Owen Gower

Category: Rural Radicalism

  • “Now Tom Till’s debt is paid”

    It was late on 18 January 1816 and snow lay thick on the ground as a group of young men, amongst them labourers, masons, and farmers’ sons, all from the Gloucestershire town of Thornbury, gathered at the house of John Allen, ready to embark on a course of action that would have tragic consequences.

    The scene had been set many years earlier. The Game Act 1671 brought in a property qualification, making hunting of game illegal unless you owned freeholds worth £100 a year or leaseholds worth £150 a year. These were significant sums, excluding all but the richest from hunting. In subsequent years further anti-poaching legislation was enacted, leading to a complex set of laws and punishments that provoked a huge amount of resentment towards the large landowners they most benefitted.

    In November 1815, the body of a young farmer named Thomas Till was found on land at Tortworth owned by Lord Ducie. He had been killed by a hidden spring gun, a deadly weapon that landowners could legally use to deter poachers. For some in Gloucestershire this was the final straw and, in the months that followed, poaching became an organised act of defiance. Most resistance was aimed at Colonel Berkeley whom many saw as being at the forefront of anti-poaching efforts. And so it was that the sixteen men gathered at John Allen’s house on 18 January 1816, united in their common purpose to go poaching on Colonel Berkeley’s estate. They disguised themselves and swore an oath they would “not peach upon each other”. Heading out into the clear moonlit night, they knew they mustn’t get caught.

    A few miles away, at Roundhouse Wood on the Berkeley Estate, nineteen gamekeepers waited for signs of trouble, as they had done on many nights those past few months. It wasn’t long until the keepers received the information that shots had been heard at Catgrove Wood, and they readied themselves for confrontation. The keepers, armed with stout sticks as Colonel Berkeley forbade them from carrying guns, soon encountered the group of poachers in a clearing at Catgrove.

    Thomas Clarke, Colonel Berkeley’s park keeper, stepped forward shouting “huzza my boys, fight like men!”. Responding with cries of “glory!” the poachers formed themselves into a line and moved forward. A shot rang out, then another. One of the keepers, William Ingram, fell dead to the frozen ground. Then all hell broke loose. In the melee that followed, a further seven keepers were injured. As the poachers finally fled, John Penny handed his gun to William Greenaway, saying only “now Tom Till’s debt is paid”.

    A furious Colonel Berkeley ordered an immediate search for the culprits and a line of footprints in the snow soon led the gamekeepers straight to John Allen’s door. It wasn’t long until fourteen men were in custody in relation to William Ingram’s death: John Allen, William Brodribb, John Burley, Benjamin Collins, Thomas Collins, William Greenaway, Robert Groves, James Jenkins, Daniel Long, Thomas Morgan, John Penny, William Penny, John Reeves, and James Roach. A further four fled the country before they could be apprehended. Benjamin Collins was eventually released without charge, whilst William Greenaway opted to give evidence against the other poachers in exchange for his life. Brodribb was charged with administering an illegal oath; the rest were put on trial for Ingram’s murder.

    At the Gloucester Lent Assizes in April 1816 all eleven men were found guilty, a verdict which merited the death penalty. Their defence had focussed on the injustice of the game laws and the impact that Thomas Till’s death had on the community, and numerous witnesses attested to the good character of the young men. Newspaper reports recorded that the jury were in tears as their foreman read out the verdict and begged for clemency for nine of them on account of their character. The judge agreed and so only John Allen, the ringleader, and John Penny, the man who fired the fatal shot, were hanged for the crime. The other nine, along with Brodribb, were transported to Tasmania. Greenaway, who had given evidence against his fellow poachers, had to leave his home and was found a new job by Colonel Berkeley. The impact of that tragic evening continued to be felt long after the snow had melted.

    Grass and mud path through woods with bare trees
    Path through Catgrove Wood by Owen Gower

    I often go walking near Catgrove Wood; the wood itself remains off-limits to anyone not involved in the running of the Berkeley Estate. It’s a nondescript group of trees, high on a ridge above the Berkeley Vale containing no clues as to the events that happened here 207 years ago, nor their long-lasting repercussions. Unless you come at night. It’s said that on the anniversary of what became known as the Great Berkeley Poaching Affray you can still hear the sound of gunfire on the main ride at Catgrove Wood and see William Ingram fall to the cold ground all over again.

    There’s another reason to avoid this place at night. The Night Poaching Act 1828, part of the series of game laws passed between 1671 and 1831, remains on the statute book (as two rabbit poachers found out in Hereford in 2007). If Mr Berkeley’s keepers find you here set on hunting game there’s still a chance that you could be transported to Tasmania!

    References and further reading

    Edwin J. Ford. The Great Berkeley Poaching Affray of 1816. Edwin J. Ford, 2005.

    Rosemary Lockie. “The Berkeley Castle Poaching Affray of 1816 – Thornbury”. Wishful Thinking. 2005. Accessed January 3, 2023. https://places.wishful-thinking.org.uk/GLS/Thornbury/PoachingAffray.html

    Steve Mills. “The infamous Berkeley affair”. The Bristol Cable. October 18, 2016. Accessed January 3, 2023. https://thebristolcable.org/2016/10/poaching/

    P.B. Munsche. Gentlemen and Poachers: the English Game Laws 1671-1831. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

    Thornbury Roots. “John Allen”. Thornbury Roots. Accessed January 3, 2023. https://www.thornburyroots.co.uk/crime/john-allen/

  • The lie of the land

    Land. There are those who, through quirk of their birth, claim entitlement to vast swathes of it. Others will buy and sell it. Some remains common property, belonging to all of us.

    But what happens when land is created? Who owns it then?

    A view over the River Severn at low tide
    View over the River Severn at low tide by Owen Gower

    On opposite banks of the River Severn in Gloucestershire sit the villages of Slimbridge and Awre, and in the early 1200s these communities were locked in a most bizarre dispute. The way in which the mighty river flowed and deposited silt meant that there was a patch of land which switched its allegiance from time to time, sometimes resting on the Awre side and sometimes accessible only from the Slimbridge side. Understandably, the residents of Slimbridge and Awre were not entirely satisfied with this situation and in 1233 a jury was convened to decide once and for all who the land belonged to. Their conclusion: no matter what the river might do, the land belonged to Slimbridge.

    A settlement of sorts, but this decision also opened another can of worms. Was this gift of the river to be common land, used for the benefit of all, or was it part of the manor of Slimbridge, held by the powerful Berkeley family?

    The Berkeleys seized the initiative, with Thomas de Berkeley (1293/96-1361) making improvements to the riverside land in the 1300s. Then, in the 1550s under Henry Berkeley (1534–1613), work began to protect the land from the Severn’s fickle ways and ensure it always remained on the correct side of the river. Finally, a series of legal cases determined that the land, now known as the New Grounds, could not be considered common land because they had been “cast together by the tides within memory of man”. New land, it seems, had to have an owner.

    But whilst the Berkeley family were asserting their right to own and profit from the land reclaimed from the Severn at Slimbridge, there was a revolution taking place just across the river. Between 1628 and 1631 inhabitants of the Royal Forests of Gillingham, Braydon and Dean rioted against the sale and subsequent enclosure of what had previously been held as common land. This royal moneymaking scheme threatened to deprive foresters of their ancient rights to graze and take timber, ruining livelihoods and challenging the very basis of established custom. Help came, as it often does in the English countryside, in the form of a fictional character.

    In these disafforestation riots, participants rallied behind the name Lady Skimmington. In the south of England, a ‘skimmington’ was a wooden ladle used in cheesemaking. It was also a name given to a form of vigilantism in which a noisy parade was held to express community displeasure at perceived acts of immoral behaviour. It made sense then that those protesting this overturning of long-established traditions in the Royal Forests would choose Lady Skimmington as their leader. In Gloucestershire this part was played by John Williams and under his leadership some 3,000 rioters set about pulling down all of the enclosure fences within the Forest of Dean.

    By June 1631, Lady Skimmington was on the move and heading in the direction of Slimbridge. In return for promised victuals, one of Williams’s lieutenants, William Gough, plus five of his company resolved to head to Slimbridge by lighter to tear down the fences enclosing the New Grounds. Their plan failed when all were arrested and brought before magistrates in Gloucester. Three were imprisoned, but Gough escaped.

    Lady Skimmington may not have been able to threaten the Berkeley family’s possession of the New Grounds but a new revolution was brewing and, amidst the chaos of the English Civil Wars, George Berkeley (1601-1658) petitioned the House of Lords, stating in 1646: “since these unhappy wars began some persons unknown to me, in a riotous manner, have digged down the banks thereof, and pulled down the houses thereon, laying it in common for all mens cattle”. A few years later, during the Commonwealth, a Digger colony was founded somewhere in Gloucestershire. Historian Christopher Hill has suggested that this group may have been based at Slimbridge.

    If the Berkeley family were able to repair their fences and return the New Grounds to the exclusive use of their tenants after the Restoration, it wasn’t for long. The 1801 Slimbridge Inclosure Act appears as something of a victory for those who had fought so hard over the centuries to have common use of the land. It reasserted that the Berkeley family owned the soil, but finally allowed freeholders of Slimbridge and nearby Frampton on Severn rights of common on the land.

    Fast forward to 2022. The New Grounds continue to be part of the 6,000 acre Berkeley Estate and whilst it’s certainly difficult for the freeholders of Slimbridge to exercise any rights of common over the land they can perhaps take comfort in knowing that anyone can visit and enjoy it, providing they are prepared to pay an entry fee. The land reclaimed from the River Severn is now home to the Slimbridge Wetland Centre.

    References and further reading

    D.G.C. Allan, “The Rising in the West, 1628-1631”, The Economic History Review, New Series, 5, 1 (1952): 76-85

    Nick Hayes, The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us (London: Bloomsbury, 2020)

    Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (London: Temple Smith, 1972)

    Francis Pitt, The Frontier of a Barony: The New Grounds at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire (1948)