#lyminster

[darkhorse-javert]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Andrew receives an invitation he cannot refuse, even if he'd rather do so. Panic - and a visit to Lyminster - ensues.

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And it's done :D. The next story in the line. With great thanks to @paulinedorchester for overall beta, and significant dealing with my errant punctuation

[darkhorse-javert]

Something Sunday

For something Sunday, and relevent ish to the current WIP, here is a rough (very rough approximation of what I imagine when I think of Lyminster vicarage

Flint fronted with brick trimmming and two gables at the front

I wish I could find an actual picture that suited

[troglit]

There are a lot of serpents featured in this crop with different origins and accompanying stories. All featured within the UK! Watch this space for more updates and progress images relating to my illustration project 'Dragons of UK Folklore' . . . #tw #wantley #longwitton #moston #lyminster #sockburn #lambton #bignor #cnocnacnoimh #filey #dragon #dragonfolklore #serpent #scales #wyvern #england #wales #scotland #uk #folklore #fantasy #fantasyart #photoshop #painting #mythology #mythical #wings https://www.instagram.com/p/BwsGLjQnbxR/?igshid=6btn8gghgl08

[troglit]

I'll explain the hiatus, but for now the project has resumed. The Knucker of Lyminster . . . #tw #dragon #dragonfolklore #knucker #lyminster #knuckerhole #serpent #scales #pencil #illustration #fantasyart #dragonsUK #medieval #monster #mythology https://www.instagram.com/p/BvwjSIOnhyW/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=xi4iprmzt5a5

[paulinedorchester]

Lyminster, West Sussex, with the parish church visible on the left.

[paulinedorchester]

John Charles Rogers, RIBA, Lyminster Church, watercolor, signed and dated July 28 ′19. (x)

Painted three days before Sam was born (per my headcanon).

[paulinedorchester]

Cooper, George. And Hitler Stopped Play: Cricket and War at Lyminster House, West Sussex (1931-1946). Cambridge: Vanguard Press, 2001.

Lyminster House (also known as Old Lyminster House) is a late-Georgian mansion on fifty acres of land on the north side of Church Lane in (you guessed it!) Lyminster, West Sussex. It is a Grade II listed building and is significant enough to appear on Ordnance Survey maps. It belonged to the Dukes of Norfolk until 1931, when it was purchased by Cecil and Violet Brown, a wealthy London couple (he was some sort of higher-up at Lloyd’s of London) who were eager to take up country living.

The Browns started a Guernsey herd to support the farm; to manage the operation they helped Mrs. Brown’s younger brother Cecil Cooper return to England after a ten-year sojourn farming in Australia, bringing with him his Australian-born wife and children. Drought had destroyed their farm and they had nearly starved. The Browns’ real business, however, was beneficence on a very large scale: in the telling of their great-nephew George Cooper (b. 1956; a history and physical education teacher at several different schools), they were relentless do-gooders - with distinct Fabian leanings, in Mrs. Brown’s case - who believed that cricket not only represented everything that is (or at any rate used to be; I’ll get to that) best about the English character, but also had the potential to solve society’s problems all by itself.

In addition to carrying out various badly needed improvements on the house, they built a cricket pitch that became home to two teams: the Lyminster Village XI, composed of local men, and the Triflers, made up in the main of their son John, former classmates of his at Westminster School, London, and the occasional relative or family friend. They were a distinguished bunch: those who survived the war include the BBC producer Antony Craxton; Sir Richard Doll, the first person to demonstrate a link between tobacco and cancer; and a number of successful authors, musicians, educators, and civil servants.

The war’s outbreak ended the cricket program, but Cooper gives a full account of what went on in Lyminster during the war. The Browns did a lot of entertaining of uniformed personnel. Far from the insulated setting that I’ve described in my fic (including my WIP - uh-oh!), Lyminster was a pretty busy place, close to both RNAS Ford and RAF Tangmere. Various companies moved in and out, there was a radar station in Poling, just to the east, and there were a lot of Land Army women around. Lyminster and the surrounding area was the target of a major air-raid on August 18th, 1940.

Having learned of the existence of this book by chance last year, I was astonished to discover a copy when I idly looked into a bin on the History table at a local used book sale. (Its presence there may indicate that there is or was a rabid Foyle’s War fan right here in this neighborhood.) Bits and pieces of information about Lyminster are tucked into it throughout (tidbit: Rosemary Anne Sisson grew up there), but on the whole I’m sorry to have to say that it isn’t very good. Part of the problem is that George Cooper, whose “grandfather . . . just missed a scholarship to university, as a result of the male Cooper tendency toward sloppy use of English,” seems to have inherited that trait. Time after time I had to reread sentences and entire paragraphs in order to make head or tail of them - and not only because I know next to nothing about cricket!

The other thing that makes this book difficult going is George Cooper’s constant circling back to his firmly-held view that Britain then was a much better place than it is now, laying much of the blame on what he sees as the cynicism of the Blair government. (He does paint a rather dismaying picture of contemporary cricket, with rampant cheating, “match fixing,” and what I gather is, yes, illegal gambling.) I’m not in a position to contradict him, but he weakens his argument by constantly restating it.

While I’m glad that I read this book, on the whole I can’t really recommend it. Better that we FW fanfic writers should each create a Lyminster of the mind.  

[paulinedorchester]

Lyminster, February 1943  (fragment from a work in progress):

‘I can -’ Sam begins, as the coach disappears up the road.

‘I know you can – it doesn’t mean you ought to, or that I’m going to let you,’ Andrew says firmly. ‘Unhand that, please,’ he continues, reaching for her suitcase, which she has already lifted from the ground, with his free hand. ‘Why’s the vicarage so far from the church?’ he wonders as they go over the road.

‘Jolly inconvenient, isn’t it?’ Sam replies absently. ‘This way.’ She leads Andrew towards a parting in the trees and hedges that screen the houses from the road, then up a gravel drive. ‘My mother said that we’re to stay on the footpath on the way to the door – the front lawn has become a kitchen garden, it seems, and she’s done winter planting. My mother did this, you understand,’ she adds, for emphasis. ‘That would have been completely unheard of before the war.’

The vicarage itself comes as a surprise: Andrew had imagined a taller house, far older than this, grey stone with pointed arches at the windows and a turret for Sam to lean out of, or at least something like the Victorian pile whose red brick cornices and steep roofs he can just see beyond the rather innocuous house he and Sam are approaching. This isn’t much more than a cottage, really, two stories of grey cobbles and dull orange brick with a low, hipped roof; late Georgian at a guess, no older than the Steep Lane terrace.

‘Do I look all right?’ Sam asks.

‘You look quite wonderful, Sam.’

Sam has dressed carefully for this journey. Beneath her coat is the black-and-brown suit and light brown hat she’d worn for Christmas, this time with a high-collared blouse the colour of the inside of a conch shell and her inelegant but practical uniform shoes. She has pinned her hair up in workaday style, but has left her haversack at home and instead carries a slightly worn-looking black leather handbag in which she now begins rummaging, finally withdrawing a small key ring.

‘What about me, though – am I all right?’ Andrew adds. ‘Um, is my tie straight?’ He is aware, suddenly, of a faint fluttering somewhere in the region of his stomach.

Sam comes to a halt before reaching the doorstep. She turns about and looks at Andrew.

‘Yes, it is – you look splendid, of course,’ she tells him, smiling. She resumes her journey up the footpath.

‘Wait a moment, Sam, please,’ Andrew says softly. He has put down the two valises and stands with her on the walk, places a hand at the small of her back and kisses her cheek. ‘Courage,’ he whispers. ‘It’s only three days. I love you, and we’re here together,’ he adds.

‘Yes. Thank you.’

Sam returns his kiss full on the mouth, which makes him gasp in surprise and delight.

‘We may not have another chance to do that while we’re here,’ she tells him. Turning back to the house, closes her eyes for an instant, opens them again, squares her shoulders, knocks on the door, then puts her key into the lock, turns it and pushes the door open.

‘Mother? Dad? We’re here.’