tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19151341.post6559761133506037820..comments2024-03-16T16:12:13.296+00:00Comments on some LANDSCAPES: Severn's ambient wavePliniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06529481330530614513noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19151341.post-59350261804113884022008-07-18T12:21:00.000+01:002008-07-18T12:21:00.000+01:00Thanks Snarlerson. I have to say your comments ar...Thanks Snarlerson. I have to say your comments are much more evocative than Samuel Lewis's description in his compendium of rivers. Lewis mentions the Bore (or 'Hygre') - just as famous in the nineteenth century. I forgot to mention that he also points the reader to Drayton's description of the Severn in 'Poly-Olbion'.Pliniushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06529481330530614513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19151341.post-74916518936437787692008-07-18T11:46:00.000+01:002008-07-18T11:46:00.000+01:00As so often, your blog brings back a flood of main...As so often, your blog brings back a flood of mainly pleasant memories. The river Severn is almost a leitmotif of my childhood. At the time of the Coronation in 1953, I lived in a flat overlooking the weir in Shrewsbury and all day and night I could hear the roar of the Water. Later we moved to a house near Haughmond and we often went via the Abbey to climb Haughmond hill with our faithful dog, Rufus. Rufus joined us when we moved to Meole Brace and where we spent many happy hours on the banks and in the Meol Brook. Like the mythical years of Edwardian England, the summers seemed to last for ever. We would take our sandwiches and set off to spend a day by the Brook. Damming the stream to build up enough water for swimming alternated with sailing small boats and dodging cow pats. At other times, the Brook was cruel, in full spate after downpours and the footbridges and causeways were under water. Today no child would be given this freedom to wander without supervision. We were not scared of drowning or of preyers on children.<BR/><BR/>We often went to Attingham too to see the Hall now owned by the National Trust but I was more impressed by the quiet Atcham parish church on the banks the Severn. The builders re-used Roman columns from Uriconium (Houseman’s “Uricon’) and I thought of it as the birthplace of the great Anglo-Norman chronicler, Orderic Vitalis. Then on downstream to the atmospheric Buildwas Abbey in the Severn Gorge which I first visited from Scout camp under Wenlock Edge. I still find it hard to believe that the nearby sylvan Coalbrookdale once looked like the inferno painted by Loutherbourg. At Bridgnorth the castle keep is at a curious angle thanks to Cromwell and there is the divide between the Higher and Lower towns which are linked by a cliff railway. Cave dwellings are also still apparent. By the time I remember it well, I had children and we enjoyed the steam trains on the Severn Valley Railway down to the pub at Hampton Loade with its delicate small ferry. Still as a child, on visits to my aunt in Worcestershire we went to see King John’s tomb above the flood plain in Worcester Cathedral and had tea with a friend at Kempsey where Simon de Montfort crossed the river two days before he fell in the massacre of Evesham. It was with my children, that I visited Gloucester then more famous for Dr Foster and the Tailor rather than Harry Potter. But the eastern window , cloisters and Edward II’s tombs were stunning. It was from the Severn here that lampreys were sent to the royal kitchen in Henry III’s time. It was not until a few years ago that I finally got to Berkeley castle to see where Edward was murdered. Now dominated by a nuclear power station; will the government care about its setting when it considers a new generation of nuclear stations? And what about the Severn barrage? Will no one see the magical Bore again?<BR/><BR/>I was impressed too that you had a link to Shenstone who is often thought of as a Worcestershire man but lived in an exclave of Shropshire.snarlersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13117760284163716428noreply@blogger.com