Woodplumpton - A Place, A Name or A Sentence?

W O O D P L U M P T O N A place, a name or a sentence? Almost Welsh in its length and complexity, the name conveys the notion of the idyllic countryside, natural food and a well fed community. In olden days when I was a lad, the local village children of Woodplumpton possessed a rural awareness sadly lost today. We all knew of the healing capacity of the dock leaf, could tell the time by the setting sun and could predict the weather by the height of the flying Swifts. Accustomed to the dawn chorus, that magnificent expression of bird song, raising to a crescendo to greet the dawn then gently fading within minutes into the normal background chatter of the blackbirds, the thrushes, the sparrows and so many more of our fellow natives, the daily rhythm of life was at peace with Mother Nature. In those early days, before the speeding traffic and the ghastly light of the street lamps, the stars brightly defined the heavens with a magnificence long lost to the sodium lamp of the road. Before globalisation, the fresh milk on the doorstep each morning was from the Friesian cows ruminating in the field outside the classroom window. And the school nature walk took only minutes to arrive at the microcosm of sticklebacks, water-boatmen and water snails in a picturesque local pool. Speaking of local pools, the village also has a past - one which some of us would prefer to forget. In darker times the damp bog by the side of the road was a pond, or pit as the locals would have it. Equipped with a ducking stool, alleged local witches would be tested – those who floated were guilty and subsequently burned – those who sank may have been innocent, yet drowned. To this day, the Parish church is still equipped with stocks, so that local offenders can be secured by the feet and abused by the local mob. Within the churchyard, a witch’s grave is preserved. The local children still tell of her supernatural ability to claw her way out of the grave, thus explaining the huge stone which now entombs her. In my childhood, these stories belonged to the olden days, and our community had become much more mellow. “Witches” were seen as eccentrics and allowed to get on with their gardening, and transgressors of the law were referred to the village policeman. Our neighbours behaved with respect for one another, and – as a symbol of sustainability - the village blacksmith continued to shoe horses. The vicar, a highly intelligent and literary man, would teach once a week in the village school, but religious dogma was out – human morality was in. In my earliest recollections of the school, the headmaster was a disciplinarian, ruling by the cane and his personal predilection for suspending a boy by one of his sideburns. This particular stress position is now outlawed as a torture tactic and was never used by the new headmaster who delighted me in my later years in the village school, by displaying a bias toward education. While I’ve been away- did I mention I’ve been away from this idyllic village life for some 20 years or more? - the village would appear to have succumbed to the future. The village shop purveys those ready-made-meals which only the English can eat. The village police station is now out-sourced to a neighbouring town. The traditional blacksmith and the historic ducking pond are long gone - replaced respectively by modern housing and a garage. The vicarage is no longer the sanctuary for literary creation but just a stepping stone in the ecclesiastical careers of a string of vicars, earning “parish air miles” to be redeemed later. Is it just the fading memories of an old man which see the best days of the village as coinciding with his own childhood? A golden time between medieval barbarism and crass modernity? Well, who is there to judge? Who else has witnessed the evidence? Who else can really understand the meaning of Woodplumpton?