Felix qui potuit

Reading Felix Dennis' obituary notice put me in mind of my great-great-grandparents Peter and Jane Davis. Their grave in Dorsington Churchyard, Warwickshire is just down the road from Felix's home, where he died on Sunday. Once an enfant terrible, Felix's can-do approach brought him both friends and fortune. Having 22 Godchildren says it all really. Oh, and he loved trees.

Having quoted the diary of F.E. Witts in my last post, I found myself walking past his former home this morning. Five of us started out from the Coach and Horses on the Fosseway and walked up through Lower Slaughter. Switching to the right bank of the River Eye, we saw what is now The Lords of the Manor Hotel on our left as we approached Upper Slaughter.

On the rails

It's Festival time again - the racing version - and the daffodils have come out to order. This little array lines the railings of a house in Park Place - I biked past this morning en route to the (deserted) shops. Everyone is bent on getting up to the course in good time.

Yesterday, we drove West into the setting sun for my talk to the Lingen History Fellowship on my ancestor's Diary. En route, we stopped in Kingsland, but neither pub there was then serving food. We found something eventually at the Mortimer Cross Inn, near the place where 4,000 soldiers were killed in February 1461. So I read in the menu - enough to spoil your appetite.

"The literary landscape of Shropshire"

This is the subtitle of a recently-published anthology edited by one Margaret Wilson, whom I don't know from a bar of soap. A copy arrived here while we were away - with compliments: a nice surprise! The reason became clear when I looked down the list of contributors: my ancestor Peter Davis' name appears alongside those of others rather more celebrated - Boswell J., Darwin C., Dickens C., Lawrence D.H., Milton J., Owen W. to name but a few.

Though thanked for the contributions Ms. Wilson selected from Peter Davis' Diary of a Shropshire Farmer, I can't for the life of me remember being asked about this beforehand. Ah well, no harm done: rather the reverse, as the two extracts are well selected, and sit alongside a handsome photograph by a Geoff Taylor, taken I fancy from (rather than of) Peter Davis' family home, Dean Park.

The book looks and feels good: it would grace any coffee table - I couldn't fit the whole of the cover onto my scanner.

"Why do we have to get richer?"

This was the question posed by Mark Tully in Sunday's Something Understood on Radio 4. (It's on - live - either very early or very late, but you can of course listen online till Sunday next.)

Something Understood is my "go to" programme each week, when I reach for the button of my bedside play again radio. Five eclectically-chosen pieces of music, four prose or verse snippets (Ronald Pickup is one of the readers this week), and a shortish informal interview: that's the pattern. Tully concentrates more upon the questions than the answers, often drawing on his long experience in India.

Gandhian economist, Devaki Jain, this week's interviewee, considered the value of craft work as a contribution to a nation's health and wealth. This question was in my mind also yesterday, as I inspected the modern designer furniture etc. at this year's Celebration of Craftsmanship & Design, held just down the road from us. Caroline and I biked along together, meeting up with friends. They, unlike us, were prospective buyers, so I tried to divide the prices by the number of hours I imagined the piece had taken to make. Ikea, it's not.

The exhibition is held in one of Cheltenham's finest buildings (in recent years, part of Cheltenham College). The catalogue attempts - not entirely accurately - to narrate the history of the building and its owners: I took a particular interest in that aspect, as the first major name on the list, the 3rd Baron Northwick has a walk-on part in my ancestor, Peter Davis' The diary of a Shropshire Farmer. They were near contemporaries, born in the same parish.

Photography wasn't allowed in the exhibition building: this impression is therefore the best I could manage - taken through one of the windows, where a trio of Judith Nicoll's driftwood wading birds were displayed. Godwits (though "Goodwits" for some reason in the catalogue).

We came away, stimulated, but in need of a cup of tea.

A heat wave!

I took this photograph in Shrewsbury this morning: both she and I were feeling the heat.

I had caught the train there yesterday, overdressed, and with my rucksack loaded down with copies of The Diary of a Shropshire Farmer. This morning, after my talk about the book to the Shropshire Family History Society, I still had a nearly full rucksack, too heavy to carry very far in the warm weather which has suddenly come upon us.

And in my room in the Old Bell, where I was billeted for the night, I cursed my first mosquito of the year.

Leintwardine

The village of Leintwardine, on the River Teme in far North Herefordshire, is where I stayed, in great comfort, last night. Its extremely active History Society asked me to talk about The Diary of a Shropshire Farmer.

Not only did the denizens of Leintwardine turn out in force, but I was given a splendid dinner (and breakfast) for my pains. And my hostess turned out to be a cousin by marriage, her grandmother featuring in one of the Diary's family trees I prepared as an Appendix.

The parish church's chancel hosts a collection of misericords: on the South side, they are ancient but much damaged. On the North, there are a couple of lively present day scenes, recently installed to commemorate the village pub's late landlady, Flossie, and the butcher (still happily with us). Andrew Pearson carved them.

"Arrow Vicarage"

Gertrude Louisa Davis' 1865/6 diary has recently been painstakingly transcribed by my Canadian cousin Bruce and his wife. Born in July 1847, she started writing a regular diary when aged nearly 15, and Bruce and Genie have now typed up four volumes/years. There isn't as much of significance in them as in her father's from three decades earlier, but part of the entry for 16th May 1865 interested me: "Papa went to a luncheon at Arrow Vicarage."

Arrow was six miles North of the Davis home in 1865, Bickmarsh Hall. And Arrow Vicarage (photographed, above, at around the time of Peter Davis' visit) was purchased by his great-grandson, my father, 89 years afterwards.

Presteigne

Pausing for lunch at The Feathers in Ledbury, we drove to Presteigne today. We are staying at Radnor House, opposite the Assembly Rooms, where I am due to speak tomorrow morning about Peter Davis' Diary.

After the Diary period, Peter Davis moved North to Diddlebury, and then 20-odd miles South to Milton Farm, near Shobdon. From there, he was married - in Pembridge Church. On our final run in to Presteigne, we stopped at both the church and the farm to inspect. Each impressed by its size, and what a view it is from the farmhouse!

This evening, there's been a concert by the Carducci String Quartet, 87.5% of whom you can see in my rather poor photograph - together with Presteigne Festival President, Michael Berkeley. Michael's Oboe Quintet ("Into the ravine") received its premiere, oboist Nick Daniel being out of my picture. "My pieces are much more spare since my illness," Michael said. (Before the concert, he had shared an interesting platform with Nick, David Matthews and Sally Beamish.)

Tenbury Wells

Tenbury Wells and District History Society invited me over yesterday evening, to talk about my ancestor, Peter Davis of Dean Park. I gave them the story of the two 1830s diaries that had come to light in recent years, published last year. One of the dividends has been meeting up with new cousins and discovering resources such as this photograph: it was taken from Dean Park, looking over the River Teme to Tenbury Wells. Those present at the meeting were pretty sure that the tall house was The Court, owned by Septimus Godson at the time of the diaries.

Now it's no longer - indeed the meeting was held very close to where it would have stood, in the 1870s Pump Rooms. Mineral water was found in The Court's grounds only a couple of years after the last entry in Peter Davis' second diary.

A bonus day

"Fair and rather mild. Good bye fair twenty-ninth for another four years." This is how my ancestor, Peter Davis opened his diary entry in 1836. I am preparing a talk on it, to be given to the church's 55+ Club tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, to mark today (when the weather was much the same as in 1836) with something unusual, I biked to Warden Hill, Badgeworth and Shurdington, to look at their three churches. This is one of Tom Denny's sensational windows in St Christopher's, Warden Hill - "The Ravens", made in 1986. It's inspired by the Western Counties of Ireland, where ravens are common, and Luke, 12:24, "Think of the ravens: they neither sow nor reap; they have no storehouse or barn; yet God feeds them. You are worth far more than the birds."

View from the Clumps

"What vasty thighs outspread to give thee birth,
DIDCOT, thou marvel of the plain?"

Thus Kit Wright begins his Ode to Didcot Power Station, composed in 2005: his step-grandchildren live nearby, and he confesses to finding it rather beautiful. And so it perhaps appears, at least from the safe distance of the Wittenham Clumps. We climbed up to them, from Dorchester, on a grey, mainly sunless Saturday morning.

I had long been interested in exploring the Clumps, as one of them may possibly feature in the background of our family heirloom, the oil painting of "The Bull" bred by my great-great-grandfather Peter Davis. (Enough: I've blogged about this before.) I returned from the walk this weekend, no wiser, but with the thought that I might ask the people at Earth Trust, which owns the Clumps, whether they have any ideas on the subject.

Didcot burns a small amount of biomass (sawdust), but large amounts of oil, natural gas, and in particular coal. So, sorry Kit: I can't get out of my mind that it's amongst the top 10 most polluting power stations in the UK, which means that the cooling towers etc. spoil - rather than enhance - the view for this onlooker.

"A celebration of Shropshire agriculture"

Paul Dobraszczyk, Andy Wigley, James Bowen, Douglas Grounds, Pamela Sambrook and I were the speakers at this rather interesting day meeting, organised by the Shropshire and Marches Georgian Group. I spoke first, about The Diary of a Shropshire Farmer: it must have been pretty well-received, as I only came back with one copy of the book left unsold. We stayed with friends a little way South of Culmington Village Hall, where the event took place: as we were going to be rather early arriving, we made a minor detour up the lane from the A49 in Bromfield, to take a look at King's Head Farm. The Diarist lived there throughout the 1850s, and indeed my great-grandfather was born there. The place looks a bit desolate today. Culmington village is a surprise: at first you think it must be all along the main road, but tucked away to the East are a number of black and white houses and farm buildings, together with a curious church (All Saints), with Saxon origins clearly visible and a Kempe-like St Michael in one of the South Nave windows. We left before the end, to travel home mainly by daylight, and were rewarded by a remarkable sunset over Ludlow.

The book is launched!

"The Diary of a Shropshire Farmer: A Young Yeoman’s Life and Travels 1835-37" was officially launched today: I billed the invitation, Cheltenham Festival of Literature, Salon des Refusés, because my suggestion to Director Sarah Smyth that the book be featured in this year's Festival fell upon deaf ears. (Notwithstanding, he adds bitterly, it chimed with two of the Festival's themes, Legacy and Locally Sourced.)

Ah well! It didn't stop us having a great all-day party at home, with some 50 people dropping in, and more than 40 copies of the book signed and sold. It undoubtedly helped that we were able to handle the original texts, brought over for the occasion by cousin Bruce from New Brunswick, and also to see the original oil painting of the Peter Davis-bred Bull ("that bovine BMW" as cousin Susannah terms it).

Though family history retains its attractions even after all the hard work has been completed, its real dividend is the variety of living characters it throws up. Or, as Tolstoy wrote, The leaves of a tree delight us more than the roots.

"The Diary of a Shropshire farmer" - again

It's arrived! There can be nothing much more satisfying than to receive a copy of one's own book in the post. Or seeing one's name as author on Amazon.

As trailed previously, my great-great-grandfather, a farmer, wrote a diary, two volumes of which have only fairly recently come to light. They cover his mini-Grand Tour of the North of England and Scotland as a young man of 23, and his day-to-day life in Shropshire during the two years following. Together, they give a snapshot of what British life was like in the 1830s. I have included an introduction, sketching the changes that he witnessed, and that our landscape faces today. This is the bare outline, anyway: it conceals an awful lot of hard work, and not just by me. Let's hope for some reviews!

"The Diary of a Shropshire Farmer"

I mentioned last week the impending publication by Amberley of my great-great-grandfather's diary: well, now here's what it will look like. I'm told the book will be in my hands in four weeks' time.

A kind friend let me use her Claude Hayes Haymaking on the cover. Ideally, there would be a portrait of the diarist on the front, but there is none: so little is known about him apart from the two diaries - discovered by chance - which make up this volume! As I say in my introduction, it's a lot down to the fact that my father never knew his grandfather; my grandfather never knew his, nor his father his.

Peter Davis' diary

I mentioned last year that I was on the way to seeing my ancestor, Peter Davis' diary into print: well, I now have a date from my publishers, Amberley: I caught the bus to their new Stroud offices - pictured - on Tuesday.

And the date? Rather fortuitously, it's my birthday, 30th May! So, look out for more in due course about "The Diary of a Shropshire farmer: a young yeoman's life and travels 1835-37".

"Travels in pre-Victorian Britain"

Today, I've realised a long-held ambition - to take a step towards publishing the 1835 travel diary of my ancestor, Peter Davis. I can't claim that all the hard work in this is mine. (There is a page of acknowledgments at the end of my finalised draft.) Nor can I show anyone a handsomely bound book, with pictures: that I hope will come. But at least the work's accomplished, even if many years after I first received a transcript of the diary from a kind cousin in New South Wales.

The tricky bit will be to link in some of the photographs of the places Peter Davis visited, which I took when I followed in his footsteps last May.

One of the objectives of publication is to elicit more information about my ancestor and his family: with a name like Davis, it's easy to get confused. Perhaps nuggets will emerge in due course.

Davis family history

I spotted this sign when walking down Bond Street last week. This A.B. Davis was no relation of ours (or not to my knowledge anyway). But another A.B. Davis was my grandfather. His ancestry is currently taking up quite a bit of my time, thanks to an incredible piece of good luck.

I've mentioned previously about the family's origins. A.B.D.'s grandfather Peter is the earliest Davis of which we know much: his travel diary of 1835 is a vital record, if not a literary masterpiece.

Now, to cut a long story short, thanks to the curiosity and initiative of my cousin Bruce Coates of New Brunswick, he has acquired a slightly later Peter Davis diary, amongst many other (later) family papers. And, what's more, he and his wife Genie have struggled against many difficulties to transcribe it.

Last night, Bruce sent me this poignant entry made on the day Peter's father died, 30th August 1837: "Warm clear day. This morning about ¼ to 5 o’clock my poor dear Father departed this life without a struggle having bourne a lingering illness of nearly 3 months. In the 69th year of his age. May the Lord have mercy upon the soul of my best friend upon earth."

Isn't this worth a thousand dry facts unearthed via FamilySearch?

Plastered on my birthday

I'm sorry to report that my grand tour - see my last post Northwards Ho! - ended yesterday with a bump. On the last leg of my journey, biking home from Brackley, I was intending to head for Chipping Norton, when instead I headed into the tarmac, and to Banbury Hospital. Coming down a steepish hill at speed with a clear road ahead, my front wheel hit a pothole and buckled. I didn't know too much about what happened next.

An amazing procession of extremely helpful people then introduced themselves to me: the couple with a first aid kit in their car, and telephone (for a 999 call); the local police; the ambulance crew; a team of nurses at the hospital; Dr Ahmed; the radiographer; the Plaster Queen - and above all Caroline, who dropped everything and rushed over to be with me, drive me home (and rescue the remains of the bike from the roadside).

And so I returned home to my birthday tea party feeling rather sheepish and very battered and bruised, with possibly a fractured foot - hence the plaster. (Agnes took this picture, and also photographed the remains of my cycle helmet, see below, without which I would certainly not be writing this today.)

Oh dear, and it had all gone so well till then! After a cold, wet start from Ludlow, the weather gradually improved once I had reached Edinburgh. The cycling was glorious when I was on canal paths and country lanes - less so at the times when my route took me along the side of a dual carriageway. All but one of the 16 trains I caught ran to time. I met as planned - amongst others - some Christian Ecology Link and RCE contacts. I visited more than 20 cathedrals and churches (more counting the ones which were locked).

But more importantly (as it was the object of the exercise), I checked out most of the places where my ancestor Peter Davis had been (and which he had written about) on his travels 174 years ago. If I found it tiring, getting round his 800-mile itinerary by comfortable train (mostly) with 100 miles on my bike, then he must have been completely exhausted after his fortnight spent mainly on top of rattly coaches with 100 miles on foot!

Northwards Ho!

On Monday morning, I am setting off by bicycle from the Shropshire farm where my great-great-grandfather lived on a journey North. He made the same trip, 830 miles, in 1835, and wrote it up in a journal. This was later transcribed by his granddaughter, and copied to me by a cousin in New South Wales.

Peter Davis walked more than 100 miles during his fortnight, but for the most part travelled by coach. I shall try to bike the bits he walked, and then put the bike on the train. Bikes weren't available in 1835, and trains only just: he describes catching the one from Liverpool to Manchester.

So it's something of an adventure!