Revealing Facts Discovered by Heritage Groups
Sticklepath Heritage Group (SHG) has two strings to its bow: history and culture. We hunt for facts and we concentrate on activities where residents come together for community events. Often these overlap; the village celebrations for the Coronation in 1953 were undoubtedly social in nature, but even as Elizabeth II was donning her robes, Sticklepath folk were erecting a new flagpole at White Rock, on the precipitous hillside where John Wesley is thought to have preached, a historical event visible to this day.
Coming up to date, SHG’s current history project is a programme of house surveys, in which residents share what they know about the history of their homes. These can be incredibly revealing. A bag full of old documents provided not only a 100-year-history of a cottage on the main street, but also of the estate to which it once belonged. In 1913, ‘Steddafords’ sprawled across the eastern side of the village and those old documents revealed the gradual break-up of the estate during the 20thcentury which spawned, among other things, the village playing field and the housing development of Oaktree Park. Another house history reveals there was probably another mill at the eastern end of the village, in addition to the ones already documented, which indicates just how industrial this area was.
Coupled with the house surveys is the programme of oral histories. We have recently transcribed two sessions with Carrel Jevons, a descendent of the influential Pearse Family and a wonderful mine of information about Sticklepath’s past. John, George and Thomas Pearse, thought to be father and two sons, set up Cleave Mill around 1828 and lived next door to each other in three adjoining houses. The houses are still there and internal connecting doors suggest they were a close-knit family. Thomas Pearse was, of course, the man immortalised in the song Widecombe Fairas the owner of the famous grey mare. In fact, he owned three such animals and there is considerable speculation as to which of the three properties was his.
Oral histories throw up some unusual claims to fame. For instance, Captain George Pearse (not the George who founded Cleave Mill) won the Queen’s Prize for shooting 1875. George must have been a robust fellow, because the kick from the Martini-Henry rifle of the day destroyed many a shoulder. Interestingly, 1875 is thought to be the last occasion on which the competition was held on Wimbledon Common; understandably this was considered to be too dangerous to passers-by and the event was moved to the ranges at Bisley.
Mention of Widecombe Fairbrings us neatly onto cultural activities. Sticklepath has a strong tradition of things like amateur dramatics, summer balls and the famous Fireshow, many of which have sadly fallen by the wayside over the years. Enthusiasm for such things is still high in the village, as shown by the success of SHG’s Grey Mare Festival, now an annual event for Hallowe’en. This restores some of the traditional English aspects of the season, such as the giving of soulcakes, lost with the arrival of the American ‘Trick or Treat’ celebrations in the 1980s.
As its name suggests, the festival is built around the folklore of the journey to Widecombe Fair and involves children, the ‘Seekers’ of the mare’s ghost, processing to music round the village in pursuit of their quest. Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer and the other riders pop up, as does the mare herself, of course, in a journey including candle-lighting at the church and an encounter with an irate blacksmith wielding a red-hot horseshoe. Later there are mummers plays performed in the village pubs. In keeping with Sticklepath’s creative traditions the festival was entirely conceived and planned within the village, with scripts and music being written by Sticklepath folk.
In an age when entertainment is served up by all manner of electronic devices, there is still room for a community to entertain itself, the Grey Mare Festival being a good example. The SHG also reinstated the Christmas Social, started in 2016, an evening of good food and variety show entertainments provided by the people of Sticklepath themselves. The audience, and possibly the performers too, are invariably surprised by the amount of talent existing in the village.
Mike Gilbert
Sticklepath Heritage Group