St David's: October 2016: Part 1

 

Down in West Wales for our annual sojourn in St David's. Here are a few photographs as a record.

The cathedral basking in autumnal sunshine. To the left are the ruins of the Bishop's Palace.

The choir I sing with whilst we are down here - the East Wickham Singers. Based in Kent but augmented with itinerant singers such as myself. We sing all the services as the cathedral choir is away for the half term. Our programme consists of what I regard as 'proper' church music. A delight to sing and a delight to be with such a talented group of singers.

And this is where we sing for most of the week - the mediaeval choir stalls. To the left of the organ pipes in the organ loft, Mrs P acts as page turner for Nick, our organist. For someone who doesn't like heights, it's a triumph of duty over fear.

The south face of the clock on the cathedral tower. The choir sponsored the regilding of the numbers III, VI and IX. A very nice touch, methinks.
 

We've had a few days without our car and this has meant walking to and from the cathedral for rehearsals and services. You get a different perspective on foot and this is a plaque we came across that we would never have seen as we whizzed passed in the car. The plaque commemorates a tragic air accident a few months after the end of the European phase of WW2. Apparently a lot of pilots were retrained to fly aircraft being used in the far East and the crew of Liberator KH 183 were part of this. Unfortunately KH 183 lost an engine mounting shortly after taking off from nearby St David's airfield and crashed in a field, killing all four crewmen. A quick Google revealed that this was not an isolated incident and there were many similar crashes scattered around West Wales, some due to engine failure and some due to navigation errors.

The last fruits of summer. A few blackberries are still around but they have long passed peak flavour. Not that the birds feeding on them would care about that.

Common Toadflax was one of the few flowers still present in the hedgerows. A yellow jewel standing out from the green of the grass.

It's too late in the year for many flying things but I did spot this moth - a Silver Y. It has the wonderful, and easy to remember, name of Autographa gamma. The eponymous Y is quite prominent on the upper wings. And, if you are interested, this is a polyphagous moth, meaning that it will feed upon a variety of foodplants. In fact, it's quite promiscuous and will munch on any plants that happen to be around.
 

Hooray for Citizen Smith

 OK, call me a naïve political dinosaur if you must but..

Let’s all of us who profess to be on the left be nice. Let’s all be beacons of tolerance, understanding, and empathy. Let’s bend over backwards to appreciate the points of view of others. Let’s receive anger but send out love. Let’s preach peace and civic responsibility. Let’s never utter a harsh word. Let’s not slag off Philip Hammond for being the most grey and boring individual on the face of the planet since former Prime Minister John Major pulled his Y-fronts over his head. Let’s gaze upon the xenophobic and plain nastiness of Theresa May, Liam Fox, Boorish Johnson, and David Davis and resist the urge to hurl abuse, however well justified it might be.

Yes, we could all do that. We Labourites could behave like paragons of virtue and show such good behaviour that would make a Buddhist monastery look like a drunken brawl in a city centre on a Saturday night, and there would still be headlines in the Daily Express and the Daily Mail about vile cybercoms and how repugnant supporters of Jezza are.

Despite that, what being nice means is that we refrain from attacking one another, we concentrate on making the case for more socialism. We don’t allow our opponents to portray us as divided. What it means is that we put into action the aspirations that we have for a socialist UK, that we demonstrate the tolerance and acceptance and good grace that characterises our vision for this country. What it means is that we don’t provide the right-wing media with ammunition to use against us, because then, when they do attempt to demonise and delegitimise the Labour movement and its supporters, it will be easier to unmask them as the kind of divisive, manipulative fantastists who populate the likes of the Daily Mail and the Express. It means we can occupy the moral high ground. And that it turn makes it easier for us to discredit them. And then we will win.

OK, call me a naïve political dinosaur if you must but I still believe in...

A walk with a bit of everything that makes for a good walk

A great day for a walk and a great walk for the day. This one, just myself and my IWC, had a bit of everything: views, history, moorland, fields, ancient trackways, hidden hamlets, streams and stone rows. We'll be doing this route again in the very near future with a couple of our walking groups and I'm sure they'll enjoy it as much as we did.


Our route, starting and ending at Bennett's Cross right in the middle of the moor. It was an anticipated 8 miles but, although not shown on the above track, we had a few deviations due to navigator's error. This probably added at least a mile to the total.

The view due west from the start. The photograph does not do justice to the shafts of light shining down through the clouds.

Lots of Highland cattle were to be seen grazing the sparse grass that the moor offers. And that's the reason they are there: they can feed on the poorest pasture.

Our descent from the moor was quite steep and this view looks back from whence we came. To the left and right of this track were the remains of the old East Vitifer mine, which was active in the mid 1800s but was never a tremendous success. Tread carefully in the woods as some of the original shafts are still uncapped.

 

It's a little strange to come across signs on Dartmoor showing the way for mariners but it's true (allegedly). In days of yore, mariners would walk from the North Devon coast (Bideford) to the South Devon coast (Dartmouth) to take up positions on the sailing ships. It was easier to do this than sail around Lands' End. The Mariners' Way is now a recognised long distance foot path (90 miles or so) linking the two coasts of Devon. In actual fact, at the time it was being actively used, there probably never was a single end-to-end path. It is more likely that the travellers used a network of paths and tracks to get them to where they wanted to be.

West Combe farm on the edge of the moor is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, the Mariners' Way actually went through the cross passage of the farm (It has since been diverted around the dwelling. The situation arose because the farm was build over an existing ancient right of way.) and secondly, it was the first Devon longhouse we encountered on our walk.

Speaking of Devon longhouses, we soon came across the hamlet of Lettaford and Sanders Longhouse, reputed to be one of the oldest on Dartmoor. It has been very well preserved by the Landmark Trust and is available for holiday rental. What is a long house? Traditionally, a dwelling with living accommodation and animal housing under one roof, separated by a cross passage.

This shows the component parts of the Sanders Longhouse and, as with all similar buildings, the animal housing (shippon or byre) was built down the slope. Sanders dates from 1500, although there was a building on the site from around 1230.

Another depiction of the Sanders Longhouse. The work done by the Landmark Trust has maintained the original functional layout.

Granite, granite everywhere. There is a bit of serious granite dressing in this wall, and there were plenty of others like it.

And talking of granite ... this old gatepost caused me to think of what it's original function was. The 'L' shaped slots threw me for a while but...

..when I came across this one nearby, it was obvious (?) that they were slots to house bars forming a gate. The 'L' shaped slots provided a sort-of locking mechanism to keep the bars in place.

Up on Hurston Common is what some say is the best preserved double stone row on Dartmoor. It's about 1/2 mile long with 49 pairs of stones. I walked up between the stones towards the end stone at the top of the hill and it was a strange feeling. It seemed as if the stones form a barrier with the outside world. There's no question in my mind that they had a processional significance, rather than a guide to orientation. 

Regular readers of this blog will recognise immediately what this depression is. Yes, it's a leat. There were many on this part of the moor, all taking water down to the Vitifer mining complex. The leats seem to have been fed by water from marshes and bogs rather than from streams.

On this day, 4th October, in 1916, Private Edwin Serpell was killed.

Private 100143

EDWIN SERPELL

49th Battalion Canadian Infantry (Alberta Regiment)

Died age 29
4th October1916

Edwin Charles Serpell was born in Venterdon on March 8th, 1887, the son of Samuel and Mary. He had three brothers and four sisters, was baptised in Stoke Climsland church and attended the primary school. At the time of the 1911 census (2nd April 1911), he was living with his parents and working as a ‘Steam Roller Assistant’, presumably at nearby Dingles. Like so many other young men from Cornwall, Edwin decided to seek his fortunes overseas and, on 3rd June 1913, he sailed from Bristol, on the Royal Line steamship Royal Edward, bound for Quebec and Montreal. His ultimate destination was Edmonton, Alberta. There he seems to have found work as a gardener as this was the occupation he gave when he enlisted in the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force in Edmonton on 1st July 1915. Interestingly, most of the 1,000 initial recruits were originally from Britain: only 208 were Canadian-born. The battalion subsequently landed in France on 9th October 1915, where it fought as part of the 7th Infantry Brigade, 3rd Canadian Division in France and Flanders. It entered the fighting line on October 16th 1915 and remained on active service until the end of the war.

The action in which Edwin Serpell lost his life was during one of several conflicts that became part of the larger Battle of the Somme. It was a desperate fight for the strategically important high ground along the Pozieres Ridge, an area that was heavily defended by the Germans. The Battle of Flers-Courcelette was a large-scale general renewal of the offensive after the weeks of attritional fighting for the third German system at Pozieres, High Wood, Delville Wood, Guillemont and Ginchy. It is historically noteworthy for being the first time that tanks were used in battle and the first time that the Canadian Corps entered the Somme. The 49th suffered 63 casualties, 14 killed and 49 wounded. Edwin was one of those who died, his body was recovered and buried in the Courcelette British Cemetery, just north of Pozieres in Picardy.

As well as on our local war memorials, Edwin Serpell is commemorated on the Canadian Maple Leaf virtual war memorial. A newspaper clipping at the time mentions that he was a life-long member of the Sunday School in Venterdon. He had an ‘even temper and transparent goodness which remain as lessons in life for all the young people of his acquaintance’.