Knighton days

Roy Kerridge For the past three months I have been living in the market town of Knighton, which nestles among steep hills crossed by Offa's Dyke, on the Wales-Shropshire border. From my window I can see Kinsley Wood, the tall forested hill which domin- ates the town. Conifers have been planted on the crest of the hill, but plenty of oak and birch trees remain. One end of the hilltop rises like the ragged, humpy shoul- der of a grizzly bear and then sweeps down to the wavering River Teme below. In the morning, mist trapped in pockets among the firs slowly rises as a watery sun appears. From September to December I have seen the wood change from dark green to orange to brown. In October, the oak trees resembled a velvety tapestry hanging on the hill. In windy weather they rippled and tossed like an autumnal sea, throwing acorns down like spray. On some Sunny mornings the whole hill would be invisible under the mist, as if a giant had Plucked it away. Below the overhanging Wood in early autumn, house martins floated on the breeze like cinders. From above, seen from any of the hilltops around the town, the Teme Valley ett appear a land of lakes, with conical hills and far-off mountains rising from mysterious white waters that are really Mist. Once a vertical cloud resting behind a Pointed hilltop seemed to be an active volcano. This heightened the effect of a Japanese landscape. A large hare with a bright ginger patch ran along the hillside on deer-like feet and then crouched in the grass. I climbed over a gate into one of the

many tarmacked lanes that criss-crossed the hills, sunk beneath tall banks and well-clipped hedges with rounded tops that reminded me of the wall round Winson Green Prison. Since farm tracks have become motor roads, with room for one Land-Rover at a time, they have captured the rainwater and become beds for narrow streams on their edges, drawing water from the earth. I trotted down into Knighton so as to be in time to see the weekly sheep auction. On the way I almost stumbled into a large speckle-chested buzzard who rose from the hedge-top on heavy wings.

Thursday is a great day in Knighton's autumn calendar, for farmers, butchers and stockmen of every kind turn up for the auction. Instead of being tourist-conscious, the local people are farmer-conscious, afraid that rain will keep the country people away. Buses from outlying villages such as Brampton Bryan (always called 'Bron') go to and fro, unloading passen- gers. The men look at the sheep, and the stout women poke at the merchandise on the stalls that perch on the edge of a steep lane between overhanging shops. A butch- er's shop has a wonderful mural across its portals showing a mediaeval king hunting deer and wild boar through a dreamlike forest where peacocks roost on oak trees. Back at the sheep market, prospective buyers plunge their hands into a passive creature's back and squeeze the wool. Cheerful young men with paint-pots push their way among the sheep and daub the animals with the lumpy end of sticks. As a result of this 'branding', the poor sheep

look more like Amazon parrots than self- respecting farm animals, brightly coloured in scarlet, blue and green. Later the same boys, wielding outsize bus-conductor clip- pers, punch holes through the right ears of sheep destined for the butcher. There is a subsidy on these animals.

Black-faced Clun , sheep are packed in with the speckle-faced Kerry breed. The latter are not from Ireland, for there are Kerry hills near Knighton. Shepherds and farmers greet each other cheerfully, crack- ing jokes in Shropshirish tones. To my ears, the Border accent sounds like rural English when men are speaking, and Welsh when high-voiced women and child- ren join in. These border people seem a special breed to me, more friendly than pure Welsh and English farmers. When the auction begins, they bid with palms raised. Sometimes a sheep escapes into the town, to be brought down with a flying tackle and either dragged back to the pen by the scruff of its wool, or walked back pinned between a cowboy-like pair of legs.

See the auctioneer now, a young stern- faced bearded man with a stick, who climbs along the railings, holding onto a post as he stands above his woolly wares and sings his market song. He is assisted by a laconic youth named Badger who carries a note- book.

`Here-they-are-gents-yearlings-all-walk- around - and - look - at - them - ready - now - Badger - what - am - I - bid — HUP twenty - six - fifty - twenty - six - fifty HUP - twenty - seven - pounds - sold - and away - for - twenty - seven - pounds - if - youre - done - Badger!

Before and after the sale, the market cafe, workmen's café and the stone-flagged public bar of the 'Jockey' are full of hill farmers and villagers greeting one another and gossiping. 'Sheep Scab Must Be Eradi- cated', warn the posters in the market café. Hopeful farm hands in their teens some- times advertise themselves here on pinned- up postcards. Until the beginning of the last war, Knighton had a hiring fair in May, when sturdy young men stood beside their metal trunks for inspection by farmers.

`Be'est 'e working, or be'est 'e staying on?' the would-be employers had asked them. Sometimes the pub conversation today concerns fights, while in the market café farmers ask, 'He's only got thirty acres, how does he manage?' In the work- men's café, frequented by middle-aged farm workers now often employed out of doors by the council, the gossip sounds more lugubrious. Everyone concerned with farming wears the same muddy khaki colour, on boots, waistcoat, cloth cap or greatcoat.

`What's 'e like to work for? I'll tell you, 'E's never put so much as a stick in the hedge. He's of good stock, mind. But 'is father before 'im 'd work that hard at shearin', 'e'd shear 'em nearly all himself. That feller just went out, 'e laughed when I talked about shearin' 50 ship [sheep] a day. 'Why, I do 200!' he boasted.

'Don't talk like that,' I said, "cos when you talk like that you're talking like a fool. You be 'avin' men ketching for you. If you're on your own all day, ketching and shearin' ship, then when you've done 50, you've done a tidy day's work.'

'I remember, it used to be out with the wagon and horses, pitching and loading. But the war changed everything, brought in machines. The manual worker's gettin' scarce everywhere. Rain coming down a drop, isn't it?'

`No, when you're out, mind, it's more mizzling.'

As market day ends, housewives haul their shopping onto the buses and farmers drive off in blue hillbilly-style pick-up trucks each with a black and white collie sitting up at the back. Enormous two-tier lorries take flocks of sheep to the slaugh- ter, and two-wheeled trailers pull luckier beasts up to a windy farm. Pubs remain open all day.

Living in isolated farms encourages eccentricity and strong individualism, and the good influence of farmers seems very evident in Knighton, a town known for its 'characters'. A cheerful farmer named Watt still uses a pony and trap for his everyday travel, and can often be heard approaching from the maze of country lanes to clatter into the High Street. The 'laughing woman' is a great favourite of mine, a white-haired lady with a very expressive craggy face and a loud booming laugh which goes on for ten minutes at a time. Sometimes she laughs when she meets someone she knows, and sometimes when she remembers something that amuses her. Another Knightonian used to sing hymns aloud as she walked along, as some West Indian housewives still do in London.

She stopped when the stares of summer tourists made her feel self-conscious. Bearded walkers with knapsacks often pass through the town as they follow Offa's Dyke Way. The eighth-century dyke cros- ses Kinsley Wood, where it becomes a haunted steep-banked ditch among mossy oak trees, some of which are now growing from the bottom of it. 'Magic mushrooms', pale brown with knobs on top, grow here, and have attracted hippies to Knighton. Ageing ex-hippies now live in council houses, changed by fungi and other stimu- lants from promising graduates to blur- brained casual labourers.

When I first came to Knighton, I was surprised at the dark, swarthy appearance of many inhabitants. They seemed too tall to be of Iberian stock. Only now have I found that at least three local families are descended from different clans of gypsies who settled here in the 19th century.

'He was born under the caravan' is a local expression used to describe those of Romany blood. Gypsies came to the Fair in large numbers until recently, fighting rival tribes when the pubs turned out. A horse dealer who arrived in Victorian days stayed on to found a dynasty, and his heirs now own half of the local Great House. Others became publicans, and one family who grew rich selling cats' meat rose to the position of Gentry, a word still in daily use around Knighton. The young ladies of this family were once much admired, as they walked demurely by in muffs and bonnets, speaking to nobody, on their way to church. They seem to have been rather Spanish in their looks and behaviour. When there was a funeral, this family returned to nature, and waked the dead in every sense by step-dancing and music- making all night around a bonfire. Neigh- bours would be formally invited to such an occasion.

'I went AWOL at the end of the war, in Holland,' a Knightonian told me. 'It was such chaos, with displaced persons every- where, that I could get away with it. So I joined a band of gypsies who recognised the Romany in me through the genera- tions. We travelled about the place, and I fitted in very well, eating hedgehog baked in clay. They didn't play fiddles, but accordions and a kind of small guitar.'

Another Knightonian gypsy played a fiddle for Cecil Sharpe the folksong collec- tor, who recorded him on a cylinder. At nearby Craven Arms, an old farmworker still sings ancient ballads in the pub, including a very long and curious version of 'John Barleycorn'.

Church and Chapel are still important, though the outbreak of war put an end to their heyday. Children were sent to their respective Sunday Schools in morning and afternoons, and marriages between Church and Chapel families were rare.

'What are you doing talking to him he's Church,' one girl had been told. Nowadays the two factions are friendly, perhaps at the cost of losing some of their faith and members. Young people with no time for tolerance drive off to outlying Pentecostal fellowships.

'I'm Church, but both my sons are taking Bible instruction,', I overheard a big man say in the market café. 'If they want to be Pentecostalists, I won't stand in their way.'

Despite the rowdy children and teen- agers who lark around the streets till eleven at night, Church and Chapel doings seem to occupy the town's thoughts. The new and dreadful custom of 'children discos' was explained to me as a modern substitute for Sunday School, as it gave the parents a bit of peace.

Harvest Festivals in late September seemed to show the difference between Chapel and Church. In the chapel, the altar was heaped up with vegetables, mar- rows and fruit, bordered with jars of home-made jam. At church, however, nothing edible could be seen, but instead dry leaves, flowers, rowan berries and fir cones were arranged in beautiful patterns around the whole building. Cut off from the working side of the land, the Church staged an aesthetic and civilised Autumn Festival. I enjoyed myself in both places.

Recent settlers in Knighton, of a Guardian-reading variety, pay no heed to Church or Chapel and go to meetings of various societies, such as the Archaeologic- al Society and the Green Group.

`In the Sixties a new breed of young archaeologists arose to topple all the old values,' the bright young man informed the Archaeological Society on my visit. 'In- stead of simply digging up pots and arrow- heads and trying to reconstruct life in prehistoric times, we now employ the language of computers. First of all, we look at people and divide all their actions into positive feedback and negative feedback. It was positive feedback when men ceased to be hunters and took up farming, as hunting is a decadent way of life.'

At the Green Group, the exact opposite view was held.

'When men ceased to be hunters and food-gatherers and took up farming, they broke the last link with nature, as symbol- ised by Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden,' another bright young man ex- plained. 'Farming is unnatural, a curse on mankind.'

Everybody began to abuse farmers vehe- mently, while I sat there amazed.

`If farmers lost their subsidies, there'd be no more sheep and the land could go back to forest,' someone remarked, a most un-Knightonian suggestion.

Brains were racked to find local exam- ples of industrial pollution, with scant success. Ban-the-Bomb rallies were announced, and then it was back to cursing at farmers once more. The possible re- introduction of wolves was discussed, perhaps as a means of keeping down sheep. An old Scotsman urged everyone to read Darwin, eat nuts and go back to the trees.

'We must change the universe, end world hunger and bring about world peace,' it was announced. I made an excuse and left, reflecting on an idea I had held at the age of 15: All the Middle Class are Barmy. My solution then, to join the working class and care only for material things, had proved a failure. The workers wouldn't have me. Just then a tall, shaggy- haired aged hippie with wild eyes strode past, the last of the Knighton mushroom men.

'Beware of the Black Hand!' he seemed to hiss at me. Although this seemed a likely, even obvious, remark for anyone to make to me, I asked him to repeat himself.

'Carples on the hand!' he shouted, show- ing me his raw, knobbly fingers. 'Every one of these joints on my fingers is a carple. This one's a carple and this one, and this one, but this one's a little bit different.'

'Perhaps that's because it's a thumb,' I suggested. He gave me a suspicious glance and walked off, still talking about carples. I learned, later, that he had given up a

career in medicine to become a hippie. Known to everybody as 'Bob', he was

well-liked, humoured and cared for by the kindly gypsies, farmers, Church and Chapel people of Knighton, the Town on the Dyke.