It Happened in Gloucestershire E-Book

Phyllida Barstow

• Herausgeber: Merlin Unwin Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

It Happened in Gloucestershire is a vibrant and compelling account of the county's diverse heritage; its heroes, its battles, its inventors, its outlandish sports. Phyllida Barstow's lively prose transports the reader across the county: from its stunning cathedral to its swan lake at Slimbridge, taking us surfing the Severn Bore, tumbling down Cooper Hill on the notorious Cheese Race, round the challenging course at Badminton and to Imjin Hill, site of the tragic stand of the Glorious Glosters. The book celebrates those who have helped to put Gloucestershire on the map: Eddie the Eagle, William Morris, Vaughan Williams, Desert Orchid, William Tyndale, Richard III – as well as the varied claims to fame of Concorde, GCHQ, the Cotswold Lions, the conqueror of small-pox, the Gloucester Old Spot and the hardy miners of the Forest of Dean.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title PageMap of GloucestershireDedication1. EARLY GLOUCESTERSHIREWho lived here first – and why?2. AFTER THE CONQUEST3. SPLENDOUR IN STONEBerkeley CastleTewkesbury Abbey4. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF YORK5. THE BISLEY BOY6. THE GOLDEN FLEECE7. FIGHTING SPIRITThe Sieges of Bristol and Gloucester, 1643The Battle of Imjin River, 19518. GREAT MEN OF GLOUCESTERSHIREWilliam Tyndale 1494–1536Edward Jenner 1749–1823Peter Scott, Conservationist 1909–1989Ralph Vaughan Williams 1872–19589. REVISITING THE PASTThe Arts and Crafts Movement10. CONCORDEThe great one-off11. SPORTING AND FARMING LIFEGold Cup GreatsThe Badminton Horse TrialsGloucester Old Spot PigsGloucester CattleKhaki Campbell Ducks12. OUTDOOR FUN AND GAMESThe Severn BoreCheese-Rolling13. ORCHARD AND FORESTPerry and Cider MakingThe Forest of Dean14. AND IT’S STILL HAPPENINGAcknowledgementsPhotographic AcknowledgementsSelect BibliographyUseful OrganisationsList of PhotographsIndexAlso Published by Merlin Unwin Books About the AuthorCopyright

To all our friends in Gloucestershire

Chapter One

EARLY GLOUCESTERSHIRE

Who lived here first – and why?

From the lush pastures of the Severn Vale to the high, bare, stonewalled Cotswold plateau, along the steep and indented escarpment and then down through its winding broken valleys to the wooded secrecy of the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire has a rich and diverse landscape whose promise of trading and agricultural opportunities was recognised by the earliest tribes to inhabit the area, and all who followed them.

This rough rectangle of a county has an area of nearly a million and a half acres and, being strategically positioned between Oxfordshire in the east, Wiltshire in the south, and Worcestershire in the north, with Herefordshire and the Welsh Marches to the west, it has particularly good motorway links to both north and west by virtue of the M5, and to London via the M4.

Far from being a natural landscape, Gloucestershire’s beautiful countryside has been shaped by the activities of the people who have made their living from the land over the past four thousand years, so that every grassed-over track, every wood, every field has its own story to tell – if only we could hear it.

Outside the busy, thriving towns and beyond the roar of modern traffic lies a gentler, more peaceful world, where the lovely tracery of dry-stone walls crisscrossing the old sheep-walks bears witness to uncountable hours of skilled work, constantly renewed as sections collapsed and had to be restored, while isolated farms and villages huddled against valley slopes blend so perfectly in their surroundings that they seem to have grown from the soil itself.

Over the ages successive waves of invaders ranging from Celtic tribesmen to twenty-first century film stars and Russian oligarchs have settled in the Cotswolds and taken possession of the land they needed to mould into their own patches of heaven.