Although we’ve been listening to the merry strains of every festive song from ‘Do they Know I wish it could be Christmas every Christmas’ to ‘Happy Christmas Mr Hargreaves time for your injection’, blaring out from shops for the past month, in fact Christmas actually started today.
Here in Bridgwater we have a recent ancient tradition of turning on the Christmas lights combined with the unlikely Pagan festival of ‘Snowflakes and Shopping’. And Squibbing. The plan here, brought in by the local Witan, sees the town centre (the heart of Westover) filled with fairground style attractions, linking in to the Friday ‘Castle’ market and feeding neatly into an extended late opening for the shops while Christmas lights get turned on at around 6pm and then the town’s famous squibs get an extra airing at more or less 7.30.
This year our festive joy was even more joyful as the event featured the return of the Bridgwater Christmas tree which had been quietly left out of recent years festivities due to incidents of vandalism but after a campaign by residents and Westover councillors it’s now back where it should have been all along.
it’s on it’s way……
Squibbing on the Cornhill in the shadow of the statue of the Great Squibster himself
Bridgwater’s new Jazz Blues cafe Highway 61 opens in time for the Christmas season
Bridgwater Rotary club offering mulled wine and mince pies in the High street
Kate Gardiner from Purple Spoon Events makes a giant paella for the revellers
Festive lights adorn Westover’s West Quay with it’s fine pubs, restaurants, record shops, hairdressers and tattoo emporia.
Bridgwater’s town centre Christmas tree ‘back by popular demand’
A year ago Bridgwater people were lamenting the lack of the town centre Christmas tree which had been removed because of fear of vandalism. A Facebook campaign started by Westover resident Steve Coram via the popular site ‘Bridgwater Past and Present’ for the reinstatement of the tree was so well supported that Westover Councillors took the issue to the Town Council and gained a reprieve for the festive greenery.
Cllr Brian Smedley, who took the motion to the town council after promising this to members of the Facebook site, said “The Bridgwater Christmas tree is back and that’s thanks to the people who campaigned for this and the town council for listening to them. What’s really important is people respecting the tree and it not getting vandalised. “
Workers put up the Christmas tree on Bridgwater’s Cornhill
Today workers were installing the new Christmas tree on the Cornhill in preparation for it’s participation in the Christmas lights switch on which is scheduled for this Friday (21st November) at 6pm by Mayor of Bridgwater and Westover Councillor Steve Austen as part of the Snowflakes and Shopping event which will also see squibbing on the Cornhill and town centre shops staying open for a festive bit longer than usual.
As the Hope Inn on Taunton road joins the long list of iconic Bridgwater buildings left to rot by one particular active and destructive developer, Westover councillors have confronted them directly to challenge their activities and to find a way forward. In a letter to Vince Nguyen of Land Promotions Group ltd, Westover councillor Brian Smedley, also chair of the Town Council Community Assets Panel, has asked the company to re-consider their activities which are destroying iconic buildings and therefore the heritage of Bridgwater and to meet him and the public to look at a better way forward.
The Hope inn was registered as a public asset by Sedgemoor District Council on 29th September but is being appealed by LPG on 10th November. The attempt to save the Hope came after a campaign by the Town Council and the Civic Society to stop the destruction of our heritage by using the new Government ‘community right to bid’ legislation. If Mr Nguyen’s appeal is rejected the community then have 6 months to put in a bid – however at the moment Mr N has left the Hope without a roof!
Trail of devastation around Bridgwater
LPG in action around the town
On Friday 7th November Mr Nguyen wrote to Cllr Smedley asking if he could add the Taunton road toilets to his Hope Inn development and purporting to speak for residents and claiming to be ‘one of your constituents’ (although giving his address as ‘Rooksbridge’) and saying “I am the general manager for Land Promotions Group ltd, the owner of the Hope Inn, Bridgwater. I have seen your name in the papers and write to let you know that I can be contacted on the details below. If you want to speak or meet please let me know and I am happy to make myself available. The reason for writing to you is to do with the public convenience just in front to one side of the Hope Inn. I have been approached by a number of nearby residents who would like to see it close. The main claim is that is is frequented by 2/3 people per day and not very well kept. I have no preference other than the fact that it might be suitable to be considered and regenerated at the same time as the Hope Inn. I have contacted Tim Mander at the Council who basically was not interested. The purpose of this communication is to seek your view concerning the public convenience after which I will relay to those who seem to think we have sway. “
Offer to find a way forward
Councillor Smedley immediately took the opportunity to engage directly with Mr Nguyen and replied
Dear Mr Nguyen
Unfortunately, for both of us, Westover ward doesn’t stretch to Rooksbridge so you’re not my constituent. Having said that you are clearly very active in my ward – much to the disappointment of many of my actual constituents.
Your company, Land Promotions Group Ltd are the people who have been demolishing pubs around Bridgwater-correct me if I’m wrong but this includes the Black Horse, Hamp’s last surviving pub , the Pig and Whistle along with the Withy Cutter -the last pubs in Sydenham and the Berrow Inn. Your actions seem to many to ammount to nothing more than asset stripping them, leaving them open to the weather and then landbanking them for some future development.
A view of Hope …from the toilets.
As you know people are appalled at this type of operation and in response we have tried to rescue the Hope Inn from this fate by making it a Community Asset under new Government legislation. I am aware that your appeal hearing is this Monday, but ultimately any real success for our community will depend on getting a successful community bid in to prevent yet another iconic feature of the Bridgwater landscape biting the dust
Today you are asking me about adding the Taunton road toilets to your brief and purporting to speak for residents. There are very few public conveniences left in Bridgwater and no resident has yet approached us about wanting less.
Whilst I am extremely concerned about your activities and ask you to please consider the damage done to our town by them, I would take this opportunity to ask you directly to put a halt to them and to devote some of your time, energy and money instead to improving the look, feel and lifestyle of our communities and not adding to our woes by systematically destroying our heritage.
Yes I would be willing to meet you, but only to discuss ways in which your operations can in future be of benefit to the community.
Would you like me to urgently set up a meeting between us which other councillors and members of the public can talk with you openly about what we want for our town and would you be prepared to join us in that vision?
A line of daffodils is all that’s left on the field today
It’s 5 years now since the Sedgemoor Splash was pulled down to make way for a Tesco Extra on Bridgwater’s Brewery Field and it’s 5 weeks since the guns fell silent on a field where only daffodils now grow in the phoney war of ‘will they won’t they’ actually come. Westover councillor Brian Smedley looks at the uncertainty being caused all over the country in the wake of Tesco’s very public freefall.
Countdown to Conflict
Campaigners protest against the possible closure of the Sedgemoor Splas
Sedgemoor District Council had been promoting the Northgate site to Tescos, apparently amongst others, since 2004 when the area was originally planned to be a ‘leisure led development with some retail’. This was broadly supported by all parties – but by the Labour Party only on condition that the ‘Sedgemoor Splash and the Brewery field were maintained or at least an upgraded town centre leisure pool was built without any gap in swimming provision’.
Somewhere along the line, Tory controlled Sedgemoor changed it’s perspective to one of a ’large store-led development’. At the time there was also the ‘Building Schools for the Future’ programme and the idea of an ‘edge of town school pool’ replacing the Splash, which Tories claimed was costing too much to run.
Labour saw the town centre leisure pool as key to bringing people to the town and feared that it’s replacement with a giant supermarket would in fact damage the town centre and therefore opposed the new proposals including organising meetings and demonstrations along with user groups.
The first shots are fired
The Splash is occupied by campaigners to try to prevent closure.
In July 2009 Tory Sedgemoor voted to close the Splash. Fearing a done deal and instant demolition to prevent any alternative solutions, an action group met to try to save the pool. Members of the user groups met with Labour councillors who set up 11th hour negotiations and Bridgwater Trades Council who suggested a simultaneous occupation.
On August 30th 2009, with a day to go to the pools designated closure, the people occupied the Splash and demanded to negotiate it’s future including community buy-out options but instead Sedgemoor came down heavy and using court injunctions and a security firm brought the sit-in to a halt after 20 hours.
Campaign group Bridgwater Forward was immediatly set up to try to save the Splash –but within 3 months Sedgemoor had demolished it. Along with residents groups they resolved to continue to fight to try to prevent the green field being built on and to stop the supermarket giant from coming to Bridgwater.
In 2010 Tesco officially announced an interest and people learnt that of the 3 parties apparently originally interested only Tesco now remained. Bridgwater Forward submitted a 2,000 name petition calling on the council to retain town centre swimming provision. It was rejected.
In 2011 Tory Sedgemoor approves the bid put forward by Tesco despite a ‘Town Meeting’ in the Town Hall called by Bridgwater Town Council which votes overwhelmingly to object to Tesco’s.
A strong counteroffensive gains momentum
In the elections of May 2011 Labour sweeps to victory in Bridgwater winning 14 out of 16 town seats with the Tories losing more than half of their councillors. However, the Tories retain control of Sedgemoor which has the final say on planning matters.
Throughout the rest of 2011 and into 2012 a ‘development agreement’ is draughted and approved between Sedgemoor and Tesco and there is shock as it emerges that part of the Tesco planning fee for the controversial Northgate development has been paid out of public funds. Labour councillors say “it is morally indefensible that council tax payers money should be spent subsidizing a multi billion pound corporation”.
The lights are going out all across Northgate
In 2013 a further public meeting held by the Planning committee makes it abundantly clear that the people of Bridgwater don’t want Tesco’s yet the planners go ahead and vote it through. Six months later Tesco’s are back to ask the same committee to ease some of the conditions –which they do despite strong objections from Labour councillors and residents.
Between February and July 2013 residents attempt to bid for Town Green status in order to prevent build on the Brewery Field. After an enquiry, a vote against by Tory Controlled Somerset County Council scuppers the move.
At this stage everything looks set for the final section 106 agreement to be signed, the store to be built in 2015 and opened in 2016. Campaigners mark out the proposed line of the store with daffodils to demonstrate the amount of green space that will be lost.
Tesco totters on the brink
Then in 2014 Tesco hits the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Financial irregularities, inaccurate figures and dwindling profits plus a change of management at the top leads to the Tesco Boss saying in May ‘No more big stores’ .
The Labour group immediately press Sedgemoor for a statement and asks ‘should Tesco not come, what is the plan B?’ Sedgemoor maintains they are still in negotiation but at the same time admits for the first time the possibility that Tesco might not be coming. An official statement says “We are awaiting the response of Tesco to the final draft 106 Agreement sent a couple of weeks ago . As to what a Plan B would be if Tesco were not to proceed, the starting point would be that the site is shown in the core strategy for town centre expansion with a resolution to grant/consent issued for a retail development. It would clearly be a major matter to carefully consider, such is the importance of this site to the town centre and Bridgwater.“
Who will hold the field of honour??
As more Tesco announcements nationally lead to further local speculation an emergency item is brought forward to a special meeting of Sedgemoor District Council on 17 September. The meeting is held under ‘Exempt report’ conditions which means that the content of the meeting has to remain confidential and members are bound over by their ‘code of conduct’ not to reveal what has been said. The reasons given are ‘commercial sensitivity’. Members are in effect gagged and can only refer people to an official statement which is immediately put out by Sedgemoor.
Sedgemoor Statement of September 17 2014 “The S106 Agreement has not yet been completed; thus planning permission cannot be issued. The Development Agreement is conditional upon planning permission being issued. The terms of the Development Agreement were agreed by Full Council. Therefore, to enable officers to discuss a way forward with Tesco Stores Ltd, on behalf of the Council, delegated authority was required. Delegated authority was therefore given to a Corporate Director to discuss further with Tesco Stores Ltd.”
Tesco stores respond with a similar statement;- “We are exploring a range of options over the best use for the Bridgwater site. We are continuing close discussions ……. over the most appropriate route forward.”
At the same time The Retail Gazette said :“Tesco’s strategy on store formats has changed significantly …. The Tesco Extra and Superstore format, has been replaced with a focus on convenient Tesco Express stores, playing to the trend of frequent, local shopping. This commitment was emphasised with the announcement that 4,000 new homes are to be built on now un-useable sites in Tesco ownership.”
None of this helps the people of Bridgwater who are currently devoid of information and can’t get it from their elected councillors or from Council officers for fear of sanctions . SDC Monitoring officer Melanie Wellman says “Any Member who discloses exempt information is liable to a complaint that they have breached the Sedgemoor Code of Conduct. If they are ultimately found in breach by the Standards Committee (following a full investigation and hearing), the Committee has the power to impose a number of sanctions. More importantly, by disclosing confidential information, a Member could jeopardise the Council’s legal position and ultimately put Council tax payers money at risk.”
However, in the wake of the current Tesco situation, this is happening all over the country, and such is the uncertainty now being caused in communities that BBC Radio 5Live have taken it up as a theme for this Sunday’s ‘5Live investigates’ programme which aired at 11am – appropriately at exactly the time that the guns normally fall silent……
Bridgwater’s own Carnival statue on the Cornhill holding aloft a squib
In the very early hours of November 5th 1605 the Catholic Freedom Fighter / Papist Terrorist (delete as appropriate) Guy Fawkes, was caught red handed (and red bearded) in the cellars of Parliament attempting to blow it up with 36 barrels of gunpowder. That evening in Bridgwater the townspeople probably hadn’t even had the news yet , so likely as not nothing at all happened here.
Nevertheless it is from that date that Britain celebrates it’s annual Guy Fawkes night and to which Bridgwater can trace it’s famous Carnival.
Some people remain confused about what they’re celebrating to this day. Wildly missing the point are those that believe ‘Guy Fawkes was the only man to enter Parliament with honourable intentions’. Fawkes aim was to cause a massive explosion with 3 tons of gunpowder that would have blown up not just Parliament but the King, his Bishops, all the MPs, a large chunk of the neighbourhood and in the ensuing chaos, breakdown of authority and power vacuum, to stage a pro-catholic coup that would destroy protestant England.
In truth Guy Fawkes, a mild mannered Yorkshire born catholic fanatic, was only part of the conspiracy – but it was him that was captured and tortured and executed. The real leader-Robert Catesby, had fled the capital to be killed with his other conspirators in a Butch and Sundance style shoot out in Staffordshire. So Fawkes remains the surviving face of the plot. Which is why today kids don’t go around asking you for ‘Penny for the Robert mister?’.
Success for Guy Fawkes would have been akin to something like 9/11 to put it in a modern context. A terrorist massacre on a massive scale . No one would suggest Mohamed Ata entered the World Trade Centre with honourable intentions.
Guy Fawkes -revolutionary hero or dangerous nutter?
Guy Fawkes was tortured into a confession and then in January 1606 executed in the time honoured way-hanging,drawing and quartering. A charming medieval method whereby you’re hung until you’re almost dead, released, only to have your genitals chopped off and burnt in front of you, then your heart ripped out and (if you still haven’t said sorry) chopped into 4 pieces. This at least prevented repeat offenders. In the case of Guy Fawkes he threw himself onto the rope to make sure he broke his neck and didn’t have to go through the rest of it. Still, at least kids today can make effigies of him and burn him on a bonfire.
King James – blowing him up – a ‘good thing’ or a ‘bad thing’? You decide.
The 16th century had been a nightmare of religious hatred changing from the tyrannical populism of Henry the 8th, who left the Roman church, introduced Protestantism and persecuted the Catholics, to his daughter Bloody Mary, who opted back into the Rome franchise and persecuted Protestants to her sister Elizabeth, who restored the old Tudor values and brought back Protestantism so they could persecute Catholics again.
By 1603 the new King, James 1st of England (but 6th of Scotland) was the son of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots but brought to England to rule a protestant country- so no-one knew what to expect. The Catholics decided to blow him up anyway just to be on the safe side.
The failure to blow the new Scottish king “back to his Scottish mountains” as Guy Fawkes defiantly screamed (at least during the initial part of his interrogation…while he still had a tongue in his head) on November 5th was to be celebrated every year as “a day of thanksgiving for the joyful day of deliverance of me” . However it was on January 21st 1606 that this decree came into operation so the first chance they’d have had to join in this patriotic party of protestant pride would have been November 5th 1606. And then every November 5th thereafter.
Why did it catch on in Bridgwater?? The Catholic-Protestant conflict was always only a smokescreen for the wider changes going on in society in the 16th and 17th century – a bloody big and actually smoking smokescreen mind. With lots of smoke. What was really happening was the rise of the merchant classes in the newly enriched towns of the country where wealth was created through trade and privileges in the form of special local powers were reflected by representation in Parliament. The House of Commons was the voice of the rising progressive classes while the King in his court with his ‘divine right of kings’, smacked very much of old fashioned Popery anyway.
PROTESTANT BRIDGWATER
Bridgwater ‘in the olden days’. Notice ‘no catholics’….
In Bridgwater in 1605 the rising power of the merchants was matched by the powerful and radical voice of the Puritans. Key vicars of Bridgwater- John Devenish and George Wooton were Puritans and, with no sense of deference to their presumed ‘betters’, preached the new religion from the pulpit of St Mary’s and it was at this time that the Borough Council furnished the church with their own private corporation pews-still there to this day facing westwards and cementing the alliance of clergy and people . In 17th century terms at least. What this meant in real terms was there’s going to be one hell of a big civil war shortly and we’re going to win it.
So Bridgwater – a staunchly protestant town with it’s large amount of independent and non-conformist religious factions, took to the new celebrations in a big way and from those origins developed what was to become the Bridgwater Carnival. This changed over the years and is without much record until the Victorians changed the face of it, but we need not look much further than the two modern surviving examples of these protestant bonfire festivals to guess at what went on. We’ve all seen the Northern Irish bonfires burning with their sectarian nostalgia but here in England to this day the Sussex town of Lewes notoriously (and they’re proud of it) carries on ‘in the old ways’. Marching though the town with their fiery crosses (oh yes they do) to commemorate the burning of the protestant martyrs by Mary Tudor they make effigies of the Pope and burn them on a massive bonfire.
Bridgwater was pretty similar to that. But it wouldn’t just be the Pope – they’d eventually learn to hate other popular hate figures as well. And burn them too. The Tsar of Russia during the Crimean war, Indian leader Nana Sahib during the Indian Mutiny and so on (Jim Davidson’s here in January-there’s another chance..).
PAGAN FOLK TRADITIONS DIE HARD
Some old Pagan festivals used to ‘worry’ the organised church a bit….so they tried to sanitise them.
But in one sense, never mind the protestant fanaticism. Yes, Bridgwater was a fanatically protestant town. It would have to be to see so many of it’s sons take up arms in the futile protestant Monmouth rebellion of 1685 only to see them cut down in battle, hung drawn and quartered in defeat and dispatched as slaves to the west indies as an afterthought. But apart from the protestant hate fest, there was a more ancient reason why the people took up their fiery torches and marched. The ancient Celtic festival of Samhain saw out the old year and saw in the new with fire. Villagers extinguished their hearth fires and made one large communal fire, all lit torches from it and paraded back to their homes to relight them from the single flame. The period of Halloween, the end of summer, the collecting of the harvest,the onset of winter and the new year (by the old calendar) coincides exactly with this time of year and had been commemorated by the commonfolk of these islands for hundreds of years already. Usually followed by a big party.
And carnival time is party time. In Bridgwater the tradition developed so that ‘gangs’ and by that we mean the clientele of the different pubs, would all make their own ‘guy’ and wear outrageous costume –following the pagan traditions of disguising your identity to allow for more freedom of mischief at these saturnalian events, and then march with their torches to the big bonfire – on the Cornhill. The costumes for Bridgy people were key and the torches in fact held at arms length so you could see them in their full glory, amounted to nothing less than a late medieval ‘selfie’.
So Bridgwater carried on like that for a couple of hundred years with the authorities keeping a low profile while the lower orders ‘got on with it’. Admitedly sometimes blowing themselves up with the gunpowder they stored to make their famous squibs-as happened to the Taylor family in 1715.
THE VICTORIANS CHANGE THE AGENDA
By the 1880’s the Victorians were getting nervous
Then another November 5th –this time in 1880 – changed everything. By now we were well into the Victorian period and the rising post feudal merchant class were running the town while the debauched revellers were the new rising working class – often organised into Trade Unions, especially in places like Bridgwater, and generally struggling for a pittance of a wage and what respite through fun they could get from the deepeningly depressing thraldom of industrial capitalism.
In 1880 Britain was ruled by Liberal PM Gladstone – but we wouldn’t have noticed that in Bridgwater as we’d been struck off the electoral register in 1868 for electoral corruption and denied an MP anyway during this period. On November 5th 1880 the Cornhill bonfire was massive and the groups boisterous revelry looked like never ending. The authorities told the Fire Brigade to put it out. They had a go. The people cut the hosepipes and chased the firemen off the streets and the nighttime revelry turned to near riot.
The next year, fearing the same thing happening again, forward thinking townspeople came up with a solution that could save the face of the authorities and at the same time harness the riotous creative power of carnival and came up with the idea of an organised procession with the much prided costumes being the main focus. And that’s where the modern carnival really started. Oh , and of course with a ‘carnival committee’.
INTO THE MODERN ERA
The present town bridge is opened on Carnival night 1883
But it was a THIRD November 5th that set the final wheel in motion that moved carnival onwards to it’s modern form . In 1883 the present town bridge was built and it was decided to give it a baptism of fire. A massive firework display and a military march past singing ‘God save the Queen’ (which I don’t remember them doing for the Sainsbury’s bridge…). To raise money for that they held a big concert by the carnivalites which proved such a success and raised such funds that they repeated it every year since. And that became the Carnival Concerts which went on to see people camping out overnight for tickets in deckchairs all around the town hall.
Today…probably….i say PROBABLY…people don’t take to the streets of Bridgwater to celebrate any Protestant ascendancy , and children don’t make mocking effigies of a poor delusional Yorkshireman who was horribly tortured on the orders of a rather reactionary King (who’d already tried to ban smoking so a successful gunpowder frenzy might have been a fitting end after all…). People probably just want to have fun.
The people who wear the V for Vendetta masks however, probably DO have a point.
Bridgwater Carnival today is held on the nearest Saturday to November 5th and is a massively popular festival of entertainment with 1,000’s of townspeople involved and 100’s of thousands of people coming to the town to witness the spectacle. Costumes and carts and squibs all play a central role as they’ve always done. No flaming torches, they have light bulbs. No horse drawn carts, but tractor drawn multilayered floats adorned by lights and populated by costumed crazies whether freaking out to some pop tune or standing motionless in some freezing November tableau.
To find out more about the Bridgwater Carnival go to their website;-
