Author: Kevan Bundell

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The Matrix and me.

The Matrix and me.

I saw The Matrix when it was first released. I was flying back to LHR on an overnight BA flight and it was one of that month’s newly released movies. Sci-fi – always my favourite – but different. Fast, original and, of course, visually stunning. The best since Bladerunner.

I was especially impressed by the excellent, unexpected ending:

Neo has survived, triumphed even, when suddenly the action shifts to a quite new location. Its a college classroom or gym. People are sat in a circle. They are taking their head-sets off. There are comments about what a great game it was. A couple of the players reach down to the hold-all bags under their chairs. They take out machine guns and proceed to shoot the rest of the circle. We are still in the Matrix !

Hey, you say, that’s not how it ends! It ends with Neo in a phone box wondering what he’ll do next and then doing a Superman – shooting off in to the sky.

You are correct. That is indeed how the film ends and I can find no evidence at all that the ending I saw ever existed.

So where the devil did it come from ? The usual accusation when I tell the tale is that I dreamt it. Which is quite possible. It was an overnight flight . . . But it’s an amazingly good dramatic twist-of-an-ending to make up while I’m asleep . . .

Alternatively, what if you found you wanted to make more Matrix movies ? Was this an original Director’s ending which the studio immediately cut and replaced with the phone box so that they could make Matrix 2 ?

Possibly. But I can find no evidence.

What I do notice, however, is that this is not the only occasion when I have experienced something which I clearly remember or knew to be the case in the past suddenly no longer being true in the present. These are usually quite minor items and easily dismissed as miss-rememberings, misunderstandings, mistakes. You have to be alert even to notice them, and even more so to remember them. I am alert and I do sometimes notice them. I point them out to my family when they occur. However, I cannot now remember them. I can give no examples. I am unable to. There are glitches in reality, but they escape us. This one, The Matrix’s ending, is the exception. I did not forget it.

So what are we to make of it all ? There is the obvious possibility that we exist within a ‘Matrix’. Just like the movie. The glitches in reality are up-dates, or corrections to the code.

This is not as ridiculous an idea as it might seem. Faced with the intractable absurdities of quantum weirdness, it has been suggested, as a logical possibility, that the existence of both ourselves and our world can reasonably be explained by the notion that we are living in a computer simulation created by a higher intelligence. Indeed, that we may be simulations ourselves . . .

How are we to know ? Is there any way of telling ? Perhaps there is not. But I invite you to be alert, to notice and to try to remember. The evidence is out there. We must strive to hold on to it, to know reality.

Unless it’s better not to notice, and if you do, then to forget . . .

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NOTE : This is a true story, as you may have gathered. Apart from this Matrix incident, the other major incident I do remember is when, after many years of travelling on the London Underground, Cocksfooters – at the top end of the Piccadilly Line – suddenly became Cockfosters. Reality changed. And before that, Ticket to Ryde became Ticket to Ride. And who remembers when Abba used to sing take your teeth out, before it became Chiquitita ? (No, that’s just silly. Stop it at once). The thing is, no one else remembers. Yesterday has been quite forgotten.

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St Peter’s Church and Sir Bevis of Hampton.

You may have noticed that the tower of St Peter’s Church is adorned around with a series of carvings of a variety of figures, some human, some animal. They are characters from the medieval legend of Sir Bevis of Hampton – i.e. of Southampton. Bevois Valley, south of Portswood, is named after him. The legend is long and complicated and if you want to know the details you can find them at https://historicsouthampton.co.uk/bevis/

 Meanwhile, it is not too difficult to match up the characters in the legend with the figures on the tower.

For a start, there’s Sir Bevis himself :   

And his horse Arondel :  

  

 

And the twins :  

and the boar :      and the lion :  

However, one of the figures is commonly said to be a character not from the Legend of Sir Bevis but rather from the local Curdridge ledgend of Kitty Knocks :

   This story tells of a young woman who drowned one night on Kitnocks Hill while trying to elope. I have written about this affair previously in the Parish News (see: https://bundellbros.co.uk/kevansmiscellany/category/kitnocks-kitty-nocks-curdridge-witch). I have even written a song about it, which you can listen to at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyeD8Jf4KSU (at 18.56).

The question is, who was this character actually intended to be when they built the tower ? Was it meant to be Kitty Nocks, or was it meant to be another character from the Sir Bevis legend – Princess Josian, for example, Sir Bevis’s girlfriend ? In order to try and settle the matter, I headed off to the Hampshire Records Office in Winchester.

I found the papers – letters, documents, plans – relating to the building of St Peter’s Church in 1887. Unfortunately they had nothing to say about the tower, or its inhabitants.

It turns out that the tower was built some seven years later than the church itself – and there are no papers at all in the Records Office relating to the tower.

The mystery remains then. Is it Kitty Knocks, or is it not ?

Kevan Bundell – www.bundellbros.co.uk

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Miss Lorna Bayley.

Miss Bayley joined the staff of Eastwick Primary School, I calculate, sometime in 1963/4. I remember her arrival. Suddenly things began to change in our morning school assembly. There were new ideas, new components, creative changes.

She taught my older brother Arnold in his last year at Eastwick in ‘63/4. She became my class teacher in September ’64, and remained so for two years until we left in July 1966.

She had a one-eyed Song Thrush in her garden called Nelson.

She introduced a maths-teaching tool called Colour Factor which was very modern but which I totally failed to comprehend.

It was the time of the Tokyo Olympics. She set maths questions on the board and a race to answer them, awarding Gold, Silver and Bronze stars to the winners . . . I remained starless.

However, she also got us boys gardening (the girls were busy dressmaking I think) – and she put up a bird table outside the classroom window. This was pioneering stuff. At this time feeding the birds mostly meant throwing crusts of bread out in the back garden or hanging up bacon rind. She bought proper bird feed. She put up large RSPB bird identification charts on the classroom wall and Robbie Medland and I competed to identify each bird. We thereby came to know birds which we had never actually seen – and many which I have still not seen.

Miss Balyley also encouraged my artistic leanings – drawing and painting animals and birds. She even set me up with a one-boy show of my work on the corridor wall.

She paid for me to join the RSPB, and continued to pay my subscription for some years after I had left Eastwick and moved away. We corresponded during that time, until I grew into a teenager and probably just stopped writing any more.

I did meet her once during those few years, at an Eastwick School fete in, I would guess, 1968. By this time I had been growing for a couple more years. I towered above her. As the photo of her class shows, she was really very short, only I hadn’t noticed when I was short too. Now I was an awkward thirteen year old. I don’t know what I said to her. I hope I thanked her for being so very good to me.

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Shawford’s Lake, Curdridge

It has long been a puzzle to me why the stream which runs by Lake Road/ Silverlake, through Kitnocks Gully and down through Fairthorne Manor to the Hamble, is called Shawford’s Lake. It is in fact a perennial stream of very modest dimensions. It’s certainly nothing like a lake.

But it’s not the only local stream that’s called a lake – there’s also Ford Lake which joins the Hamble at the junction of Wangfield Lane and Maddoxford Lane; and there’s Posbrook Lake which joins at the old slipway on Church Lane in Botley. Just before the Hamble joins the Solent, there’s a tributary called Hook Lake.

Some while ago, I happened to be perusing the Ordnance Survey map of the Solent. I noticed that many of the tidal channels in Portsmouth, Langstone and Chichester Harbours, are called lakes. The main channel of Portsmouth Harbour is fed, for example, by Fareham, Porchester, Spider and Bombketch Lakes. Langstone Harbour is similarly blessed with Broad, Russell’s and Sinah Lakes.

There was obviously a mystery here to be explored.

I consulted my friend David Chun, expert on and author of The River Hamble: A History.  It seems that the word lake has two different etymological origins. On the one hand, our usual and modern word lake comes, via French, from Latin lacus, meaning a lake, basin or tank. There is no suggestion there of a stream. However, the now dialect word used for our tributary streams and channels comes from Germanic Anglo Saxon lacu, meaning lake, pool and also stream. These words are of quite separate origin, but, unsurprisingly, they have become, over time, conflated and confused.

Puzzle solved.

However, another puzzle remains. Silverlake – which is not obviously silver nor a lake – derives its name from Anglo-Saxon Sulaford, which means ford of/at the boggy place. It was a ford on the important road from Botley, through Curdridge, to Shedfield and on to Wickham – before it was bridged – or rather, culverted. As Anglo-Saxon gave way to Middle and so to Modern English, Sula became silver and ford was replaced with lake, referring to the stream. But then how, why and when did it then become Shawford’s Lake ?


Kevan Bundell

www.bundellbros.co.uk

 

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The history of Tanglewood

With the arrival of the modern Land Registry, old title deeds have become superfluous and are often simply thrown away when properties come to be sold. Fortunately, our solicitor saved the deeds for us when we moved into Tanglewood and I spent several weeks’ worth of winter evenings trying to unravel the history of the house and its land.

The older papers ‑ the earliest dated 5th July 1853 ‑ are beautifully handwritten documents on thick waxed paper with elaborately scripted titles. Two are written on printed engrossment paper and are sealed at the bottom with wax. From 1925, however, the papers are typed and full of errors and obvious failures to understand what was being copied. The art and experience of the legal clerk had gone.

Among the documents is an “Abstract of Title”, dated 6th August 1883. It begins with a summary of the Will of the 15th March 1862 of one William Camper, concerning, “All those two cottages and premises then lately erected and built by him … with the land and farm buildings thereon and adjoining thereto”. The original building was it seems a pair of two up two down “cottages”, both since substantially extended, one of which, has now become Tanglewood.

“William Camper of Gosport in the parish of Alverstoke in the County of Southampton, Shipbuilder” was one of the founders of the now world-famous yacht-builders firm of Camper and Nicholsons, still based in Gosport. In 1809 the young William Camper was apprenticed for a period of seven years to Francis Amos, a former ferry‑man between Gosport and Portsmouth who had turned to boat building near the ferry steps in 1783. At the age of about thirty‑five Camper took over the shipyard, presumably on the death of Amos, and in the following years built up with his partner Benjamin Nicholson, such a profitable business that he not only became wealthy but also earned himself the status of “Gentry” in the local Post Office Directory.

He seems to have bought the plot of land which has now become Tanglewood in about 1857 and he must have had the cottages built sometime between then and March 1862, the date of his Will. He also seems to have had built a couple of other properties nearby, further along the lane, including a modest Victorian villa which is still called “Camper House”.

When William Camper died in 1863 the land and cottages went to his daughter Mary. Unfortunately, things then appear not to have gone well. Between 1872 and 1883, when Mary died, “various dealings” with a number of individuals resulted in the ownership of the property being divided into three shares, two owned by two of Mary’s four sons and one by a Henry Morton Cotton. It looks as though the other two brothers, and possibly Mary’s second husband, John Earl, had used their shares to raise loans which they failed to repay.

Given this situation the two remaining brothers presumably had no choice but to sell the property. It was sold on the 6th August 1883 to Robert Anthony Burrell of Fairthorne and Augusta Burrell, Spinster, his sister, for the sum of £850.

The Burrells were from a wealthy mine‑owning family from Durham and had come down in 1878 and bought the 120 acre Fairthorne Estate, one boundary of which lay adjacent or close to Camper’s land. There is no record of what they did with the cottages and land but it may have been used to house some of the estate staff. Other houses nearby were especially built by Augusta Burrell for this purpose.

Robert Burrell died in 1910 and his sister, after a long life of local philanthropy, died in 1924. In 1925 the Fairthorne estate was sold by Augusta Burrell’s executors. What had been Camper’s cottages and land was sold to one George William Jupe, Farmer, on the 16th September of that year, for the sum of £1,250. In fact, George Jupe had already been occupying the cottage and land since the 1900’s. This is not stated in the documents, but Alf Mears, who was born in one of the Fairthorne staff cottages in 1912 and then lived in another, told me that it was certainly the case. At one time, said Mr Mears, Jupe courted his Aunt, but nothing came of it and Jupe remained a bachelor. He lived in the cottage with a housekeeper, who kept a small shop in the front room, and her daughter.

What Mr Mears did not know, but the documents reveal, is that in order to buy the property Mr Jupe had borrowed a substantial sum of money. On the day after the sale he mortgaged the entire property to one Allan Bowes Wilson of Hutton Rudby, Yorks, for £1000. Wilson was clearly a relative ‑ perhaps the father or brother ‑ of Augusta Burrell’s solictor John George Wilson of the Durham firm of Wilson, Ornsby and Cadle. Unfortunately, it seems that Jupe was never able to repay the loan. Mr Mears recalls that some time before the war Jupe moved out of the cottage and went to live in a shack on another piece of land that he owned or rented in the village. When I told Mr Mears about the mortgage and how much Jupe had paid for the property he replied that Jupe had been a fool and the property never worth so much.

Jupe must have moved out within a few years because by 1930 the cottage and land were occupied and run as a smallholding by William George and Dorothy Rose Pink. It was during this time that the property at last acquired a name. Although the property had become known informally as Pink’s Farm, when the registration of smallholdings was required, it was named “Field View”, borrowing the already existing name of the other half of the cottage.

The Pinks remained in Field View – or Pink’s farm – until 1971, a year or two after William Pink had died, and the following year Edmund Luxmore, the final heir to the Jupe mortgage, sold the property to our immediate predecessors, who both modernised and extended the house and gave it the name “Tanglewood”.

The deeds of the property now end with some papers relating to our purchase of Tanglewood in the summer of 1993, taking us to modern times. As mentioned earlier, the oldest document dates to 1853, so the deeds now cover one hundred and forty years of our home’s history. However, after some time and study I discovered that the deeds actually take us a great deal further back than the 1850’s – as far back, in fact, as the fourteenth century.

The fields which are now Tanglewood were formerly part of the lands of Bishops Waltham Manor. In 1925, the same year that George Jupe purchased the property from the Fairthorne Estate, the copyhold rights of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, “Lords of the said Manor of Bishops Waltham”, were “enfranchised and conveyed ……. in fee simple as freehold henceforth and for ever discharged from all fines quit rents heriots and other incidents of copyhold tenure”. In other words, the land became freehold and the Manor’s rights over the property were abolished. Prior to that, however, whenever the property was sold the new owner had to be ‘admitted’ by the payment of a ‘fine’ to the court of the Manor. Among the papers we inherited with the house and land is a copy of a document giving such admission, with the original dated November 1864. The document lists and describes not only Tanglewood but also other adjacent and nearby plots of land. The description of one of these reads as follows:

“…. by estimation ten acres of land now called Outlands formerly Isold in the tithing of Curdridge in six closes now divided under the yearly rent of 1s being late parcel of one messuage and one yard of Boudland and one toft and half a yard of Boudland formerly Isold at Park and other premises ….”

The word “Isold” was a puzzle to me. The other unfamiliar words were in the dictionary ‑ a messuage is a dwelling with its outbuildings and attached land; a toft is a dwelling with attached rights to use common land and “Boudland” is presumably “bondland”, a holding where the tenant was obliged to render some kind of services at harvest and at ploughing time to the Lord of the Manor. “Isold”, however, was not in the dictionary.

At first sight, except for the capitals, it appeared to be a verb ‑ something which had happened or been done to the land ‑ but without knowing what it might mean I had some doubt. It was only when my neighbour, a local historian, handed me a copy of the “1332 and 1464 Rentals of the Manors of Bishops Waltham”, translated from the Latin originals by Harold Barstow, (1992), that the mystery was solved. There in the list of tenants and their holdings for 1464 I found, “ISOLDA daughter of the late Andrew at Park”. I realised immediately that I had been missing the clue given by the word “formerly”. This is in fact always used in the documents – as standard legal usage – to refer to a previous owner. Isolda at Park had managed to survive centuries of intervening tenancies and continue to appear on the court’s description of the land ‑ a medieval landholder in a nineteenth century document.

Isolda’s name first appears on the list of 1332, although it was only added at some later and unspecified time when the list was updated. She is shown as having succeeded one Andrew le Thatchare to “one cottage in purpresture” ‑ that is, a cottage built by encroaching on a public road or track. By 1464, however, she had become a more substantial landholder and is recorded as having four tenancies scattered throughout the southern part of the tithing of Curdridge.   It then became clear from a sketch map prepared by E.M. Stevenson on the basis of Harold Barstow’s translation (“Curdridge in 1464”, Hampshire Field Club,1993) that one of her holdings included the land now occupied by Tanglewood (look for Q3) :

The medieval documents show that Isolda’s predecessors to the holdings were also at Parks. One tenancy was previously held by her father Andrew; the other three were previously held by one Peter at Park ‑ perhaps her uncle or her brother. Peter in turn had been preceded by Roger at Park in one case and by Robert at Park in another. The third holding appears to have been the one already mentioned above as having come from Andrew le Thatchare. One of Peter’s holdings had earlier been held by Thomas and Margaret at Park, as indeed had the holding Isolda presumably inherited from her father. By 1464, however, there are no other at Park’s listed as tenants not only in the tithing of Curdridge but anywhere on the Manor’s lands. The question is, where had the family gone?

The Black Death swept England in 1348‑49 and decimated whole villages. However, that would seem too early to explain why only Isolda seems to have remained by 1464 when there were clearly other at Parks alive in the intervening years. On the other hand, rates of mortality, particularly among mothers and infants, were high enough in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries irrespective of the plague and perhaps this is the reason not only for the absence of other at Parks but also why Isolda inherited from Peter at Park as well as her father, Andrew. Her name survived in the documents, I believe, because she was the first tenant to be written down and recorded in the court’s lists. This record therefore became part of the defining description of the holding as it passed from tenant to tenant across the centuries.

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The History of Tanglewood – Part 2

Since I wrote the above, new evidence has come to light about the original form of the house built for William camper in 1860 (or thereabouts). It seems that the original house may in fact have been one – not two.

William Camper’s Will of the 15th March 1862 says “All those two cottages and premises then lately erected and built by him … with the land and farm buildings thereon and adjoining thereto”. I concluded from this that the original building was a pair of two up two down “cottages”. However, Flem and Edna Alison – from whom we bought Tanglewood – have always begged to differ. Having rebuilt half the house, and added to it, in the early ‘70s, they maintained that it was originally built as one house. This would explain the clear presence of a bricked-up doorway in the middle of the front elevation – which was always a puzzle.

Last year we had a downstairs bathroom created between our downstairs bedroom at the front and the back room behind. That is, between the front and back rooms of the old part of the building. We made some interesting discoveries.

Firstly, we unburied a short brick path running parallel with and between the two rooms. Christina from up the road, whose grandparents had lived in the house (the Pinks), confirmed that this was the floor of the cellar under the stairs – which also served as the air-raid shelter during the war.

Secondly, our builders happened to expose a patch of the rear wall of our bedroom, the front room. The patterned brickwork revealed clearly matched the brickwork of the original outside walls elsewhere. That is, this must once also have been an exterior wall and the original house must only have been one room deep – two downstairs and two upstairs. The rooms behind and the division of the house must have come later.

I can speculate when.  During George Jupe’s time the house was as it had been built and his housekeeper’s shop in one of the front rooms (which then sported a bay window) was accessed by the front door. After the property was repossessed – and before the Pink’s moved in ? – the house was divided and more rooms added at the back. Unfortunately, the only witness I could have checked this with, David Mears, who told me about Jupe and his housekeeper, is no longer with us.

So what are we to make of William Camper’s Will saying “those two cottages lately built” ? If the original Tanglewood was one, where’s the other ? My guess is that it might refer to the semis up the lane which sit beside Camper House. I had a word with the current occupant of one of the two and he was of the opinion that the house was once one. If so, then either another house was added beside the original, or, as in the case of Tanglewood, a single dwelling was subsequently rent asunder.

2024

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Curdridge and Curbridge – the same or different ?

          

                 Curdridge                                                       Curbridge

I have often wondered whether the two Curs in our parish[1] are the same or different. That is, are they of same etymological origin, or are they just an historical coincidence ?

The first thing I noticed when I began to explore this mystery is that the first edition of the Ordnance Survey 1 inch map of South Hampshire solved the problem by deciding that they were one and the same. According to the map there is no such place as Curdridge. Everything is labelled Curbridge – not only Curbridge itself, but also Curbridge Common (the fields from the top of Station Hill to Lockhams Road, Curdridge Lane and The Plantation) and Curbridge House (now Kitnocks House at the top of Kitnocks Hill). They should, of course, be Curdridge Common and Curdridge House. Either the surveyors got confused or maybe someone in the office decided that the surveyors had made a spelling mistake. Fortunately, this was all corrected in later editions.

The next thing I did was e-mail my friend, and local historian, David Chun. He has written a fine book on the history of the River Hamble and its surrounds so I thought I’d ask what he knew about Curdridge and Curbridge. He advised me that he had read that ‘place name interpretation is complex, and not something that an amateur should dabble in!’

However, he also referred me to ‘The Place-Names of Hampshire’ by Richard Coates (1989). He then pointed out that there was a copy available on Amazon for 79p. I bought it at once. The postage was a good bit more of course, but still, it was a good purchase: it answered my question.

Curdridge originates from an Anglo-Saxon name meaning Cuthred’s ridge. In other words, some chap called Cuthred ‘owned’ or had otherwise been granted possession of what we now know as the village of Curdridge, which lies – largely – on a ridge.

Curbridge, meanwhile, was variously known – or at least spelt –as Kernebrugge, Kerebrigge, Kernebregge and Cornebrigge. These names – or spellings – do not obviously have any connection to our man Cuthred. The common cur component in the two village names is, it would seem, a coincidence.

But then there is another mystery. Mr Coates is not at all sure what the meaning of Curbridgde’s Kerne, etc, might in fact be. He is convinced on historical-linguistic grounds that it comes from the Anglo-Saxon for quern – that is, the lower stone of a hand-driven grinding mill, once a common domestic item. He is then understandably unconvinced that anyone would try to build a bridge over a river with a collection of quern-stones. It is, he says, a question he prefers to leave open.

One possibility, of course, is that kern does not refer to – or describe – the bridge, but was, as it is now, the name of the river. But then why would you name a river after a grinding stone ?

My reluctant conclusion is that what David said is right and that this is not the sort of thing an amateur should dabble in.


Kevan Bundell

  1. The Parish is Curdridge, of which Curbridge is a hamlet. ↑

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Frog Mill or Paper Mill ?

Frog Mill or Paper Mill ?

A few months ago I mentioned in the Parish News that Frogmill Track – off Wangfield Lane – is so-called because it leads, by footpath, to the now derelict Frog Mill. This was a paper mill, not a corn mill. Rumour says that it used to make paper for Bank of England bank notes, or for the Morning Post newspaper. After my comment appeared I received a phone call from Miss Katherine Stone, formerly of `The Elms’, Outlands Lane, now living in Botley. She was keen to tell me that the correct name of the mill is Paper Mill, not Frog Mill. Her grandfather lived there and always called it by that name.

Here was a mystery. It is certainly known as Frog Mill, or Frogmill, nowadays, and is named as such on OS maps. But even within living memory it was also, it seems, known as Paper Mill. I immediately contacted Dennis Stokes of the Botley and Curdridge Local history Society to see if he could help solve the conundrum. He sent me a paper from the Society’s archives, researched and written by John Hammond , which tells the following story :

Just a quarter of a mile upstream from Frog/Paper Mill sits Durley Mill. In the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries this mill was owned by a family called Frogge. Furthermore the deeds of this mill called it `Frogmill’ right up to the 20th century. Our mill, meanwhile, was, from its earliest record, in 1648, `called a Papermill’ and it was not until 1738 that it is first referred to as Frog Mill. By 1834 it is clearly referred to as `a paper mill known as Frogmill’.

There was obviously some confusion over the centuries and the name Frog transferred from Durley Mill to the Paper Mill, despite the name Frogge remaining on the former’s deeds. John Hammond suggests that Durley Mill `was, no doubt, referred to generally by the name of whoever the owner at that time might be’. This would explain at least why it lost the Frog name over time, leaving the name free to float downstream.

By 1862 Paper Mill was, according to its deeds, `long since disused’, although people continued to live in its associated cottage. John Hammond reports that Jesse Bannell (who was Ms Stone’s Grandfather) and his family lived there from 1871 until at least 1891 and that Walter Henry Elliott and family lived there from 1901 until the 1920s. By 1938 the cottage was no longer occupied and by 1965 the building were all derelict.

It remains a minor mystery how it was that while everyone else followed the confusing of the names and mills, those who lived there still knew very well that the `correct’ name was in fact Paper Mill. We must thank Miss Stone for keeping this knowledge alive.

Kevan Bundell

11.08.15

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Richard Phillimore (1907 – 2004).

I first met Commander Richard Phillimore RN (Rtrd) in about 1968 when a friend took me to the Stamp Club which Richard hosted in the playroom of his ancestral home, Shedfield House, near Southampton.  The room had been Richard’s playroom when he was a boy, in the 19-teens’s.  Now it was full of young people again, swapping stamps.  It was not that Richard was particularly interested in stamps, it was rather that he was committed to helping young people, both practically and spiritually.

Richard first got  involved with young people when he was a junior officer in the Royal Navy in the late 1930s.  He was put in charge of boy recruits sent from shore based training establishments to his ship.  He was disturbed to find that they all behaved like zombies, highly disciplined and without personality.  He tried to encourage them to be individuals. (What his superiors might have thought of this approach is unknown . . . ).  But the key event in Richard’s commitment to young people came in 1940 when he found himself about to crash- land in an RAF Wellington bomber which had ran out of fuel.  Richard prayed for the crew and for himself.  He promised that if he should be spared he would like to give his life to helping young people.  He was spared, but he was left hanging upside down from the wreckage trapped by his twisted legs.  He was told by his doctors that he would never walk again.  Fortunately this proved not to be the case and after expert medical care he was back playing cricket – his favourite game – within a year.

I met Richard a few years after he had met the Focolare – an ecumenical movement originating in Italy.[1]  He was always looking for new spiritual movements, especially those which might be attractive to young people. He had gone to a Focolare meeting in London and inspired by what he had heard, he came home and started a group for young people.  I was one of those who became involved, attracted by the practical advice of how to put love into action.  Richard provided us with a place to meet and with transport in his old Volvo to meetings where we spoke about our experiences of trying to put love into practice.  He also took us to the annual Focolare Mariapolis in Manchester and to meetings in London.  He took groups to Focolare centres in Rome, Loppiano and Vallo and to Belgium. There were always young people coming to stay at Shedfield House, including from Belgium and from Northern Ireland – a mixed group of Catholics and Protestants.  Sometimes, however, Richard’s enthusiasm could perhaps overrun his understanding.  He once organised his own Mariapolis for local young people, somewhat to the alarm of the Focolare HQ in London, who only heard about it at the last minute !

The Focolare /GEN was only one of Richard’s many spiritual adventures.  At home he was a stalwart of his local Anglican Church and a Sunday-school teacher.  He was also involved with a local Community Church,  with an Alpha Group,  and with the YMCA, helping to tackle the very practical problem of homelessness and rough sleeping among young people in the 1980s.  He also took a group of young people to Taizé in France.

*

In 1996 I asked Richard if he wouldn’t mind me interviewing him in order to write a brief article on his life and role in the village, as a farmer and local Squire.  I was planning on an hour or two.  “We might as well start at the beginning”, he said, and proceeded to recount his entire life in month by month – sometimes week by week – detail.  We finally finished nearly one year later.

I was particularly fascinated by his experiences during the Second World War.  He had flown as an observer in Fairy Swordfishes and Grumman Avengers.  He had been deputed by his Admiral to check out the new rockets that the RAF were fitting to Hurricanes and Typhoons – which is how they came to be fitted to Swordfishes too.  He had visited Hiroshima only six weeks after the bomb.

However, he was particularly interested in telling his spiritual adventures and in 2000 Richard produced his own version of his life, entitled  ‘A Spiritual Odyssey’.

I had clearly failed him.[2]

Richard’s autobiography is a fascinating account of Richard’s thoughts and explorations of spirituality over his long life.  Near the end he writes :

‘I hope that this short book may be of value to lay people and especially to those like myself, who are of an inquisitive nature, and want to know what is God’s will for us on our Christian pilgrimage.’

He was indeed spiritually inquisitive, and he always kept to his promise to try and help young people find both themselves and God.  It was a privilege to be his friend.  Richard passed away in 2004 at the age of 97.

[1] http://www.focolare.org/en

[2] I never did write my intended article.  However, my notes and recordings of the interviews now form part of the Phillimore Papers archived in the Hampshire Records Office.  So too does ‘A Spiritual Odyssey’, which you can read  here via the Menu tabs.