TADLEY GOD HELP US
Tadley God Help Us is a village (a small town really) in Hampshire. The story to explain the ‘God help us’ appellation is that at the end of the nineteenth century, or maybe the beginning of the twentieth, a balloonist descended on Tadley. The balloonist walked up to a cottage door and asked where he was. The terrified cottager, seeing that the oddly dressed stranger had descended from the heavens, dropped to his knees and exclaimed, ‘Oh Lord almighty, this is God-forsaken Tadley, God help us.’ Since then, smart and sophisticated people who fly in the skies have called the place Tadley God Help Us.
Now, Tadley is out on heathland, and in a rural area, but it was never that remote. I rather agree with Vesey-Fitzgerald when he places the story in Tangley, a remote village set in a narrow chalk cleft up in the downs near Chute’s Broadway. However, the story has attached itself to Tadley, and that may be because of the storytelling proclivities of the Tadley broomsquires.
Tadley isn’t a particularly prepossessing place – though I love going there to tell stories in the excellent library, may God preserve it. If you look at the house next to Tadley Library, a perfectly ordinary semi-detached, you may notice that there are besoms (broomsticks) leaning against the wall in the porch, and then you may notice a plaque on the wall. The plaque shows that here dwells the officially approved supplier of besoms and pea sticks to Her Majesty the Queen. The heathland around Tadley was full of birch coppices (providing the brush for besoms) and hazel (providing the handles), and Tadley was a major centre for besom production. Arthur Nash made besoms here, and I bought one – not for any witchy ‘new-agey’ nonsense, but as a practical tool, to clear up leaves and sweep the yard. Sadly, Arthur Nash has now passed on, but I believe that his wife and son still continue the tradition, even making besoms for the Harry Potter films – though I imagine it is hard, now, trying to sustain a business making quality handmade implements.
At one time, though, when Tadley was full of besom makers, these experts, known as broomsquires, were great raconteurs and storytellers, and they probably enjoyed spreading the Tadley God Help Us stories. Like many a village in England, there are stories of treacle mines and bacon ghosts, but here is one I heard. I was telling stories at a country fair, and a broomsquire, who had heard it from one of the old Tadley originals back in the early sixties, told the following story to me:
THE MAN IN THE MOON AND THE BROOMSQUIRE
A broomsquire had been peddling his besoms out to the east of Tadley, and on his way home he stopped for a drink or three at Hall in the Hole, now long gone. Night fell, and he still had to traverse Pamber Forest to get himself back to civilisation and Tadley. As he stumbled through the forest, he came across an open clearing that he didn’t recognise – and across it there was a line of white stones, all shining under the light of the full moon. He followed the stones, but, as he did so, his feet started to sink into the ground – and this was strange in the dry heathland. So he stepped up onto the stones, and stepped from one to another like they were stepping stones. Then, oh dear me, a cloud drifted in front of the moon, and it must have been a big, black, thunder cloud, because he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He stopped, balanced on a stone, but then he felt it begin to sink. Oh Lord, the glutinous, soggy ground was up to his ankles, then it was up to his knees. When the boggy substance reached his thighs, the cloud cleared from the moon and the broomsquire realised he was up to his arse in treacle; he had stumbled into the Tadley treacle mine. Just then, a magpie alighted on a stone.
‘Trrrk Trrrk Trrrk,’ said the magpie.
One for sorrow…
‘That’s all I need,’ thought the broomsquire, ‘to be watched by a bad omen as I sink into a treacle mine.’
‘What are you doing?’ said the magpie. Now, this was surprising.
‘I be standing on a stone in a treacle mine, and the treacle is up to my waist,’ replied the unfortunate broomsquire.
‘Why?’ enquired the bird.
‘I don’t know.’
‘If you don’t know why, I won’t. Why don’t you fly away?’
‘I can’t. People can’t fly.’
‘Bloody fools,’ said the bird.
The broomsquire tried to remain polite. ‘I be standing on a stone in a treacle mine, and the water’s up to my chest,’ he said, ‘could you help me please?’
‘Don’t know about that,’ said the magpie, eyeing the broomsquire over its beak in a supercilious manner.
‘Please – I be standing on a stone in a treacle mine, and the water be up to my neck.’
‘Oh, very well,’ said the magpie, ‘Allow me to introduce my wife.’
‘Trrrk Trrrk Trrrk,’ said Mrs Magpie.
Two for joy…
‘Reach out for our feet,’ said the magpie. The broomsquire grasped their feet and they flapped and they flapped, and they hauled him out of the treacle mine, and way up into the air above Pamber Forest.
‘Thank ’ee, thank ’ee,’ cried the broomsquire, ‘will you be setting me down in Tadley now?’
‘No,’ said the magpie.
‘No?’
‘No – because I don’t like you. You and your kind throw stones at us when you’re gathering your blessed birch sticks. You chase us away, you shoot at us, and you hang us upside down from fences. I don’t like you.’
‘Please – I’ll never throw another stone,’ pleaded the broomsquire. But the pair of magpies had taken him high into the sky, and, when they reached some shining, white ground, they threw him down. Then off they flew, shouting rude things at him, and calling out, ‘Trrrk Trrrk Trrrk.’ The broomsquire dragged himself to his feet, and looked around. Where was he? He was on the moon.
The poor broomsquire sat on the rim of a crater and began to cry. ‘I only wanted a few drinks. I only want to get home. I’m just a humble broomsquire – what did I do to deserve this? Boo hoo hoo.’
Just then, a little man with a very long beard and a pointy hat popped his head out of the crater.
‘Who are you?’ said the little man.
‘Who are you?’ said the broomsquire.
‘I asked first,’ said the little man.
‘I’m a broomsquire fromTadley.’
Well, b***** off back to Tadley, then.’
‘I can’t, I’m on the moon – and who are you?’
‘Who do you think I am? I’m the man in the moon, and I don’t want you on the moon.’
‘And I don’t want to be on the moon!’ wailed the broomsquire.
So the man in the moon picked up a besom – a proper moon-made besom – and he swept the broomsquire up into the sky. The broomsquire found himself falling and falling, into the world.
‘Oh dear Lord,’ he thought, ‘I’m going to be splattered.’
Just then a goose flew by, folded its wings, and started to plummet downwards with him.
‘Honk,’ said the goose.
‘Aaaaargh!’ said the broomsquire.
‘What are you doing?’ asked the goose.
‘Falling to my death,’ said the broomsquire.
‘Hold on to my feet then,’ said the goose.
‘Now, this has happened before,’ thought the broomsquire – but a drowning man will clutch at a straw, and a plummeting man will clutch at a goose’s feet, so he grasped them. The goose spread its wings, levelled off, and flew southwards.
‘Climb up onto my back,’ said the goose, and so the broomsquire climbed onto its back and, as if he was astride a flying horse, found himself flying over Hampshire. There, in the moonlight, were towns and hamlets, churches and barns, forests and copses, roads and rivers, field and farms – and then there was the sea and the whole coast from Sussex to Dorset, and the Isle of Wight ahead of them.
‘You’re not dropping me off at Tadley, then?’ enquired the broomsquire.
‘I’m going to France,’ said the goose, ‘and you’re a very fat broomsquire and I can’t support you much longer; you’ll have to get off.’
&n
bsp; ‘I CAN’T!’ screamed the broomsquire, ‘I’LL BE KILLED!’
‘There, there,’ said the goose in a patronising tone, and swooped down, low over the sea.
‘See that ship? If it’s not sailing to Southampton, it’s sailing for Pompey. You just drop into the sea, shout for help, and they’ll fish you out.’
So, when he thought that the goose was nearest the sea, the broomsquire dropped off its back, tumbled into the sea, and sank like a stone. And along came a whale and swallowed him all up. It was disgusting in the whale’s belly – all sorts of flotsam and jetsam floating about, besides dead fish and all sorts of rotting, smelly things. A voice boomed out, all muffled and strange, and the broomsquire couldn’t make out the words.
‘Beg pardon?’ he called, being a polite sort of a chap.
‘TICKLE MY TONSILS,’ boomed the voice of the whale, and the broomsquire did. The whale was violently sick and threw the broomsquire up onto a little shingle beach. And there he was, all wet and bedraggled, and covered in whale vomit, on Spice Island in old Portsmouth. He had a long walk home.
Ever since then, though, it was said that his besoms had a bit of magic moon dust about them, and the sort of people who bought them didn’t use them for practical purposes, but danced around them naked, and stuff like that. Speaking personally, I’ll stick to the practical usages – because if you should ever see, as I have done, a leaf-clearing contest between two gardeners, and one has a besom, and the other has one of those noisy, two-stroke leaf blowing machines, you’ll know that it’s the besom that wins every time.
CRICKET, SINGLE-STICK WRESTLING AND BARE-KNUCKLE BOXING
Hampshire Hogs always had a fondness for battering each other, so the county was known for the violence of its sports. Hambledon, in mid-Hampshire, is well known for being the birthplace of cricket, and, whilst cricket may be thought of as a rather gentlemanly game, anyone who has faced a speeding cricket ball may well think otherwise. (I do think that the Hampshire cricket commentator, John Arlott, who has himself entered folklore, was, however, a true gentleman, and the kind of man desperately missed by modern sport.)
Hampshire was also known for single-stick wrestling, where combatants were armed with sticks. The Reverend J.E. Jackson wrote:
They fought bareheaded, with the left arm fastened to the waist, so that they might not use it to ward off blows. To hit an opponent on the face was against the rules: but to hit him on the top of the head was the grand point, and the grandest point of all was to hit him so as to produce blood.
We’ve already encountered bare-knuckle boxing in Wickham, but if we are to travel eastwards from Tadley, we come to where Hampshire borders with Surrey, and this is a land of sheer, unadulterated savagery.
The Battle of Farnborough
At Farnborough, we have the place that marks the beginning of international boxing championships. It marks it with the brutality that is probably appropriate to the sport, with a fight that entered the public consciousness in the way that turns real events into folklore. The county border is significant to the story. By 1860, bare-knuckle boxing had been outlawed; so, if the fight was raided by the Hampshire police, everyone could leg it (and if they missed the bridge and a boat, swim it) across the River Blackwater into Surrey. The fight took place on Farnborough heathland, outside what was then a village.
John Heenan was a giant Irish-American, who had developed his fighting prowess as an ‘enforcer’ in the rigged elections of San Francisco. Tom Sayers was only 5ft 8in, but he was driven by his background from the slums of Brighton and London. He was hard as nails, and boxing was, as it always has been, a way to earn fame and money, and a way to escape.
Vast crowds of people descended from London Town, and these crowds included notables like the Prince of Wales, Charles Dickens, W.M. Thackeray, and – so it is said – Lord Palmerston, the prime minister himself. Plainly the rich, the famous, and the high ranking could be turned on by the sight of working-class men battering each other to a pulp.
The fight was long and savage. At first, Heenan knocked Sayers round the ring, and it looked like no contest; but then Sayers started to move, and he inflicted so much damage on Heenan that the prize-fighter was temporarily blinded. The contemporary descriptions, and the local folklore, describe how Sayers would inflict damage, and then stand back and examine Heenan, generously letting the man recover. This seems highly unlikely; in England, we like to portray our heroes as gentlemanly underdogs, and make up stories to fit this image!
The fight went on for forty rounds, after which Heenan was unable to see, and Sayers was fighting with a broken arm. Finally, Heenan forced Sayers’ neck onto the ropes, and held him there till his face turned black, his tongue protruded from his mouth, and his eyes were popping from their sockets. At this point, the highly partial crowd stormed the ring and cut the rope; and, in the ensuing disorder, the police were forced to act. In they charged and there followed utter chaos – crowd battling police, general brawling, and folks legging it across the county border to Surrey. The fight was declared a draw, and, after this, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry came up with the ‘Queensberry Rules’, to ensure fairer fighting. The Battle of Farnborough is often taken as being the world’s first title fight.
A HIGHWAYMAN’S HEATH
In Victorian times, north-east Hampshire was urbanising rapidly. Mrs Juliana Horatia Ewing, a lover of folklore and writer of children’s fairy tales, wrote about Aldershot:
Take a Highwayman’s Heath. Destroy every vestige of life with fire and axe … then shall the winds come, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and shall raise on your shaven heath clouds of sand that would not disgrace a desert in the heart of Africa.
On that shaven heath has grown the urban conglomeration of Aldershot, Farnborough, Farnham, Fleet and Camberley. As heathland, though, it was a dangerous place on the high road to London. It was said that Dick Turpin haunted this heath, but the name of Turpin seems to get attached to highwaymen in general – rather in the way that the name of Arthur is attached to ancient kings and chieftains. There was, however, only one Claude Duval.
Duval was a Frenchman who had come to England to work as a footman for the Duke of Richmond. Monsieur Duval, however, took up the profession of gentlemanly highwayman. One fine day, he held up a coach on Farnborough Heath, but told the gentleman and his wife that he would only take part of the loot if the gentleman’s wife would dance with him. So, they danced by the roadside while a manservant played the flute. William Pope used this tale for a poem, and William Powell Frith used it for a painting.
There was also William Davies, aka the Golden Farmer. He would also behave in a most gentlemanly manner, so as to show his victims that he was no mere footpad or cutpurse. He sometimes worked in league with ‘Old Mobb’ from Romsey, who rather liked to dress as a woman. The Jolly Farmer Roundabout on the A30 at Bagshot, just across the border in Surrey, gets its name from William Davies.
These highwaymen did rather fancy themselves, and there has always been great snobbery amongst thieves. In 2002, the newspapers were able to add to these legends, with headlines such as ‘Highwaymen hold up a Stagecoach’, when two thugs held up the Aldershot to Camberley Stagecoach South mini-bus. They tied up the driver, stole his money as well as the takings, and drove the bus back to Aldershot. I tend to think that this sums up highwaymen in general; the robbery would have been a miserable and traumatic experience for the bus driver, and so robberies must have been for victims of those historical highwaymen.
Duval and Old Mobb ended their lives dangling on a rope at Tyburn. Davies ended his on a rope at Salisbury Court, also in London. Salisbury Court was the place where Davies had murdered a butcher, and his life ended at the scene of the crime.
THE TREASURE OF THE BASINGSTOKE CANAL
So, now most of north-east Hampshire is an urban ‘splurge’. Yet there is always hidden magic, and beneath motorways and link roads, in between housing estates and industrial estates,
there really is beauty and wildlife – for there is the Blackwater Valley nature reserve. The length of the River Blackwater is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and a haven for wildlife. There is also the old Basingstoke Canal, which was built to link Basingstoke with London, and a story.
When the canal was being dug at the end of the eighteenth century, some of the ‘navvies’ (a word to describe the canal construction workers that was taken from the word ‘navigate’) unearthed a hoard of buried treasure: gold and silver, and the armour of an ancient chieftain. The navvies promptly downed tools and disappeared. They were gone for seven years – in stories, if it’s not threes, it’s sevens – and when they finally reappeared they were dressed as fine gentlemen. It was said that one of them, who came from the County Cavan in Ireland, became Lord of Farnham, but I can’t vouch for the historical authenticity of that.
THE BLACKWATERBEAT
Folklore and folk stories – always developing. So we come to 1961, The Beatles, and Aldershot. As I took a drink in an Aldershot social club, I was told that if it hadn’t been for a little mistake, the genre of music known as the Merseybeat might have been called the Blackwaterbeat, which alliterates rather nicely, and the Liverpool sound might have been the Aldershot sound.
In December 1961, The Beatles were booked to play the Palais Ballroom, Aldershot. The story of battling in this part of Hampshire doesn’t just refer to bare-knuckle boxing, for this was a north versus south battle, a battle of the bands. The Beatles, from the north, were pitched against Ivor Jay & the Jaywalkers, from the south. Sam Leach, The Beatles’ manager, wanted this to be the band’s debut in the south.
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Folk Tales Page 13
