Gravedigger - Grave Stories

Just in time for International Women’s Day on 8th March an article in The Guardian newspaper cited figures produced by the General Medical Council revealing that, with 164,440 women licensed to practise medicine in the United Kingdom, the number of female doctors had for the first time exceeded the number of males. Women now make up 50.04% of the nation’s doctors.

In 1865 there was only one female doctor on the medical register of the GMC: Elizabeth Garrett.

Born in 1836, Elizabeth Garrett had been educated at home and at a private boarding school for girls. She recorded her dissatisfaction with both her governess and her teachers, complaining particularly of the absence of science and maths teaching, although her sisters remembered that they received a sound grounding in literature and languages. After school and a tour abroad, Elizabeth returned home where for nine years she pursued her own studies alongside her domestic duties.

In 1859 she met Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to qualify as a medical doctor in the USA. Blackwell was in London to give a series of lectures on “Medicine as a Profession for Ladies.” In a biography of her mother Louisa Garrett Anderson describes a conversation a year later between her mother, her mother’s younger sister, Millicent Garrett, and their friend Emily Davies. She quotes Davies:

It is clear what has to be done. I must devote myself to higher education, while you (Elizabeth) open the medical profession to women. After these things are done, we must see about getting the vote. You are younger than we are Millie, so you must attend to that.*

The conversation may be apocryphal, but Emily Davies went on to establish and become Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge for women students, while Millicent Garrett Fawcett led the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies between 1897 and 1919.

Elizabeth Garrett faced implacable opposition from the British medical establishment, but she had several advantages on her side: she was clever and determined, she came from a wealthy family, and her father, a successful businessman in Suffolk, was unusually supportive of his daughters’ education and of their aspirations.

Unable, as a female, to enrol at a British medical school Elizabeth took up a position as a surgery nurse at Middlesex hospital. Despite protests from the male students, she was permitted to use the dissecting room and to attend chemistry lectures. With financial support from her father, she employed a tutor to mentor her in anatomy and physiology, securing certificates in those subjects along with chemistry and pharmacy.

Despite this evidence of her commitment and ability, the medical schools continued to reject her applications.

Undeterred, Garrett continued to study with private tutors and professors, and applied to the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries seeking to exploit a loophole in their charter preventing them from excluding students from their examinations on the grounds of sex. Nonetheless they did attempt to reject her application, backing down only when her father threatened to sue them. In 1865 Elizabeth Garrett obtained her licence from the Company. Though not a medical degree, the licence did qualify her to practise medicine, and her name appeared on the register of the GMC. The Worshipful Company took immediate steps to amend their regulations, disallowing anyone privately educated from sitting their examinations in the future.

Yet though she was now qualified Garrett could still not, as a woman, hold a post in any hospital. This time her father’s backing enabled her to open her own practice and a dispensary for women and children which became The New Hospital for Women and Children.

In 1870 she finally obtained a full medical degree from the faculty of medicine in Paris which was beginning to admit women.

Members of the medical patriarchy did their best to discourage other women from following her example. In 1874 the psychiatrist Henry Maudsley claimed that education for women led to over exertion which would reduce their reproductive capacity and render them liable to nervous and mental disorders.** Edward Hammond Clarke asserted that:

Higher education in women produces monstrous brains and puny bodies, abnormally active cerebration and abnormally weak digestion, flowing thought and constipated bowels.***

According to these physicians the trinity of menstruation, pregnancy and menopause rendered women frail, unstable and unsuitable for public life.

Garrett responded that the danger for women came not from education but from boredom in the home.

In 1874 Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (she had married in 1871) cofounded the London School of Medicine for Women (later the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine) where she lectured. Here women were prepared for the medical degree of London University whose examinations were opened to them from 1877.

Garrett Anderson retired to her old family home Alde House, in Aldeburgh in 1902. She is buried in the family grave in the churchyard of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.

Family grave of the Anderson family, SS Peter and Paul, Aldeburgh

Newton and Louisa Anderson, Elizabeth’s parents, and some of her eleven siblings are buried here

While lauding the achievements of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and the other early pioneers, I had reservations about the triumphalist tone of the newspaper article: it seemed an old and long settled battle to be reviving. But days later a letter appeared in the same newspaper from an emeritus professor at St. George’s Hospital Medical School describing a study he had published with a colleague in 1985 showing that secret quotas still existed in all the London medical schools limiting the number of women admitted to study medicine. The use of discriminatory practices only ceased in the UK in 1988 as a result of this study. **** Not such an old battle then, and as Professor Collier points out, it still took forty years to achieve today’s gender balance.

*Louisa Garrett Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson:1836-1917, Faber and Faber, 1939

**Henry Maudsley, Sex in Mind and Education, Fortnightly Review, Volume 15, April 1874

***Edward Hammond Clarke, Sex and Education, 1875

****Joe Collier, Guardian letters page, 10 March 2025

Shepton Mallet, Home of James Allen, The Snowdrop King

By Gravedigger

On March 2, 2025

In Gardeners

Wool was the backbone of the economy in Medieval England. From the fourteenth century, the Lord Chancellor, while in council in the House of Lords, sat on The Woolsack, a symbol of England’s wealth. Supposedly, this was a wool bale, although when the seat came to be restuffed, six hundred years later in 1938, it was revealed to be filled with horsehair. The replacement was duly made with wool.

The wool trade peaked in southern England between 1500-1714, providing a generous revenue for the government, which reciprocated briefly by passing a law in the 1570s supporting the industry by enforcing the wearing of woollen caps to church on Sundays.

The wool towns prospered, and with them rose magnificent parish churches, clothiers’ and merchants’ houses. Somerset’s wool towns were not the richest, that distinction went to Suffolk, but there was no doubting their affluence.

Shepton Mallet’s very name echoes its original source of wealth: scoep and tun, sheep and farm. In the eighteenth century there were some fifty mills, spinning, weaving and dying wool, in and around Shepton.

But by the end of that century the southern wool towns were in decline, losing out to the steam powered production of cloth in the north. Surrounded by steep hills and waterpower Leeds became the major wool town.

The population of Shepton Mallet plummeted as unemployment and poverty engendered emigration. By 1801 there were only 5,000 people in the town, and the population remained at that level until the 1950s.

There were partial revivals of the town’s fortunes. For a while it developed a trade in silk and crepe: the silk for Queen Victoria’s wedding dress was produced there. But cheaper imports and changing tastes in fabrics meant that the respite was brief.

In the mid-nineteenth century two railways arrived, a branch of the East Somerset Railway in 1859, and one of the Somerset and Dorset in 1874. Shepton became a centre for storing Farmhouse Cheddar Cheeses while they matured, and then distributing them. “The Strawberry Line” carried strawberries from Cheddar to London and Birmingham. But the Beeching cuts of the 1960s closed these lines and ended the trade.

In 1864 the Anglo-Bavarian Brewery in Shepton was the first to brew lager in England, but it closed again in 1921.

James Allen grew up against this background of a precarious economy. He was born in 1830 at Windsor Hill Farm, just outside Shepton Mallet, where his family operated a corn mill. Such was the poverty in Shepton, that in the Bread Riots of 1842 desperate, starving men, unable to pay for both rent and food, threatened to burn down the mill. James’ older brother persuaded them to leave, promising flour to those who came from Shepton Mallet the following morning, and the mill was spared.

Windsor Hill Farm, birthplace of James Allen

Windsor Hill Farm. 80% of the water from the spring which rises behind the house goes underground to supply the town, the remaining 20% today running across the garden once powered a mill

Later the family moved to Highfield House in the town and into the business of storing and distributing cheese.

Highfield House, former home of the Allen Family, backs on to the yard where cheeses were stored.

Though Shepton was poor, the Allen family prospered, and their affluence enabled James to pursue his interest in horticulture. He was entirely self-taught but, a passionate galanthophile, he became the first person to breed new varieties of snowdrops from the wild. During his lifetime around five hundred cultivars were produced; he was personally responsible for over a hundred of them. He grew all the species known at the time, crossing and raising hybrids from seed, achieving fame as The Snowdrop King.

After his marriage to Ellen Burt the couple moved across the road from Highfield House to Park House. There he continued his experiments, also breeding narcissi, lilies, a wood anemone, Anemone nemorosa Allenii, and a lavender, Scilla xallenii.

Sadly, the fungal infection Botrytis, followed by an attack of narcissus fly, blighted Allen’s remarkable collection of snowdrops, destroying most of them. But two of his cultivars survive, the exquisite Merlin, with its completely green inner flower segments, and Magnet with its long pedicel causing the flower heads to bob in the breeze.

The Allen family had a prominent role in the town’s affairs, and were generous benefactors, contributing to public works including the town cemetery which opened in 1856. The latter was built with Anglican and Non-Conformists sections and a separate chapel for each; the Allens themselves had converted to Non-Conformism which had a strong following in the town and throughout the West Country.

Their wealth and philanthropy, combined with James Allen’s considerable fame in Victorian England, ensured him a prime spot in the cemetery when he died in 1906. He was buried in front of the nonconformist chapel, with an obelisk above him, and surrounded by a circular bed of spring flowers.

Like many Somerset towns Shepton Mallet has never recovered its early prosperity. Today its high street is rundown, empty units like missing teeth alternate with charity shops, and small business ventures have a rapid turnover. Yet Shepton Mallet is undefeated, and last month I attended its Annual Snowdrop Festival.

The festival was founded ten years ago to celebrate James Allen and to support regeneration of the town by raising its profile and attracting visitors. Volunteers from the town’s horticultural society open their own gardens in the summer, raising money to buy bulbs for the Shepton snowdrops project. Every autumn they plant more bulbs. Since they began, they have planted more than 500,000 bulbs around the town at roadsides, roundabouts, and in public spaces, with special attention to parts of the town where flowers are not so commonly seen.

At the February half term, the festival features plant sales, poetry and photography competitions, painting and craft workshops for children, puppet making and storytelling, gardening talks and heritage walks…and a snowdrop themed fashion show.

I joined a walk, and we set out for Windsor Hill Farm, where James Allen was born. Its gates were open, a brasier lit on the patio, and the current owners had prepared tea and cakes, iced with green and white snowdrops, to welcome us.

We walked along one of the two great railway viaducts, the previously overgrown track now cleared by volunteers for cycle routes and footpaths. This work is ongoing and several of my fellow walkers were involved, all adamant that there can be no greater joy than to rise early on a weekend morning for a communal attack on the brambles.

One of the railway viaducts,brambles cleared from the old track, welcomes walkers and cyclists

On through the lower part of the old town with the sudden surprise of the lovely old merchants’ houses and the chapel where James Allen married, and his children were baptised.

At Park House again the gates were opened to us, the owners pointing out the locations where James Allen grew his various cultivars. Stripping back layers of ancient wallpaper when they moved in, they had discovered outlines on the wall probably indicating the presence of an indoor greenhouse, a feature much loved by the Victorians. They are currently scrutinizing Allen’s handwritten notes and correspondence held by the Royal Horticultural Society to see if they can confirm this.

We finished our walk beside James Allen’s grave. The original obelisk fell into disrepair and had to be dismantled on safety grounds, but in 2022 a perfect replica was unveiled during the festival.

In Memory of James Allen, The Snowdrop King

You do not have to wait until next February to make the acquaintance of James Allen. You can download the Shepton Mallet Heritage Trails at any time. There, alongside the story of the Snowdrop King, you will discover that no lesser an authority than Pevsner claims that the medieval church boasts the finest oak wagon-roof in England; that Shepton Mallet is home to England’s oldest prison (1627), which housed national records including the Magna Carta during World War II, and the Kray twins when they went AWOL from national service in the fifties.

Former home of Magna Carta and the Kray Twins

Shepton, you will learn, is the birthplace of Babycham, in 1953 the first alcoholic drink to be aimed specifically at women, and the first to be advertised on commercial television in Britain.

Everyone of a Certain Age remembers the babycham advert. The newly spruced up deer now lives next to the cafe at Kilver Court.

Then there is the Amulet theatre, built in the 1970s and highly rated by the Brutalism Appreciation Society, an enthusiasm admittedly not shared by everyone. And, my favourite, The Rock Flock Roundabout, where the model sheep may sport party hats, green and white scarves, easter bonnets or santa hats depending on the time of year.

…and the rest of the flock at Rock Flock Roundabout

Gavrilo Princip – Still One of My Heroes

By Gravedigger

On February 20, 2025

In Activists, Reformers, Radicals and Revolutionaries

In the 60s and 70s all our secondary schools followed the same history curriculum. We began with Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain and made our way systematically through England’s vicissitudes from 55 BC up to 1914, skimming the extreme edges of classical antiquity and contemporary history. The former was held to be the remit of the classics department, and of the latter we did not speak. My history teacher justified this on the basis that objectivity was impossible without a certain distance; my youthful cynicism judged it more likely a reluctance to engage with criticism of the status quo.

In those final history lessons in the fifth form, as we edged towards the First World War, I developed a wild enthusiasm for Gavrilo Princip. This can certainly not have been the intention of my history teacher, a firm supporter of law and order, who would without doubt have been an apologist for the Austro-Hungarian Empire against the upstart Serb from Bosnia.

But to me Princip was a romantic hero, striking a blow against Austria’s occupation of Bosnian territory in 1878 followed by its aggressive annexation in 1908. Young Bosnia was a revolutionary movement seeking to end Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia-Herzegovina and to establish an independent state. The political assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the representative and heir of an unelected ruler at home and a foreign oppressor in Bosnia, was entirely justified. Princip was a freedom fighter.

If there had been posters of Princip for sale in English provincial towns in 1968, one would undoubtedly have adorned my bedroom wall alongside Che Guevara.

Two years ago, I visited a museum with the cumbersome designation Museum of Sarajevo,1878-1918. The dates mark the period of Austro-Hungary’s occupation, and it was from outside this building that Princip fired the shots which killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Until the collapse of Yugoslavia it had been called the Young Bosnia Museum, and Princip and his fellow members of Young Bosnia had been glorified as revolutionary idealists. Outside the museum a footprint was set into the cement to mark the spot where Princip stood to take aim at the Archduke, and there visiting Yugoslav schoolchildren used to pose for photographs.

The Museum of Sarajevo 1878-1918, located in a former delicatessen beside the Latin Bridge, formerly called the Princip Bridge.

Today a discreet sign set into the pavement marks the place where Princip stood. Formerly Yugoslavian children would pose for photographs standing in Princip’s footsteps

Today, the museum’s approach is more subdued. It records the history of resistance to Austro-Hungarian oppression, and the assassination. There are clothes, photographs, and weapons on display, and two uncomfortable looking waxworks of the archduke and his wife. But the tone is factual, and the historic significance of the museum’s location is not stressed.

For the recent history of the former Yugoslavia has cast a shadow which has led to the past being rewritten in some of the former constituent republics. Under the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic ethnic cleansing of Croats took palace in those parts of Croatia controlled by Serbia. Milosevic’s ultra nationalism, his irredentist and revanchist attempt to seize Bosnia for the Serbs, combined with Radovan Karadzic’s genocidal massacre at Srebrenica, and the brutal siege of Sarajevo, have cast the Serbs in an ugly light.

And Princip has become a polarising figure: while still a hero in Serbia, he is now perceived in Croatia as a Serbian nationalist terrorist rather than a liberty loving revolutionary. He is even held responsible for the First World War rather than his actions being understood as a catalyst and excuse for further Austrian aggression.

There is no commonly held view in Bosnia. Two different versions of the truth are expounded alongside each other. School texts in predominantly Bosniak and Croat areas describe Princip as a Belgrade backed terrorist, while the children of Bosnian Serbs are taught that his cause was a just one, seeking liberation from colonised serfdom.

It is unwise to rewrite the past in the light of the present. It is true that in 1914 there was in Serbia a desire for a union of southern Slavs under Serbian hegemony, and that the Bosniaks and Croats had no desire for this greater Serbia. But Princip was no Milosevic or Karadzic, his loathing for Austrian oppression was legitimate. At his trial he argued,

I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, and I do not care what form of state, but it must be free of Austria.

Asked why he had shot the archduke he replied,

People suffer because they are so poor and because they are treated as animals. I am the son of a peasant; I know how people live in the villages and that is why I wanted revenge.

Princip risked his life for a revolutionary ideology of social justice. Austrian rule was feudal and oppressive, political opposition brutally suppressed. Moreover, the Serbian government was not involved in the assassination, and the members of Young Bosnia were drawn from all three ethnic groups in Bosnia: the Bosniaks, the Bosnian Serbs, and the Croats.

The museum, located in predominantly Bosniak Sarajevo, displays understandable discretion. But I was happy to see that Princip’s grave in the Holy Archangels Cemetery in Sarajevo still receives care. At the time of the assassination, Princip was only nineteen, a year too young to be subjected to the death penalty, so he was given the maximum sentence of twenty years in an Austrian military prison. There, chained to a wall in solitary confinement, he died of TB in 1918. In 1920 he and his comrades were exhumed and reburied below the Vidovdan Heroes Chapel. Today there are flowers on the grave, and it bears a quotation from the Montenegrin poet, Petrovic-Njegos,

Blessed is he who lives forever; he did not die in vain.

Grave of Gavrilo Princip and his Young Bosnia comrades

Vidovdan Heroes Chapel, Holy Archangel Cemetery, Sarajevo

Gavrilo Princip, photograph in museum of Sarajevo 1878-1918

Jemima Nicholas, The Welsh Heroine, Scourge of the French Invaders

By Gravedigger

On February 2, 2025

In Activists, Happy Endings

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Britain has not been invaded since 1066, when, as alleged by Sellar and Yeatman, “The Norman Conquest was a Good Thing, as from this time onwards England stopped being conquered and thus was able to become top nation.”

Acknowledged, but not entirely true, for though their achievements were usually puny by contrast with the Normans, and though they are not so well remembered, other assailants have landed from time to time, seeking to vanquish and subjugate the land.

Under Sweyn II the Danes took first York in 1069, and then Ely in 1070, before accepting a bribe to leave the country.

The future Louis VIII of France had himself proclaimed king, though never crowned, in London in 1216. He captured Winchester and controlled half of England before being defeated at Lincoln and accepting 10,000 marks to withdraw.

In 1588, when the apparently much greater threat of the Spanish Armada was defeated by a combination of English fireships and British weather, some unfortunate Spaniards landed by default, shipwrecked on the west coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Later, at the Battle of Cornwall in 1595 a Spanish force of four hundred men sacked Mousehole, Penzance, Newlyn, and Paul.

When the Dutch sailed up the Medway to Chatham in 1667, they burned more than a dozen warships and captured the flagship of the English fleet, HMS Royal Charles. Samuel Pepys recorded his alarm:

and so home, where all our hearts do now ake; for the newes is true, that the Dutch have broke the chaine and burned our ships, and particularly The Royal Charles, other particulars I know not, but most sad to be sure. And, the truth is, I do fear so much that the whole kingdom is undone, … So having with much ado finished my business at the office, I home to consider with my father and wife of things, and then to supper and to bed with a heavy heart.

Twenty-one years later another Dutch invasion, led by William of Orange, landed in Devon, with a fleet of 463 ships and 40,000 men. This time they had been invited by the opponents of James II, and when the latter fled the country, he was deemed to have abdicated. William and Mary replaced him, a substitution legitimised by Parliament and hailed as The Glorious Revolution.

But while that may have been the last successful incursion into mainland Britain, it was not the final landing by a hostile force. On 24 February 1797 around 1,200 French soldiers landed at Carreg Wastad Point near Fishguard in South Wales. This battalion incorporated a penal unit consisting of convicts mobilised for military service. Called the Legion Noire, because they used captured British uniforms died black or blue, they landed appropriately under cover of darkness.

The defending forces were ill-prepared and outnumbered: a quickly assembled group of five hundred reservist militia, aided by the civilian population. Yet the Battle of Fishguard, little more a few skirmishes, was over in two days with the French troops making an unconditional surrender.

Once they had landed discipline had broken down amongst the French troops as they ransacked local farms, looted, and grew intoxicated. Was this why they were so easily defeated? No, it was all down to Jemima.

Jemima Nicholas was a cobbler in Fishguard who led a group of women, armed only with pitchforks, against the French. One story describes Jemima single-handedly rounding up twelve French soldiers and holding them captive overnight in a church at Strumble Head. Another has the Welsh women in their traditional red cloaks and steep crowned black hats marching up and down the cliffs until nightfall, and the inebriated soldiers mistaking them for British Redcoats and thinking themselves outnumbered. Instantly demoralised, they capitulated.

Whatever the finer details, the government concurred that Jemima had taken a brave stand against the French. She was awarded an annual pension of five pounds for helping to defeat the invasion.

Subsequently known as Jemima Fawr, Jemima the Great, Fishguard’s heroine was buried in the churchyard of St. Mary. There was no headstone at the time, but in 1897 a stone was erected by public subscription collected at a centenary banquet. It records rather quaintly that,

She died in the main street July 1832,

Aged 82 years.

At the date of the invasion she

Was 47 years old, and

Lived 35 years after the event.

Jemima’s grave, outside St. Mary’s, Fishguard

A sign above the Royal Oak pub in Fishguard records that the peace treaty was signed there, following the last invasion of Britain.

My friends were reluctant to linger in the graveyard, but were eager to celebrate the signing of the peace treaty where it took place – at the Royal Oak pub in Fishguard

In 1997, at the bicentenary, seventy-seven local people embroidered the Last Invasion Tapestry employing the same techniques as those used for the Bayeaux Tapestry.

A pastoral scene before the French soldiers arrive.

…and word spreads that they are coming closer.

But Jemima, equipped with only a pitchfork, is more than a match for the French soldiers…

…they will rue the day they invaded Fishguard.

Jemima and the other Welsh women in their red cloaks and black hats march up and down until nightfall…

… the inebriated French soldiers mistake them for Redcoats, lay down their arms…

…and prepare to march to prison.
The French are defeated. Hurrah for Jemima!

You can find the tapestry of the Last Invasion in the Fishguard library. And if you want to contrast it with the Bayeaux Tapestry of the Norman Invasion, there is no need to go to Bayeaux. Reading Museum has a perfect copy of the latter and no jostling crowds.

Sellar and Yeatman, 1066 and All That
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 12^th June 1667

Colin Francis (1953-2022) and The Great Wall of Norton Saint Philip

By Gravedigger

On January 19, 2025

In Artists, Work and Play

On my way to the village shop I take the path across the churchyard. The Christmas wreaths which adorned the graves last month are disappearing now, but the first snowdrops are pushing through the grass ready to encircle the stones.

but the first snowdrops are already appearing around the older graves

Now that I have lived in the village for more than twenty years, I know a few of the inhabitants of the churchyard. They congregate beside the gate leading on to Church Mead. I pause wondering what Vivienne will think about the latest scheme to build more “executive housing” on the fields adjacent to the Mead, or what Den will have to say about the recent fly-tipping beside the brook in Wellow Lane.

I don’t need to solicit their answers, I can anticipate quite well the vehemence of their responses. I share their views: the Poundbury-pastiche housing with its pretentious porticos and faux bricked-up windows, ersatz facades, and sterile Stepford Wives ambience repels me too. Like them I seethe at the gratuitous dumping of rubbish in the woods and fields, on the roadside and in rivers.

At the same time, I smile at the memory of Den in his powerchair equipped with black sack and litter picker. The fridges and the mattresses may have eluded him, but with his dog running alongside the chair or hitching a lift, he waged a loud war on the beer bottles and fast-food wrappers tossed into the hedgerows by passing motorists.

A robin lands on the grave, cocks an eye at me, is unimpressed, and begins a furious excavation of the earth. Den was a gifted photographer, and I am reminded of his exquisite studies of birds and butterflies, fruits and flowers, and of his readiness to share his knowledge and talents with others.

Mollified by these reflections, I turn to the grave of Colin Francis. Much loved in the village for his gentle charm and the warmth of his manner, Colin was a very special person.

Though he was quiet and modest, we were all familiar with the magnitude of his talent. For Norton Saint Philip is a village of dry-stone walls: the approach roads are lined by them, the fields and our gardens enclosed by them. Victims of erosion by frosts, unchecked ivy growth, trees planted too close leaning heavily into them dislodging stones and pushing them out of line, and the occasional rogue motorist, there is always a wall somewhere in the village in need of attention. And Colin, a stone mason, was also an expert dry stone waller.

In all seasons we encountered him stripping out the walls, removing ivy roots, sorting stones, and rebuilding. It was always slow work for dry stone walling is a separate technique from masonry, requiring skill and patience in choosing the right stones, setting them correctly, hearting each course with smaller stones, ensuring that each stone crosses a joint below it, and keeping the courses level.

Moreover, we would all hinder Colin in his work for none of us could resist to stop and chat, knowing our day would be enhanced by his always smiling good humour and his apparent pleasure at our interruptions.

Throughout one particularly bitter winter he worked his way along the length of the wall which lines the Bath Road into the village. He proved the most effective traffic calming scheme we have ever had as, commuting to and from work, we all slowed down to wave and check the day’s progress, or came to a complete halt the better to admire The Great Wall of Norton Saint Philip.

Colin was only sixty-eight when he died three years ago. Two hundred people packed into the village church to remember him. They did not all know each other but they shared a common sadness at the loss of this lovable man and his joyful approach to life.

As well as the marker on his grave, a tree grows on The Mead in his memory. “It’s a blasted nuisance, but there tis,” reads the plaque beneath. This well remembered catchphrase was the closest he ever came to vexation.