Engel's England

by Matthew Engel

  The Golden Valley is changing, but it does so only slowly. In Craswall, ‘the highest and wildest parish in Herefordshire’, according to the 1955 Shell Guide, ‘the farmers ride about on horses as they always did’. Electricity came here only in the 1960s, around the time everyone else’s novelty was BBC2. Even now there is a clear delineation between the old farming families – Powells and Prices and Prossers, Watkinses and Williamses – and those whose forebears are not in the churchyard.

  Twenty-five years is several centuries too short to understand all the interlocking kinships and ancient feuds that govern life here. Incomers have to learn Golden Valley ways as a foreign language, and a native speaker can always tell the difference. We try to tread lightly, but sometimes fail. The farmers have a holy terror of outsiders telling them what they can’t do, which is the best explanation as to why, though it is an area of outstanding natural beauty, it is not an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (unlike large chunks of Kent, Surrey and even Lincolnshire). We may regret that next time some damn fool wants to build a wind farm.

  But if there is hostility, it is either hereditary or personal. There is a mutual dependency, a recognition that without fresh blood the place would have withered long ago, and an underlying strength. When they tried to build a wind farm on the Cat’s Back, and when the council tried to close the schools, the community rose as one. When the roads flood or the valley’s white and blocked by snow or you drive the tractor into a ditch or the sheep break out, there is someone to help. There is an aristocracy here, but not in the normal sense; it comprises the kindly, the sociable, the capable, the quietly knowledgeable and the adaptable.

  In all of that, the Golden Valley is merely a distillation of the rest of Herefordshire. ‘I think borderlands have a very special quality,’ Michael Tavinor, the Dean of Hereford, told me. ‘That’s why they’re more liberal. The population have to deal with Welsh people and the Welsh language and get on with it. They are used to accepting differences.’

  That applies within the Church too. ‘There’s no real sense of extremes of churchmanship,’ the Dean went on. ‘Partly because clergymen look after a large number of churches. Any differences would tend to be ironed out.’ Hereford was keen to appoint a woman as its 105th bishop but the resignation of no. 104 came a touch too soon for the Church as a whole. This liberality extends to what might be described as the Church’s polar opposite: Herefordshire’s most famous yet most secretive group of humans, the SAS. No regiment in the army depends less on blind obedience and more on individual decision-making. That above all is an aristocracy of the adaptable.

  But, long before women bishops, the city of Hereford never managed to be among the nation’s pacesetters. This was one of the last cities to get a railway (1854), a multiplex cinema (2014) and a bypass (sometime never). The London trains take for ever, or longer on a bad day: much of the route is single-track (‘You are held in a queue. Please hold the line.’). There are only one and a bit road bridges over the Wye, which the shoppers and commuters have to share with all the traffic crawling its way through the unbypassed city centre on the A49 – a sluggish enough road anyway. The longest hour of my life was spent following a Somerfield lorry from south of Leominster to Shrewsbury. Hereford itself has more traffic to less purpose than anywhere else I know.

  The irritated motorist may catch a glimpse of the cathedral. However, the defining sight of the city was for many years a rear view of a row of grim shops that fringed the old cattle market by the Edgar Street roundabout. The market was demolished last year to be replaced by a new and controversial shopping-and-entertainment complex. The visitor is now greeted by the brick wall of a branch of Debenhams and a multi-storey car park. There are two schools of thought about this among Herefordians: either it is slightly less ugly than the previous monstrosity or actually uglier. ‘Couldn’t they afford an architect?’ asked one incredulous visitor.

  Poor Hereford: too small (55,000) to be urbane, too big to be intimate, too badly connected to be businesslike, nor quite beautiful enough to make a living from its looks. But the genius of this county does not lie in the city, nor even in the pleasant small towns like Ross, Ledbury and Leominster. Nor even does it lie in the villages, handsome though many of these (Pembridge, Weobley, Eardisley, Bodenham …) may be, especially the half-timbered black-and-white villages towards Leominster. It lies down the obscure lanes in places you can find only by satnav or accident: parishes and hamlets and valleys and wooded hills the world has passed by.

  Most of Herefordshire is more conventionally, more quintessentially English than the Golden Valley: the fields are larger, the farms more arable, the springtimes earlier, the Welsh influence less obvious. But these Shangri-Las of the Marches are dotted everywhere (Aylton, Brinsop, Kings Pyon, Knill, Snodhill, Preston-on-Wye …).

  Everywhere too are hidden valleys, lush hillsides, sudden breathtaking views and remote homesteads any Briton genetically imprinted with the urge to buy houses wants instantly, even those who are lucky enough to have one of their own already. The pornography of this quasi-sexual urge can be found in the property supplement of the Hereford Times. These urges are related to those found in Surrey and Cheshire too, but they represent a different kind of kink. Herefordshire houses do not habitually include swimming pools and are not guarded by electronic gates. They tend to be scruffy, often draughty and damp, but divinely positioned. These days they are often inhabited by liberal, unstuffy, well-travelled baby-boomers who have made enough money elsewhere, thank you, but not all that much. But there is a price to be paid. And it is paid, as ever, by the young.

  One of Hereford’s most successful institutions is the Sixth Form College, founded in 1973 when the county’s schools went comprehensive. It was one of the first in the country and is recognised as one of the best. The college now has nearly 2,000 students, about 80 per cent of the county’s A-level cohort, giving them much of the personal freedom of a university but perhaps more insistence on academic rigour. There are only two drawbacks. One is the extent to which the college adds to the city’s rush-hour gridlock. The other is more profound, and Dr Jonathan Godfrey, the college principal, is well aware of it.

  ‘Almost a performance indicator of our success is the percentage of our students who go away to university,’ he says. ‘And not many come back.’ There are a few professions in which it is possible to build a respectable career in a place as provincial as this one. ‘We’re doing our bit,’ Godfrey adds. ‘We’ve got about twenty ex-students on our staff.’ But simple reality, never mind ambition, means that most of Herefordshire’s brightest and best feel they have to leave. That includes many of the farmers’ children who helped their parents lambing and milking at the hours when London kids were just getting back from parties. Their departure is not always reluctant.

  In an era when almost everywhere has a university of its own, the Marcher counties have been a sad exception. This has been an important factor in Hereford’s stagnation. There has been talk of a university for some time. Godfrey insists it has gone beyond a pipedream and become a serviceable plan for an institution concentrating on (that word again) ‘liberal sciences’ which has been garnering at least notional support within government. All that is still missing, as normal in Herefordshire, is the money.

  ‘What we can’t offer are the fleshpots of Manchester, Liverpool or Leeds, or the cultural life,’ he admits. ‘But that cart would follow the horse of a university.’ Worcester now has a university. Worcester has a bypass. In some versions of the story, Worcester made damn sure of that.

  The county of Hereford and Worcester (born squalidly: 1974; died unmourned: 1997) is the locus classicus of the wretchedness of the local government botch. Originally, this malformed entity was to be called Malvernshire; protesters won that argument, but none of the others. Hereford’s name went first but it was to be second in everything else. It was not a minuscule minority, as Rutland was in Leicestershire, but, with one-sixth of the combined population, it was
a perpetual minority nonetheless and Herefordshire did feel itself oppressed.

  This is a county that has always had a powerful self-awareness. Opposition to the original plan was universal and theatrical: a black flag on the Shire Hall in Hereford, a bull led up to Downing Street, a coffin paraded before a Hereford United game. Discontent continued during the twenty-three-year occupation. It was felt most acutely by Herefordshire’s contingent of councillors, whatever their politics, who sensed total indifference to their concerns, exemplified by the decision to build a new council HQ – on the other side of Worcester.

  I don’t recall dawn raids by Worcestershire storm troopers on the homes of suspected dissidents or crowds of independence supporters being tear-gassed by armed traffic wardens and health and safety officers. Worcestershire didn’t much care what we thought. I do remember my heart leaping every time I saw that the HEREFORD AND WORCESTER sign on the Monnow Bridge south of Ewyas Harold had had the ‘AND WORCESTER’ bit whitewashed out once again. It would always take ages before anyone bothered to restore it. The persistent rumour is that Worcestershire stole all Herefordshire’s treasures and never gave them back. David Taylor, who has represented the village of Clehonger on various councils since 1970, is dubious: ‘Well, they may have had something. But we hadn’t got much treasure to start with.’ And though it is true that Worcester got a bypass and Hereford did not, this was largely because Hereford kept bickering about the route.

  When the government said it would consider a demerger, a poll showed Herefordshire more than 90 per cent in favour. And the night before it happened, in 1997, regional TV brought the leaders of the newly elected separate authorities to the restored county border on the crest of the Malverns. Terry James, the first leader of the new Herefordshire Council, said it was like the end of empire. ‘It was very funny. I talked about all the parties and how every church in the county would be ringing its bells. Then they asked, “What’s happening in Worcestershire?” And their leader said, “Nothing.”’

  But, as happened in post-colonial Africa, the first flush of liberation-enthusiasm did not last long. James avoided being toppled by an army general who then made himself president-for-life, but each winter now the lovely lanes become more pothole than tarmac, and the public lavatories were closed as expensive fripperies, and a new rat-friendly dustbin regime is imminent. Most of this is due to cuts outsourced by government to the council to palm off the blame. But David Taylor is a little wistful about the loss of the neighbours’ stronger tax base: ‘It was always Them and Us with Worcestershire. But we were getting quite a good return, financially, in those days. We’re in the S-H-ONE-T now.’

  As in Africa, no one would seriously seek a return to colonialism. But there are reports, from one of the county’s borders, of a new act of creative vandalism. The current clever-dick signs read:

  Herefordshire

  You can

  Supposedly one of these has been amended to:

  Herefordshire

  You can’t go to the toilet

  The livestock market, banished from the city centre, is now several miles out of town. The new site is far less cramped and far more practical. But its departure marks a major severance of the link between town and country: the Farmers’ Club, as run-down as the old market, has closed and been sold off, and the special character of market day has gone for ever.

  As a business, the market seems to be reviving. But it’s not the same. ‘People used to do ten minutes of sheep selling and four hours of chatting,’ says Steve Hancorn. ‘Now it’s a place of business. Soulless but functional.’ Hancorn is the scion of a Golden Valley farm family who did come back and still keeps his sheep. ‘Most of the farmers do a bit of hedging, a bit of ditching, a bit of shearing or a bit of contracting. I was lucky enough to go to university so I can do a bit of teaching in the warm.’

  Meanwhile, Debenhams, Waitrose and the new multiplex (a measly six screens) stand on the market where the cattle used to low. Since the market moved, the only bull now seen anywhere nearby is the life-size bronze statue in the city centre. It is supposed to be a Hereford bull, but lacks the white face which is its defining feature. It does have what must constitute the most impressive display of male genitalia on permanent display in any shopping street in the land. It is just outside the local branch of Ann Summers, its head slyly half-turned towards the window as though he were wondering whether the flimsy pink bra-and-knicker set on display would suit one of his paramours.

  On a quiet side street nearby is the HQ of the Hereford Cattle Society, which dates back to 1878, since when it has recorded the productive matings of Hereford cattle across the county, the country and the world: these are beyond question Herefordshire’s most successful exports and have become synonymous with the roast beef of Olde England.

  The breed dates back more than a century before that, to when a group of local landowners began to experiment with breeding from their oxen and discovered that the animals with white faces and markings on a reddish-brown body tended to thrive best. The pioneers did their work secretively, a characteristic which is bred into the Herefordshire farmer.

  The animal that resulted was short and stocky, like a rugby fly-half, and it had the great Herefordshire adaptability gene. But it was big enough until, in the twentieth century, it began getting smaller. David Prothero, the breed secretary for the past thirty years, says the Americans wanted smaller animals for their indoor feed-lots. Then they changed their minds and decided bigger was better, and British breeders were slow to catch up. So Herefords went into decline, especially in Britain, even in Herefordshire.

  When Prothero joined the society, as a teenage driver, in 1971, it was an organisation with thirty-nine staff. Now it has five plus one part-timer. That is partly because the laborious record-keeping has been computerised. It is also a reflection of bad times. The sturdy old Hereford went out of fashion. Farmers wanted bigger, fancier, continental animals; consumers wanted beef less often and they wanted it leaner.

  But the British Hereford was saved. Extinction was never likely, but it might have become a cutesy novelty. The breeders bought in new genes from overseas, to put some bulk into the breed. It was, says Prothero, a thirty-year process, and not universally popular. A minority refused to turn their cows into GI brides and insisted on sticking to the time-honoured British bloodlines. They remain inside the fold but are treated rather like the anti-feminist fundamentalists in the Church, with semi-affectionate exasperation. The Traditional Herefords are marked in the herd book with square brackets and an asterisk, [*].

  David Powell is an eighty-year-old bachelor farmer from the cidery village of Much Marcle, whose great-grandfather first bought some Herefords in 1834. He took over his father’s farm in 1972, bought a bull and went on from there, building up a herd that is very much [*]. ‘Mine are shorter and slower-maturing, but the meat cooks better, the fat going through the grain of the beef. People are coming back to them. I’ve got a butcher in south London who will take as much as I can produce. And we’re now getting enquiries from South America and Australia for embryos because they’ve gone too far changing the breed: they’re too tall and too narrow.’

  With his personal bloodline dying out, Powell has done a deal with a charity and runs his farm partly as an education centre. This has been an education for him too. ‘We get students from London, and they all shout because they say you can’t hear yourself in London. We also had a girl who thought to get milk from a cow you had to kill it. And a boy who thought potatoes came off a tree. They weren’t from London, though, they were from Ledbury.’

  Some of his cattle were grazing amidst the trees in his cider orchard, which were just coming into blossom. God was in his heaven. His star turn was at the far end of a meadow, looking across to May Hill and Gloucestershire beyond.

  ‘Come here, Laura,’ he called. ‘Come on, Laura. I want you.’

  And over she ambled, for a small bit of grub and a pat on the head.

  ‘She
is a bit of card, this one,’ he admitted. ‘But there you are. Most docile breed in the world. Would your wife come to you if you did that?’

  In his office in town, David Prothero has his triumphs to report too. Within the past couple of years Waitrose, the Co-op and now Sainsbury’s have all started marketing Hereford beef. Square brackets and genetic purity are not part of the deal. There is an asterisk on Sainsbury’s promotional leaflet: ‘Hereford means sired by a Hereford bull, registered with the Hereford society.’

  Still, there is a certain reflected glory for every male in the county. There are counties symbolised by roses, swords, bears, foxes, what-have-you. But where else is represented to the world by a bollock-naked professional stud?

  David Garrick was born in Hereford. So was Gilbert Harding. And Beryl Reid. Nell Gwynne, maybe. Mott the Hoople and most of the Pretenders were Hereford boys. Blanche Parry, Elizabeth I’s confidante, has a memorial in the church at her home village of Bacton. Much Marcle prefers not to mention its own local boy, Fred West.

  Sir Edward Elgar from Malvern worked on The Dream of Gerontius, and much else, in a small cottage at Birchwood. Painters? There are some very fine locals. But Herefordshire’s most famous resident artist was undoubtedly an incomer, and far better known as Australia’s most famous artist.

  Sir Sidney Nolan made his name after the war for his Ned Kelly series. He then lived in London for many years until, in disarray after the suicide of his second wife in 1977, he sought refuge in a remote house in the Golden Valley with Mary Perceval, who became his third. In 1983 the Nolans bought the Rodd, a farm north of Kington, where he lived and worked for the nine years until his sudden death, aged seventy-five.

  The Rodd is surrounded by low hills in the Hindwell Valley, and already had an antipodean connection: it was from here that Australia reputedly received its first Hereford bull, Sir Archibald. And Nolan was evidently enchanted by the place, even establishing his own herd of cattle (not Herefords). He kept painting in one of the barns, often using spray paints: the studio has been preserved and looks as though it belonged to a particularly finicky vintage car restorer. He worked under fierce lamps designed to recreate the light of the outback, here, in this soft, damp borderland. All his artistic life Nolan relished harsh light and harsh landscapes: Australia, China, Greece, Antarctica. Never once, apparently, did he paint Herefordshire.