Alfred Williams in South Marston, Wiltshire

'ALFRED WILLIAMS

HAMMERMAN POET

BORN IN

CAMBRIA COTTAGE 1877.'

 

After Richard Jefferies, Alfred Williams is probably the most well known Wiltshire writer. Cambria Cottage was built for Alfred's parents, Elias and Elizabeth (née Hughes), although they shared it with George Ockwell's family. Elias had taken out a second mortgage to finance a business in Swindon in which he was described as a 'joiner, carpenter and builder'. But the business folded in 1882, bailiffs threatened, and Elias fled, leaving Elizabeth to support her children.

 

 

'ROSE

COTTAGE

1865'

 

'POET AND WRITER

ALFRED WILLIAMS

LIVED HERE

1881 – 1903'

 

The Williams family, then, moved next door to Rose Cottage, which was built by Elizabeth's father Joshua Hughes, and this is where Elizabeth had met Elias when he and his father David lodged here as travelling carpenters. Alfred stayed here until he married Mary Peck in 1903.

 

Dryden Cottage in South Marston, where Alfred Williams and his wife Mary lived for fifteen years.

 

I was unable to find Alfred's grave in the church cemetery, although I discovered the grave of his mother and his brother Henry. Elizabeth Williams died in October 1917 at the age of 68. Her epitaph is from Matthew 11:28: 'Come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest'. Her son Henry Oliver Williams died less than two years later, in May 1919, at the age of 43.

 

In the parlour of the Richard Jefferies Museum at Coate there is a small bust of Alfred Williams, although I know nothing of its history.

 

Much of the above material was culled from the Alfred Williams Heritage Society website, which is very informative and linked below:

 

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Alfred Williams Heritage Society

Arkell's Brewery Mural, Swindon, Wiltshire

Arkell's Brewery was established in Swindon in 1843 and moved to Kingsdown, Swindon in 1861. It remains an independent family brewery. The above mural, completed in 1985, is in County Road and is by Sarah Faulkner.

Richard Jefferies in Coate, Swindon, Wiltshire

 

The Richard Jefferies Museum is the only literary museum in Wiltshire, and is on the Marlborough Road a few yards from Coate Water Country Park and next to the Sun Inn.

 

Coate is only about two miles from central Swindon, although this photo deceptively looks deep in the countryside.

 

'RICHARD JEFFERIES MUSEUM

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

BIRTHPLACE OF THE

NATURE WRITER AND NOVELIST

RICHARD JEFFERIES

(1848–1887)

 

Open 1st and 3rd Sunday

in each month

May–September 2–5pm

Admission Free'

 

'BIRTHPLACE

OF

RICHARD JEFFERIES

BORN

NOVEMBER 6^TH 1848

 

Coate Farm, originally known as Jefferies Farm, was bought by Richard's great-grandfather, a baker and miller, in 1800. Richard's grandfather John was also (reluctantly) the principal miller and baker in Old Town, Swindon, and his father James Luckett Jefferies was a farmer here.

 

Richard had no interest in farming. He went to school in Swindon, began working for the North Wiltshire Herald at seventeen, and remained in journalism the whole of his short life. In 1874 he married Jessie Baden who lived nearby, and the couple went to live in Swindon. Jefferies wrote a large number of books largely filled with his observations of nature culled from his childhood in and around Coate, and he is perhaps best known for the autobiographical novel Bevis (1882).

 

He died in Goring at the age of 38 and was buried in Broadwater and Worthing Cemetery, West Sussex.

 

And this is the entrance door to the museum.

 

In the sitting room is a replica of a bust sculpted by Margaret Thomas. The original was unveiled in Salisbury Cathedral in 1892.

 

In the parlour and on the stairs are paintings of 'Jefferies's Land' by Kate Tryon (1864–1952), an artist from Massachusetts who was a very keen enthusiast of Jefferies's work, who visited Wiltshire six times and produced 230 Jefferies-themed works. The above painting is of Upham House (1910).

 

The interior of Upham House.

 

At the top of the stairs is another bust, this time by K. M. Harwood, dating from 1948.

 

The room on this floor was a bedroom but now contains exhibits. This plaque, a memorial to Jefferies and the Wiltshire poet Alfred Williams, was salvaged from Liddington Hill after it had been used for target practice by troops during World War II. Shame about the reflection.

 

A manuscript page of Jefferies's children's novel Wood Magic (1881) with a few emendations.

 

Jefferies's study is in the attic.

 

A closer view of that representation of Jefferies as a child.

 

Jefferies's original writing desk.

 

A first edition of the triple-decker Bevis: The Story of a Boy.

 

And a first of the two-volume Wood Magic.

 

The rear of the property.

 

'THIS TREE WAS PLANTED BY THE

CHILDREN OF THE SWINDON BRANCH

OF THE WORKERS EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION

AND DEDICATED BY THE

R^T REV THE LORD BISHOP OF MADRAS

TO

RICHARD JEFFERIES

NATURES GREAT PROSE WRITER

SEPTEMBER 21^ST 1921.'

 

Penny and I really enjoyed our visit to Richard Jefferies Museum, and it's evident that a great deal of excellent volunteer work is being done here. My thanks to all involved, particularly to the chair of the Richard Jefferies Society, John Price, with whom I had a brief conversation about Jefferies.

 

As far as obscurity goes this museum is nothing like as little known as some authors' house we've visited – such as Lillian Smith's place halfway up Old Screamer mountain in Clayton, Georgia; or Frank Sargeson's rebuilt bach in Takapuna, New Zealand – but perhaps it could do with a little more publicity.

 

Linked below is an excellent, well illustrated 28-page guide to the museum by the Richard Jefferies Society, and I'd recommend that anyone going there read it first.

 

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In the Footsteps of Richard Jefferies: A Guide to Coate Farm