Thomas Arthur Ryder (General)

by m p griffiths , Wednesday, November 04, 2009, 19:00 (5572 days ago) @ pclark

There is a death registered in CHELTENHAM District - Jan/Feb/March Qtr 1981 of

Thomas Arthur RYDER - date of birth 16 March 1902
(which ties up with 'Slowhands' birth April/May/June Qtr 1902 Westbury on Severn)

I do have a copy of T A Ryder's book (first edition - 1966 reprinted Edition 1976) - which I've hunted out of the bookcase.....

Portrait of Gloucestershire - which says this 'About the Author' on the back inside cover.

T A Ryder comes of a family that has farmed in Gloucestershire for over four hundred years. A Fellow of the Geological Society of London, he has also been Chairman of the Gloucestershire branch of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England. He has written several books about the County and on other subjects, appeared on TV broadcasts, and lectures for Bristol University and the W.E.A. He is at present Vicar of Cam.

Front inside covers......

Gloucestershire contains within its boundaries more geological variety than any other English county. This gives rise to many types of soil and consequent variety of scenery, flora, fauna and natural resources, all of which have influenced the county's history and its present state. .......... the early chapters, describe the geological and historical events that have moulded the county and produced the Gloucestershire of today......

He says....

"I was born in Westbury-on-Severn and lived there as a boy on my father's farm. Incidentally, my family has farmed in that same parish for well over four hundred years. From the highest part of the farm we looked over the greater part of the country - in fact, all that could be seen lay within it. The farm lay on the outer eastern slope of the Forest of Dean which rose behind us, capped by Chestnuts Wood, near Littledean, and the tree-tufted hill erroneously called the Roman Camp, but which was actually a much later earthwork constructed as to look-out in the twelfth century of the defences of Gloucester, to warn maybe, of Welsh raiding parties"

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Although my x Great Uncle the Rev W S Wickenden wasn't a well known Author from Etloe, T A Ryder did include him in this particular book, and quoted one of his poems describing the Severn Bore thus:

And see, hoarse Boreas shakes the craggy shore,
And circling eddies mark the whitening bore,
And wave impelled by wave, tremendous sound
And like a deluge whelms the hissing ground

(think my old English Teacher would have told William - too many and's....)

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T A Ryder, also talks about a Fred Archer, whose racing career has never been surpassed. He was born in Cheltenham, in 1857, but when he was two years old his family moved to Prestbury, where his father became the landlord of the Kings Arms Inn, hence the plaque on one of the walls there which bears this inscription.

At this Prestbury inn lived Fred Archer the jockey,
Who trained upon toast, Cheltenham water and toffee
The shoe of his pony, hangs up in the bar,
Where they drink to his prowess from near and from far,
But the man in the street passes by without knowledge
That 'twas here Archer swallowed his earliest porridge

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He mentions a churchyard at Lydney with a small memorial stone....

Here a pretty baby lies
Sung asleep with lullabies
Pray be silent and not stir
The easy earth that covers her