpful and friendly, and clearly good at propagating and growing nursery stock. The nursery was devoted to ornamental trees and shrubs; Dad was the business’s main nursery manager, overseeing six nurseries, at first helping his brother, Bob, but eventually taking over more or less completely. He did an almost daily round, visiting each nursery in turn, moving plants and other items from one to another as required. Sometimes he would take me along for the ride.
The nursery was accessed along a short track on the east side of the road through the village, with a five-barred farm gate at the end. And then it opened out with beds edged with cinder blocks and filled with potted plants. The foreman’s house was a little to the right and trees and shrubs growing in rows were over towards the left. There were several wells and pumps, mostly already disused by the time I was at school but essential to the business before the Second World War.
You can view the map in full online, the area was surveyed and mapped by Ordnance Survey between 1892 and 1914.
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.
On leave, 1939
My grandfather, Edward Arthur Jefferies, governed and managed the family business following the death of his uncle, William John Jefferies in 1929. He managed the business on his own for some time, but as his three eldest sons became involved in different aspects of the business he decided to make them all directors. So in 1939 they officially began sharing the management with their father. As all three of the brothers joined the armed forces during the Second World War, it would have fallen to my grandfather to continue taking most business decisions on his own, but after that the brothers would have been able to devote more time to affairs in Cirencester (the photo shows Richard with his wife Millicent in London in 1939). The brothers had different roles, John took charge of the garden design and landscaping department. Richard managed the seeds business, and Robert looked after the day to day management of the various nurseries. Meanwhile Dad was only thirteen and was still at school in Rendcomb.
World events (September 1935): Sir Malcolm Campbell became the first person to drive an automobile at 300 miles per hour. (September 1930): In the 1930 German federal election: the National Socialists won 18.3% of the votes, making them the second largest party.
As with the 1930s material, everything in this section will have a connection of some kind with these two decades.
OBITUARY: WILTS & GLOUCESTER STANDARD SATURDAY 16TH JULY 1904
DEATH OF MR JOHN JEFFERIES
‘We record with much regret the death, which took place early this (Friday) morning, after a few weeks illness, at his residence, Minerva Villas, The Avenue, of Mr John Jefferies, one of the oldest, and most valued of Cirencester’s inhabitants. Mr Jefferies, who had reached the ripe age of 86 years, was one of the leading horticulturists and nurserymen of his day. Born at Somerford Keynes, in the neighbouring county of Wilts, he became, when quite a young man, manager to the late Mr Gregory, seedsman and nurseryman, of Cirencester, whose father established the business more than a century ago. In 1850 Mr Jefferies acquired the business from Mr Gregory. At that time the nurseries were far different to what they are now, and included a large area between Victoria-road and Watermoor-road, held of the Abbey estate, and now built over, and also a considerable extent of ground including what is now the garden of Cirencester House and surrounding land. When occupation of this land was resumed by a former Earl Bathurst, and when the Nursery property belonging to the Abbey estate was sold for building purposes, Mr Jefferies purchased what afterwards became the Tower-street nursery, and established extensive nurseries at Somerford Keynes, Siddington, Watermoor and London-road. Joined and aided by his sons, the business rapidly extended. till it became one of the foremost firms in the kingdom, its reputation for the growth of forest and ornamental trees, the celebrated Cotswold roses, and other specialities, being high and widespread. Twelve years ago, Mr Jefferies retired from active business pursuits, and his eldest son, Mr William John Jefferies, to whose energy and ability the success of the establishment was largely due, continued the firm under its old style of “John Jefferies & Son.” The opening up and planting of the Avenue as a pleasant through thoroughfare to Watermoor-road was primarily due to Mr Jefferies’s liberality and public spirit. Personally, the deceased gentleman was one of the most genial and amiable of men. as he was one of the most unassuming and unaffected, and his loss will be keenly felt by his large family circle and many friends. Up to the beginning of the slight indisposition which developed into what proved to be his last illness, his four-score-and-six years sat lightly on him, he took a keen and lively interest in current affairs, while the placid and cheery disposition that always characterised him remained unperturbed till the end, when, in the fulness of time, his long, useful and honourable life was peacefully laid down, and he entered into his well-won rest.’ (Phew – they were mighty wordy in those days!)
World events (September 1900) The 1900 Galveston hurricane killed around 8,000 people. (September 1905)Albert Einstein submitted the paper in which he put forward the equation E = mc2. (September 1910) The Vatican introduced a compulsory oath against modernism for priests at ordination (September 1915): The first military tank was tested by the British Army.
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We cannot know exactly what this area would have been like when it was full of active volcanoes, but we can get a rough idea from modern subduction regions on Earth today. Under the Mediterranean, for example, the African plate is being subducted underneath the plate carrying Europe.
This is one of the waterfalls along Stock Ghyll just north-east of Ambleside, Cumbria in the English Lake District. It’s beautiful countryside, and the nearby Force Cafe and Terrace served us a wonderful ‘Full Force’ breakfast. In the local dialect, a waterfall is known as a ‘force’, and there’s a whole string of them along this stretch of Stock Ghyll. A ghyll or gill is a narrow, deep, wooded ravine with a stream running though it. The term can also be used for the stream itself. Donna and I made our way carefully along this muddy, stony footpath, and it was well worth the effort.
Stock Ghyll runs right down into the town of Ambleside where it once powered a series of watermills, and finally flows into the nearby lake of Windermere.
Bobbin mills
Bobbin mills were common in Ambleside in the 19th century. Coppiced timber was cut to length and shaped on a lathe, then wooden discs were attached to both ends and the completed bobbins sold to the textile spinning and weaving businesses in the industrial cities south of the Lake District where they were used to store thread after spinning and before weaving. They contributed to the rapid growth of spinning and weaving factories in northern England. Wooden bobbin manufacturing died out with the 20th century introduction of plastics.
Formation of the Lake District
Skiddaw in the distance
The granite structures of the fells and mountains of the Lake District erupted from volcanoes during the Ordovician period some 460 million years ago.
Much more recently, repeated glaciations ground out U-shaped valleys arranged more or less radially and when the glaciers melted during warmer periods, lakes remained in the valley bottoms. Rivers flowing into the lakes or sometimes from one lake to another, have silted up some of the lakes at one end, and these flat, silted zones are now rich areas of pasture and crop land as well as places where urban construction has become possible. The photo above shows the mountain of Skiddaw in the distance and farmland in the foreground. The town of Keswick, out of the frame to the right, is also built on this flatter land laid down as sediment in the northern part of Derwent Water.
What else can we learn
One thing is very clear, what happens in one time period may be changed drastically at another, later time.
We cannot know exactly what this area would have been like when it was full of active volcanoes, but we can get a rough idea from modern subduction regions on Earth today. Under the Mediterranean, for example, the African plate is being subducted underneath the plate carrying Europe. The Alps and the Pyrenees have risen as a result, and volocanoes like Etna and Vesuvius are still actively pumping out magma or ash. The Mediterranean region is also prone to earthquakes. Now imagine (if you can) a mile or more depth of ice resting on top of the Alps grinding down the rocks to form U-shaped valleys as they slide due to gravity across the rock surface far below.
In Roman times, the areas of river sediment like that in the photo above would have been smaller than they are today and the lakes would have been correspondingly longer.
It’s very much a dynamic process. It’s a bit like the life of a person, we start as a new born infant and learn to talk and walk, then run. We learn to eat, and we learn to reason. at school we learn a lot more about the world we live in, politics, science, other languages, geography, history; we fall in love, we marry and raise a family; we have a career and learn how to manage the work environment, run a business, serve customers, manage bank accounts and so forth. The world is our playground, we travel on business or just for fun, we become grandparents as we grow older and retire from work. There are many beginnings and endings along the rich tapestry that is a human life. And lives intertwine in so many ways – friends, family, work colleagues, neighbours. Just like the Lake District, at any point it’s impossible to know what the future might hold.
Life is the same. What happened in my life when I was young is very different from what is happening in my life today. Change and unpredictabilty are the only things that are consistent throughout. If the ice hadn’t melted when it did, the Lake District would be far different from the place we know and love.
How do we deal with this built-in uncertainty? One way that many have found is faith, following a guide that we trust in ways that stretch us and help to shape our characters. Faith can be like an anchor in a choppy sea or even a full-blown storm, holding us safely in the right place until calmer conditions return. I recommend having an anchor in this experience we call life. But if you choose an anchor, choose carefully, there are some pointers elsewhere on this website. Hunt around and see if there’s anything here that you find attractive or compelling.
I’m always fascinated by links and similarities between one thing and another, life is full of them and sometimes they help to broaden our vision and understanding in ways that are quite unexpected.
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Living fossils can be found and recognised over long periods of geological time, and appear very similar throughout. And they may have little diversity, in other words the species in the group all tend to be similar to one another.
The first two are required for recognition as a living fossil; some authors also require the third, others merely note it as a frequent trait.
To put this more simply, Living fossils can be found and recognised over long periods of geological time, and appear very similar throughout. And they may have little diversity, in other words the species in the group all tend to be similar to one another.
Here are some examples, listed in order of their discovery. In some cases the fossil organism was already known before a living form was discovered, in other cases the living form was known first:
Mymarommatidae or ‘false fairy wasps’ (2007ish, North America)
Syntexis libocedrii or ‘cedar wood wasp’ (2011, California to British Columbia)
What else can we learn from this
Two things really. The first thing is that species can sometimes exist for very much longer than normal. And the second thing we learn is that species with astonishingly similar appearance may rise independently more than once. So-called fossil species may be no more than independently arising lines that happen to look very similar.We see the same thing between different living groups, so there’s a marsupial mouse that looks quite like its European namesake. This is known as parallel or convergent evolution.
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Charlie Barnett was a famous test and county cricketer … when he retired from cricket, he set up a business in Cirencester, selling fish, game, and more exotic items such as seagull eggs (1950).
May 2025 (3 months before publishing this article)
Click pics to enlarge
I invited my friend Mark to the Small Group barbecue at Bernard and Vivien’s in Berryhill Road. He enjoyed the food as well as the chance to meet and chat with some new people. Al, especially, enjoyed talking with Mark.
At the Old Prison
On 16th we took Donna’s Mum, Isobel, to the Old Prison Cafe in Northleach; it’s one of the places we like to visit from time to time as it’s not very far from home and is in relaxing surroundings. You can still visit the old prison cells, but they don’t look relaxing at all!
Paul and Vanessa visited for the day on 18th. We met them at Lynwood in the Market Place for coffee and cake and then back at our house for lunch, with Isobel as well. We chatted in the afternoon round the dining table and then on the patio.
While going through some items from storage boxes I came across this old hunting knife, it has an antler handle and a leather case and I used it as a teenager as a scout knife. But I think it was given to me by an uncle who might have acquired it from his days in the British Army during World War 2. But wherever it came from, it’s not an object I could legally carry around while walking the streets in 2025!
Rococo Gardens
The snowdrops in Painswick’s Rococo Gardens looked lovely as they always do in season. Every year there are more, partly because gaps are being filled by natural spreading , and partly because additional areas are being planted up.
We had some issues with the new heat pump, mostly due to incorrect wiring during installation, but the engineers came back quickly to make fixes. The heating seemed better and better as time passed and we got to grips with the lifestyle changes – like using a summer duvet in the winter.
JHM: I wrote about truth and facts; and about an asteroid heading our way. World events: The Baltic states synchronised their power grids, connected to Europe and disconnected from Russia; and Thutmose II’s tomb was discovered.
We visited Springhill on our way north to Portrush. Mum used to talk about this old house and garden which she really loved. It was the home of William Conyngham who founded the village of Coagh where Mum was born and grew up.
We were on holiday with my daughters and their families, this time in Northern Ireland. On 7th we set out from the house and walked east along the coast to visit Dunluce Castle. Only Aidan and I went inside as we arrived near to closing time, but itwas well worth seeing.
Near the start of our walk
It’s a magnificent coast as you can see from the photo, there are beautiful beaches and rugged cliffs along the way. So it was a memorable walk. The second image shows some of us near the start of our expedition, on Portrush’s east beach with the town in the background. As always, click the thumbnail for a larger version. Read more about our holiday.
Back at home later in the month, I decided to finally close down my account on X. Back in the day when it was still Twitter I used it a lot and enjoyed the conversations, but in its later form it became full of unpleasantness and anger. I had already found a better, more friendly home in Bluesky – so goodbye X.
Beth and Paz celebrated their silver wedding this month, a grand achievment!
Cairn Gorm summit
And we also had our family summer holiday, this year in Scotland. Beth, Aidan, Meredith and I made our way from the ski-lift car park to the summit of Cairn Gorm, but were unable to go further because of heavy cloud. On the way up we were lucky enough to spot a small herd of reindeer.
Freshwater beach, Aidan and Heidi
We visited a freshwater beach at Loch Laggan, a very strange thing to see, with patches of grass and seedling conifers growing in the sand.
We stayed in a big, old house in the village of Newtonmore. It held a few surprises for us, for example taking a shower caused water to drip through the ceiling in the dining room! But despite the quirks, we loved the house and the area.
Donna and I visited Boat of Garten where friends from near Cirencester were visiting family. Also in August, I went for a walk through the Beeches Estate where we lived until I was eleven-years-old; it brought back a lot of memories and I was able to jot them all down later when I got home.
Beth, Debbie and their families camped at Siddington. It was lovely to have them so close and to be able to pop out to spend time with them. in the photo you can see several members of the family and my sister, Cindy.
Near Snowshill
Paul and Vanessa came to stay for a long weekend and we did a circular walk from Snowshill, then we went to stay at their flat in Weston-super-Mare to look after the dogs while they were away. The photo shows Vanessa, Maizi, Paul and Donna.
And finally, Thomas Holme came to live with us for a period of time, starting on 22nd.
We went to a ‘Wings and Wheels Day’ at Old Warden airfield, not far from home in St Neots. It was amazing, with a series of vintage aircraft flying and vintage cars on display, and with a picnic as well. Donna booked the occasion well in advance, and as it turned out the weather was perfect.
Hillman Minx
The cars and trucks were a mix of civilian and military vehicles from throughout the twentieth century, some from before World War I. And many of them were in the air or driving about, often flown or driven by people in period costume. It was an amazing day!
Also in August – I released a new version of JDMC, Ed and Jo were married, Peter and Dadka came to live with us for a while, and we had a visit from Beth, Paz, Meredith and Verity. Quite an eventful month.
The Cornerstone cafe and bookshop opened for business in St Neots; after a lot of hard work by many people guided mainly by our friends Keith on the construction side and Jim on catering. We were able to hand over to Paul who had provided the original idea and most of the funds, and a series of volunteers for the day-to-day running of the business. Cornerstone also offered a small meeting room for local businesses and clubs, and a comfortable space for conversation or counselling. The first directors’ meeting would follow on 1st September, involving Paul, Jim, Donna and me, and Mark.
Donna and her Dad
We visited Broadstone near Poole to see Donna’s Mum and Dad. There was a naval display on, with ships off the coast and Royal Navy planes and helicopters in the air as well and we ate later at a local pub.
And finally, our Swedish friend David came for a short visit.
Donna’s church cell group went to an open air music event in Bedford, in the photo we were enjoying picnic food with our friends before the music began. A few weeks later the cell group went Greyhound racing, another fun social event.
Roman well
Towards the end of the month, I looked around Loves Farm on the edge of St Neots with our friends Ken and Gayna. Archaeological excavations were going on where a new area of housing and facilities were to be constructed. Iron Age, Roman, and Saxon remains were discovered and recorded on the large site. It seems clear that this land had been farmed continously from Iron Age times right up to today. The Roman well in the image was carefully lined with stone, and ancient ditches were clearly visible as bands of darker soil across the site with several roads and trackways also identified.
Donna travelled with her Open Door cell group to the New Frontiers annual event at the National Agricultural Showground at Stoneleigh; I drove up for the day on 1st August. The photo shows the book and music shop.
Table skittles
Knowledge Systems Group (KSG) met for lunch at the Beds Arms in Souldrop close to Unilever Research, Colworth. We often went there and played table skittles, a game local to the Northampton, North Befordshire area. Three ‘cheeses’ are thrown at the skittles and apart from that, the rules are very similar to normal ninepin skittles.
Other events this month were a visit from Donna’s Mum and Dad and a weekend with my Mum and Dad at Cirencester. We also visited Cindy and Paul at Bibury and I travelled to Amsterdam for a Unilever meeting on an intranet website, Research onLine.
World events: The Russian submarine Kursksank in the Barents Sea; and Tsar Nicholas II and his family were canonized .
Beth worked hard on her A-level biology project with help and advice from Judy. Debbie was well into her University degree work. Beth appears again in the distance in the second photo. It was a very hot and dry summer, vegetation was scorched, even deep-rooted trees were suffering and grass everywhere was dry and brown.
Blagdon Lake
Judy was still mobile and capable, leading a pretty normal life, though clearly losing weight and often suffering a little discomfort. I continued at Long Ashton Research Station, working for the Statistics and Computing Department and independently developing a Microscopes and Microscopy web site as a resource for professional microscopists. It was developed on my PC at home, and at first hosted only on the Long Ashton web server, but later a microscopist at an American University asked if he could mirror it for faster service in the US and after that it ran on both servers.
Meeting regularly with Tony, Faith, Paul and Jenny was becoming more and more special. Every time we all felt encouraged and peaceful, knowing that whatever the future held, everything would be OK.
It was around this time that Judy began collecting up all her old photos, putting them in albums, and and writing short notes about when, what and who appeared in the images. She was also getting them into date order as far as possible. Clearly she was planning ahead for me, Debbie, Beth and other family members. I’ve always been very appreciative of this, especially as I write these notes for the Blast From the Past series.
World events:Aided by NATO, Bosnian and Croatian forces continued to fight Serbian seperatists; and Eduard Shevardnadze survived an assasination attempt.
Debbie returned from her French exchange visit on 8th and we collected her from Lulsgate Airport. She had lots to tell us about her trip and had brought back some souvenirs including a huge French banknote!
Symonds Yat
Later in the month we visited the Forest of Dean and walked via Biblins Bridge to Symonds Yat where we crossed the river by the rope ferry, stopped for ice-creams, and returned to the car by the same route. And at the end of August we enjoyed a time at the Bristol Flower Show up on Clifton Down, and a trip on the North Somerset Steam Railway.
World events:Iraqinvaded Kuwait, leading to the Gulf War; and East and West Germany announced they would unite on October 3.
We had a holiday at Ogwen Bank in North Wales. Debbie and Beth are sitting just outside our caravan in the photo. The site was close to Bethesda so we were able to visit lots of interesting places all over Snowdonia
Debbie, Beth, and me!
One of the places we visited was Benllech Beach, lovely sand and rocks as you can see. I’ve always enjoyed messing around at the seaside, especially building miniature dams. So there were three kids on the beach and one adult – Judy, who took this photo.
Amongst other things we visited a working slate museum, a woollen mill, The island of Anglesey with its sea zoo and butterfly house, a couple of castles and more. Judy and the girls visited Port Meirion while I stayed at the caravan and worked on an Open University (OU) course.
Apart from the OU courses which ran through the summer, August was always a great time for family life. The girls were on holiday, so was Judy, and we were able to go out for day trips as well as have a week or two away somewhere.
Beth was interested in the cat, while the cat seemed to be interested in the paddling pool! And the sandpit in the background appeared to have been the scene of a nasty tractor accident. Just an ordinary summer day at 22 Rectory Drive.
Beth was just 2¼-years-old and Debbie was five and a half. Judy was considering beginning a teaching career having earned her qualification before Debbie was born while we were still living in our flat in St Andrew’s, Bristol. I was working at Long Ashton Research Station on fruit crop pollination, mostly on apples and plums; and I also had a week away at an Open University summer school.
World events:Hurricane Allen pounded Haiti, killing over 200 people; and the Gdańsk Agreement was signed in Poland allowing the free trade union, Solidarity.
Debbie turned five months old and was growing quickly in both size and ability. She was developing better coordination, holding things and beginning to interact with adults and distinguish between them.
We started to get the house tidier and items put away. We had much more floor space than at the flat and although our furniture was the same it seemed lost in a large space rather than crammed together. We had only the old, green carpet we’d brought with us; it had filled the lounge/diner at the flat, now it just covered the dining area! Every other section of floor was bare boards, including the stairs, but the kitchen retained the covering left by the previous owners.
I began cycling to work from Yatton to Long Ashton, for a couple of years I’d been used to cycling from St Andrew’s, Bristol. What a change! No more dangerous, heavy traffic to contend with, instead a longer but much more relaxing trip through attractive countryside and the villages of Claverham and Backwell.
World events: The Helsinki Accords recognising Europe’s national borders and human rights, was signed in Finland; and NASA launched the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
Judy was away on holiday for two weeks in the Lake District with her parents and brother, Frank. She took this photo at Watendlath Packhorse Bridge near Keswick.
Judy and I were planning for our wedding in early October, there were just some finishing touches to put in place really, but we didn’t want to run out of time.
Pete, a good friend from University, discovered the Ministry of Agriculture were empl0ying graduate students to interview farmers during the summer of 1970. We signed up for this survey work as we both had our own transport, and spent several weeks driving around the Cotwolds with the questionnaires interviewing the farmers and some of their employees. We lived at Mum and Dad’s house in Victoria Road as our base of operations. Part of the time they were on holiday in Northern Ireland with my sisters so Pete and I looked after the place while they were away.
World events: The Soviet Union launched Venera 7 towards Venus; and rubber bullets for riot control were used for the first time.
This was the month of the Grammar School Explorers Club expedition to Scotland, organised and led by one of my biology teachers, Mr Castle. I was one of two sixth formers who travelled with him in his Bedford van with the lighter equipment (the heavy stuff went by train). Graham and I camped just outside Edinburgh while Mr Castle returned by train to travel north again with the fourth and fifth form members of the expedition. Most of us would travel by coach while Mr Castle brought the van and equipment. Graham and I were assistant leaders.
We walked up the Dee Valley into the Cairngorms, then to Ben McDhui and Cairn Gorm, descending along the ski lift route. We visited Pitlochry for a night or two and then to Mallaig and the ferry to Skye where we viewed the Cuillins from Elgol beach and went to the Portree Highland Gathering. After a night at the coral beaches, we returned to the mainland to visit Fort William and walk to the top of Ben Nevis.
It was quite a journey and an experience I shall never forget.
Our annual holiday this year was in Northern Ireland, staying at Holmlea in Coagh, Co Tyrone with Mum’s parents. The photo was a brief stop near the Spelga Dam in the Mountains of Mourne during a day out. I had scrambled up the steep bank and took this image of Dad taking a photo of Mum and my younger sisters, Ruth and Rachael, Granda is sitting in the car. Granny and Cindy may have still been in the car as well. How did we all squeeze in for the trip? Ruth and Rachael were small enough to sit on an adult lap, probably with Mum and Granny.
We’d have done a number of trips out like this one, almost certainly including a day at the seaside at Portrush, maybe a trip to see the Giant’s Causeway, and definitely visits to Cookstown and to Mum’s cousin on the farm at Killycurragh on Slieve Gallion. The first (and only) time that I milked a cow was at Killycurragh, but what I remember most was high tea, where the table with its white cloth groaned under a huge choice of delicious food, much of it home grown and home made.
World events:The Beatles began a 48-night residency at the Indra Club in Hamburg; and Russia launched Sputnik 5 carrying two dogs, mice and rats, and plant specimens. All the animals returned safely after a day in orbit.
In August we visited Windsor Castle, I don’t remember this trip although I was seven-years-old at the time.
Mum sent the postcard to her younger sister, Annabelle, and wrote on the back,
‘Christopher & Cynthia couldn’t take their eyes off the soldiers & had to send you this picture so that you could see them too. Wish you were all with us. Much love from us all. Your loving Sister, Lilias.’
I needed a photo for the summer of 1950 but couldn’t find one. I’m guessing this is a bit more recent, perhaps between 1950 and 1960; but it does capture business life in Cirencester in that era. In those days there were no supermarkets, you would have visited a variety of small bakers, butchers, grocers, greengrocers and so forth. Barnett’s was one of these.
Charlie Barnett was a famous test and county cricketer, born in Gloucestershire. When he retired from cricket, he set up a business in Cirencester, selling fish, game, and more exotic items such as seagull eggs. The photo shows him working in his shop.
We must have been settling into our new home in Queen Anne’s Road at this time. There were probably boxes to unpack, clothes to put away, as well as the normal household chores of laundry; and for Dad there’d have been the task of getting the garden area tidy, clearing weeds, removing building rubble, stones and so forth, and planning a garden.
World events: North Korea’s Air Force was largely destroyed by anti-communist forces; and Uruguay beat Brazil 2–1, to win the 1950 World Cup.
On 2nd August Mike had the bad news that he was being posted overseas. He had to rush to get Lilias to Cirencester as fast as possible, perhaps something they’d planned to do a little later.
He arrived in Stranraer on 3rd and was in Coagh on the evening of 4th. By 7th they were on the train south from Stranraer. On 8th his mother, Nor, met them at Cheltenham Station with the car and Mike drove them home. They then had five clear days to enjoy time together in Cirencester and around the south Cotswolds until Mike was required back by the RAF on 14th. But this was a really good day because the victory over Japan was announced and the war was finally over. Medicals, inoculations, and the issuing of tropical kit took almost two weeks; then there was a final twenty-four hour period when he was able to get back to Cirencester to see Lilias and his parents, and the last three days of August were spent on duty in Blackpool waiting for a ship to become available.
World events:Winston Churchill supported the idea of a pan-European army; and Pope Pius XII declared evolution to be a serious hypothesis that does not contradict essential Catholic views.
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.
Cinder-block bins
For August 1940 I’m going to write about another of the John Jefferies & Son nurseries, this time a very small one, the Abbey Nursery. The medieval Abbey owned a great deal of land, not just in the town but in the surrounding countryside. Part of the Abbey’s land lay inside City Bank, and part of it formed the Abbey Nursery. It had a shed for equipment, and cinder block bins for sand, grit, gravel and other garden materials. The bins are still there, just inside the gate on the left. Today the land is a nature reserve and is open to the public.
All Cirencester people will know where City Bank is. As the name might suggest, it has to do with a city (which Cirencester is not). But in Roman times its predecessor Corinium was a large and important city only exceeded in size by Londinium, present day London. In the later years of Roman Britain, most cities aspired to a wall, perhaps defensive, or perhaps just a way to demonstate high status. So there was a city wall. In medieval and later times, the useful cut stone was robbed from the old walls and used to build the town anew. What was left of the old walls was a bank of tumbled stone and soil, covered with grass and scrub, hence City Bank, not City Wall.
In 1940 and up until John Jefferies and Son’s nurseries gradually fell out of use from 1975 onwards, the Abbey Nursery was used mainly for growing Christmas trees for sale in November and December, but was also the storage site for the Cotswold stone and paving slabs used by the landscape construction part of the business.
In August 1940 my father, Mike, was nine-years-old and lived with his parents at ‘Churnside’, 37 Victoria Road. His Father, Edward (Ted, Guv, or ‘the Governor’) was 60 and his mother, Norah (Nor) was 61. His brothers, John, Richard (Dick), and Robert (Bob) were 33, 30, and 27 respectively.
World events: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were annexed by the Soviet Union; and the Royal Air Force bombed Berlin for the first time.
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.
An illustration from the book
Uncle John and Auntie Jo were married on 15th September 1932. John was my father’s oldest brother, born in 1907 and 19 years older than his little brother. This is a large gap between the oldest and youngest in the family so it seems my Dad may have been an unexpected late addition!
John and Jo lived at 4 Tower Street, Cirencester; it was a three-storey town house and the features I remember most were a floor to ceiling mirror in the narrow hallway which made the narrow space look much more spacious, and the front reception room with a stone fireplace. There was a fine collection of hand-bells on the mantelpiece, collected over the years it seems and not a set, but nevertheless, in tune with one another. I remember a long passageway with the kitchen at the far end and a little, shady garden beyond that. The floor above must have contained bedrooms and a bathroom, but the top floor was the most exciting as there was a storage room at the front with all sorts of intriguing items discarded from everyday use. An Aladdin’s cave! John and Jo’s daughter, Jill, was my godmother so I was invited round from time to time. She always had something interesting for me to see or fun activities to do.
John and Jo had a poodle (one of the larger kind). He was called Gigot and I remember Auntie Jo collecting the wool when he was clipped and storing it year by year until there was enough to be washed, carded and spun into yarn. Gigot was a mid brown colour and she knitted herself a cardigan from the wool!
As a young child I always found Uncle John a bit solemn and aloof, even a little bit scary, but of course he was quite good fun in many ways if perhaps a little on the serious side. He became Chairman of Cirencester Urban District Council, almost but not quite the Lord Mayor. Cirencester had no mayor in those days, though today it does, and the chain of office is still the one once worn by John.
When my grandfather died, John and his brothers Dick and Bob took over John Jefferies & Son as directors. John’s role had long been managing the landscape design and construction side of the business, using the entire top floor over the shop in Cirencester Market Place as the design studio. I remember Desmond Walker who helped as John’s deputy in the design office. Desmond lived right next to Tower Street Nursery and had a mulberry tree in his garden.
World events (August 1935): The volcanic island of Anak Krakatau began to form permanently in the Sunda Strait. (August 1930): United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act into law.
As with the 1930s material, everything in this section will have a connection of some kind with these two decades.
My father, Mike, was born on 4th June 1926. He would almost certainly have been born at home – Churnside, 37 Victoria Road, Cirencester. His parents were Edward Arthur Jefferies and Norah Jefferies (nee Monger), usually known as Guv or Ted and Nor. Mike had three much older brothers, John, Dick and Bob (19, 17, and 15 years older). Because he was a bouncy baby, his brothers called him ‘Tigger’ and this stuck. He was still known as ‘Tig’ by the brothers and by his parents while they were still alive. Churnside would itself have been fairly new when Dad was little, the house is Edwardian and was built shortly before Guv and Nor were married. This and the house next door are semi-detatched so were built as a pair, I believe they were the first houses on this section of Victoria Road.
World events (August 1900): International troops entered Peking to free European hostages during the Boxer Rebellion. (August 1905): Norway voted to break from the union with Sweden. (August 1910):Japan formally annexed Korea. (August 1915): In the First World War Gallipoli campaign, the Battle of Sari Bair was fought.
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One thing you could do was fix a piece of flexible card to the rear frame so that it made contact with the spokes of the back wheel. Then it made a marvellous noise that rose in pitch the faster you went (1955).
Apr 2025 (3 months before publishing this article)
Click any photo to enlarge
My friend, Dave, from Unilever days came down for a chat, a coffee, a walk and lunch. It was great to see him, as always. We took a look at the Roman amphitheatre and ate at Blend in the old brewery building.
Donna moving compost
It was Donna’s birthday this month and we visited Hidcote which has to be one of our favourite gardens. Our grandson, Aidan, was trekking in South America, exploring the Caribbean coast of Colombia, sending back regular comments and photos on the family WhatsApp channel. He’s taken some time out between A levels last year and starting University in York later this year.
At home, Donna and I were building and filling two raised beds where she plans to grow vegetables this summer and we had a dumper bag of a soil/compost mix delivered and barrowed it all to the back garden.
JHM: I wrote about dinosaurs and the Bible; and the little wren which is a bird and a coin. World events:Fram2 carried astronauts on a polar orbit for the first time; and Pope Francis died at the age of 88.
The new heat pump system was running by the end of the month and we had warm radiators for the first time on January 31st. What a joy! In the photo Akki, the team’s electrician, is commissioning the system.
Our leaking chimney was also repaired this month and a damp ceiling dried out well with no more drips in heavy rain; some alterations and improvements to the house were finished as well. We now have windows we can open in our bedroom on hot summer evenings, and that will be a huge benefit. Everything is getting better (but it’s all costing money too).
The CBC Small Group I go to every week had a social evening with a meal at Tony and Penny’s, there must have been ten or twelve of us there and it was a great time.
Our new greenhouse was erected today and looks just great. More good news is that Labour won the General Election and Roz Savage won our local constituency (South Cotswolds) for the Lib Dems.
The rather less good news was that Isobel had a fall while she was away with Donna for a Warner’s break. She had a partial hip fracture which resulted in a partial hip replacement operation and the need for recovery and physiotherapy.
Leaving Wales
Our friends Jim and Pam from St Neots stayed with us for one night. They arrived in a large camper van and were heading for a touring holiday in Wales. And on 17th I started my ‘Image of the day‘ series of posts here on JHM. On 28th we set off for Ireland via Fishguard and Rosslare for our annual summer holiday with the family.
Our solar panels were commissioned and fully working by 3rd July, and they came with a phone app that would let us monitor their activity as well as that of the 10 kWh battery that we’d bought. It was great to see the power flowing on sunny days, meeting all our needs day and night on good days and often exporting power to the grid as well. We knew things would be less impressive in the winter months.
With Debbie and the grandchildren
The Small group I’m a member of met for a meal at Phil and Judith’s house in South Cerney, it was good fun as always and an opportunity for longer conversations. Donna and I visited Batsford Arboretum, and Debbie, Aidan and Sara came to visit us for two nights at the end of the month. In the photo we’re strolling in Cirencester Park heading for the town centre.
We visited Bradford-on-Avon to visit an old garden and take a look at the town. Much to my surprise, there’s a particularly well-preserved Saxon church there. It wasn’t open so we couldn’t look around inside, but it was fascinating to see a structure that dates back before the Norman Conquest. It may have been built in 1001 CE, so very late Saxon. (See: Wikipedia article)
We ate breakfast in Cirencester’s Toro Lounge, the first time we’d done this since the COVID outbreak.
Gloucester Cathedral
Near the end of the month we visited Gloucester Docks and the Cathedral with Donna’s Mum, Isobel. The docks area is being redeveloped as a shopping centre with restaurants and a museum as well as all the old docks themselves now in use as a large marina. There’s a large plaza, places to sit, car parking nearby, and an easy walk to the city centre and the cathedral.
JHM: I wrote about a local musician; and a free way of writing online. World events: Russian voters backed an amendment permitting Putin another two terms as president after 2024; and the number of COVID cases worldwide passed 15 million.
Our family holiday was at Noordbeemster in the Netherlands, we crossed on the ferry from Harwich. One of the places we enjoyed during this week away was the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen. In character it’s very like the Welsh Folk Museum and the children enjoyed it just as much as the adults. The photo shows Meredith in the distance and Aidan trying out weird Dutch traditional toy vehicles. Pump the handle to move and steer with your feet. This proved to be much harder than you might think!
I drove to Burton Latimer to meet Rachael and our friend, Jody, for lunch and to talk about meeting again in our homes to hear what the Holy Spirit would say to us together.
It was an exciting month for astronomy as the New Horizons probe flew by Pluto and Charon and began to return data on 15th.
I visited the Christian Bookshop in Letchworth with my friends Jim and Paul to see if we could learn anything that would help us develop the new cafe/bookshop in St Neots. We were looking for good ideas, things to avoid, and advice from people who’d been through a similar process.
Train ride
Our family holiday was in North Wales at the end of July this year. The photo shows Beth and Paz with their daughters Meredith and Verity on the narrow-gauge steam train, something we have to do on every holiday! This time we were on the Welsh Highand Railway. A few days later we went to visit the Dinorwig pumped storage power station which is an impressive feat of engineering.
World events: The first 24-hour flight by a solar-powered plane was completed; and Slovenia became the 32nd member of the OECD.
Debbie and Steve were married in Cornwall at the end of July. It was a quiet but special occasion, with just the two of them, Donna and me, and Steve’s parents. We explored the local area briefly while were there, Steve’s Dad and I very much enjoyed the amazing Bicycle Museum.
Steph, Donna and Sondra
Our friend Steph Bennett and her daughter, Sondra, came to stay earlier in the month. During their visit we travelled to Paris by train via the Channel Tunnel and spent a day or two in the city. In the photo we’re on our way to the top of Montmartre.
World events:Eris was discovered, the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System; and the Huygens spacecraft landed on Titan.
Our friends Karen and Gert were married in Ampthill and I had the job of taking the photos, most were taken on Kodak colour negative film, and a few on my first digital camera. These were low resolution, but were better than film in low light conditions.
My Uncle Dick’s funeral was on 25th, and my branch of the family gathered at Churnside in Cirencester before the event and returned afterwards for a meal together. It was the same day that an Air France Concorde caught fire and crashed near Paris with tragic loss of life.
A Ford Anglia
We went along to the Tilbrook Village Fete where I spotted a 100E Ford Anglia just like the one I’d owned in 1969. It was great fun to see one again after all this time. I remembered the three-speed gearbox and the windscreen wipers using a partial vacuum from the engine. They were not the best wipers in the world!
Judy’s health was definitely declining slightly and she continued to lose weight slowly. But apart from that she was doing quite well and was not in pain at the start of the month. By the end of July, though, she needed some paracetamol now and then, especially when travelling in the car.
My Mum and Dad came down on my birthday and we were able to sit outside on the patio in the evening. Debbie and Beth were with us and Nick joined us as well.
We continued meeting regularly with our friends Tony and Faith, and Paul and Jenny for the most amazing times of spiritual experiences, feeling very close to one another and very close to Jesus too. They were such special occasions, not prayer sessions and not about physical healing, but they were about spiritual revelation and growth for all of us. Dad sometimes jokingly referred to them as ‘The Gang of Four’ or all six of us as ‘The Crazy Gang’.
Dad retired from Country Gardens this month where he’d worked to ease the handover of the old family business as a going concern to the new owners. His nephew Tim had worked with him on this, and being younger Tim continued with them after Dad left. Mum was pleased to have Dad at home and with time to walk into town or go out for daytrips, and even on longer holidays.
Cindy, Paul and little Sebastian visited us in Yatton. Seb was unable to walk without some support, but with his walker to aid him he was already bombing along really confidently – and fast!
Mum and Judy
We visited Mum and Dad on my birthday, we spent some time chatting in the garden as it was a lovely summer’s day. The photo shows Mum and Judy, with Dinah the Siamese cat sitting on Judy’s lap for a relaxing stroke.
World events: East and West Germany merged their economies; and Belarus declared sovereignty in a move towards independence.
I was at the RMS Microscopy Conference at York University on 12th, this was to help me get to grips with some new techniques, including electron microscopy and fluorescence microscopy. At this point I was still attempting to localise the plant hormones known as gibberellins in frozen plant tissue for Long Ashton’s Plant Sciences Group.
Debbie, Beth, and dolls
Judy continued teaching Biology GCSE and A Level at Cotham Grammar School in Bristol. Debbie (10) was studying at Backwell School, and Beth (7) was at Yatton Junior. We were living at 22 Rectory Drive in Yatton west of Bristol; the photo was taken in our front garden.
World events: The Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk; and P. W. Botha declared a state of emergency in South Africa.
The new Jefferies garden centre at Kingsmeadow was doing a good trade during the summer months after opening to customers in April. The Tower Street garden centre continued operating, as well as the shop in the Market Place (now Vodafone). And although the nurseries were still in use, they were beginning to fade away in terms of the value they added to the business. It was becoming cheaper to buy in nursery stock than to employ staff to raise plants locally.
Kathy, Debbie and Joanne
We travelled up to Frank and Kathy’s home for the Christening of their new daughter, Joanne, almost certainly in the car with Judy’s parents.
This was the last full month that we lived in our flat (upper flat in the photo) in Belmont Road, Bristol before moving to Yatton on 2nd August. The flat was very cluttered at the end of July, everything was piled up or packed in boxes ready for the move. This was at once exciting and very inconvenient.
Debbie was four months old on 12th and was dedicated at Zetland Road Fellowship on 27th according to a note in my Dad’s photo notebook. So a lot was happening in July 1975!
World events:Cape Verde gained independence after 500 years of Portuguese rule; and the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project docked American and Soviet crewed spacecraft in orbit.
My degree ceremony at Bath was a little earlier than Judy’s at Aberystwyth (or it might have been the other way around), but we both had our hired robes for the period between the two and the photos were taken at her parent’s house in Cheltenham during that week.
I travelled to Aber with Judy’s parents and brother and crept into the hall at the back to watch and listen as there were insufficient tickets for Judy’s family and for me as well. Then at Bath Judy came along with my parents. The next big occasion for us would be our wedding in October, and planning for that was pretty much done and everything arranged apart from little jobs like writing name cards for the tables at the reception and so forth.
World events: France tested a hydrogen bomb on Mururoa Atoll; and the Aswan High Dam in Egypt was completed.
At the beginning of July we visited Oxford for the day, Günter Klauß who was staying with us on a school exchange came too and very much enjoyed the trip. Mum sent an Oxford postcard to Granny in Northern Ireland reporting that Ruth had learned to swim a few days earlier.
On 10th, Günter returned home to West Germany, we took him to Kemble Station to see him off on the train to London. This was also the end of my first year in the Sixth Form at Cirencester Grammar School and Mum’s 37th birthday was on the 5th.
World events:Mariner 4 flew by Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to return images of the planet; and Edward Heath became Conservative Leader in the UK.
The Cotswold Roses would have been flowering freely on the London Road Nursery (now Partridge Way and Pheasant Way on the eastern side of Cirencester). The photo of the catalogue for the following season gives some idea of what they would have looked like.
The school holidays were always a time to look forward to, the freedom to do whatever I liked was great and we would certainly have some family days out to enjoy and a summer holiday away somewhere.
Mum’s birthday was on 5th, she was 32; mine was on 31st, my twelfth; Dad’s birthday was in June and he was now 34; Cindy was 8-years-old and about half way through her time at Querns School (juniors); while Ruth and Rachael had not yet started school at all being just four and three.
World events:Kwame Nkrumah became the first President of Ghana; and Francis Chichester won the first Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race aboard Gypsy Moth III taking 40 days.
My seventh birthday was the 31st of July in 1955. Mum and Dad gave me a somewhat faded red bike that was almost too big for me to ride, even with the saddle and handlebars set as low as possible. I found it quite daunting at first, but once I’d learned to ride it, I loved that bike. One thing you could do was fix a piece of flexible card to the rear frame so that it made contact with the spokes of the back wheel. Then it made a marvellous noise that rose in pitch the faster you went. Before long I was riding my bike to Querns School, though Dad came with me to make sure I was safe in all the town traffic. The photo shows our back garden at 17 Queen Anne’s Road where we lived at the time. It was taken in September 1960, but wouldn’t have changed very much since June 1955.
Mummy was 22-years-old on 5th July and I was two at the end of the month. I was admitted to Cirencester’s Memorial Hospital as a one-year-old (date unknown, so probably not July) and was apparently very taken with a large teddy bear they had on the ward. I was suffering from a serious bout of diarrhoea and, presumably, dehydration and was kept in for a week. The photo shows the hospital in 1950 (from the Facebook group, Old Ciren).
World events: North Korea’s Air Force was largely destroyed by anti-communist forces; and Uruguay beat Brazil 2–1, to win the 1950 World Cup.
A three watch system was started, and Mike spent a good deal of time writing and reading letters to and from Lilias, his family, old school friends, and RAF friends now at other stations. In one of her letters Lilias mentioned a problem with serious period pains, a cause of concern for them both.
Generally, RAF duties were rather light during July with the war in Europe now over. Mike mentions activities like cricket, softball, swimming and tennis as well as lectures on topics like returning to civilian life.
On 16th he was off to Staxton Wold radar station near Scarborough where there was rifle, machine gun, and hand grenade practice. Mike had a B+ Pass from the course at Staxton Wold. On 26th he was disappointed to learn that Labour had won a landslide victory in the General Election.
He spent Friday 27th travelling to Cirencester, Saturday with family and friends, and Sunday 29th travelling back to Skendleby and normal duties again with some new radar equipment. The picture shows a Midland Railway engine, probably still in use by the London, Midland, and Scottish (LMS) when Mike made his journey to Cirencester.
World events: Germany was divided between the Allied occupation forces; and the first atomic bomb test (Trinity), used 6 kg of plutonium to explode with the force of 22 million kg of TNT.
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.
Peace
For July 1940 I thought I’d write about the London Road Rose Nursery. This was a large field with a north facing slope, typical of hilly ground in the Cotswolds generally; it was limestone brash overlain by a shallow, stony subsoil and thin topsoil, by no means the most promising site for rose growing. Today it is an area of housing, Pheasant Way and Partridge Way. The field was owned by John Jefferies & Son and must have been bought by the company quite early.
To help keep the poor soil in reasonable condition a rotation was employed. It included a cereal crop, and roses the following year. I don’t know, but it’s possible (even likely) that a crop of mustard or some other nitrogen fixing choice would have been grown in a third year and ploughed in during the autumn to fertilise the soil and add organic matter. From the 1960s I recall stooks of corn (wheat or barley most likely) and the use of a threshing machine to separate and clean the seed for bagging and to produce straw. In 1940 it might have been done the same way or perhaps in those days there would have been more hand labour involved.
Corn seed would have gone to the Jefferies warehouse in Tower Street for further processing, cleaning and bagging for onward sale to local farmers for delivery in the autumn and sowing in the field in the autumn or the spring for early or later harvest. Straw was useful for packing plant orders for despatch in the winter months, and excess quantities could be sold to farmers and horse owners for bedding, or if long enough and of the right quality, sold for thatching.
See July 1960 above for more on the Jefferies roses. Wikipedia has a good background article on roses. The bloom in the image is a cultivar named Peace, the photo is taken from that article. It’s a hybrid tea rose with a good fragrance, presumably named shortly after the end of World War II. My father had two rose beds in the front garden at 17 Queen Anne’s Road, and the one nearest the front door was Peace.
Anything that appears in this section will be material that I believe belongs in this decade. Items will not be in sequence within the decade, but where I can make a good guess of the date I will do so.
An illustration from the book
When Tigger (my father) was about six or seven (a guess) his father, my Grandpa, wrote a little story for him. His mother (Nor) had a hand in this too for the book is machine stitched. I well remember her treadle sewing-machine from the 1950s when I was a child, clearly he had asked her to use it to stitch along the central fold of the sheets of paper making up the book.
The book has the title ‘Mr Fizwig, his monkey, and their adventures’ and was ‘Written for Tigger’. The illustrations have been coloured, mostly by a child of Tigger’s age, and a list of page numbers added along with the word ‘chapter’. Taken as a whole this provides a touching insight into family life around 1932 at ‘Churnside’, 37 Victoria Road, Cirencester.
You can read the book if you want to, it will open in a new browser tab. I’ve assumed a date of Christmas Day 1932, but it might have been written at any time and was not necessarily a birthday or Christmas gift. After a few years it was most likely forgotten, but never discarded. But now it’s here for anyone to read.
World events (July 1932): The Dow Jones reached its lowest level of the Great Depression, at 41.22; and Norway annexed northern Greenland.
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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click to enlarge
This boat, seen here on the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal, is based at Saul Junction in Frampton on Severn. It might look like a tourist boat available for hire by the public, but it serves a different and entirely charitable purpose. Two similar (but not identical) special boats were built to provide opportunities for disabled or seriously ill people to experience a day on the canal for free. And for those that want to, they are also given the chance to explore the boat, see how it all works, hold the steering gear and so forth. The boats are designed for wheelchair access too. Check the See also link below for details and photos from the Willow Trust website.
I love to see examples of effort and resources being expended by enthusastic teams to greatly benefit those who need and deserve help. Every one of us can see the need for support of this sort, though not all are able or willing to provide it. But every single person in the world can do something positive to help others one way or another. It might be as simple as a kind word at the right moment, or a helping hand to steady someone losing their balance, or even just a smile. All it takes is an open eye, an attentive ear, and a willing mind.
If you are a wealthy person you might give thousands of pounds towards maintenance and fuel costs for these boats; if you have some spare time but no money, you might give time and energy to help with tidying and cleaning a boat between trips or helping in other practical ways. No matter what we do or do not possess, there’s always something we can offer.
It’s about contributing something, anything, in a world that’s not always fair or kind. And there are so many considerate, helpful organisations out there – everyone can find worthy opportunities in every town and most villages around the globe; even where there’s no local group or organisation, there will be many local opportunities to find and fill a need of some kind.
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
Journeys of Heart and Mind 
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