© Stephen Bigger 1st October 2012
Clungunford and Clunbury, Clunton and Clun
Clungunford and Clunbury, Clunton and Clun
Are the quietest places under the sun (Neglected Mountain
Stephen Bigger
Ida Gandy (1885-1977) is well-known
in Wiltshire for gentle country books, most written in old age. A doctor’s
wife, they bought a new practice in Clunbury, Shropshire
from 1930 having fallen in love with the area during a holiday. She wrote her
memoir of these years when she was 80, entitled An Idler on the Shropshire Borders. Clunbury is in the wedge
between Clun, Craven Arms and Bishops Castle, skirting the south end of the
Long Mynd and not far from Cwm Head and Prior’s Halt/Witchend. The area
particularly features in The Secret of
Grey Walls (where Jon and Penny arrive in Craven Arms and whilst some cycle
to Clun, the others take the bus); and in The
Neglected Mountain (where we meet Trudie Whittington, the Bishop Castle
Ida Gandy’s book about life in and
around Clunbury in the 1930s gives a delightful view of this section of Shropshire , telling how she tramped around with her young
children, exploring, picnicking, and meeting locals. At much the same time, the
Savilles visited the same area, so Ida Gandy’s book provides much local colour
and atmosphere. The ‘idler’ of the title refers to the fact that everyone was
busy with their tasks, and were surprised that she had the time to wander about
with her two sons and daughter. This is how she described the local men at a
farm auction: “Many of the men were of racy type, with faces which, if not
handsome, were strongly individual, shrewd or humorous. Many wore faded
velveteen jackets and brightly coloured scarves around their necks.” (pp.15f).
The family got their milk from Chapel Farm, much as Witchend was serviced by
its local farm. Being in the WI, Mrs Gandy went around meeting people, much as
Mrs Morton was hospitable to the likes of Jasper Sterling and even the spy Mrs
Thurston.
One local story has resemblances to
The Secret of Gray Walls. A gang of
poachers and sheep rustlers lived nearby around 1850. One in the house
signalled the all clear by hanging a sheet out of the window. “At other times
the gang would be off over the hills after sheep. They were such a wild, crafty
lot that they never got caught. But things grew too hot for them at last, and
they disappeared.” (p.28). The sheep were “true natives” – black-faced Clun Valley
Another local story featured a
young man who “sick to death of life on a tyrannical father’s farm, resolves to
seek work in the town.” (p.41). Although mother and sister pleaded with him to
stay, there was a fierce row during which the father threw the lad out into the
pouring rain, telling him to go to the devil. The lad drowned as a footbridge
over the river was swept away. There is a clear resemblance to the plot of Seven
White Gates! Mrs Gandy was keen on amateur dramatics, as Saville also was, and
wrote and produced a play about the story. She submitted it to BBC Midlands and
it was accepted (with some modifications) as a radio play. The ‘young man’ was
played by a porter at the local railway station. A follow-up national broadcast
was made about life in a Shropshire village, reviewed excellently in the Manchester Guardian, and a piece for Children’s Hour about witchcraft in
Shropshire (the devil’s chair, phantom hounds of Wild Edrick and similar).
Perhaps Malcolm Saville heard some of these; certainly he talked with the same
local people who, like Jenny, took these stories seriously. Like Jasper
Sterling loving reading books in his lonely cottage and knowing them off by
heart, Mrs Gandy describes another local who bought a shilling’s worth of
second hand books and read and re-read them: she brought him new books when she
visited.
A local train ran from Craven Arms
to Llangunlo (and thereafter to Builth and beyond to mid Wales
She liked to visit the river Onny,
especially near Horderley (a short distance from Prior’s Holt/Witchend) and
describes the little Bishop’s Castle railway at the Horderley crossing gates.
Her daughter Jill was running on ahead: “But I soon realised there was no cause
for anxiety. The funny little train came puffing gently along as though it had
eternity before it, and in front of it ran six hens. That was the dearest
little railway I ever met, and it passed through a rare bit of country, the
Onny on one side and the Long Mynd rising, fold on fold, above it” (p.122). When
clean, the engines could be seen to be painted green: it would be either Carlisle , with
tender, or No. 1, a tank engine. The
railway appears on the map in Wings Over
Witchend and in the Foreword, Saville says: “If you are clever, you will be
able to find traces of an old railway track which once linked Craven Arms to
Bishop’s Castle”. In the story, the twins find the station’s derelict booking buildings
full of stolen Christmas trees: “When they were nearer they saw that where the
rails had once been laid in a single track was now a grassy lane, and here
again the snow had been churned into mud by the wheels of cars. The old
platform had nearly crumbled away. The windows of the tiny waiting room and
booking office had been without glass for years, and as they stepped across the
threshold they realized that they had fitted together another part of the
puzzle. The old booking office was packed from floor to ceiling with Christmas
trees” (p.187). Unfortunately, they were then kidnapped, and Mackie the dog
shot at. Most of Saville’s villains hate dogs. Today the old station is a
private house. On a separate visit to the Onny, after seeing kingfishers
fishing, she says: “Above me the Long Mynd was again multi-colourerd. From a
little grey home, guarded by two Scots firs, on the hillside, a woman came out
and stood there with the low sunlight making a halo around her head” (p.124).
The ‘lone pine’ two miles away clearly had some company. Nearby she watched
cloggers making their clogs. Incidentally,
the stream that flows through Marshbrook (Onnybrook of Mystery at Witchend) is a tributary of the Onny.
On another occasion they went to
the old lead-mines (the boys found an old mining truck and had great games
riding down on it) and the Stiperstones, the Nipstone and the Devil’s Chair.
There were many red squirrels and foxes, she revealed. They parked in The Bog,
about which she had little pleasant to say; and by the time they got back to
the car, the damp mist had settled over the Stiperstones.
Another Saville link is mentioned
beyond Clun, which Mrs Gandy visited on a car trip (p.57). She had read The Lady of Bleeding Heart Yard which
told her of Lady Frances Coke who at the age of 15 was forced by her stepfather
Sir Edward Coke to marry Sir John Villiers, brother to the Duke of Buckingham.
She was imprisoned, beaten, and given savage penance. Her children were
declared illegitimate, and her husband went mad. Nevertheless she managed to
get away and live in the Hall of the Forest, beyond Newcastle Shropshire
(1939), written too late to guide the author at the time, but certainly a nudge
to her memories. Elements of this Villiers/Buckingham connection are seen in Palace for the Buckinghams, but the use
of the name Buckingham possibly shows an early knowledge of this story, and
that the last Buckingham book was planned when the first was written and the
name Buckingham first introduced (unless the Villiers connection was a happy accident).
The
Neglected Mountain contains scenes in Bishop’s Castle Fair in the Summer
Holidays. This is brought to life by Mrs Gandy, who calls them the “May Fairs”:
“Numerous
gypsies camped in the small bye-lanes round the Forest
when the season of the May Fairs began. Bishop’s Castle, Ludlow
I am sure that adventure is not too
far away. Prejudice against Romany ‘gypsies’ was even then strong, so tales of
friendships across the divide contained particularly important messages for
child readers. Ida Gandy’s remembered account of life in the 1930s brings home
the world that the Saville family encountered when they made their first visit,
when horses and carts outnumbered cars, when water was taken by bucket from
wells and streams, and people not only wore but made clogs and other family
essentials. Mrs Gandy was also observant of birds, and like Malcolm Saville her
favourite was the goldfinch. She describes watching a flock of herons, in a heronry
of at least 28 nests, near the old iron-age enclosure Bury Ditches, which
reminds us of Bury Fields, Alan Denton’s farm. “The young birds made themselves known by a
sharp, metallic clucking, first from one nest, then from another. Sometimes a
mother gave an admonishing cry as though to order silence, an order that always
seemed to be obeyed” (p.142). The one bird she does not mention, unfortunately,
is the peewit, but if they had been common, a peewit call would not have been
of much use as a club signal.
end
