Coleford, Gloucestershire

 

Wood, coal and iron

The Forest of Dean, the area of ancient Gloucestershire woodland between the Rivers Severn and Wye, is a place of extraordinary natural beauty. Ancient trees, including oak, beech, sweet chestnut, birch, holly and various conifers, abound, while parts of the forest are rich in wild flowers and fungi. What surprises many visitors is that the region also has a rich industrial history. It was once studded with coal mines (a few were still worked when I was a boy) and places where iron ore was extracted. Because there was both iron ore and trees to make charcoal, there was a major iron-smelting industry in Roman times and in the Middle Ages, when the metal was sent to centres such as Gloucester as well as being worked locally.

In the late-18th century, iron smelters in many regions realised that coke could be a more efficient fuel for their furnaces and by the 1790s, some industrialists were making coke from the local coal and using it to smelt iron. Just outside Coleford there are the remains of a large coke-fired blast furnace that was built for smelting iron ore in 1798. Investors in the furnace included a stockbroker from London called Thomas Halford. He became unhappy with the money that iron from the furnace was making him – it took about 80 tons of iron ore and 120 tons of coke to make a mere 20 tons of pig iron. Halford began to correspond with an expert in the field, David Mushet of Derbyshire. Mushet went into partnership with Halford and by 1810 had moved to the Forest to run the furnace.

It quickly became clear to Mushet that he couldn’t make a profit from the furnace – rich as the local ore was, the Forest coal simply didn’t lend itself to coke production. Mushet sold his shares and Halford eventually went bankrupt. The ruined furnace remains, its great arch leading into a vast space where the ore was heated. The size of the structure, the very thick walls, the chunky masonry all speak of a purposeful industrial structure here among the trees. There was originally also a steam engine to pump away and send a blast of air into the furnace to keep the internal temperature high enough to melt the iron. The clanking engine, the horse-drawn tramroad bringing in coal and ore, the activity of the workmen – all of this must have made this a noisy, bustling place. It’s quiet now, with the occasional sound of traffic on the road to Coleford the loudest sound, and between the cars, the song of birds.

Cinderford, Gloucestershire

Writing the Forest, 1

The Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire’s least known part, is perhaps also the least easy to know. It is long stretches of achingly beautiful woodland – a rich mix, with notable stands of oaks and hollies, to name two of my favourite species; it is also sites of abandoned industry, from Roman ironworking to 20th-century coal-mining. It is mostly rural – even the mining was rural – but there are towns too. If the countryside is visually gorgeous, towns like Cinderford and Coleford are apparently unprepossessing, the kind of places any guidebook with gloss over, or simply pass by. Tourists are directed to the rural Dean Heritage Centre to learn about the area’s history and for refreshments too – and in normal times they’ll be nurtured well there, in both ways. The comedian Mark Steel, arriving in the Forest, asked the whereabouts of the local bookshop, usually a good place to find out more about an area that’s new to you. ‘Bookshop?’ they said. ‘You’ll have to go to Monmouth for a bookshop.’ And Monmouth is in Wales.

But there is always a but, isn’t there? There’s much of interest in these places: medieval and Victorian churches; nonconformist chapels, some repurposed, some still in devoted and devotional use; a town hall or two; other incidental pleasures. Foresters are proud of their history, and some, at least, are proud of their buildings. And of those who’ve written in and about the Forest, which is where the mural in my photograph comes in.

In 2018, an organisation called Reading the Forest commissioned two murals – this one in Cinderford and another in Coleford – from the artist Tom Cousins. Each mural bears portraits of three Forest writers. The idea of the murals was both to celebrate the local literary heritage and to encourage and inspire local young people who might have an interest in writing themselves. The three writers in the Cinderford mural, the first to be painted, all lived in the town, and all their work features the Forest in one way or another. The poet Leonard Clark (1905–81) worked as a teacher and then an inspector of schools. He wrote prolifically, and a lot of his poetry was written especially for young readers; he also edited collections of poetry for children. Quite a lot of his poetry reflects on the life of the Forest and its people, and the area also plays a key part in his autobiography. Winifred Foley (1919–2009) came to fame when her stories of her youth in the Forest were broadcast in BBC Radio’s programme, Women’s Hour. Her stories, collected in such books as A Child in the Forest and In and Out of the Forest vividly recount her young life as the daughter of a miner (who was killed in a mining accident) and her time ‘in service’, performing the expected domestic drudgery for families in London, Gloucestershire and Wales. These books still find readers and are still fresh, decades after they were published. Jack Beddington (1901–86) focused his work single-mindedly on Forest life, to the extent of writing most of it in Forest dialect. Living in Cinderford for nearly all his life, he knew the place inside out (he wrote for the local newspaper for years). If the popularity of his stories and anecdotes was limited mainly to the local area, his plays reached a wider audience, as did his radio appearances.

None of these people were world renowned celebrities. But that, in a way, is the point. Writers like Clark, Foley, and Beddington deserve commemoration on their home patch. At a time when young people in deprived areas face difficulty in finding any job, let alone one that takes them into faraway worlds, the fact that people like this, from families like theirs, could make it as writers, ought to be cause for hope – that writing can be a life, and that pride in your local area isn’t a bad thing.