Who would ever try and compare the arable fields and the woodlands of Woodcutts to the Highlands of Scotland? Are there any similarities or are there just differences? The answer is very much in the way the question is looked at. The one certainty is that there is wildlife in both; somewhat different wildlife, but it is certainly there in both cases. At the beginning of October, Meg (Madge) booked a holiday for us at the Aigas Field Centre near Beauly, a few miles north-west of Inverness.
Neither of us had been to any part of Scotland previously, and weren’t we in for a wonderful surprise. A brother-in-law who visits the Highlands every year, gave us a route to follow with copious notes. One of the notes was a ‘very scenic area’. This was written on the map at Glencoe, and what an understatement this was. We had opted to drive up rather than fly, and how glad we were that we had made that decision. The weather was extremely kind to us on the journey up, and we saw plenty of the wonderful countryside and the wildlife.
We drove up the side of Loch Ness but were not given the opportunity of seeing any monster. However we were rather in awe of it, that is the loch, when we read that it was big enough to hold the population of the world ten times over, and contains enough water to fill every lake and reservoir in England. At its deepest at Urquhart Castle, it is 227 meters deep and we don’t even have a shallow pond in Woodcutts. We do have three places where the road gets flooded after heavy rain, but there is no canal linking them, as the Great Caladonian Canal joins the east coast to the west coast. We also have the lane down to Gussage St. Andrew and Cashmore from here, which has lots of water running down it after a downpour. Mind you, there aren’t any boats or water fowl on it, although we have the occasional dead pheasant which has been run over.
By the time we had reached our destination at Aigas, we thought that things could not get better, but how wrong we were. The house itself, was built by wealthy Victorians in the style of Balmoral, as a shooting lodge. It was here that we were to eat and meet Lady Lucy, our hostess and members of the staff (rangers), together with the other visitors. All meals were taken together at a long table in the hall, which sat some thirty people. The food and the company were excellent. Our very adequate accommodation was in log cabins within easy walking distance of the house.
After breakfast each morning we were taken by minibus on tours of the countryside, including the riverside, lochs, the coast, glens and mountainside to walk to vantage points to watch red deer rutting, fallow deer, birds of all kinds including, sea eagle, golden eagle, kites, buzzards and other raptors, grouse, (we unfortunately were not to see capercaillie and ptarmigan), numerous water fowl and waders, crossbills and crested tits. We also saw where beavers had been working and the position of their lodge, an otter crossing a river, the common seal and grey seal on the coast, as well as a pine marten, not far from the house.
On our daily excursions, we were kept informed of the natural history of the sites visited, the history, the geology and archaeology as well as being shown the wildlife which our very competent rangers pointed out long before we were able to spot it. This was a naturalist’s dream holiday and I hope that one day I will go back.
If we were away for the day, we were given packed lunches to take with us, which were very varied and extremely good. If we returned before four thirty, we enjoyed afternoon tea with homemade cake, followed at seven by a home cooked three course dinner. During dinner and in the common room afterwards, the day was discussed and as there were two different groups, comparisons were made. It was amazing how soon the natural world broke down barriers, and complete strangers were chatting happily together about the scenes and the day’s experiences. The memories of this holiday will be with us for a long time, and the few paragraphs written here about it, are completely inadequate; to give it justice would require much more space than the Downsman could give me. Perhaps I should have made more notes and then I could have written a complete book on it.
Since returning home, I have not been able to stop reading about the Highlands. Firstly I read a book on the Highland clearances and then went on to read books written by John Lister-Kaye, the naturalist owner of the Aigas Field Centre. He is a great naturalist and his books are well worth reading, particularly if you are interested in the Highlands.
Returning home was quite a change, leaves were still greener and certainly the colours of the glens weren’t duplicated here, nor did we have red deer stags roaring or a huge variety of waterfowls and waders and certainly no pine martins, but we certainly had lots of visitors to our bird table once we had replenished the peanuts and fat balls. Sitting on the settle at the kitchen table, looking south out of the window towards the apple tree, which lost its leaves several weeks ago, whose branches now act as a intermediate perch for small birds coming for food, I am ideally situated to see what species arrive.
On the first three days of November we had a strange visitor, but we haven’t seen it since. It was a female greenfinch which had a white hood, extending down to its shoulders. Obviously partly albino, it is different, which makes it a target for predators and possibly a pariah within its own species. Where it has gone we don’t know; maybe it will return someday. Other visitors have included numbers of long tailed tits and what I believe to be willow tits, or could they be marsh tits? These two tits are so similar in looks and size, that it is difficult to tell them apart. Another surprise was to see a goldfinch on several occasions, feeding on the nuts together with chaffinches and greenfinches. Other tits seen include blue, great and coal. We may not have crested tits but we do have a male and a female greater spotted woodpecker. We also have roe deer and the occasional stoat and weasel, so our wildlife may not be directly comparable to that of the Highlands, but there is plenty of it, if only it is looked for.
Now I must say thank you for reading this, and God bless you.
When I set out in 2004 to chronicle the lives of the servicemen commemorated on the village War Memorial I did not have any plan in mind to complete the first phase of my endeavour just ahead of the 90th anniversary of the armistice that brought some respite to the cataclysmic suffering of the nations involved. Even for those not particularly interested in military history one cannot fail to grasp the enormity of events that spanned those four terrible years of total war. No conflict previous, or since, has touched the heart of our towns and villages at such an intimate level. Barely a family in the land escaped the pain of losing a loved husband, son or close relation. It was a time when the harbinger of death was never far distant from the minds of both rich and poor alike for this was a war that encompassed all strands of our society.
In order to form an understanding of how twenty-three men from Sixpenny Handley and its environs came to make the supreme sacrifice it is important to remember that in 1914, the British Empire reigned near supreme across the globe. Critical to the continuing prosperity of the Empire and the influence that this gave to our island home was the Royal Navy whose protective strength ensured unfettered passage for our merchant shipping coursing the oceans in pursuance of trade. Such dominance was viewed with unease, particularly by Germany where despite the royal linkage between George V and the Kaiser [they were cousins] mistrust of intent was never far from the minds of their respective governments
This potent brew of suspicion of purpose between the major Powers of Europe culminated in the assassination in June 1914 of Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, during an ill-advised state visit to Sarajevo, capital of Serb-populated Bosnia. In the few weeks of peace remaining and in the face of intense diplomatic positioning within Europe the armies of the principal players mobilised. War was the inevitable outcome.
When it ended at the eleventh hour of the eleventh month of 1918, 5,152,115 service men and women from Allied Powers were dead, while casualties from the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria totalled 3,386,200* but, I advise, these figures vary depending on which of the many tables reporting the statistics of the Great War are used.
Casualties from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland approached a million dead and well in excess of that figure wounded. Registering for perpetuity the names of the fallen was in itself a monumental task, a task which for the drive and determination of one man may never have been accomplished. Born at Clifton, Bristol in June 1869, Fabian Arthur Goulstone Ware was 45-years old in August 1914, too old to be accepted into the armed forces. A most learned man who had attended universities in London and Paris before embarking on a mainly educationally focused career, Fabian Ware on his return to London in 1905, from service in Africa where he had held the prestigious post of Director of Education on the Transvaal Legislative Council, was appointed editor to the Morning Post, a position he was to hold for the next six years.
Following his disappointment at being rejected for military service, and having stood down from being on the board of Rio Tinto Limited, Ware enlisted the help of Viscount Milner [under whom he had served in the Transvaal] and within weeks he found himself in France commanding a mobile ambulance unit.
At this point it is necessary to take a step back from the Great War and reflect on how the British Army had dealt with its dead in campaigns past. Sadly, it is an area of our military history that is not exactly covered in glory for in truth scant regard was paid to those who had fallen in battle [or who had died across the breadth of the Empire while on garrison duty]. In the awful aftermath of Waterloo in June 1815, the dead were collected and buried in huge pits though, I believe, efforts were made to separate the officer fallen from their men and either repatriate their bodies or erect suitable memorials. The Crimea War [March 1854 to February 1856] was little different and it was not until The Second Boer War [1899 to 1902] that public disquiet, mainly aired through articles in the national press, raised a general awareness of the neglect being shown towards those who had laid down their lives in the service of their country. Fabain Ware, as a newspaper editor during the early part of the 20th Century and who had been in South Africa in the immediate aftermath of the conflict there, was mindful that something needed to be done, particularly after arriving in France to find that the approach to the marking and recording of graves was little changed from times past.
Benefitting from a position of experience as an administrator, Ware set about badgering the field commanders [who probably regarded him as an infernal nuisance] and still working within the auspices of the Red Cross he set about coordinating the work of insisting that casualties should be correctly identified and their place of rest noted. Such was his undaunted determination to oversee due recognition be given to the dead that in 1915, his work was officially transferred from the Red Cross to the Army with Ware himself being appointed head of the organisation that was now titled the Graves Registration Commission [GRC]. As a mark of the importance now being given to his department, Fabian Ware was appointed to the rank of Major General.
By the autumn of 1915, the GRC had registered over 31,000 graves, a figure that by the late spring of 1916, had risen to approximately 50,000 and this was before the terrible conflict on the Somme had begun. It was around this time that Ware began to give careful consideration as to how these graves would be maintained, once the fighting ended. Already, the more or less static nature of trench-warfare and the increasing weight of artillery bombardment meant that many of the graves dug immediately behind the lines were being destroyed. Nevertheless, he remained unflinching in his resolve and with the help of Edward, Prince of Wales and other influential personage, Ware wrote a memorandum on the subject and this was duly presented to the Imperial War Conference of 1917. As a consequence of this historic memorandum the Imperial War Graves Commission [IWGC] came into being on May 21st, 1917, by a Royal Charter, with the Prince of Wales appointed as it President and Fabian Ware its Vice-Chairman, a position he was destined to hold until he retired from the Commission in 1948.
These few brief paragraphs may imply that Fabian Ware’s work was relatively plain sailing. Nothing, I fear, could be further from the truth for although a few of a like mind agreed his aims in principal many were vehemently opposed. One example will suffice to illustrate the barriers that he had to overcome and this was his insistence that officers’ bodies would not be repatriated to the United Kingdom for private interment, neither should they be afforded separate plots or memorial tablets. The maxim that they fell beside their men and they will be buried with their men prevailed in 1918, and has remained so ever since.
Finally, for this a subject upon which many books have been written, in the eventual establishment of the numerous cemeteries in which our glorious war dead now lie, along with the many memorials to those who have no known grave [and upon which are hundreds of thousands of names chiselled into the tablets], all maintained in perpetuity, the finest architects Sir Edwin Lutyens [1869 to 1944] being to the fore were commissioned to ensure that those who made the supreme sacrifice for King and Country would rest for ever young in the proudest of surroundings.
So, for the families of our village who lost either husband or son [and in some cases two sons] some degree of closure has been made possible by the vision of that quite remarkable man, Fabian Arthur Goulstone Ware.
In preparing this article I acknowledge Wikipedia for notes concerning Sir Fabian Ware, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for additional material and Sparticus Educational for statistical data [indicated by asterisk] pertaining to casualties sustained in the Great War.
Ahead of preparing profiles for the three servicemen who died in the Second World War, I am grateful to the many Downsman readers who have commented on my writing, the most recent being Mike Dennis who telephoned me from Marnhull to say that Sapper Arthur New [see The Downsman, February 2005] married Margaret New [nee Hill] from Uley in Gloucestershire. Subsequently, Margaret was to marry Joe Rideout of New Barn.
A little while ago a friend gave me a small collection of bits and pieces he had found metal detecting in a field at Gussage All Saints. Amongst these, a small brass hinge, probably from an item of luggage, caught my eye as it appeared to have been inscribed. Closer inspection revealed it was the owner’s name and home town, Sarum, engraved in fine copper plate script. However, I couldn’t clearly decipher the name although the prefix of ‘Gen’ showed he was a military gentleman. I decided with the Sarum (Salisbury) connection it was worth leaving it at the museum there for David Algar to examine. I know from previous experience that David has a vast knowledge of artefacts, coins and history relating to the Salisbury area. I was not to be disappointed as David was able to provide me with a fascinating story regarding the owner of this seemingly mundane artefact.
The inscription read ‘Gen Schrapnel SARUM. Henry Schrapnel was born in 1761 into a family whose home was at Midway Manor, Bradford on Avon. He had a career in the Royal Artillery rising to the rank of Major General. His invention of a devastating exploding shell was a major contribution to the success of the coalition against Napoleon in the Peninsular War. Apparently he spent about £30,000 of his own money on armament research and was never adequately compensated by the British Government. His name has passed into the language as a term for shell fragments. He is recorded as leasing the King’s House, now the home of Salisbury Museum, in 1785. He was probably there for many years as the hinge probably relates to this period and he is unlikely to have been a General at the age of 24, although further research should sort this out. He died at Peartree House, Southampton in 1842 and is buried in the family vault in Bradford on Avon. It has taken some 200 years for this piece to return to the King’s House!
Wife says to husband: “You never take me to any expensive places.” Husband says, “OK, get your coat on — I’m going to take you to the most expensive place in town.” “Where?” she asks......................... Husband replies, “The petrol station!”
EVERY DAY’S A GIFT. THAT’S WHY THEY CALL IT THE PRESENT
“That’s the trouble having a wife who eats nothing but chicken before she goes to bed,” said George to Arthur. “She always wakes up in a fowl mood.”
Why you should row with your spouse If you argue with your husband or wife you are likely to live longer than if you don’t, according to recent research. Apparently, the occasional marital row is far better for your health than bottling up the tensions inside you.
A study of 192 marriages by researchers at a University of Public Health has discovered that couples who suppress their emotions are twice as likely to die earlier than those where at least one partner expressed their anger. As one professor explains, “Marriage must be built on.” “Reconciliation after conflict.” If you don’t express your anger, but swallow your words, they can quite literally KILL YOU.
The world must be flat because I’ve been walking on the edge all my life.
Failure is just nature’s way of saying, “Not yet, my dear.”
A woman was trying hard to get the ketchup to come out of the bottle. The phone rang so she asked her 4-year-old daughter to answer it. “It’s the vicar, Mummy,” the child said to her mother. Then she added, “Mummy can’t come to the phone right now, she’s hitting the bottle.”
A little girl was watching her mother do the dishes at the kitchen sink when she noticed several strands of white hair in contrast to her brunette head. She looked at her mother and inquisitively asked, “Why are some of your hairs white, mum?” Her mother replied, “Every time you do something wrong and make me cry or unhappy, one of my hairs turns white.” The little girl thought about this for a while and then said, “Mum, how come all of grandma’s hairs are white?”
Dentist: “I have to pull the aching tooth, but don’t worry, it will take just five minutes.”
Patient: “How much will it cost?”
Dentist: “It’s £50.”
Patient: “£50 for just a few minute’s work?”
Dentist: “I can extract it very slowly if you like?”
A man walks into a hotel dressed in full medieval armour and asks the manager, “Do you have a room for a knight?”
REMEMBER: Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping them up!