Grange Farm (Mrs Tomkins)
Alfred, Alfred, Alfred !
Bring me the dusky day
So I may place it
With the other jams
Grange Farm (Thomas Little – Farmhand)
I am frying an egg
On the tin barn roof
The chickens enjoy the view
Grange Farm (Alfred Tomkins – Owner of the Farm)
We are often naked
In our marital bed
Surrounded by rational turnips
Grange Farm (Alfred Tomkins – Owner of the Farm)
We rise at 5
Break our night fast at 6
By 7 we are ready for 8
Tolpuddle Farm (J C Smoth – Owner of the Farm)
Two rivers
Run through my farm
My wife (Mary) and I swim separately
Exchanging our rivers each day
Cliff Cave – Smallholder
I am collecting samples
Of the marsh gases
For the winter months
(Coal is so expensive)
Notice next to the Coroners Office in Greenbridge
Keep Out
Deep Pond
Often Drained
Lucinda’s Diary (1921)
Lucinda Bas-Scott was born in Faversham in 1900 and attended the Slade School of Art . She is best known for her landscapes and collages. She and her husband Gerald Bas-Scott vanished whilst on trip to the Soviet Union in 1937.
I came across two pages of her diary in a collection of Left Book Club ephemera in a bookshop in Salisbury
July 10th
On summer days Gerald and I visit the downs mainly to sketch and read. Today was no exception. We climbed nearly to the summit of the hill where I sketched the nearby flowers whilst Gerald read a novel by Mr James.
At about two in the afternoon Gerald said to me that he thought that I was his Eve and he was my Adam in the first garden. I joked that no serpent was present. He warned me that serpents were always present but well hidden.
July 12th
We climbed the downs again today. The weather was less sunny but none the less it was very warm. The shadows of the clouds produced a curious kaleidoscope of patterns on the fields below.
Note
Lucinda’s observations on that July afternoon in 1921 sowed the germ for her Kaleidoscope (Landscape) series of paintings (there were five in all). These were offered at auction in 1962 and have not been seen in public since.
Bus Shelters
A number of bus shelters in rural areas have been painted aquamarine instead of the normal green, Ian Chateris who has responsibility for all bus shelters in the county has denied reports that the contractor involved was colour blind.
From the Greenbridge Gazette
Twinning Towns
Sir Jomo Left was in charge of the twinning of Greenbridge with the Serbian town of Kanic in1984. He now lives in Lower Tripping and wants to twin the village again. This time his idea is more radical. Sir Jomo noted the following when I met him recently.
“ The twinning of Greenbridge and Kanic in the 1980s was very successful, but very very expensive costing the town some £28.000 a year. Obviously Lower Tripping does not have these funds, so it was decided to twin our village with Upper Tripping three miles away. This has been even more successful than the Greenbridge twinning at a fraction of the cost. We are hoping to twin with Middle Tripping next year so that all the Trippings are twinned. I feel that future generations in the Trippings will benefit greatly with the cross cultural and geographical activities.”
Notice at the Apollo Tearooms in Senton
My Great Great Aunt was the model used by J W Waterhouse in his painting Hylas and the Nymphs. In view of this fact all visitors from Manchester can take advantage of our two for one offer on our delicious cream teas
George Cordice
Miss Eileen Test (84) met the poet in the 1950s when he came to live in her village. She remembers:
“He was a strange sort of man, very tall and with a thick beard. If he met you in the village, he would greet you like a long lost friend. I do not think he had to buy a drink in all the time he lived here.
He was a great lover of Swinburne and when he found out that I had an admiration for the great man we became firm friends. He began to write poems for me but this was hindered by the fact that he only wrote poetry during anticyclonic periods of weather. He often started poems but never finished them. As the weather in the early 1950s was decidedly mixed he left the village and moved to Trinidad where he was able to complete more poems with only the hurricane seasons to worry him.
I will read you fragments of the poems that I still have. Sadly I lost some during the years since George left. ”
Celandine
I shall find you in the sweet-lands
My small illicit flowers
Woven into the decorations
Of your many hidden towers
In the ballroom barns —–
Sweet Eileen
There be no sugar
In those far hills
All that thee needs
Rests here
A —-
In the Early Morning Mirror
Many dreams will go
Sadly yours will linger
After —-
Grange Farm – (Amos Tomkins – Son of the Owner)
One of the great pleasures of modern farming is that it enables me to erect fences everywhere.
To be continued