Early on in ‘proceedings’ I and two of my group of friends, who meet several times a year from around the country, decided that in the absence of our traditional summer gathering perhaps we would read a book together. The three of us settled on Wiltshire Village by Heather and Robin Tanner.
There followed the whole business of ordering a copy of the now out-of-print book online and awaiting its arrival. Mine was the last to arrive and I was about ready to mug the postman on each successive day that he drove straight past. This whole ‘waiting for the post’ has only got a whole lot worse because I’m not sure any of us could have imagined the reading trails that one small book, published in 1939, would open up for us....and the subsequent books we would be ‘forced’ to buy.
Robin and Heather were an arts and crafts couple. True to their values both spiritually and aesthetically, and kindred spirits from the day they first met as teenagers in Chippenham at the end of the First World War, forging a creative life together that makes for the most fulfilling exploration all these years on
Robin trained as a teacher, became a schools inspector but was also an artist of prodigious talent, specialising in etching, whilst Heather, with her First Class degree in English Literature, could provide the written word to accompany his work. Wiltshire Village was their first collaboration and is a fresh and vibrant now as the day it was first published. Recording what, even then, was a vanishing way of life, I have revelled in a book whose traces still echo today in the countryside here. Along with the village buildings and crafts there are beautiful accounts of the village year and the people, all accompanied by Robin's etchings.
There was much discussion here over coffee one day about the Wiltshire hoop-raved wagon. How practical it was, the width of the wheel base to fit the ruts in the track, the outward tilt of the wheels and how these wagons would doubtless have been trundling up and down the lanes around us here....and how the carved decoration and chamfering was about removing as much unnecessary wood as possible to lighten the weight of the whole.
At a time when life has felt a little as if it has stepped back more than a few decades it’s been good to be reminded of how things used to be...
’There was no room for petty selfishness in true craftsmanship; whoever found a new way or improved on an old one shared the discovery and it became part of the tradition followed by all the fellow craftsman who came after him...’
And I find myself relating that to the now and the worldwide collaboration in science and research as we seek ways to treat and improve life chances with the latest affliction. New advances are shared and publicised and we can only hope that, whilst a vaccine may be a long way off, if it does happen its discovery and production will be a worldwide endeavour.
Talking of the postman, or in this case post mistress, she gets a mention in Wiltshire Village (based on Robin and Heather's home village of Kington Langley) along with the complexities of delivering letters to a scattered community many of whom may have the same surname. We love our postie and hats off to him for the round that he has to do.
It reminded me of my early days as a twenty-four-year old rookie rural health visitor. Finding my way around the byways of West Devon and Dartmoor and being paid for it (and with car provided) was quite the novelty in 1978. However, when the only address I had was a cottage name and the village, with no postcode or satnav to guide me, my arrival was often a lengthy process. I would be wholly reliant on the older health visitors who would give me instructions that invariably started with ‘Turn left/right/go straight at Pridham’s Garage...’ The Garage is still there albeit under a different name, and we still direct people to our house by the same method..turn left at the garage, turn right after a hundred yards, go straight for two miles, only house you come to on the right.
I wonder if many of you have recently reconnected with that sense of community that was a given in the days of Wiltshire Village. For most of us our radius from home had shrunk to about a two miles, and it was the introduction to another book, The Open Air - An Anthology of English Country Life by Adrian Bell that made me think...
’Another form of isolation has been brought by motors into country districts. ones circle of friends is no longer the circle of a ten mile radius ...one friend is forty miles in one direction, another twenty-five miles in another, half a dozen are in London...thus people living in a place may have no part in that place fundamentally, or in any place.
I hadn’t really given this much thought ...the advent of the car and what it must have meant...
’Whereas in the old days whoever lived round about you, unless they were extremely difficult, you fitted into your circle of friendship. The more socially gifted thus helped out the less, and the whole was leavened. Now, by more peremptory standards we choose only those with whom we are ‘in sympathy’, the spontaneous functions of local life consequently decay and the number of lonely old people must be legion.’
First published in 1936 The Open Air is, as Adrian Bell suggests, ‘an attempt to catch some glint of the genius of the country in an oblique, perhaps the only way.’ The world order was shifting and I’m grateful that visionaries like Adrian Bell, and Robin and Heather Tanner, captured it and pinned it down before it was lost.
The three of us have exchanged almost daily emails and Wiltshire Village has led naturally along the Robin Tanner trail to his book of letters From Old Chapel Field and his autobiography Double Harness (more work for the postman) both of which are (or were) readily available at You Know Where and reveal more about this astonishing man.
Robin was a gentle soul, kind and caring, loved his friends and treasured their friendships, but was also an inspired and intuitive educationalist with connections to Dartington Hall and courses there in the 1960s along with countless other artists and crafts people. Every page offers up another name to be researched, another trail to follow...I’m currently happily diverted into the world of 1930’s textile designers Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher (even more work for the postman) and their indigo vat and block printed fabrics.
It's been such an inspirational journey so far and there is a way to go yet.
Meanwhile I'd be interested to know if any of you have heard of Robin Tanner....read his books or seen his etchings (maybe even own one)...
Or whether you too have found some inspirational reading trails to follow in recent weeks...
And how about that sense of community...has it flourished were you are...
Our village has established a weekly Covid Chronicle. We all submit our copy and can't wait for each edition to arrive by e mail....there have been walking treasure hunts, photography competitions, someone's created a socially distanced five hole golf course on one of their fields, there are offers to shop and collect prescriptions, there's a plant swap in the church porch and generally everyone is getting to know each other in a way that they might not have done before.
We are all very excited about the party that we will have eventually.
Footnote...
Incidentally the senior health visitors were much better at directions than doctors. The ‘next left’ on one set of definitive instructions from a GP turned out to be a dried up river bed and there was quite a lot of bother and much hilarity extricating myself....'Oh, I didn’t mean ‘that’ left,’ he said when I finally got back.
Recent Comments