Ancestral Link

Peter and I had a boys' day out today. We'd intended to get the bikes out but a vicious south-westerly and squally showers put paid to that idea. I know there are some who get pleasure from cycling in the face of adversity but we're not amongst them, not when there's a perfectly sound Honda CR/V available.

We were stuck for photographic venues. I suggested Gloucester Docks, always good for a bit of rippling water and some photogenic boat bits. Then I remembered it's Easter week. There'd be people about, maybe children, clogging up the images with their untidy presence. I hate people in pictures, nasty undisciplined things, never dressed to suit the shot, wandering about, willy-nilly, with no concept of thirds or foreground interest.

Inevitably we found ourselves in church again, the only public buildings readily available in inclement weather. I hope we don't catch religion.

Staverton Parish Church near Cheltenham has strong ancestral connections for me. Samuel Leach, my great-great-great-great grandfather was the clerk there in the early 1800s and would have been involved in the building of the organ seen on the right of the picture. It was completed in 1825, two years before his death. He had joined the 29th Regiment of Foot in 1788, served in the West Indies, met his wife, Margaret Plomer, in Cornwall while standing by to repel Napoleon (who obviously fancied a tub or two of Cornish Clotted Cream otherwise he'd have been making for Kent or Sussex) and was invalided out as a sergeant in 1800.

He settled in Gloucestershire, became a schoolmaster and raised eight children. No doubt he had seen life and had stories to tell the children of the resident agricultural labourers. For them the trip of a few miles to Cheltenham or Gloucester would have been adventure enough.