A Shropshire Lad

It’s not raining today but rather blustery. I’ve just been out watering my window boxes that don’t catch the rain and I noticed the little birch trees by the railway line bending in the wind and it reminded me again of a poem by Housman. The poem was going through my head last Saturday when we were in Shropshire. When we checked out of our hotel we asked where the nearest cash machine was and they said the one in the town centre had been boarded over because of the riots so we had best go to Morrisons supermarket. There was  a wonderful view of The Wrekin from Morrisons car park and I wished I could go climb it again as I had in childhood but, unfortunately I had woken with a migraine and had to take medication which left me feeling too worn out.

"Why do you want to go there anyway?" my husband asked,"it looks as if it’s just a forest."
"It’s my forest." I replied. So after we got our money we decided to drive through the woods on the lower slopes. I picked bluebells there as a little girl and it was emotional to visit the woods again. As we drove into the countryside again I could see Wenlock Edge in the distance and that’s when the Houseman poem came into my mind.

                                                      On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble
                                                      His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
                                                      The gale, it plies the saplings double,
                                                      And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

I discovered Housman’s poetry after my parents moved to Sussex. I did it for my English A Level. I fell in love with ‘A Shropshire Lad’ partly because it’s full of Shropshire images, and nostalgia and loss so it seemed to be my story.

After our nostalgic visit to the bluebell woods we went on an ancestor hunt. One of my great great grandmothers, Ann Wilson, came from the Dawley area. We found Horsehay Pool near where she grew up. It’s a beautiful atmospheric place spoiled only a little by the chip shop on the corner. In Great Great Grandmother’s time there was a huge ironworks opposite the pool so it was hardly a rural idyll then, either.
 

Then we followed the signs to Lightmoor where Ann’s mother in law, Mary Ann Garbett was baptised and noticed we were in Frame Lane. That was the address of  Ann’s grandmother in the 1851 census! By that time Ann’s family had moved to the Black Country. I wonder if, in her later years, she, like me, felt nostalgic about The Wrekin and the Shropshire countryside.

St Paul’s church where Mary Ann was baptised is now a private house, but we looked around the graveyard. The older stones were worn and unreadable but we found Garbetts there and other names from my family tree.

Afterwards we drove down to Ironbridge where the oldest iron bridge in the world crosses the gorge of the River Severn.

Looking at the names on the signposts I was reminded of another favourite poem, this time by John Betjeman. Betjeman borrowed Housman’s title for this comic work, ‘A Shropshire Lad’. It couldn’t be more different, though. I love it.

The gas was on in the Institute,
The flare was up in the gym,
A man was running a mineral line,
A lass was singing a hymn,
When Captain Webb the Dawley man,
Captain Webb from Dawley,
Came swimming along the old canal
That carried the bricks to Lawley,
Swimming along, swimming along,
Swimming along from Severn,
And paying a call at Dawley Bank
While swimming along to Heaven.

The sun shone low on the railway line
And over the bricks and stacks,
And in at the upstairs windows
Of the Dawley houses’ backs,
When we saw the ghost of Captain Webb,
Webb in a water sheeting,
Come dripping along in a bathing dress
To the Saturday evening meeting.
Dripping along, dripping along,
To the Congregational Hall;
Dripping and still he rose over the sill
And faded away in a wall.

There wasn’t a man in Oakengates
That hadn’t got hold of the tale,
And over the valley in Ironbridge,
And round by Coalbrookdale,
How Captain Webb the Dawley man,
Captain Webb from Dawley,
Rose rigid and dead from the old canal
That carried the bricks to Lawley,
Rigid and dead, rigid and dead,
To the Saturday congregation,
And paying a call at Dawley Bank
On his way to his destination.