A COLD SNAP...
... and a reader recalls a chilling tale of the Temple Church bombing
AT the recent excellent Lark Ascending centenary commemoration concert in Shirehampton Public Hall (BT, December 8 2020), there seems to have been a calculated silence about one important figure.
The original concert in 1920 included the song Names, by local composer Philip Napier Miles of King’s Weston House, who was also the conductor on the night.
This was one of the six songs omitted from the 2020 celebration, which otherwise had the same programme as the 1920 one.
Ralph Vaughan Williams was staying at King’s Weston when the concert was arranged, and it was there that he and Marie Hall, the violin soloist, completed their preparation of the Lark.
Miles had financed lessons for Hall at the beginning of her career. In 1903-4 he had donated the land for the building of the venue at which both the 1920 and 2020 concerts took place, and contributed £100, or 5% of the projected cost of its construction. It was designed by
Miles’ estate architect.
By omitting all mention of Miles, whilst adding insult to injury by having Jonathan James introduce the concert from the comfort of Miles’ house, the concert organisers could hardly have been more ungracious to an important contributor to the success of the event, and of the piece of music itself.
Richard Coates
Shirehampton
Editor’s Note: If you missed the online concert on the anniversary of the first performance, you can still see it by going to bristolbeacon.org/ shows/the-lark-ascendingcentenary/ and following the links.
Chilling tale from the Blitz
[RE Temple Church (BT, December 15): Born in 1898, my father Bill Goulding added two years to his age to volunteer at the beginning of First World War, and was in the Royal Engineers.
Surviving all battles he then volunteered in 1939/40, and became Chief Fire Officer for the Filton Fire Service (AFS) at the top of North
ville Road, then NFS. We had a large bell installed in the hall (below my bedroom!), which sounded to alert my Father (and half the neighbourhood!) that the Nazi ‘planes were passing over the far-off coast of Dover etc. he could then get to fire station to be ready for the call from Bristol to go where ever the crew were needed.
(On November 24 1940) Temple Church was their call, and much later the next day my father had still not come home.
Eventually there came the knock at the door and my very worried mother ran to open it.
There stood two men, one stiff as a ramrod, filthy, smelly, wrapped in a blanket and FROZEN STIFF!
The other man said, “It’s alright, he’s alive, BUT DON’T WHATEVER YOU DO TOUCH HIM!”
Everything, including his helmet and smoke visor was hanging with icicles and frozen to his skin. The other man said, “just stand him in a zinc tub in front of the fire and let him thaw out, if you don’t you will rip all his skin off too!”
It took a long time as the thick, serge uniforms were made to keep
them warm! It appeared he and his men were called and ordered to battle inside Temple Church from the very beginning, but as they faced a losing battle and the roof collapsed upon them my Father was trapped under all the debris.
Only the next morning was he dug out, and as the temperature had been freezing all night the spray from the hoses had, of course, formed ice and icicles all over the men – looking to me as a child just like an outdoor Cheddar cave!
I’m glad to say he made a full recovery, but never talked about it to us, his son and daughter.
Years later, when I was a teenager, we were going somewhere in
town, the car passing along Victoria Road when he said, “Would you like to see where Daddy was buried alive?”
He would not stop but I was able to see the ruin and the still-standing leaning tower as a stark reminder of those dreadful years.
As a child he was head choirboy in his local church and I know felt it a privilege to try to save that wonderful church. Gwyneth Buckle (nee Goulding), by email Editor’s reply: What an amazing story! It’s little tales like this that really bring home the awful things people endured in the Blitz.
Forgetting the bombing
THE raid by enemy aircraft on Filton on September 25th 1940 is covered by the book I have called The West at War by James Belsey and Helen Reid, the latter who I can remember writing for the old Evening Post.
A survivor said in 1990 to this day he never found where the bombs fell although it was within a mile square. People just wanted to forget.
A colleague of mine, who was brought up in Patchway, remembers as a small boy climbing under a fence of BAC as small boys often do and playing with human skulls and bones in the 1950s.
They never reported it for fear of being accused of trespassing.
If these were victims of the bombing I hope that they were discovered, identified and received a decent burial.
In view of the recent large-scale development of houses on Filton airfield I wonder if one day someone will discover more bones and artifacts owned by the unfortunate victims when digging in their garden.
Perhaps in the fog of war and secrecy following the raid there were more killed than the official figure of 141.