The Liberty of Alcester, but not in Warwickshire
On Tuesday 01 April at 2.30p.m. at Gold Hill Museum Matthew Tagney will deliver an illustrated talk on The Liberty of Alcester. This is, Matthew says, A tale of peculiar historical boundaries, pious medieval practices, Mr Raspberry the brolly-maker, and “convenient buildings & exceeding rich meadow land”, wandering from past to present on Shaftesbury’s western edges. Strange though the persistence of the name of a small Midlands town on maps of Shaftesbury might seem, this is no April Fool story, and Matthew has diligently researched the origins and surviving evidence of Shaftesbury’s Alcester. What follows is Matthew’s synopsis of his (highly entertaining) talk, for which he has also supplied most of the images.
Some time ago, Matthew Tagney spoke briefly on two occasions at Shaftesbury & District Historical Society’s “members’ tea and talks” sessions about his research into first the Bury Litton, the former St John’s churchyard at the western end of Bimport; and second, an auction sale that took place in the early 19th century of certain farms, cottages and fields near Shaftesbury owned by a Mr George Foyle. Now he has pulled these topics together with a deeper investigation of the history of the ancient Liberty or Manor of Alcester. Earlier versions of this talk were given to a local ladies’ luncheon club and to Gillingham Local History society, but this is its premiere in Shaftesbury.
How did an area on the western edge of Shaftesbury come to bear the name of a town in Warwickshire? What is a Liberty, anyway? We will remind ourselves of Thomas Hardy’s riddle about the churchyard nearer heaven than the church steeple, and consider what traces remain now to the observant eye.
Along the way, we shall meet the Common Ground charity and its championing of “the commonplace, the local, the vernacular and the distinctive”; the Reverend Hutchins, and a list of vicars; the history of butlers; the Bayeux Tapestry; the National Trust’s Coughton Court, and the redoubtable Mrs Dorothy Styles; the puzzlement of our Town Council as to who owned a disused graveyard, and why it was eventually surveyed by a professor from Vienna; and the struggles of 19th century census-takers to spell surnames of residents who – like the speaker’s own forebears at Chesil on Portland – might have signed their own name only with an X.
We shall finish with a workhouse, a community farm, an Italian cook, and the surviving marks of a Rural District boundary – which those attending the talk could view by stepping out of the museum and taking a five-minute walk. It all adds up to a celebration of local distinctiveness and a glimpse of how, as we go about our lives in the present, the past – always there just below the surface – might now and then unexpectedly tap us on the shoulder.
Matthew’s talk is free to S&DHS members, while seats for members of the public should be available from 2.20p.m. on payment of £5 at the door of the Garden Room. Admission to Gold Hill Museum is otherwise free and visitors might like to view the new temporary exhibition The Goddess, the Hound and the Fox curated by Matthew and fellow S&DHS member Peter Stanier.
