St Wilfrid's Church, Scrooby earlier today
Out in Nottinghamshire, close to The Great North Road, there's a village called Scrooby. Back in the sixteenth century, a family by the name of Brewster lived in Scrooby's Manor House - not far from St Wilfrid's Church.
For whatever reason, William Brewster (1568-1644), stopped attending the local church and held alternative puritanical services in The Manor House. It was part of a regional movement - away from The Church of England that had itself broken away from Catholicism under the reign of King Henry VIII.
William Brewster and other puritans attracted unwelcome attention that began to give out the aroma of persecution. In those days The Church of England was all-powerful and crossing it was a dangerous thing for anyone to do.
Brewster and his adherents headed to The Netherlands where they lived for almost ten years, enjoying what they saw as greater religious freedom. Then in September 1620, with his wife Mary and a hundred other puritans, he set sail for the east coast of America via the Devonshire port of Plymouth. Their aim was to establish a puritan colony in The New World.
The puritans were aiming for Virginia but bad weather and wretched conditions aboard "The Mayflower" saw Brewster and the rest disembarking near Cape Cod on the coast of Massachusetts.
Elder William Brewster and The Pilgrim Covenant. This picture is in The US Capitol building.
For twenty four years William Brewster played key roles in the successful but difficult establishment of The Plymouth Colony. The first governor was William Bradford from Austerfield in South Yorkshire - a village that is just five miles from Scrooby. Brewster was Bradford's right hand man and adviser. Together you might say that they were the architects of The Plymouth Colony - the true "pilgrim fathers".
I was in Scrooby earlier today. St Wilfrid's Church - the church that Brewster disavowed is still standing. However, the old manor house where he grew up and held puritanical services is no more. It was razed to the ground in 1636/37 as ordered by King Charles I.
After Scrooby, I set off along farm tracks to the village of Mattersey. Later, walking by the B6045 that leads to Ranskill, I was nearly killed by the driver of a speeding 4x4 vehicle when he overtook two slower cars. I must have been no more than ten inches from him as he flashed by. I hope he looked in his rear view mirror to see my two-fingered salute.
Starlings on telephone wires near Mattersey
What an image ! The starlings of Mattersey !
ReplyDeleteLast time I saw starlings like those was in a remote village in Gloucestershire called Cold Aston.
That's funny. There's a village to the south of Sheffield called Coal Aston.
Deletethats where I'm writing this from Yorky, south of Sheffield, Cold Aston, used to have a pit there before Thatcher, I's only making this crap up about Scotchland, far as I's concerned, north of Carlisle you can stuff it, Glasgow girls have nice bodies some of them, but the way they speak would put me off shagging for life, glad to see your narrow escape, whats it all about
DeleteAnd that's funny too. I thought you were on the west coast of America... "I am a writer living in the San Francisco Bay Area, having recently traded the mass hallucination that is Silicon Valley for the more idiosyncratic and satisfying illusions of fiction."
DeleteWe all want to be California, Yorky. I'm a 19-year-old lassie in Airdrie on a creative writing course. Haggerty was my great-nan's coalman, she said he used to bring her free coal in the winter when times were hard, Haggerty was a pure gentleman, and all he asked for was a cup of tea and a chat. That's what you bloggers do, ay? Provide a public service for needy people. My writing tutor was Jim Kelman in Glasgow (no John Haggerty in the Bay Area). We fell out when I said to him, *You've turned a chip on your shoulder into a theory of language. I want to talk proper like the lassies who go to posh schools.*
DeleteThink about the Starlings, Yorky. They sing with one voice, does that not tell ye something?
What a frightening incident. Glad you were spared, and I hope innocent bystanders are in the future.
ReplyDeleteThank you Joanne. How odd that one's life could be ended so unexpectedly.
DeleteI believe tragic is a better description.
DeleteI'm glad you didn't die. I'd have given the two fingered salute along with some choice words to the idiot driver. Scrooby is so close to Scooby-Doo that the autocorrect on my phone keeps trying to force me to type that instead.
ReplyDeleteIn England some people say, "I haven't got a scooby!" instead of "I haven't got a clue!" I wonder what William Brewster would have made of Scooby Doo?
DeleteJennifer, I instantly thought of Scooby-Doo when I read this place name. I love its quirkiness!
DeleteA murmuration is common up here
ReplyDeleteStarling numbers in Britain have fallen by 60% since the nineteen seventies.
DeleteThe powers that be didn't fool around with you in those days. Too many people lost a vital organ.
ReplyDeleteReligious arguments went beyond mere argument in those days.
DeleteNot so different today, is it.
DeleteNot long ago you posted about the French teacher who was beheaded.
While I wasn't from convict stock, I think I would rather be a new colonialist based on criminal offences committed in Britain than a religious exile and all the bother that goes with religion.
ReplyDeleteA great starling photo. Next, a murmuration.
I like the Glaswegian accent. It comes with much promise of naughtiness.
Carry a few stones in your pocket to fling at the cars of errant motorists, if you have a hedge or wall to jump over.
Good advice. Thank you for that Andrew.
DeleteApparently Starlings visit England from abroad in the autumn. I think the main reason they are declining is because the earthworms are disappearing mainly due to modern chemical farming. I love the Gothic Autumn photograph YP.
ReplyDeleteI called across the graveyard - "Ghosts! Rise up!" but nothing happened.
DeletePerfect picture of the church. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteNo. Thank YOU Ilona. I think the milky light of the late afternoon and the fallen leaves help that picture along.
DeleteI once wrote about a family who went to America, and they thrived there. It was fascinating to follow the progress of the family as someone had written a book about it. They came from Avebury and called the family home Awbury in America, he was only a humble tailor though that started the family dynasty.
ReplyDeleteGiving up everything in search of a new life. It's quite a thing to do. Rather like the Iranian family that died so tragically in The English Channel this week. Who will write their book?
DeleteMaybe the driver didn't see you in time to stop his overtaking manoeuvre. Sometimes hairy situations will arise and all you can do is try and make a bad job not even worse.
ReplyDeleteA year or two ago I crossed a fairly wide road, a through road, just off one of the city's docks into town. At that time of the day quiet. I was just about to set foot onto the road, someone coming round a bend, out of nowhere, at speed, wrong way. Whizzing past. And I mean whizzing. There was no time to measure the distance between life and death in inches (or cms). If measured in seconds I'd say two. It was so close unlike you I wouldn't have been able to give him your two finger sign (something I haven't employed once, not once, in my life). I staggered back, held onto some wall behind me, doubled up and retched. And retched. It's called shock.
A question to you, the experienced rambler: There are obviously times you'll have to walk alongside a road without pavement/walkway. In the motherland when we have no choice but to walk on a country road, indeed any road outside town, we walk on the side of ONcoming traffic so drivers can see you. That way your situation couldn't have happened. Doesn't the same rule apply in England?
U
Yes. It was clear that the driver did not see me on that arrow straight section of road. He probably wasn't looking.
DeleteIn England the custom/ guidance is to walk facing the oncoming traffic - so it is just the same as in Germany. The experience you recounted does indeed sound sickening.
I shan't ask why you didn't then, YP. I don't mind making myself unpopular asking pertinent questions but there are limits.
DeleteBy way of light relief, and so much more romantic than a run-in with a tonne of metal: Once upon a time, I was about six, my mother had picked me up from school. Little sister in pram. We lived outside town and it was quite a walk back home. Just as we were about to go down a rather steep decline, alongside the forest, my mother, instinct bred by experience?, suddenly turned round, looking back. She shouted at me to climb up the embankment, pulled my baby sister out of the pram and scrambled up behind me.
It was dramatic. It was majestic. A horse had bolted and was running, for hell and leather, with a half torn cart still attached, the cart swinging right and left. It's what, nowadays, in our health and safety sanitized world, you'd expect to see in a film, not in real life. One of those visceral moments, the horse running down that slope, disappearing into the distance, edged into my memory. I was in awe. In awe of the power of nature, the horse power (!), the horse's passion and my mother's presence of mind. It was WILD.
U
I did face the oncoming traffic - half on the verge and half off. The speeding driver came from behind me, overtaking two slower cars.
DeleteLove your runaway horse story.
YP, your experience with the 4X4 driver is very familiar to me. We live at the end of a single track lane (with no footpaths) which is treated as a racetrack by some drivers. Whenever I feel brave enough to walk from home without having to use the car, I regularly experience a similar close brush with death. It is harder for me, being deaf, as I cannot hear vehicles approaching at speed from behind me, therefore the sudden, unexpected brush of a speeding vehicle at my shoulder is quite startling.
ReplyDeleteI can appreciate that deafness must be a particular handicap in such situations. When I heard the slower cars approaching from behind me on the opposite side of the road, it did not occur to me that a boy racer in a powerful car would be overtaking them like Lewis Hamilton.
DeleteSt. Wilfrid's is a beautiful church. I was amused to see a dog in that painting -- I wonder if there really was a dog on the Mayflower? If so, I've never heard about it. Olga is happy to stay on dry land.
ReplyDeleteI'm always amazed by the crazy ways some people drive, both here and in the USA. (Witness Anne Sacoolas.) Why's everybody in such a big hurry?
That picture is of course idealised. I wonder what William Brewster was singing. Perhaps "I'm Alive" by The Hollies (1965).
DeleteI didn't know of the Nottinghamshire connection with the Pilgrim Fathers. Interesting story, and goes to show how many obstacles people are willing to tackle when it comes to their dream of a better, freer life, just like today's refugees and immigrants.
ReplyDeleteAs for driving, some people speed even within the most densely built-up areas. O.K.'s cottage is on a fork of the main village road, behind him are only three other houses around a cul-de-sac. One of the ladies living at that end habitually drives out of her parking space at racing speed. Never mind the family with 8 children living on the same patch! Her nickname with us is Racing Julia (Julia being her real name).
The pictures are beautiful, can't decide whether I like the aesthetics of the starlings lined up like strings of beads more or the church against the autumn sky.
I would be tempted to put a polite sticker or note on Julia's windscreen. "Please slow down when driving out of the cul de sac. There may be children or old people around. Thank you."
DeleteI was going to say something silly about Scooby Doo but I thought, on reflection, that would be too flippant after your scary incident with the vehicle. (I don't suppose it was a shiny green van being driven by an oversized dog?)
ReplyDeleteI do not mind you making a funny remark Sue. I would have minded even less if I was currently lying on a marble slab in a mortuary.
DeleteThat's where I would have played the Glad Game, YP, he didn't hit me. Of course playing the Glad Game wouldn't have stopped me trying to lob a large stone through his rear window. I was trying to decipher the starlings on the wires but my music reading doesn't stretch that far.
ReplyDeleteHa-ha! if you could read the notations on those wires you might come up with an obscure piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen!
DeleteGiven that his mantra was "Play as you feel" heaven alone knows what it would sound like.
DeleteI'm so glad the driver didn't hit you. Such incidents remind us of how perilous life can be, how quickly it can change or end.
ReplyDeletePart of me wishes that religious freedoms were never sought in this new world because those freedoms became intolerances of their own over the years and we suffer from them still.
I guess "Love it or Leave it!" has always been a philosophy for those who cared to dare.
I wonder what it would be like to live in a society that had no religion - no churches, no chapels, no mosques, no synagogues, no temples, nothing. I would be very happy to test it out.
DeleteThe first thing that would happen, YP, is that someone would want to be Top Dog and he would invent a religion to achieve his aim because he didn't have a physical weapon handy enough. You can control a lot of people with fear of a deity or presence.
DeleteWhen there's no fear of God in the land Graham, you get boy racers and Boris.
DeleteRoberto Saviano, the heroic writer in hiding (a foe of the Mafia) said Britain was the most financially corrupt country in the democratic world.
I wish the Mafia and Britain's economic oligarchs realised that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Boris Shagger to.
Being persecuted is a terrible thing. It's best to come to a new world and be the ones doing the persecuting.
ReplyDeleteThis may be a stupid American question, but what does 'scrooby' actually mean?
All place names have meaning Debby. "Scrooby" means "Skropi's farmstead". Taken from old Scandinavian 'by', or farmstead, and 'Skropi', a person's name. This connects the village with Viking invasions after the Romans retreated from Britain in the fourth century AD.
DeleteI have come back and looked at this photo several times now .. perhaps it is the low angle and perspective that makes the the photo so fascinating.
ReplyDeleteThank you Carol. I was standing on the footpath leaning over the church wall when I took that picture.
Delete