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Right. The #VillageTales series by . @GMWWemyss; its latest, #OrdinaryTime.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GBB179L
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GFMLGCL https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GJ6GVR7
Right. The #VillageTales series by . @GMWWemyss; its latest, #OrdinaryTime.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GBB179L
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GFMLGCL https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GJ6GVR7
1/ History, archaeology, cricket, skulduggery, high politics, High Churchmanship, low cunning, and agriculture.
The series, and #OrdinaryTime, turn on the land and its life, and digging ruins and relics from unpromising ground. With that in mind … let’s meet the team.
The series, and #OrdinaryTime, turn on the land and its life, and digging ruins and relics from unpromising ground. With that in mind … let’s meet the team.
2/ Professor Dennis Farnaby DPhil, Student of Christ Church, Fellow of All Souls, Tauntonian Professor of Ancient British History and Antiquities.
3/ Den Farnaby regards anything after the Sub-Roman as modern ephemera; and has never seen a landscape he’ll not assume to be sacral. Deputy director of the Great Vale Dig.
4/ Professor Millicent Lacy, professionally: MA (Oxon) MPhil (Dunelm) PhD (Cantab); late Professorial Fellow, S Chad’s, Dunelm; Quondam Fellow of All Souls; Director of the Great Vale Dig; historian-archaeologist; a Lacy of Mansell Lacy;
5/ The Baroness Lacy of Merryhill and Mansell Lacy in the County of Herefordshire, for her life, suo jure; and now, as of #OrdinaryTime, HG the Duchess of Taunton, with all the countryside and County duties of that station. Here she is ca. 1997:
6/ Dr Barbara Winton, archaeologist, a Deputy Director of the Great Vale Dig; Dr Jack ‘Rogue’ Herries, modern industrial and social archæologist and historian; the visiting archaeologist Dr Esha Das, from Oz;
7/ Dr MB ‘Mads’ (in fact, Maude) Reckley, palæoanthropologist: quarrelsome, and the woman Dr Farnaby’s ex-wife left him for;
8/ The folk of the Vale (of Sennell), 2,207 souls in its SW Wilts reaches, Semelford, Wadhay, Sparverham, Yarncombe Mitton, Stoke Yarncombe, Wick S Aldhelm (‘Wick Almstey’), Stinchy Common and Senfield Mallett, and Shallwell Mallet;
9/ dairies and piggeries; Senwood as a discrete remnant of ancient Coytmoor Wood, the Great Wood, coed mawr; brickyards; poultry; corn, and maltings; not part of the Combined Benefice.
10/ The Downlands and their folk, ancient sheepwalks, champion country; 442 souls, mostly in Somerford Mally, Somerford Canons or Canonicorum, Somerford Tout Saints, Lamsford;
11/ Cliff Ambries, Shifford Ombres, Combe Woddley (Waddlycombe), Chalford Mallet (and the Shrunken Mediaeval Village of Hawksbourne), Harstbourne Fitzwarren, Harstbourne Sallis, and Harstbourne Fratrum or Friars;
12/ sheep country, bordering, to its South and West, upon The Vale: at which margin are the ancient sites of Freeford; Rethebury Rings; Wadpool; Wades Barrow; Grimmelsmere; and, most significantly, Wodewough Wood. Part of the Combined Benefice.
13/ The Downlands, by the late Sir Bennett Salmon RA, all chalk and pastoral:
14/ The Woolfonts and District, it and its folk being the main setting of the tales; part and heart of the Combined Benefice.
15/ Woolfont Crucis is the centre-point and boasts the mother church, founded by S Aldhelm; Woolfont Magna is the largest village (just) and the site of Sir Thomas Douty’s Davill Court;
16/ Woolfont Abbas on the R. Wolfbourne (Fl. Voliba, Ουολιβα) is hard by Wolfdown House, the ducal caput;
17/ Wolfdown House, East front, part, service side, shown; the Dower House; the Dower House gardens, by Gertrude Jekyll; view from Wolfdown past the Dower House towards Abbas:
18/ and the hamlet of Woolfont Parva, now threatening to grow larger than Magna with the HQ, shop, and yards of the restored steam Woolfonts & Chickmarsh Railway (shown: No. 1021 Earl of Maynooth down train to Gillingham Peacemarsh)
19/ and the community Woolfont Brewery.
20/ The local market towns are Beechbourne, the post town and primary market town for The Woolfonts, part of the Downlands, and an extensive economic hinterland: including portions of the Duke of Taunton’s estates;
21/ the villages of Woolhead St Margaret and Woolhead St Aldhelm; and much country to the North and East, towards Belbourne St Peter and Belbourne St Paul,
22/ and site of the Beechbourne Free School, the Beechbourne Herald & Courier, and the famous Ford’s, Bakers & Purveyors;
23/ and the market town of Chickmarsh, 629 souls to Beechbourne’s 1063, noted for its quarries of splendid freestone oolitic limestone and, nowadays, for its restored cider orchards.
24/ The market towns are not part of the Combined Benefice of The Woolfonts, Somerfords, & Harstbournes, which covers the Woolfonts and the Downlands.
25/ The Rector of the combined benefice is the Revd Canon Noel John Paddick BA (Oxon) MA (Oxon) BTh (Oxon) MA (Liturgy) (Coll Resurrection Mirfield / Sheff) SSC, scholar, boxer, and widower,
26/ author of numerous scholarly works, including The Depth of Love Divine: John Wesley, the Caroline Divines, and the Oxford Movement; The Beauty of Holiness and the Poetry of Grace: Andrewes, Donne, Ken, and Ferrar;
27/ Herbert Thorndike: a reappraisal (forthcoming); and Conscience, Law, and Reason: Anglican Thomism, from Hooker to the Caroline Divines to the Tractarians (forthcoming); and kindly but uncompromising shepherd of even the blackest sheep.
28/ Canon Paddick is assisted by his curates, listed here by length of service:
The Revd Paul Andrew Peter Campion SSC, senior curate, Keble & Oxon rugger blue, and brother of Dr Tim Campion (shown: Fr C at CLGB Sports Day in mufti, coaching);
The Revd Paul Andrew Peter Campion SSC, senior curate, Keble & Oxon rugger blue, and brother of Dr Tim Campion (shown: Fr C at CLGB Sports Day in mufti, coaching);
29/ The Revd [Sir] Gilbert Joscelyn Humphrey John Bohun [Bt] SSC CBS CMP ACS [MC, Mentioned in Despatches, late Major the Blues and Royals (Royal Horse Guards and 1st Dragoons)], MA Oxon, RMA Sandhurst, MA (Liturgy) (Coll Resurrection Mirfield / Sheff); widower;
30/ has special responsibility for the Downlands parishes; former non-stipendiary Home Missionary; priest-associate of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament; author of
31/ ordained to priests’ orders 2006 by the then Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali (shown: newspaper snap of Fr B on his ordination day, courtesy, the Medway Messenger);
32/ and by the Revd Professor Henry Gerald Gascelyn Levett MA (Cantab) MSt (Cantab) PhD (Cantab) FRSA FRHistS RIBA, late Fellow of Clare, and the acknowledged authority on ecclesiastical architecture since the death of Sir Ninian Comper (shown: Fr HGL as Fellow of Clare);
33/ who now shares special responsibility for the Downlands parishes, their restoration and integration into the newly combined benefice; and is author of such works as
34/ Certain Commonalities in the Wool Churches of East Anglia and of the West Country; Thomas Sumsion and the Gothic Survival; Dowbiggin and Ecclesiastical Architecture; and Clouds of Witness Above the Fray: The Angel Roofs of East Anglia and the Defeat of the Iconoclasts.
35/ There is a strong musical tradition in the parishes, and Fr Campion’s brother Dr Timothy Campion BA MA MSt DMus FRCO is Music and Choir Director, Master of Music, and Organist to the Combined Benefice.
36/ RC residents are looked after by the Revd Monsignor Timothy Folan MA (TCD, Dub) STB & STL (NUI / Pontifical University of Ireland (Maynooth)) STD (Pontifical Gregorian University), Priest, Our Lady & S Edith of Wilton (RC) (Beechbourne),
37/ who asserts his family came to Calne with the first drift of Irish bacon pigs; is deceptively fubsy and ginger; and went to Downside with Brian ‘The Breener’ Maguire, who accuses him of being Socrates in a Roman collar.
38/ Brian ‘The Breener’ Francis Michael Maguire CBE, shown in his playing days below, is an Irish-English former cricketer born in Kilgarvan, and a TMS commentator and a regular after-dinner speaker. He’s a madcap lad in the spotlight, but a pillar of the community at home.
39/ Just as well: he’s married to the fluffy-seeming, no-nonsense, Anglo-Welsh the Hon. Gwen, shown below in rose, L, handing out prizes, daughter of the racing life-peer The Baron Evans of Pont-y-clun and Aintree, with whom The Breener now runs the Woolbury Stud...
40/ and with whom he’s the father of the Terrible Twins, Máire Mairéad Gwendoline Constance and Eoin Aneurin Charles Patrick. He remains a stalwart as wicketkeeper for the all-conquering Woolfonts Combined CC 1st XI.
41/ The Hon. Gwen attended Cheltenham Ladies’, although she insists she was in fact educated rather at Cheltenham Racecourse, Taunton, Ludlow, Fakenham, Plumpton, Fontwell Park, and Doncaster. She then attended the then RAC Cirencester, now the Royal Agricultural University.
42/ The Beechbourne Free School, which is now planning a satellite in the Downlands, has as its Head Mr Jeremy Trulock MA (St And) MA (Dunelm), late Captain 1 PARA and Mentioned in Despatches. There are few discipline problems at Beechbourne School.
43/ His Deputy Headmaster is Sher Ali Mirza CBE MA (Ebor) MMus (Leeds) ARCO Dip CHD, an English and Music master:
44/ scholar, musicologist, occasional recording artist, and composer; heir apparent to the heir designate to the Nawab of Hubli (HH Abdul Ali Aftab Mirza Khan), his uncle and cousin; composer-in-residence, the Beechbourne Free School;
45/ conductor of the Woolfont Consort; awarded the Bach Prize of the Royal Academy of Music and the Queen’s Medal for Music; notably the composer of Bach in Euanthia: Twelve Canons and Fugues upon the Seikilos Epitaph;
46/ the only practicing Muslim in the UK to be, academically, as a musicologist, an expert on the music of the Church of England;
47/ and hopelessly in love with Canon Paddick, though both of them for conscience’s sake refuse to admit eros into their relation, and stick with the other Three Loves.
48/ In Abbas, on the ducal doorstep, is The Woolford House Hotel, gastro-critically bestarred.
49/ It’s run by The Celebrated Hipsta Chef™, Cllr Teddy (Edward Henry Lewis) Gates OBE JP, Commandeur, l’Order du Mérite Agricole, MW, who, as a school leaver (shown below), won a BBC cookery show and took his winnings to go train in France as a pâtissier.
50/ He there earnt his BA (Institut Paul Bocuse / IAE Lyon (Université Jean Moulin Lyon III)) and MSc (Institut Paul Bocuse / EMLYON);
51/ and in the course of his training became MW (Institute of Masters of Wine) and a full-fledged chef de cuisine, although remaining always a pâtissier at heart and by preference.
52/ Back in the UK he was hired on first by one of the Duke of Taunton’s clubs, then as a celebrity chef at a splashy hotel. Falling prey to various London-fleshpot temptations, he was extricated by ducal interference and given The Woolford to sink or swim with.
53/ He swam: and met and married another refugee and one of the ducally-rescued wounded, Edmond Austin Huskisson OBE JP, the Illingworth-born ex-Premier Leaguer turned LGBT activist, with whom he has four sprogs.
54/ At the Dower House, there’s the Duke’s former sister-in-law, widow of his late brother Lord Crispin, now no longer Lady Crispin but rather the Hon. Lady Trulock, shown below in more stressful and less happy days.
55/ The Hon. Lady Trulock CBE, formerly Lady Crispin Fitzjames-Holles-Clare-Malet, born the Hon. Constance Ivy Diana de Clifforde,
56/ daughter and only child of the 24th Baron Mallerstang, 13th Baron Swarthfell, 10th / 12th Baron Mallerstang & Swarthfell (Rodger Alban Percival Thomas de Clifforde) & his baroness Pamela Mary Penelope (née Portingale-Vypont), daughter of the Earl of Wigan,
57/ widow of the late Lord Crispin Fitzjames-Holles-Clare-Malet, younger brother to the Duke of Taunton, mother to Rupert, now Master of Dilton, James, and Henrietta Maria (‘Hetty’), whom she, with the aid of her brother-in-law Charles, Duke of Taunton, raised,
58/ is the wife, since 2017, of Sir Giles Trulock KBE LVO FRCVS, Headmaster Trulock’s younger brother the vet. She is slowly becoming less acidulated. Glacially slowly.
59/ Rupe, Master of Dilton, the Duke’s nephew and heir (below, in 2017, Oxf), and his siblings Jamie (below, 2017, Oxf) and Hetty (below, 2015 in Scotland):
60/ in full, Rupert Charles Edward Donald Fitzjames-Holles-Clare-Malet; James Denzil Valentine Gilbert Fitzjames-Holles-Clare-Malet; and Henrietta Maria Flora Anne Fitzjames-Holles-Clare-Malet:
61/ spend as little time at the Dower House as possible. Rupe’s usually at Hellgill, with ‘Uncle’ Hugo Mallerstang (Hugo, Lord Mallerstang and Swarthfell, DSO & Bar MC, Mentioned in Despatches), shown below gardening:
62/ Jamie, a boatie and the ultimate wet-bob, somewhere watery; and Hetty, somewhere horsey.
63/ And their uncle? Small, peppery, insufferably clever, the deus ex machina of anything he can meddle with, a Magnificent Bastard on the side of the angels –
64/ Colonel (Army Reserve) the Duke of Taunton KG GCB GCVO KBE [Mentioned in Despatches] PC TD VR DL FRHistS, late the Intelligence Corps,
65/ Marquess of Templecombe, Earl Fitzwarren, Earl of Dilton, Viscount and Baron Malet, Baron Daubeny, Baron Chard, Baron Beechbourne, Baron Marden and Widham, Hereditary Keeper & Constable of S Aldhelm’s Castle, Hereditary Ranger of Yarncombe Forest, Lord of the Downs;
66/ Commander of Clan Stewart of Camserney, Mac Raibeart / Mac Raibeart Dìuc / Mac Raibeart Prionnsa / Mac mhic Raibeart Stiubhaird / Mac Raibeart na Chamserney;
67/ Fellow of All Souls, ‘the Red Wolf’ to the daunted Taliban, author of, most notably, Archbishop Laud and Honour (Duff Cooper Prize), Rose and Laurel: A History of the Intelligence Corps,
68/ Sir John, God Save You: a life of Betjeman [his godfather], and Beating the Bounds: the Wiltshire and Dorset Clubmen in 1645 (Wolfson Prize);
![68/ Sir John, God Save You: a life of Betjeman [his godfather], and Beating the Bounds: the Wiltshire and Dorset Clubmen in 1645 (Wolfson Prize);](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ei8tLE6WsAQqziq.jpg "68/ Sir John, God Save You: a life of Betjeman [his godfather], and Beating the Bounds: the Wiltshire and Dorset Clubmen in 1645 (Wolfson Prize);")
69/ eleventh in descent from Frances Malet and James II, 30th in descent from the half-English Malet cadet who married into the thegn’s family whose land he was granted in 1066, 36th in descent from the Cerdicing atheling Cynric, whose lands these were;
70/ intolerable, cunning, the cleverest bugger in the room at any age –
71/ well … when not Up To Something with his old right-hander and Eton-and-OUCC Vice-Captain, Sher’s uncle the Nawab; or providing the basso foundation to Noel, Sher, Teddy, Edmond, and The Breener –
72/ ‘The Fonts,’ doing Northern Soul to a professional standard for charidee appeals and the Village Concert –,
73/ and acting as pater patriae and paterfamilias for his people and tenants, he’ll be, deferring only to HMQ, almost always to his new duchess, and most of the time (but not all) to his Rector, Doing Good and Setting Things to Rights,
74/ happily making enemies and making them very sorry to be so, bullying bullies, puncturing scholarly slovenliness,
75/ taking up the cudgels on the side of . @PryorFrancis and . @DrSueOosthuizen (both of whom should likely be appalled by the wee man in real life) in historical disputes; and enjoying stepping hard on the tenderest toes he can find.
76/ There’s a reason HRH the D of E called the Duke ‘a man with a refreshing want of diplomacy’.
Just Ordinary Times in the Woolfonts.... https://village-tales.fandom.com/wiki/Village_Tales_Wiki
Just Ordinary Times in the Woolfonts.... https://village-tales.fandom.com/wiki/Village_Tales_Wiki
77/ Give yourself a holiday there. After all, . @petermaughan5 said of #Ordinary Time, ‘stylish, witty, original, and beautifully written, speaking splendidly of Old England. In short, bloody marvellous’.
Learn more here as well: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/VillageTales
Learn more here as well: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/VillageTales
78/ And then, as . @MarkhamShawPyle advises – https://markhamshawpyle.com/2020/07/12/book-review-escape-to-the-countryside-peter-maughans-batch-magna-chronicles/
79/79 –, spend some time in our friend Peter Maughan’s Batch Magna: https://www.batchmagna.com/ , the cure for Lockdownitis.
Read. Take refuge. Escape. Enjoy.
END THREAD
Read. Take refuge. Escape. Enjoy.
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