Click here for the latest issue of Civic Sense, the online newsletter, with links to civic societies around the country and what they are doing.

Annual general meeting this Friday: all members urged to attend — film: “I saw Norman James”

The necessary business part of the meeting will be short — annual reports, election of officers, etc.

Then we will see a BBC programme unearthed from the 1950s about Snows Timber and its boss, the late Norman James. He was a force to be reckoned with: twice mayor of the old Borough of Glastonbury when it had all the powers now passed to Mendip District, alderman and county councillor. Snows as a business dates back to the 1700s and had become nationally famous as a maker of cricket bats and tennis racquets.

John Coles found the 25-minute black-and-white film and converted it to DVD. He himself has served as mayor of Glastonbury and spent his working life at Snows Timber as its “saw doctor”, making the tools of the sawmill’s trade.

St Mary’s hall has its own parking at the rear: enter via Morrison’s supermarket.

Photo shows an Atkinson lorry in the timber yard, about 1955.

The Chronicles of John Cannon

Both volumes of The Chronicles of John Cannon are out now (£55 and £65, oup.co.uk). Adrian Pearse, who is probably Cannon's nearest descendant, reviews the publication in Newsletter 134.

From Prof John Money, the editor who spent 18 years on the project, a lengthy essay about Cannon’s diaries of Somerset is online on the Conservation Society website.

Cannon was born at West Lydford, near Glastonbury, in 1684. He worked as an exciseman (tax officer) and then as a scrivener (solicitor’s clerk) and Glastonbury town schoolmaster. Throughout his life he kept a meticulous diary, and it contains fascinating detail of people, places and customs that no one else of that period recorded. Cannon has been called “the poor man’s Pepys”.

About the society

It is somewhat startling to calculate that the Conservation Society has been doing its bit for more than 10% of the tercentenary that Glastonbury as a town recently celebrated: 40 years out of the 300. The society was formed in haste in 1971 in order to save the Crown Hotel in the central Market Place from being pulled down, as had several interesting medieval buildings nearby; swift spot-listing saved a number of other sites too. Today the Crown thrives as the Backpackers Inn. Another project was to rescue some of Glastonbury’s pre-Beeching heritage: the canopy from the railway station, by relocating it (ironically?) amid parked cars, in the main central carpark, where it shelters market stalls and makes two acres of asphalt easier on the eye. The trees in the carparks are the society’s work too.

Today, Glastonbury Conservation Society

• obtains copies of all planning applications and exercises the right to comment
• plants trees in town and 10 miles around: 45,000 trees in 40 years!
• hears interesting talks from experts on various aspects of our environment
• publishes a quarterly newsletter

The membership subscription is only £5 a year (and dare i say it, the newsletter alone is worth that much); members are of course free to give more.
 

Also on this website

• Eric King’s memories of the High Street in the 1940s (four-part series published in newsletters 95–99) Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Robin Huggett, touring New Zealand after a wedding, discovered a longcase clock with “R. Woollan, Glastonbury” inscribed on its face, at The Elms, a historic mission house built in 1847 amid warring Maori tribes. Can anyone shed light on the clock? Who made it? How did it come to be where it is? Write to the newsletter.
   Mr Huggett and his wife founded Becket’s Inn in Glastonbury High Street (in a building that was the town surgery for 250 years); they now live in France.

David Orchard grew up in the 1950s in a forgotten square near the top of the High Street. His schoolboy painting of it won him a scholarship. Somers Square was flattened to become a garage and eventually the Co-op supermarket. Now that too has been demolished and new cottages and flats have gone up; the developer called it Avalon Mews. Click here for a fuller version of David Orchard’s piece, from Newsletter 115.

• The Street Society — our neighbour, two miles west of Glastonbury
• Wells Civic Society — our cathedral city, five miles north
• Frome and District Civic Society
• Mendip Society — people who care for the Mendip Hills, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
• Bridgwater & District Civic Society — historic town 15 miles west of us
• Civic Voice — “the national charity for the civic movement in England. We make places more attractive, enjoyable and distinctive. We promote civic pride.”
• Past pupils of St Louis convent school in Magdalene Street, now converted to four large dwellings, have set up a website of reminiscences and history.
• Glastonbury Antiquarian Society has an extensive site, with archives and pictures of the town and its features, including a town trail and the Lake Village.

Articles include:
•  Morland site has new owners again — who they are and what they plan
•  Giant hornets spied at Pennard
•  Adam Stout on “the Idea of Glastonbury” after the Dissolution
•  Old Wardour Castle and its Saxon cup from Glastonbury
•  Society’s tree total reaches 47,500 in 29 years.