Crickley Hill in 1938 or thereabouts

This postcard was sent in September 1938 to someone who lived in Southampton. It's remarkable how few trees there are on the lower slopes of the hill and around Cold Slad. There is now pretty thick tree cover on the lower part and the houses in the Slad are hard to see through the trees.

Dr Ferris writes ...

I enjoyed Crickley Hill Man's recent elegaic posting about his most recent visit to the Hill. I too have experienced similar feelings of tremendous and transcendent well-being when visiting Crickley on a number of occasions in the past few years with parties of students. Can one die from an overdose of nostalgia of this kind or would Crickley Hill Man recommend that I seek professional medical advice? (Seek psychological help, Iain - Ed. But keep on taking the hills)

  

Crickley Hill Man's recent mention of Cold Slad made me recall that when I first came to dig at Crickley I was told that this was the village of Slad featured in Laurie Lee's 'Cider With Rosie'. It was only in 2002 or so that I learned that this was not the case and that Laurie Lee's Slad was in fact close to Stroud, though still in Gloucestershire. I wonder if Crickley Hill Man or any of his dedicated readers have laboured under this same misapprehension? (Like you, I was misled into believing that Cold Slad was the Laurie Lee one - you just disabused me of the notion.)

  

I note in Dave Butler's recent posting on Crickley Hill Man's blog that he had not remembered the names of the three cooks he referred to as having done the dig catering. I recall that 'the Chinese cook' was Aileen (or Eileen), while the 'two Geordie cooks' were Ken and Dave who did the catering two seasons' running.  (Ken Fussell is now in South Africa here)

Dr Phillpotts recalls Tony being the cook in about 1972.

Crickley & Credenhill: I've been both faithful & unfaithful last weekend ...

Posts non-existent in the last few days as I have been away in Herefordshire visiting friends. I've been carrying out the important role of Roman sentry/centurion, being attacked regularly by Celtic spies. During the course of my duties I died several times on the astonishing oval rampart, round the whole of which you can walk, at Credenhill. I cannot recommend a visit enough.  Jonathan (10) and Holly (very nearly 6) had a splendid time constructing Celtic ambushes on the top of the rampart: their mother and I carried out heroically incompetent defensive patrols!  The cleverness of the digital camera means that our rolling about was captured for posterity on film.  All blissfully fun. 

But in the wrong hillfort.

Wishing to be "wright and wromantic" as opposed to "rong and repulsive", I thought, as I drove home, that I should stop by a certain hill.  The Volvo got to the Air Balloon and guided itself left towards the top of the hill as opposed to straight ahead towards Oxford and London. 

Between 3.45 p.m. and 4.30 p.m. this afternoon Crickley was heartbreakingly beautiful, even in the pouring rain.  Visibility north was between 10 and 20 miles maximum, depending on the wind and the rain, down over Cold Slad towards Shurdington.   I met 4 other people on the hill set for Shurdington but was otherwise alone.  Visibility was good towards Barrow Wake. 

The leaves are all on the turn: the rosehips are a beautiful bright red and the hawthorn berries dark.  A few sloes.  The Long Mound has many more thistles at the eastern end as opposed to the western, I suspect because the turf shrank all those years ago and we returfed west to east.

I did something I've never done before and drove back down towards Gloucester and into and through Cold Slad: sitting quietly below the quarries looking up at the top of the hill.  As I write now, I remember Flt. Lt. Southwood, so many years ago, in late July 1976, playing "The Last Post" on a scaffolding pole in the quarry  for Sir Mortimer Wheeler, with a platoon of diggers standing to attention. 

Very peaceful and beautiful even on a rainy day.  Reluctantly, I turned for home.