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ThePen is Mightier Than The Sword

The Precious Gift of Memory

The Sherborne I remember best and recall with the greatest affection is a small old-fashioned market town. Through the years, however, it has developed into a much larger “settlement” with the addition of modern and “pseudo-period” period buildings to the sprawling housing estates situated mainly in the northern and western parts of the town. In more recent years the sprawl has encroached on the eastern side as well.  Development of this nature is inevitable, of course, as the population grows with more and more living accommodation required, although it can still come as a shock when the vision entrenched in one’s mind is shattered by reality, as happened to me on my first return visit after many years away ─ this happened in the late 1950’s. My late father took me into what I have since called “new” Sherborne, and I was lost! I actually felt lost, too!

I can still remember to this day, over half a century later, the vivid impression I sustained, the uncanny experience that engulfed me, the strange feeling overwhelming me, so difficult to explain or describe. To me this was not my hometown, my Sherborne. This was like meeting a stranger, we had nothing in common, or so it seemed. But who was the stranger? Could it be I was the stranger? Being my first return visit to Sherborne after so many years away and so many other places visited as far away as Southern Rhodesia (as it was then called, now known as Zimbabwe) and Singapore, and many other places in Asia, Europe and the African Continent, I realised that we were both strangers! Sherborne had moved on while I had been away. I recalled with surprise that it had been a little over ten years I had been away, so the development must have been quite rapid. For many years, even before I was born, there had been very few new building erected, but now this sudden explosion of development. It was too much to bear. Somehow I felt within me an intense desire to leave that modern estate, never more to venture into that part of the town. All my childhood memories had been shattered.

Where were the fields where I had played as a boy? What had happened to the leafy lanes where we had gathered hazelnuts, or pickled catkins in season? We used to call them “lamb’s-tails”. Gone had the school allotments with the war-time trenches dug in them, the wooden duck-boards usually submerged in several inches of water; in their place stood an estate of prefabricated house, so popular after the war. In fact, these “prefabs” sprawled southwards over the field where cows had grazed, and as excited children we had been able to look over the school on occasions and watch a calf being born. That caused us more questions than answers! Those dwellings seemed to go on for miles, stretching down as far as the laundry which backed on to the row of houses facing Cold Harbour, part of the main A30 trunk road through the town making its way from London to Exeter (or Exeter to London, depending your direction of travel!) At one time Sherborne had been an important staging post on this ancient stagecoach route from the Capital to the West Country.

But I digress. I was pondering my introductory shock to the “new” Sherborne back in the late 1950’s. Could this concrete road really be the Muddy Lane of my childhood where my friends and I had played hide-and-seek or cowboys and Indians? There was no longer any charm, no excitement, no room for imagination, in the bricks, the concrete, the bristling television aerials around me. And where had the old stone quarry gone where we used to play cops and robbers? It is all caravans now ─ or it was then at the time of my first return visit.

I know I have already suggested that, in spite of all the development in the town over the past fifty years, it is still possible even to this day to discover the delightful old-world atmosphere and charm of the Sherborne I remember as a boy if one knows where to look and is prepared to use a little imagination. The modern additions may not have destroyed the old-world enchantment completely, yet there is still something missing. It is a void which can only be filled with that precious gift of memory. The Sherborne I am writing about in this Pen4God Ministries Faithful Memories Notebook, together with its surrounding countryside, can mainly be found in my memory.

One of my more treasured possessions is a book from my late father’s library ─ not that he owned very many books, but the ones that he did were all good quality volumes ─ and I believe it was one of his favourites, if not the favourite. It certainly was mine, because we both shared a love for history, especially local history. This book was published over a hundred years ago by a Bournemouth company called W. Mate & Sons, Limited, 62, Commercial Road, as one of a series of Mate’s Illustrated Guides. Under the title of Dorsetshire Illustrated, it cost 2/6 [12½p] ─ a princely sum in those days ─ and was described as “A Complete Handbook to the County of Dorset, Its History and Antiquities”. Now, why am I mentioning this book? Because it has provided us with a perfect introduction to Sherborne and its Abbey. In describing Sherborne as “a clean and well managed town”, it goes on to say that, “The greatest attraction of the place is not, however, in the town itself, but in the Abbey Church of St. Mary. It is the chief object of attraction…” This beautiful old Abbey, in spite of modern development, still dominates the southern part of the “old” town, keeping as it were a motherly eye on the ancient school buildings clustered around it and on the fourteenth century almshouse nearby. It even dominates the ruined old castle, at one time the home of Sir Walter Raleigh, standing on the edge of town.

There is a sense in which the Abbey keeps a motherly eye on the whole town itself, because there are very few places where this magnificent structure cannot be seen. It may be through the trees, across the roofs  (it is interesting to note that in my original writing I used the older form of the word, which is rarely used today ─ “rooves” ─ which tends to date me a little!), or between the houses, there it stands, as someone has described it, “majestic in her coat of rich Hamhill stone.” Even the modern developments cannot block its view. This, then, is the Sherborne about which I write in this Faithful Memories Notebook, a delightful little market town in the north of a beautiful, picturesque county. We will be returning to my father’s favourite book from time to time in these articles, as indeed we will be looking at the Abbey in greater detail as well.

It was in the year AD705 that Sherborne first became a town of any importance, when St. Aldhelm founded a church on the site of which now stands the Abbey. “Upon this holy place, by this clear stream, and on this pleasant hill, I will build a city and a church. And it shall be known throughout all ages as the place of the clear streams, and unto the end of time its children shall call it ─ Sherborne.” So said St. Aldhelm ─ or, to be more precise, a priest by the name of Canon Westcott, who portrayed him ─ in his speech, taken from the Sherborne Pageant of 1905, staged in the grounds of the Old Castle to celebrate the twelve hundredth anniversary of the founding of the town.

Forty years later I wrote a description of the “clear stream” to which St. Aldhelm referred, the River Yeo, as part of my schoolboy masterpiece, and I cannot resist including it here in its original composition. However, upon reflection, even after all this time, I am not absolutely sure that I can claim complete originality for all of it!

“This ‘clear stream’ ─ the River Yeo ─ has a particular charm of its own, winding along between emerald-green fields and beneath tall, majestic trees. In places the water is covered with delightful pink and white water lilies, set in beds of dark green leaves, spreading like a blanket over the rippling surface. At other times it is flanked with bushes and undergrowth, trailing their long, slender vines in the cool, clear water. Under quaint bridges, and again out into the open, it flows; in winter, a fast flowing river, and occasionally a mighty, rushing torrent, flooding the fields on either side with its angry waters; in summer, a gentle stream where waterfowl laze.”

Did I really write that? It’s in the original typed manuscript! It certainly seems to be very “flowery” language for a schoolboy of fourteen, and one which, strictly speaking, is not altogether an accurate description of the river as I remember it some twenty years later. This is confirmed by my school friend, the late Gerald Pitman, in an observation in one of his books. “The Yeo, flowing over clay, is dirty.” Nevertheless, I felt this typically wordy piece of prose by a 1940’s schoolboy ought to be included here, even though it may have been the product of a very fertile imagination.

Just after my father died, in 1961, I walked along the riverbank for a while. The phrase from a familiar old hymn came to my mind. “Change and decay in all around I see…” Somehow everything around me seemed strangely different. Was this the same river, which I had described in my manuscript, where I had played as a boy, sitting for hours with my little green butterfly net catching minnows and collecting them in an old jam jar with string for a handle? (The next day I might well have been using the same net to catch butterflies!) The water appeared to be drying up. The river was certainly smaller than I remembered it. There was no evidence of water lilies, nor did I see any waterfowl, lazing or otherwise. Gerald was right, it even looked dirty. On the other hand, could it be that the eyes of a schoolboy see things very differently than those of an older man? The romance, the excitement, the wonderment of childhood ─ does it all die as one gets older, or is it just dimmed by approaching middle age? At least, it was middle age in 1961, so what about now in the early years of the 21st Century?

Perhaps Sir Frederick Treves has the answer when he writes in his book, Highways and Byways in Dorset. He claims that, “things change but little at Sherborne. The world has passed by, with its unrestful projects and its irreverent breaking up of old landmarks, but the Wessex town has kept green the memory of its past, and has so clung to its possessions that it has to be the up-to-date town as the page of a missal is to a newspaper print. The city of faithful memories is to this day the most picturesque town in Dorset, while many will declare that it is the most pleasant to dwell in.” Like my description of the river, even this may not be strictly accurate today, for it was originally written just after the turn of the 19th Century ─ it was first published in 1906. Nevertheless, I treasure the memories of my early years in Sherborne; the days before the Second World War, when to walk down the main street of the town, so aptly named Cheap Street, at eight o’clock ─ or even nine o’clock sometimes ─ on a Saturday night and buy, for example, a large hand of bananas for a few pennies was an accepted and regular occurrence. It wasn’t called Cheap Street for nothing!

What an experience! I can still recall it quite vividly, even after so many years have been relegated to history, thanks to that precious gift of memory. It was always dark when we ventured out on those Saturday nights ─ or so it seemed ─ because the kindly old gentleman was always bathed in light, with his ruddy face glowing in the light of the paraffin flares illuminating his open-air stall on the Parade, a large open space at the bottom end of Cheap Street, calling his wares. There, in the shadows of the monk’s Conduit ─ an interesting feature which will be explained later in another article ─ he could be heard shouting, “ ’nanas, lovely ripe ’nanas! They be very cheap t’day! ’Nanas, lovely ripe ’nanas! Who d’want this ’ere ’and o’ ripe ’nanas? Only a tanner!” [6d, 2½p] His name was Mr. Evans, one of the town characters.

Yes, those early days, up to and including the Second World War, have left their mark on my life, especially as I ponder the distinct contrast with the present. For example, today, after five o’clock and the shops have closed, the town goes “dead”. Back in the 1930’s the centre of the town throbbed with life until quite late in the evening. Yet they were exciting days, and they provided for me an abundant storehouse of treasured memories. Being blessed with a good memory is one thing, of course, but finding something to prompt it, to drag out from the deepest recesses of my mind those valuable nuggets, like a miner digging for gold, is something else. What I required was a key to unlock that storehouse, to enable me to pour out in abundance those treasures on to the pages of the Faithful Memories Notebook.

The discovery of my schoolboy notebooks and diaries, a large envelope bulging with scribbled notes on an assortment of sheets of paper of varying size, and the 76-page manuscript of my first unpublished literary masterpiece with the impressive title of Romance in Dorset, has provided the key ─ the storehouse is now open! All that remained was for me to commit those memories to paper in an orderly fashion before they were completely forgotten with the creeping advance of old age. What a sheer delight it has been to journey back through the years and wander again around the streets of the city of faithful memories, to travel out into the surrounding countryside of equally enjoyable memories, thanks to that precious gift of memory, and to share them with those who visit this Faithful Memories Notebook website.