Books and Literature

Books and Literature

John Drinkwater the poet and playright so loved Oakridge that he stayed at Winson Cottage for a year! Drinkwater was attracted by the landscape. He wrote 'The Cotswold country is, as I think, the most beautiful in England. There is no more tender or subtle landscape on earth.' He loved the old stone cottages, admiring 'an architecture that has never lost its vitality'. Around him in Oakridge were craftsmen, thatchers, tilers, carpenters and stonemasons, still working in the traditional way, using skills handed down through countless generations.

The local people inspired Drinkwater to write a small book, Cotswold Characters, which contains a series of portraits of craftsmen, clearly local, though Drinkwater disguises their identity.

There is Eli Gardiner (called Joe Pentifcr), the thatcher with his 'long stormy beard and his thick hair itself thatchlike', while Thesiger Crowne (probably a Hunt or a Gardiner) is definitely an Oakridge stonemason. The clue is the historic scar he bears, the mark of a police truncheon. Crowne was one of the ring leaders in a night of violence and arson when the Pest House was burnt down in 1896. Police had to be brought from Cheltenham to deal with the rioters, several of whom ended up in jail. But when Drinkwater met the stonemason he was an old man of 77, 'one of the Cotswold breed. and his handiwork is in every town and village within twenty miles of the hamlet that had been his home for seventy-seven years. At the age of sixty-six. he used to walk twelve miles a day to and from work.'

You can read 'Cotswold Characters' here.

The above is an extract from 'Oakridge a History' by Pat Carrick, Kay Rhodes and Juliet Shipman, available from Oakridge History Group, price £15 through the ‘Contact Us’ page or from the Oakridge Village Shop.

Oakridge History Group