THE MUSEUM OF ENGLISH RURAL LIFE

William Simmonds lived for many years at 'The Frith', Far Oakridge, near Stroud in Gloucestershire. He evidently took a keen interest in the surrounding countryside and in local people as well as in examples of rural craftsmanship. Mr. Simmonds, his wife and their friends organised village entertainments in the 1920s and 30s. The 'Oakridge Players' flourished with well-attended performances in settings designed by Simmonds for the tiny stage of the Oakridge-Lynch village hall. In the museum's photograph library is an album with several studies taken by Simmonds of local characters. Some are accompanied by notes of conversations and reminiscences.

[Album dated 1923]

William Wilcox of Fairford.

Simmonds documents the prints 'Worked as a fogger' for Edwin Abbey. His two roomed cottage is seen on the right with the sunlight on the front of it just above his left hand. The little finger of his right hand which looks stiff in the photograph was damaged playing cricket when he was a boy. The velvety softness of his trousers was produced by constant washing, one of his two pairs always being out on the line to dry on Monday mornings When the Abbeys were having a carpet beaten before taking it to London William said "Ah, I bean thinking they ain't got no gardens in London, so I suppose you'll have to take it to the market place, if you wants to beat it when you get there". He and his father had rented the cottage for ninety years'.

The English Dialect Dictionary entry reads Fogger:

"A farmer's headman, one who attends to the cattle, horses and pigs; a groom, a manservant. Here we may presume the former, or perhaps a more general "handyman"."

Edwin Abbey, 1852 - 1911, was an American artist who settled in England and maintained a country house at Morgan Hall, Fairford. William Simmonds worked with Abbey in Pennsylvania on murals for the state capital in Harrisburg. neg. 35/7588

Sexton of Fairford Church, 1916

Dickey Watts

The album caption reads, 'Once a postillion to Queen Victoria and at this time living in retirement near Fairford. At the annual sports in Fairford Park he always competed in the races etcetera and tied his handkerchief to his whip like a banner, but never won. He would say "Now you do what you like with me, but you must not touch my donkey' neg. 35/7590

Thomas Fisher of Sapperton

"He could remember walking to church at Oaksey to be baptised on Set. 30th 1767. He died in 18 aged 106. He was a farm labourer at Sapperton. One of his sons Billy Fisher fought in the Crimea and was given a military funeral when he died in 19 over 80 years old. This son was a "handsome old man with a long white beard." Copied from a photograph lent to me by Mrs John Harrison of Sapperton."

Jonas and Esther Workman of Sapperton

"He was a quarryman and later a roadmender about the village" Mrs John Harrison. Died about 1890

Shepherd Hedges of Chipping Camden

neg. 35/7585

Old John Brinkworth of Kings Hawley

"" - an honest hardworking "hedger and ditcher" - hale and hearty at 81 years of age"... I came across this old photograph in a print shop at Cheltenham and know no more about him than the note on the margin tells"

[Portriat, labourer on road to Standish]

Old man on the road to a farm at Standish near Haresfield, April 1925

A brief conversation is recorded:

"W.G.S.: Will you stop a minute while I take a photograph
Old man: Oh' but I must be gettin ' along.
W.G.S.: I won't keep you a minute
Old man: Oh' but I must be getting along. you see we be goin' a' draggin' on the hill."

Jethro Dunn

"At Cerney Fields stone quarry making tiles"

Thomas Telling, Ashton Keynes

'Rending oak laths'. Ashton Keynes

neg. 35/7608

Untitled

George Hunt, plasterer, Far Oakridge

(A pencil note adds, 'died 1937 aged 93') "W.G.S.:Do you know Haresfield Beacon Mr Hunt. Cromwell is said to have watched his armies from there.
Mr H. : Oh yes and the story goes that he fired at the cathedral tower from there, and they put sacks round it to protect it. That's how the story goes but I aint never been up there. An' there's Robinswood hill close by, a sort of continuation. I been up that many an' many a time. I took a girl yp there May walkin' one time, or rather she took me. I was lodging in Gloucester at that time an' she says, Mr. Hunt will you come a May walkin' I'll call ye? but I didn;t think she would, but she did an' we went up Robinswd. Hill. She was a friend, an aquaintance like. That was before I was married."

George Hunt. Photographed in the Spring 1926

"Talking of our house, Frith Cottage, 'I don't remember it, but I've heard my father speak on't. A man named Frank Whiting used to live there and he was thrown from his horse an' killed just up here on the common, and as long as it was open common the people here did used to keep his name cut in the turf where it happened. They cut his initials in the turf an' kept it clean".'

Mrs Seth Gardiner. Waterlane. Oct. 1927

[Albert Bucknell, blackmith in his smithy]

Albert Bucknell, blacksmith, Waterlane, 1927

"Made many things to Ernest Gimson's design when the workshops were at Daneway. Still makes excellent iron fittings, hinges, fire irons and every kind of ornamental iron work"