‘Do not forget me quite, O Severn Meadows’
Newnham on Severn is a small town overlooking the west bank of the Severn, once a port on the river, now a pleasant and in my experience rather quiet place – as quiet, that is, as is compatible with being on the main road between Gloucester and Chepstow. There’s a curving High Street, a long green, and a variety of brick houses, some dating from the 18th century.
And then this. A 19th-century-looking shopfront, unremarkable in itself, but displaying a marvellous collection of signs, stickers, and printed material. I particularly like the old ‘Blackbird’ and ‘Swan’ pen signs with their bird symbols and distinctive name. Not ‘fountain pens’, but ‘Fountpens’, to make it that bit more memorable, I suppose, unless a ‘Fountpen’ is a specific species of pen of which I’m not aware.
The window also contains a collection of printed material from the archive of the Severnside Press, whose shop this is. It’s full of gems. British readers will recognise the style of several election posters, which are of various dates from the 1920s onwards. The real star is the large poster headed ‘PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION’, a list of polling stations and their locations in this part of the county. This extraordinary poster is a litany of names (Awre, Corse, English Bicknor, Joy’s Green, Pillowell, Plumphill, Ruardean…) as evocative as the place names in an Ivor Gurney poem. More than this, it’s an impressive print job: a complex multi-column layout in a variety of typefaces handled with a mixture of flair and expediency. The flair is in the balance and the fit of the text, the expediency in the occasional resort to the ‘wrong’ typeface when reasons of space (or perhaps a shortage of type) meant that an alternative sort had to be chosen for a word here and there. The poster is dated 1951, but it’s done in a traditional style that goes back much further – the heading type could be from a Victorian playbill, the more complex layout lower down from a Methodist lay preaching plan, blown up to size.
So, in a small shop window, there’s a reminder that Newnham is a town (albeit a small one) where once many people worked at making things – in the glass industry, at tanneries, even, once upon a time, building ships. Where there were businesses, there needed to be a printer, turning out letterheads, business cards, notices, and the like, using metal type and inky presses, in the days before ‘publishing’ was something people could do on their ‘desktop’. And amongst these printed products were election posters to remind us that towns like Newnham and Newent and Lydney were (and still are, up to a point) centres for a whole network of rural communities, some nucleated villages, some more scattered Forest or Severnside settlements. Do not forget me quite…
I've been through Newnham several times, and always meant to stop and have a look. There's something about its Englishness when approaching from the Welsh direction: the red brick, the big fields, the Germanic place-names. Also, the Forest of Dean corner is peculiar in its own way, inhabited by a "race of hobbits" a local resident assured me: he lived a matter of yards from the boundary with Monmouthshire. Frames for eel nets all along the riverside, can be seen from the train. I wonder how old they are. Why do the buildings suddenly change as soon as you cross the bridge from Chepstow? E.g. Tidenham church so drastically different from Gwent churches not very far away.
ReplyDeleteYes, you have it right – there is something English about the place when you approach it that way. The Forest of Dean is indeed a place apart (apart from Wales, apart even from adjacent riverside places like Newnham). The playwright Dennis Potter, who came from Berry Hill, wrote a book about it when he was a young man, The Changing Forest; it captures some of the individuality of the Forest and its people, which was still more marked 50 years ago.
ReplyDeleteOh yes. Makes me want to go there immediately. I love looking over at Newnham church on its deep pink sandstone cliff from the Arlingham shore.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good view across the river from Arlingham, I agree. Must look inviting in the early morning sun, but it always seems to be evening when I am there. The Old Passage restaurant at Arlingham, until recently a characterful green in colour, has now been painted a more seemly but less unmitigated white.
ReplyDeleteAs a humble 'hobbit' of Newnham, all I can say is I am glad you like the place. I think my friends from The Forest might take exception to your description, but I will leave it to them to 'come round yur owse and sort ee out ol butty'. Meanwhile just remember that behind those English facades there is many an intrigue and upset. I am sure whoever writes the script for The Archers lives here. Those eel nets are actually fish engines. Devices to catch salmon, and their history is probably more ancient than any building you can see in Newnham now. They are called puts and when the time is right are filled with putchers, a tapering wicker or nowadays steel basket. Oh and one more thing. I am very pleased that the Old Passage is white again, it has regained its place as a little landmark beside the vast expanse of the River Severn.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your comment, mypinknee. Yes, I was wondering when someone would make a comment on the 'hobbit' reference. I must say, my wife, whose grandmother kept a shop in the Forest, will probably have something to say about it too! Thanks also for the information about the fish engines – puts and putchers are new words to me and I'm pleased to make their acquaintance.
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