Posted on 15 June, 2024

From teacher to priest to writer, a goodly progression – meet Goffy!

Rather than talk about my own writing in this month’s post, I hand the stage to another friend who has become increasingly active as an author in recent years. I have known Colin Gough for the last fifty-five, since he was a teacher at Wisbech Grammar School. With a volume of my boyhood memories to come out later this year, I was more than interested to read his own ‘Scenes from Family Life’ as also his admirable published works in local history. I leave Colin to discuss these in more detail in his own words. The Rev’s up!

Historical enquiry and sheer nosiness!

Both traits have been part of my makeup from my earliest years.  I always wanted to know what was going on and WHY (the perennial question of the inquisitive child).  So it’s not surprising that when moving to a fresh area one of my earliest moves has been to acquire guide books or local histories and to wander around places, looking carefully at buildings, layouts, roads and spaces.  My brain will niggle away at recreating some sense of the concerns of people of the past and how folk chose to live where I live now.

In 2010 I retired after 35 years of church ministry and we moved to live in a former coal mining village in mid-Northumberland, between Alnwick and the coast.  The boundaries of the parish of  SHILBOTTLE were formed in the 1200s when the Norman Tisons and de Vesci families were the power in the land – to be replaced a couple of hundred years later by the Percys, who’ve hung around as Dukes of Northumberland ever since.  I quickly found that in this instance, there didn’t appear much to consult.  Apart from one volume of 20^th century photographs, no work on local history had been undertaken since the magisterial ‘History of Northumberland Vol V’ by John Crawford Hodgson published in the 1890s.  He was primarily an archivist and here at least is to be found references to anything known about the place from medieval manuscripts and archaeological work up to that time.

Primarily an agricultural area, Shilbottle dabbled from its earliest times in coal mining and this increasingly became the way in which money was to be made and livelihoods earned as the demands of the Industrial Revolution resulted in pits that mined tons of house coal in its millions, supplying a high quality, ashless source of powerful heat even to Buckingham Palace!  The advent of the railways of the 1840s enabled a form of viable transport, north and south.

The Norman overlords also established a church and churchyard (unless something had been there before of which there is now no trace) and priests were appointed – later by Alnwick Abbey until the time of the Reformation when the privilege was taken by the Crown.  From the late 17^th century onwards we have Parish Registers and Vestry Meeting minutes and accounts … and before long the urge to find out more grew, especially as a Heritage Lottery Grant towards maintenance of the church required more of a sharing of its story with anyone interested.  I was smitten, and since 2018, research and writing became my companions so that I could share what I learned with others.

Since 2021, three books have emerged:

Church & Community in Shilbottle ~ a chronicle of 900 years   

A retelling of the life of the community through events, people and past-times – with a focus through the story of the one continuing organisation and the people that shaped it and that has witnessed the lives and deaths of most of the population of the place.

A Shilbottle Miscellany

 

More about some of the events and people that brought change, among then Naval Commander Samuel Widdrington whose exploits during the Napoleonic Wars earned him a Portugese knighthood and George Handyside, son of an agricultural worker who made three fortunes in boot and shoe making, property development and popular pharmaceutical remedies.  He left his wealth for the treatment of the poor.

Shilbottle Grave Talk

Something over 10,000 bodies have been buried in the parish churchyard.  Here are stories of 15 families who have left their mortal remains with us.

Copies of the above are available from Colin Gough ([email protected]). 

 And I’ve been no better at leaving things well alone in the affairs of my own family.  The research bug in this struck in 1996 and at intervals since then I have been charting my own life-story and those of my ancestors.  This has resulted in a further volume for the interest of my family and friends.

“… anyone who has received a copy of A Goodly Heritage must realise immediately that this is a significant piece of autobiography and, at the very least, is very illuminating about the various stages of your life and places and parishes where you have lived. My husband and I wanted to read it simultaneously so we shared the reading of it, a section at a time, so that we were able to discuss it. It really kept our interest and made us realise how important it is for future generations of a family to have an understanding of the family’s heritage.”

                                                                                          Sue Brough

 

It’s given me real satisfaction to look back at life’s gifts and opportunities and to be able to capture some of it in print.

Colin Gough