Two of the Forest’s most popular poets lived more than 100 years apart – Catherine Drew (born 1784) and Harry Beddington (born 1901). They wrote about the Forest’s people, places, landscape and history. Catherine described the remarkable changes she saw as Forest industry expanded and Cinderford grew into a town; Harry captured the essence of the Forest character through sharp observation and humour. Now we’re discovering there was even more to these two than we’d thought: finding forgotten poems written by Catherine, and unpublished poems (and more!) by Harry. To share some of our new discoveries, Dean Heritage Centre is streaming live online (for the first time!) this Thursday (3rd Oct.) 12noon (1pm GMT) from the Gage Library. Log on if you can and hear some of these newly (re)discovered poems as we mark National Poetry Day in the Forest of Dean. And see some of the other incredible material relating to these two writers recently donated to the new Forest of Dean Writers Collection. All made possible with support ofThe National Lottery Heritage Fund

Summer season of fun family crafts workshops have kicked off at Dean Heritage Centre. They're open to all. If your children get free school meals you can apply for one of our fully-funded family places - free entry, free workshops, and free lunch - for children and parents/carers. Thanks to the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, FVAF, Gloucestershire County Council and University of Gloucestershire, with the support of Dean Heritage Centre we're putting on a series of crafting activities inspired by poems in the new Forest of Dean Writers Collection. Today's (1st August) was themed around the brilliant dialect poem 'Varest Ship' [Forest sheep] by Keith Morgan. We've two more (specific to the collection) coming up: Thursdays 8th and 22nd August. Free places are limited, so to find out how to apply and book, go to Forest Voluntary Action Forum's booking page: here: https://forestofdeandistrict.coordinate.cloud/project/57012 

Year 3 at St John's C of E Academy, Coleford have been studying the work of Forest of Dean poets Joyce Latham and Catherine Drew. Joyce's poem 'The Water Carriers' took them back to her childhood, in the 1930s and 40s, when her home, like many in the Forest at that time had no running water: it was Joyce's job to go down to the spring-well with her father each morning to collect the water. The class learned that toilets for many people then were still outside affairs - a bucket under a bench in a shed down the garden. For some in the class it was something they had heard about before from their grandparents.

Catherine Drew's work took them back to the early nineteenth-century. She loved to write about the riches of the natural world, as Joyce did too. The class studied a newly discovered poem by Catherine that has just come in to the Forest of Dean Writers Collection being established at the Dean Heritage Centre. The poem describes the different bird song heard and flowers seen in Spring-time. Catherine's other poems described the dramatic changes she saw in the Forest of Dean during her lifetime (1784-1867) under the forces of the industrial revolution. So, where better to go to bring all of this alive than the Dean Heritage Centre?

Starting with a verse from her poem 'The Forest of Dean in Times Past, Contrasted with the Present' local history expert Jim Dean used exhibits in the museum to show how coal was once taken by horse-drawn railroads to small harbours on the River Severn to be shipped to cities such as Gloucester and Worcester - all as described in Catherine's poem. Jim took the children on a walk around Soudley to see the route of the tramroad, the old pack horse bridge, iron age hill fort, and finally the crossing keeper's cottage - part of the  steam railway network that Catherine would have known towards the end of her life as something very modern! 

Celebrated, controversial, much missed -  television dramatist Dennis Potter passed away thirty years ago this June, and as a celebration of his life and work University of Gloucestershire's Reading the Forest is teaming up with The Palace Cinema and Dean Heritage Centre to mark the anniversary.

On Sunday 9th June The Palace are screening in-full Potter's ultimate television masterpiece: The Singing Detective.

Recognised by critics and fans alike as a tour de force of television drama writing and production the serial did much too to cement Potter's reputation in his native Forest of Dean. Large parts of the drama were filmed in the Forest and as with his other locally filmed works, local people were employed as extras. He was a hugely important figure in the development of British television, but he never forgot the people and places where he grew up. 

The event also marks the passing of the remarkable Michael Gambon last year. 
 
The screening is taking place thanks to the enthusiastic support of Andy and Karen, owners of The Palace Cinema, who have licensed the screening through the British Film Institute. The Palace, built in 1910 is one of the oldest purpose-built cinemas still operating in Britain, and Potter himself knew it as a youngster. The audience is being encouraged to come dressed as characters in the drama – detectives, spivs, doctors, nurses, patients, or in 1940s period clothing.

The screening will be introduced (via video) by world renowned Potter expert and author Professor John Cook of Glasgow Caledonian University, a long-standing friend and consultant to the Potter Archive. John’s own research in the archive saw him author a recent paper demonstrating how Potter drew on several of his longstanding themes and ideas in his writing of The Singing Detective. 

Those attending the screening will also get to see some of the unique artefacts relating to the drama that are held by the Dennis Potter Archive.
 
The screening is on Sunday 9th June 10am-6pm. Tickets available to pre-book online at https://cinderpal.com/cinderford/soon/ 


Professor John Cook's paper on his discoveries in the Dennis Potter achive can be read for free here: : 
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://researchonline.gcu.ac.uk/files/72336635/Cook_J._R._2022_The_Country_Boy.pdf  

Friday (17th November) saw the official launch of our exciting new partnership project with Dean Heritage Centre: The Forest of Dean Writers Collection Project.

Reading the Forest friends and volunteers, joined trustees from the DHC for tea, coffee and cakes to hear news that this new two year long project had just received the go ahead from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

The project will bring around 400 artefacts relating to Forest authors into the care and custodianship of the DHC. The new collection will include hand-written manuscripts, early drafts, notebooks, photographs, and personal items. There are poems, play scripts, novels and children's stories, some never published or seen  before, some written in Forest dialect. The materials came to light during Reading the Forest's work with authors' families and literary estates, and with members of the local community. All were looking for a safe home for their unique collections, but also that the material might be properly researched, understood, AND used to benefit the Forest community - especially its young people. And so, the idea of Forest of Dean Writers Collection (FODWC) project was born: to save and conserve these unique artefacts; interpret, curate and share them with the local community, visitors, and researchers; promote this creative culture of the Forest of Dean;  and use the work and stories of their authors to inspire local young people. 

On Friday we were able to announce that The National Lottery Heritage Fund has awarded the project £133,873 of funding to make it all happen. University of Gloucestershire will lead, working in partnership with Dean Heritage Centre. The new collection will be based at the museum in Soudley, but the project will also see exhibitions and events happening around the Forest. In officially declaring the new project 'launched' Simon Phelps, Vice Chair of Forest of Dean District Council, and a trustee at DHC, spoke about his father, Forest author Humphrey Phelps. He talked about how precious the Forest's cultural heritage is, and how vital it is that we cherish it.  

The work in the new collection will span almost 200 years of Forest history, writing and ideas, and will include authors Catherine Drew, Valerie Grosvenor Myer, Leonard Clark, Harry Beddington, Humphrey Phelps, Gladys Duberley, F W Harvey, Dr Tandy, Fred Boughton, Winifred Foley, and Ralph Anstis.

If you've anything unique (a letter? an unpublished piece of writing? a photograph? or anything else...) relating to a Forest writer, stuffed in a drawer or squirrelled away in the loft - we'd love to see it! And of course, if you're looking for a new home for it.... ​

As the NHS marks it’s 75th birthday, it’s worth reflecting on several remarkable Forest books that give us an insight into the realities of the day-to-day frontline delivery of healthcare. They are portraits of that vital figure the General Practitioner, the doctor. Dr Bill Tandy and his family moved to the Forest of Dean in 1940, eight years before the formation of the NHS. He’d been living and working in India and was acquainted with several of those involved in the independence movement of the then British colony. Tandy’s book, ‘ Doctor in the Forest (1978) looked back on the early years of his practice in the Forest, describing pre-NHS doctoring, when sometimes a patient might only be able to pay ‘in kind’ – with produce form the garden or home-made wine – for a consultation. Tandy’s book is both humorous and anecdotal in parts, and his affection for both his patients – something reciprocated - and the Forest as a whole comes over clearly. Tandy’s book was in some respects a warm and welcome antidote to a more analytical and intellectual exploration of a doctor published a decade earlier. A Fortunate Man (1967) by author and critic John Berger with Swiss photographer Jean Mohr was part documentary, part novelistic portrayal of ‘Doctor John Sassall’, the thinly disguised real life Dr John Eskell, GP for St Briavels and district. The book sought to examine in detail the particular relationship between a rural doctor and his patients: distant in terms of professional status from his patients, yet intimately knowing of their bodies, their lives and the life of the village community. Critically acclaimed, it upset many local people because of Berger’s arguably ham-fisted attempts to describe the distinctiveness of the Forest and Foresters. Both A Fortunate Man and A Doctor in the Forest inspired follow-up books by different authors. In 2018 came Another Doctor in the Forest (2018) by local GP Dr Chris Nancollas, and in 2022 writer and documentary maker Polly Morland published A Fortunate Woman. Morland’s book, with photographs by Richard Baker is partly an homage to Berger’s work, inspired as she acknowledges by finding a copy fallen behind her parents’ bookshelves. Similar in structure, approach and psychological probing to the book that inspired it, the book brings us right up to date, its female covering Eskell’s old patch as the COVID pandemic takes hold.  Whilst Morland’s contemporary prose is both refreshing and enlightening, all of the books discussed make for a rewarding read, and all paint a picture of that part of the NHS most of us are familiar with.

For all the literary expositions on the causes and events of the 1831 riots, the most engaging and inspiring surely has to be Keith Morgan’s poem ‘Warren James: Freedom Fighter’. The poem came into print in his collection Albert’s Dree Wi’ker the year before Ralph’s book and continues to be performed by Keith to this day. Recently Ian Right (above) published The Life and Times of Warren James: a freeminer from the Forest of Dean (now in it's 3rd revised edition). Ian is also one of a small group of enthusiastic volunteers who have come together with the aim of keeping the memory of James alive by establishing an annual Warren James Day on the 8th June (the first day of the ‘riots’). We are told more details of the day will be revealed over the coming weeks.  Warren James place in the history of the Forest may be secure for some time to come. ​

In 1944 Leonard Clark returned to the Forest to find his beloved Chestnuts Wood clear-felled: “There, to my horror, I saw a bald hill with just a thin ring of trees on the top. My eyes flooded with tears. So this was all that remained of my Chestnuts Wood” (A Fool in the Forest, p11). Startling as this present-day scene is near Worrall Hill, thankfully it’s a long overdue harvest of chestnut coppice – so soon new shoots will be sprouting, and in just a few years chestnut trees will be reaching for the sky again and resounding with bird song in spring. Leonard Clark wrote three fantastic books looking back at the Forest of his youth. In those books, and in many of his poems he brilliantly evokes the deep and rewarding relationship we can have with nature and landscape, ever changing as it is. Successful author, poet, editor he is also a hugely important figure in the history of Forest of Dean writing – someone to inspire the next generation of Forest writers?