Shropshire, 7.5.06: Beasts Kneaded and Boozy Bread Pudding

S. Abbey. Began the day by reading John Donne: “Man is a lump, where all beasts kneaded be,/Wisdom makes him an Ark where all agree.” And, “That love hath not attained the highest degree/Which is still diligent lest others see.”

All I wrote yesterday balderdash. Just not myself mentally or physically. No boring list of infirmities: all the ills flesh is heir to. They do add up as one ages, though, and have a cumulative succubus effect on vitality.

Yesterday in Shropshire. On the drive from Worcester, forest on either side of roads cut into deep hills of red limestone (?). Carpets of bluebells in the woods, just as authors say. And perhaps because it’s higher and cooler than Kent, daffodils in bloom at the same time, clumps of white and yellow alongside the bluebells. In Kent the daffodils were mostly spent.

Parked at St. Chad’s church, Shrewsbury. A doddering but very sharp elderly woman, slightly stooped and pale, beaky nose and squinty eyes, visited us as angelic presence there, offering us extras of the church poster (which had a price otherwise): “Do take more than one in case the one you have is marred.”

I made the mistake of asking her about the pamphlet re: hatchments (a word we met in Canterbury, that I’m still to fathom), and an intense search began, involving the rector, Rev. Mr. T. Who was stolid and supercilious, greeting both my questions and thanks in total silence. I believe she’s the bane of his existence. I devoutly hope so. She insisted I leave my name and address so they can mail me the pamphlets when they’re found.

A smiling twirling curtseying too girlish altar-guild lady with bunches of flowers. A very friendly parking guide with a slightly Welsh-sounding accent, bright blue rheumy eyes and a high complexion, who presided over the parking lot like an orchestra conductor.

Beautiful city, full of half-timbered houses, as was the town of Much Wenlock through which we drove. The hills and narrow streets reminded me of Kronberg im Taunus.

We were single-minded, though, about seeking the archives. Wonderfully helpful young woman at the tourist information center—sparkling brown eyes. Welsh eyes. I saw two tourist ladies, however, having some joke at my expense. They may have been Welsh and took me for English? (And why, at my age, do I even care and torture myself with whys? They aren’t worth it. One looked like a rather dull camel, all fuzzy lip and big stupid eyes. The other was like a stock figure from a British show about lower middle-class people. I directed a reproachful look at her and she pursed her lips and twisted her neck pertly to show me she was oblivious to reproach from the likes of me.)

In the archives, again that mix: incredible niceness from the receptionist, to a fellow researcher who told me of two other Watmer (Watmore, Watmough) researchers and gave me their addresses, to a Mr. Price who was also researching and talked to me as we worked.

But on the way out, as Steve bought an old Shropshire (repro) map at the receptionist booth and a woman waited in line behind him, I caught her eye, and realized we were Not To Be Taking Her Space. She glared in a way designed to reduce us to worm status. In the glare, she managed to communicate that Americans are so bothersome and crude, an intrusion in her green and pleasant land.

And on to Stottesden (after finding Mary a wonderful pottery hedgehog in a shop window where the owner said, “Oh, yes, Little Rock. I’ll be giving away my age, but when I hear of it, I think of ‘South Pacific’”—a comment that mystified both Steve and me).*

Stottesden: clear evidence of its medieval character in the old stone walls that must once have been drywall but now usually have some mortar. Very thin stone carefully fitted together.

Older farmhouses were a mix of that construction and later (17^th-19^th century?) brick. We took a picture of one such house just outside Stottesden, which had whimsical topiaries—a bird and a ?—in its front yard. It was called, appropriately, Yew Tree Farm.

Beginning to mizzle as we neared Stottesden, which is high and down many narrow hedged country lanes. Church dark inside, its age very evident. The baptismal font, said to be the most beautiful in Shropshire, was magnificent, what we could see if it—Celtic knots carved across it.

Monastic origins of the church evident in its choir. At the head of the south aisle a little chapel-like area I don’t think I’ve seen in any other church, with a seat so that someone in it would face south—i.e., with his/her back to the main aisle and altar, and looking crosswise at the congregation.

Visiting old churches makes me think about liturgical space—how and why it’s arranged as it is, and what theological (or practical) reasons account for the arrangement. You can often see the whole history of Catholicism to Reformation in a single church—altar to pulpit.

The graveyard had a forlorn feel, with benches rotting and one set of stones enclosed with a coping totally overgrown with ivy and weeds. What story lies there?

It’s one of those graveyards in which animals are now allowed to graze (a sign said this is part of a national ecological movement) and had dried clumps of manure in the high wet grass. It, and the church, on a high hillside. One feels the presence of Wales nearby.

Mr. Price had told me the pub, Fighting Cocks, is good, so we stopped there about 4 P.M. Meals were chalked on the board but not to be had. They included a vegetarian bread and butter pudding and for dessert pecan pie and boozy bread pudding.

Signs—old clippings—said the pub was voted best steak pie in Britain in 2000. An array of cocks on the mantel beside us, of every sort—porcelain, metal, and stuffed. A sign next to two said, “Philippine fighting cocks.”

Men talking in thick Shropshire accents that I couldn’t understand. Though rough-seeming, they also seemed not hostile. Country friendliness—a lovely smile on a young man’s face as we met his tractor in a laneway leaving the village.

+ + + + + + + + +

In Stottesden: as we arrive at what we think is the entrance of the church (oh, those glozening English signs that promise so much and deliver so little), a van drives up. Lady with groceries gets out.

She tells us that we’re at the old vicarage. She has a key to the church and will give it to us in case it’s locked.

As she does so (I’ve told her I’m trying to find Watmer roots), she says, “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

What a perfect—gentle, inclusive—way to send a pilgrim forth. And the very line my grandmother spoke to me as she commissioned me to forth in the days before her death and my graduation from high school.

*Well, I've now (16.6.2008) managed to inform my ignorant self. The lady was obviously speaking of Nellie Forbush, the character in "South Pacific" who is from Little Rock. I just read an article about how she was booed on stage in New York, when she announced her place of origin, since this proclamation came on the heels of the Central High crisis in Little Rock. And that crisis, of course, occupied our attention far more than the Broadway play, accounting (in part) for my ignorance of the "South Pacific" reference.

Fakenham, 4.5.06: Lemon Posset, Women's Rights, and Lessons for Pilgrims

Writing now from Fakenham in Co. Norfolk. The last two days rather a blur.

After Chris left us on the morning of the 2^nd, Steve and I went to the library in Canterbury and found its local history section to be closed until the afternoon. So some aimless knocking about Canterbury—

To find a travel kit of multicolored thread for Trudie Reed, who says she’s found this no place else but in England. So off to Marks and Sparks, which didn’t have it. But we did buy things for supper—egg salad and watercress sandwiches, chicken and ham, ploughman’s. Found nice juices—raspberry and orange or strawberry and orange. And tomatoes and a mix of greens—rocket, watercress, and spinach.

We did find the thread at a sewing shop. Turned out it’s called a plait.

And suddenly I look up to admire an elephant—some cast metal; the b and b lady has many of them—that’s catching the morning light in our breakfast nook. And see the lampshade above it, which says, “Beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio impiorum et in via peccatorum”: another pilgrim moment.

We are definitely in via. And the way I seek on this pilgrimage—should seek—is that of the righteous and just . . . .

And back to Canterbury. Found that scented shelf paper we’ve seen only in the British Isles at the sewing shop. Got some lavender-scented boxes. Nice to go out of one’s way to fulfill the needs of someone else and happen on what one needs oneself: pilgrim, take note.

Then on to have a bit of lunch at a Cornish pasty place off the High Street. The day was close, and the air at the outside tables felt good. We sat and talked. To talk with fellow pilgrims often tiptoeing through a minefield. I must learn to be more aware (ware: Warten, watch?) of the needs and feelings of others. Another gift for which I pray on pilgrimage.

Then several hours of research in the local studies room of the library. It was mostly misspent time, except that I was able to obtain the originals of Dorothy Gardiner and Gregory Whatmore on William Watmer the mayor.

And they had bits and pieces of information no one had abstracted, which fill in gaps re: the Wynnes. E.g., once Robert and his wife died of plague, it was confirmed within three weeks and the house was sealed, a guard placed at its door. William Watmer had apparently removed the children by then. Their clothes had to be burned—hence the details in some family histories about local merchants providing clothes (for which the estate paid).

And that Watmer’s papers have survived and are in the Dean and Chapter library of the cathedral. The house on the north side of the High Street west of Mercey (from “mercer,” I find) Lane was owned by the Dean and Chapter.

That the “Scottesden” referred to in the Watmer lineage for arms is Stottesden in Shropshire. William Watmer left there as a young man to go to Canterbury, evidently because—Whatmore suggests—Robert Wynne had preceded him, going with William’s sister Frances. Whatmore says the Wynnes were from Canterbury.

The papers of William Watmer form the bulk of Consistory Court records of Canterbury in the early 1600s, and of dispositions from that period.

Picture emerging: when Charles was killed, there were riots in Canterbury in 1647 when extreme Puritans sought to suppress Christmas. In 1648, more riots. The man who ended up with the Wynne house—his name is in one of the articles; they’re not in front of me—was a Puritan who sought to mollify the extreme faction and was consequently arrested. The 1648 riots were caused by the court returning no true bill found in his case.

He became a Royalist in reaction and died within the year. Surely all of this—coupled with the fact that the mayor Robert died in debt—forms the background to Robert Wynne’s decision to head to Virginia.

And then there are the ties to the Randolphs, multiple ones, through both the Wynne and Epps families, that would have helped him in Virginia. The Randolphs seem to have had connections both to Massachusetts and Virginia, and a turbulent career in the former, which leads me to think that they were not thoroughgoing Puritans.

The picture I get of Kent is of a county much divided in the war. Hardline Puritanism throve in east Kentish places like Biddenden. Canterburians had a vested—an economic—interest in the business of pilgrimage and some must have run afoul of Henry when he sought to suppress the cult of Beckett.

It was a divided area that, by the end of the 17^th century, was a bare ruined choir—something on which Pepys comments.

Well, what more to say? A nice meal—the sandwiches, raw vegetables, and crisps—in our room that evening. I was excessively tired—heat, constant walking, lingering jet lag.

Next day, a quandary. There’s an Epps tomb in St. Clement’s church, Old Romney I’d have dearly loved to see. There’s Ashford, where the Slomans and Epps lived.

But that would have been to take us south when we needed to go north, and we found the Kentish Studies Society archives—to which the Canterbury library kept nudging us—was in Maidstone, east of Canterbury and on our way to Walsingham.

So we forewent Romney and Ashford and went to Maidstone. Where I found a baptism record, 1620, Ashford, for a Mary Sloman who has to be Mary Poythress Wynne.

And where I found the 1619 and 1663 Watmer pedigrees. The first is when William obtained a coat of arms by tying into the Watmough family of Ecclestone.

The second is his son Giles’s pedigree, showing the Randolph connection. I found in both books the Randolphs, Epps, Petts, etc., and copied multiple pedigrees. Amazing, the extent to which those Virginia families were—and would have known they were—cousins.

As we walked to the Kent archives—we’d managed to park only three blocks or so from them, not knowing we were close—we passed a house that had a statue of a nun in old habit holding a cross, facing out the ground floor windows.

On our return, Steve photographed her. As he did so, I saw in the upstairs window a Virgin Mary. As Steve snapped photos, I saw a shadowy presence looking out the window, and then a witch-like face glaring as she opened the door.

Pilgrims: beware. What appears to be a sign may be conveyed by a “witch.” Things are never as they seem. And grace may arise from unexpected places.

Then on—an interminable trip. We hit terrible traffic, a slowdown, skirting London. Only to find the M11, our main road north, was closed. So on to unexpected byways (pilgrim, take note), wending and winding, anxious about a bed to sleep in and a meal, since we’d had only breakfast earlier in the day.

Then, after driving through scrubby and slightly forbidding forest, past barren-looking fields of sheep, and into Fakenham, we stopped at the first b and b we saw. They had no room, but called a place called Smith’s Cottage on Smith’s Lane.

They recommended a pub at Colkirk (pronounced “coker”) for a late supper. Steve had steak and ale pie, Chuck and I fish and chips and peas. We finished with a lemon posset so buttery it was like eating butter beaten with lemon and sugar. Otherwise, food not distinguished, but the pub was very restful, clean, quiet, in a quaint little village I’d love to explore.

Interesting conversations. A woman, two men, the barkeeper (a woman). Woman at bar tells the group she’s half Spanish. The older of the men says he’s a typical English mongrel, too: he’s half German and partly Scottish.

One thread seemed to be about a soap opera they were watching, which has a repressive Christian character—a vicar?—who thinks the Jews should be killed. That led them to a conversation about how the Christians often betray Christian values. And that led to a protracted discussion of women’s rights and how women (barkeep’s contribution) have no option in today’s workplace except to defend themselves.