By Peter Neville-Hadley
Meridian Writers’ Group
CHELTENHAM,
England—One of the last surviving sites of the ancient sport of deer
coursing, Lodge Park, about 25 kilometres east of Cheltenham, has itself to be
hunted down. Despite maps and instructions, my approach on winding lanes was
unintentionally cautious and circuitous, but I finally caught sight of the
property down a long, straight and very narrow road, marking the edge of the
grand Sherborne Estate it had once served.
The compact, two-storey
hunting lodge of 1634, constructed from the warm yellow stone of the region and
now prettily dappled with lichens, was described as “built at the great Cost
and Charges of a noble true hearted Gentleman, more for the pleasure of his
worthy Friends, then his owne profit.”
This was one John “Crump”
Dutton, who was given permission by Oliver Cromwell to take bucks and roes from
nearby Wychwood Forest to fill the park he had constructed on a swathe of
otherwise useless wasteland.
The grounds and lodge are
today owned by the conservation charity the National Trust, but “Crump” Dutton
was also public-spirited in his day and he made the facility available to his
countrymen — or at least to those rich enough to indulge in such
expensive pleasures:
“It is agreed upon that
the keeper shall put up his Deer at a days warning for any Gentleman to run his
Dogs paying his Fees which is half a Crown a Dog and twelve pence to the
Slipper for a breathing Course.”
Coursing is hunting by
sight rather than smell, and the principle entertainment of deer-coursing was
to race a pair of dogs against each other for gambling purposes, not to obtain
something for the pot. A “breathing Course” left the deer alive. Half a crown
in those days would be more than $25 today, a very handsome sum of money for
the time.
The “Slipper” was the man
who held the dogs in a special double collar allowing them to be released at
the same time. The winner was the one closest to the deer at the time it leapt
a small ditch opposite the lodge, before leaping to safety across a second
ditch too wide for the dogs to manage.
Deer-coursing gets a
revival each October when modern deer-hounds are let slip in a recreation of
the ancient sport, but in pursuit of a mechanical lure in what is described as
“the Formula One of 1634.” Dogs are brought in from as far away as Switzerland,
and many participants dress in 17th-century costume.
The lodge itself was
disembowelled by several subsequent owners, and successively remodelled as a
dower house, labourers’ cottages and a private residence again before being
bequeathed to the Trust in 1982, which started its own hunt for the building’s
original form. Vast forgotten basement kitchens were discovered, once used to
produce banquets for those enjoying a day’s sport.
The ascent to the flat
roof is past portraits of several generations of Duttons to a sweeping view
similar to the one they must have enjoyed themselves: England at its most green
and pleasant.
ACCESS
For more information on
Lodge Park visit the National Trust website at
www.nationaltrust.org.uk
and click on “Visits & Holidays.”
For information on travel
in Britain go to the Visit Britain website at
www.visitbritain.com
.
PHOTO CAPTION
Most of Brookwood Cemetery is well-maintained, but the northeast section,
where Edith Thompson lies buried, is not.
PHOTO CREDIT
John Masters/Meridian Writers’ Group
All aboard for Britain’s biggest burial place
By John Masters
Meridian Writers’ Group
BROOKWOOD, England—When the London Necropolis was designed it was
meant to be not just the dead centre of town, but a town in its own right: a
veritable city of the passed-on.
The necropolis was one of those grand Victorian schemes based on
enlightened social reform. The idea was that, for health reasons (and just
because imperial London liked to build big), henceforth all of London’s dead
would be laid to rest in the same place, well outside of the capital.
The London Necropolis, about 50 kilometres southwest of the city, was
originally meant to cover 810 hectares. In the event, only 180 hectares were
ever opened, but that still makes Brookwood Cemetery, as it’s now called,
Britain’s largest burial place, with 250,000 residents.
It’s simple enough to reach: from Victoria Station take the train to
Brookwood, just past Woking; the trip takes 30 minutes. Walk through the
railway underpass and you’re in the graveyard.
It used to be even easier to get to: from 1854 until 1941 it had its own
railroad. There were two stations in the cemetery (six had originally been
planned) and a London terminus next to Victoria Station. It still stands, at
121 Westminster Bridge Road, with a passageway for hearses. The year 1900 is
inscribed under its crowning arch.
For half a century the London Necropolis Railway had scheduled service, and
not solely for the deceased. The living would make a Sunday of it, taking a
picnic or stopping for refreshments at one of the cemetery stations, North Bar
(in the Nonconformist section) or South Bar (Anglicans), both of which served
tea, food and liquor.
Second World War bomb damage ended the train service. The stations
continued on as cafés for a while. North Bar was pulled down in the 1960s when
dry rot set in. South Bar operated until 1967, then was used for paint storage
until 1972, when vandals set it alight in a spectacular blaze that could be
seen from Woking.
Only the foundation remains of North Bar, but at South Bar, next to the
small St. Edward the Martyr Church, is a Russian Orthodox monastery.
Two bearded monks worked in the vegetable garden the day I visited, and
Father Niphon was in the church. He gave me some literature on his order and
told me stories of the cemetery.
One was about Edith Thompson, the last woman to be hanged in Britain. She’s
in Brookwood’s northeast corner, a creepy, poorly kept section, with tombstones
tilted at angles or swallowed in underbrush.
“She could have escaped hanging,” Father Niphon told me, “if she’d pleaded
insanity, which the judge told her to do, but she refused.”
Unlike London’s better-known Highgate Cemetery, whose citizens include Karl
Marx and George Eliot, Brookwood has few notables. Freddie Mercury, of Queen,
is supposed to be one, but Father Niphon said, “I’m not sure he’s even really
buried here.”
He isn’t mentioned in John Clarke’s definitive book,
London Necropolis
(on sale in
Father Niphon’s church), and I couldn’t find a marker.
But it’s a very big cemetery.
ACCESS
For more information on the London Necropolis visit the Brookwood Cemetery
Society website at
www.tbcs.org.uk
.
For information on travel in Britain go to the Visit Britain website at www.visitbritain.com .