Walpurgisnacht - which bears the name of an English nun born in the neighbouring county of Devonshire.

Chambers' Book of Days tells us:

"The eve of May Day is a time when witches are believed to fly abroad.  In Germany it is known as Walpurgisnacht, a night that bears the name of an English nun, St. Walburga (or Walpurgis), who became the abbess of Heidenheim in the eighth century.  On Walpurgisnacht, witches are said to gather at the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz Mountains in Germany.  There they carouse with the devil until midnight , when the Queen of May appears.  (In other parts of the country, other high places are said to be the scene of the revelries.)  The night is marked by fancy-dress celebrations, with costumes similar to those of Hallow'een, and by singing and dancing around bonfires."

St. Walburga was born, c. 710, in the county of Devonshire into a local aristocratic family.  She was the daughter of an under king of the West Saxons.  At the age of 11 Walburga was entrusted to the abbess of Wimborne Abbey in Dorsetshire and in the course of time became a nun.

Eventually Walburga, after 26 years at Wimborne, travelled with her brothers to Francia to assist St. Boniface in evangelising the still pagan Germans.

Walburga became a nun at the double monastery of Heidenheim amm Hahnenkamm which was founded by her brother Willibald.  He named her as his successor and she became abbess of the monastery following his death in 751.

Walburga died in February 777 or 779 - the records are unclear - and was canonised by Pope Adrien the Second in 870.

Forget-Me-Nots in a South Somerset garden, and a poetic tribute to them.

Lots of wood forget-me-nots have sprung up beneath a holly hedge in my garden.  Below are a couple of photos of them and a very appropriate poem in tribute to them. 

And closer in!

The Forget-Me-Not Fairy

By Cicely Mary Barker

So small, so blue, in grassy places

My flowers raise

Their tiny faces.

 

By streams my bigger sisters grow

And smile in gardens

In a row.

 

I’ve never seen a garden plot;

But though I’m small

Forget me not.

The Somerset village of Corfe and its Church of St. Nicholas.

The Somerset village of Corfe straddles a short stretch of the B3170, the road linking Taunton with the A303, a mile south of Taunton Racecourse.  I visited the village a couple of years ago and had a stroll around after leaving the car in the small car park alongside the Church of St. Nicholas.

The Somerset Federation of Women’s Institutes beautifully described Corfe in their The Somerset Village Book (Countryside Books, 1988).

“Corfe is a small, pretty village on the northern slopes of the Blackdown Hills , four miles south of Taunton.  The name is said to have been derived from an ancient word meaning ‘gap’ or ‘pass’ and this is borne out by the cleft in the hillside which takes the Honiton road over the Blackdowns from the village.  Although it is not mentioned in the Domesday Book the village has existed since Norman times.

Calamine and limestone were quarried on the hills around the village and there were numerous lime kilns for burning the lime for agricultural use.

The ancient woodlands which provided fuel for the kilns remain and provide a magnificent backcloth to the village.”

The Church of St. Nicholas in the Somerset village of Corfe.

The charming little Church of St. Nicholas with its uncommon tower has its rebuilding chronicled by Ronald Webber in his The Devon and Somerset Blackdowns (Robert Hale & Company, 1976).

"The church of St. Nicholas at Corfe is built in Norman style, but this was done in the nineteenth century – most of it in 1844 and the rest (including the tower) in 1858. The old (1844) tower was small, low, square and ugly, so it was replaced by the present one of blue stone with a peal of four bells; a great improvement, it would seem, to the old one."

The village war memorial outside the Church of St. Nicholas in the Somerset village of Corfe.

The plaque on the village war memorial in Corfe, Somerset.

I came across this just inside the gate at St. Nicholas Church, Corfe, Somerset. Never seen one like it in a churchyard before!

Dragon's teeth in the undergrowth defending Ilminster in South Somerset.

While on an afternoon stroll in South Somerset a couple of days ago I came across some relics from World War Two.  What looks like some strange form of alien plant life lurking in the undergrowth are actually concrete dragon’s teeth covered in ivy.  For most of the year they are hidden by the greenery, but at this time of year they are easily visible.  

 They were used to form part of the Ilminster Anti-Tank Island in the early years of the Second World War when a German invasion was considered possible.  The dragon’s teeth originally ran all along the eastern side of Dillington Park Drive.  An information board near a concrete pill-box in the Drive is very informative and explains the role of Anti-Tank Islands.

World War Two dragon's teeth in Dillington park Drive, Ilminster, South Somerset.

HS2's illusory benefits. The Social Democratic Party offer an alternative.

The letter below published in The Week (27 February) echoes my thoughts on HS2.   It also adds some pertinent points on working practices following Covid-19.  The letter first appeared in The Daily Telegraph.

 HS2’s illusory benefits.

To The Daily Telegraph.

The Government demanded that HS2 should be designed to reach a top speed of 250 mph – which many experts said was unnecessary given the relatively short distances concerned.  This restricts its route, as curves cannot be included, forcing the line through homes and sensitive areas, including 33 Sites of Special Scientific Interest and 108 ancient woodlands.

The argument that journey times will be shorter ignores the fact that there are no stations between Birmingham and London, so many of the headline time savings will be eaten up by additional journeys required to reach HS2.  Furthermore, even after the completion of the final phase, HS2 only reaches about half way up England, so the true long distances don’t benefit from the dramatic cuts to journey times seen in other countries.

Of course, the case for HS2 has further collapsed now that many people have discovered, thanks to Covid-19, that they no longer need to travel to work anyway.  I’m sure the vast majority of the population would prefer to have superfast broadband for everyone, rather than an over-fast railway for a few.

Gordon Findlay, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The Social Democratic Party has an appealing policy which advocates cancelling HS2 and using the funds on creating a new rail network in The North of England.

All well and good, but I would like to see funds spent on reopening, where practicable, lines and stations closed by Beeching. 

Railways should be operated as a public service under state control – something which the SDP also appears to support.  I reproduce below some of their transport policies from their website.  I hope they don’t mind, but they are ones which I could certainly vote for.

• Our railway system will be nationalised. Rail operator franchises will be taken back into public ownership as they fall due via a re-established British Railways.
• British Railways will be a comprehensive, fully integrated system encompassing track and infrastructure, rolling stock and stations.
• A Minister for Rail will be introduced, responsible and accountable for making the system work for the public and passengers.
• We will scrap HS2 and invest some of the freed-up funds to create a Great Northern Railway Network, better linking up the towns and cities of the North of England to unleash their joint potential.
• Funding for regional and rural bus travel will be increased in order to protect the viability of and patronage on essential routes.
• VAT on motor vehicles costing more than £35,000 will be increased to 25%.

 

Green U-Turns by the British Political Establishment.

Having a wood-burner I sympathise with the letter below which appeared in The Week on 27 February, it was first published in The Times.

As for making things last as long as possible, I scrapped my 1998 registered Subaru Impreza last September.  It was 4 years old when I bought it, and it gave me 18 years of enjoyable and reliable service - I think we both did our bit for the environment!

Green U-Turns

To The Times  

In 2001, Labour introduced new vehicle tax rates that encouraged us to buy diesel cars.  We bought one.  About 15 to 20 years ago the advice was to buy a wood-burner because wood, being carbon neutral, was better for the environment than fossil fuels.  We bought one.  This week you reported that we are being urged to ditch wood-burning stoves as data showed they are the worst pollutants.  On top of this, we are told to make the things we buy last as long as possible, as this is better for the environment.  Presumably this includes wood-burners and cars?  What are we supposed to do?  Will the advice change in a few years’ time?

Marianne Beale, Saltash, Cornwall.

Brexit came too late for the Cadburys factory at Keynsham in North East Somerset. A letter in the WDP.

A letter in the Western Daily Press on February 6.

Cadbury move too late for SW factory.

It has been reported that Cadburys is bringing Dairy Milk chocolate bar production back from Germany and other sites in Europe to its Bournville site in Birmingham.  Very good news for workers in the Midlands, but we should spare a thought for those who were employed at the Cadburys factory in Keynsham near Bristol who lost their jobs in 2011 when the factory was closed and the machinery shipped to Poland.  Brexit came too late for them.

S.W.

Ilminster, Somerset.