With thanks again to my friend Colin Gough for last month’s guest post, my featured picture is a page from a third-form essay he set 55 years ago, titled The Church in the Middle Ages. This month our youngest child prepared to leave home (again – or move house, as she might put it), oldest grandchild graduated with honours from Warwick University in Renaissance and Modern History and youngest left his first primary school, the John Wycliffe in Lutterworth.

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

Me and Uncle Buck roll up at Hunny fair 20 August 2023.

Joe and I were pleased and proud to attend the wedding of my Ecuadorian godson David to the lovely Johanna. I will leave the happy couple to make their own posts of 19 April 2024, showing here gatherings of friends and family the day before and the day after. Happy times in la tierra de mi corazon and of Joe’s birth.

Dave Daze Deluxe

Sunday 7 December 2014

(from Cuba) → Madrid 12.45   15.00 → Gatwick 16.20  17.05 → Rugby 21.28
And then, on reaching home, to be greeted by a snarling Alsatian collie cross who dwarves Rufus; growling anyway, Wendy had emailed me picture of new ‘foster dog’ Amy’s called Logan poor sod doesn’t know it yet having answered to Magic his four years to date. Welcome to the world of Mrs Bailey mate, I gather your knacks being whacked in the morning.

That was hello, and Thursday 21 March 2024 was farewell. A lonely sound, but lovely to walk with you such a good stretch along the way dear Nick, third and last of your line.

A little late but happy birthday Nige at Topside Barracks, Sun 18 Feb 2024: Corregidor.

DDD (Dave Daze Deluxe) Mon 25 Sept 1978: Northampton
My first day at work. Puked up some red pop into bath first thing, arrived in office about 11 … bloke Nigel Cook took me to lunch, not a bad dive called Cagney’s p.m. I started work in Personal under tuition of attractive and pleasant redhead

While dear ones have been lost along the way, there are still many friends and reasons to smile amongst the ruins.

Reading, the greatest gift. After traditional Three Kings’ Day trip with kids and grandkids to Astley Book Farm 2024 material sorted, only two books a month – and yes I know some of these were in the same montage last year! Apart from writing more I hope to read more this year and more discriminatingly, breaking a lifetime’s habit and being prepared to quit on a book if it’s not one I would have chosen for myself (eg one through reading group, gifts deserve a special effort).

All the best for 2024, David.

I never hero-worshipped Hemingway, but blowhard and boorish bully though he was he had a tremendous work ethic, knocking out on this typewriter articles for Esquire and fiction during the 30s in his main kip for Havana fishing trips. I was not allowed to test my weight on the chair – no matter, he always typed standing up anyway. And he didn’t do bad at that, wrote many true sentences. I noted one of them recorded by his biographer Hotchner in my 1994 diary, since also used in Dave Daze

‘the only constructive thing I ever learned about women – that no matter what happened to them and how they turned, you should try to disregard all that and remember them only as they were on the best day they ever had.’