A Very Brief Guide to Adam Thorpe’s novel, Ulverton.

(These are notes and suggestions on how you might ap-

proach the chapters. Each chapter includes MUCH more. I have
not attempted to summarise the stories; I’m just helping you to get
started, and indicated some key themes and connections. You must
look for the actual examples!)
Thorpe: Born 1956. Poet. Published his first novel, Ulver-
ton in 1992 when most of his readers would have had living con-
nections through parents and grandparents with events in the last
three chapters. And many other events are all around us in build-
ings, memorials, novels of the time, and family history.
Chapters
1.Return 1650 Narrative - after many years
2 Friends 1689 Sermon
3.Improvements 1712 Journal
4. Leeward 1743 Letters
5. Dissection 1775 Letters by an amanuensis
6. Rise 1803 Monologue to a stranger in a pub
7. Deposition 1830 Letters interact with extracts from a legal re-
port of witnesses
8. Shutter 1850 A lecture or perhaps written notes to accompany
photographs
9. Stitches 1887 Monologue by a solitary but as though spoken to
a boy now dead
10. Treasure 1914 Narrative - after fourteen years.
11. Wing 1953 Broadcast script plus journal
12. Here 1988 TV script
The stories each explore different literary-technical meth-
ods as above. Worth discussing what Thorpe is doing. It is not ex-
actly pastiche, because that implies mockery, parody. Neither is it
simply faithful copying, because Thorpe makes the language in
each case come alive as that of his speaker/writer. How?
Where is Ulverton? Find Oxford on your map and move
southwards until you reach the town of Newbury (referred to as
Newberry in the first chapter). About 5- 10 kilometres north of
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Newbury are dozens of little villages tucked away in the Berkshire
Downs. Ulverton is a fictional example of one of these villages.
‘Downs’ means lowish, (200 metres) undulating chalk hills. The
slopes are often steep, the valleys sometimes have a stream or
small river flowing through them if the bottom of the valley is
clay. Once you are beyond the two or three lanes in the village you
are almost always going steeply uphill - and often then, downhill.
The soil on these chalk slopes is very thin, so they are covered
with short grass (almost no trees), and the only effective agricul-
ture is raising sheep. In the valleys which have enough soil for
trees, there is more chance of success with crops, particularly
when, as here, chalk, clay and gravel mingle.
The geology and geography of Ulverton are typical of
many areas of southern England (but by no means all areas). For
example, the South Downs, the Wiltshire Downs, and some parts
of Dorset where Hardy sets his novels.
Geography of the village. On the crest of the downs: a
Barrow (a prehistoric burial chamber. This kind of countryside has
dozens of such barrows.) This is Louzy Hill. On the other side of
the valley is Gabby Cobbold’s farm with five elms. The village is
in the valley to the North. The upper road to Frum goes over the
crest near Gabby’s farm. Five Elms Farm, though an elm comes
down in the early 18th century. The name survives until the
present.
A river, the Fogbourne, through the village. You walk up
onto downland behind the church and into Bailey’s wood, which
later is known as Baylee, (and Bayleaze by Victorian times- and
back to Bayley’s by the twentieth century) and is full of good oak
trees.. The Chalmers’ ( the big house) is in the valley or coomb ad-
joining Plumm’s farm which they buy and by 1830 it is known as
Ulverton Hall Farm, though still called Plumms locally. [You can
trace much more in ‘Deposition”]
Another landmark is Sam’s oak tree, he being the carpenter
who tells his story in the pub. By the twentieth century it is called
‘Samson’s.
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 Some recurring symbols: Bedwine. (wild clematis, Old
Man’ Beard) is constantly mentioned.
E.g. Seeding. p.33 ‘I was as the seed thrown upon the
wind, hurled hither and thither..’ In context, this is jus tone of
many Biblical and Biblical-type references, but it is a prevailing
image. The bedwine scatters its seed - and its ironies.
For example the Bedwine - the seed - the freedom - on p.97 where
Ann Chalmers looks at it from her cooped-up room.
p.161 - the lawyer talks about ‘these inflammatory pam-
phlets which have seeded themselves deep in the fallow hearts of
the peasant classes...’ again if unintentionally, the association is
with freedom. In that chapter, the last line, ‘answering, ‘No, it be
only plumes of seed that must be planted on the wind....’
Ribbons are another image. Gabby carries some ribbons
from – or for – Anne.
There are ribbons in Leeward, in Deposition, in Wing, and
elsewhere.
Return 1650
The first two sentences are about the Barrow (see above).
In Treasure it will be excavated. William ‘knows’ that a warrior is
buried there. The Civil War (1642-1649): Newbury supported the
Parliamentarians and there were 2 battles of Newbury in 1643 and
1644. So Gabby went away at the time of the first of these. When
Charles I was executed in 1649, many soldiers believed that their
efforts were over. But Cromwell insisted on going off to Ireland
to subdue possible rebels. His Irish campaign was notably brutal,
especially at Drogheda.
William is a shepherd, illiterate, with a poet’s eye for de-
tail, a wife who has given up sex, a mind that refuses to be white-
washed over like the images in church. Gabby comes back from
Drogheda - and his wife Anne has married again. William’s story
combines ‘telling a story’ with a great deal of reflection.
Some of this is the kind of brooding wisdom which ap-
pears in much of the book.
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 p.3 ‘Whether a man has done a thing or no, I know when
he believes he has, and that is all the same in the end.’
His moral life is based in Protestant thought and common
decency. Of course they are supporters of the Revolution, but you
should show respect to the King when dead, and the destruction of
the churches with harmless statues and pictures was unnecessary.
p.5 ‘We looked at the words in our heads and seed if they
were God’s words or no, remember?’ (When he picks up the
Bible, he hears the parson’s voice since he can’t read.)
Warmth and tenderness are what is offered by Anne - and the
question at the end is how far this is ‘paying for silence’ and how
far it is a witch’s bargain, and how far it is compassion and love
between two lonely people.
The pictures are whitewashed over in his mind, but they
feel loneliness comforted and happiness.
In a way, this is perhaps characteristic of many questions
asked in this book. How do you look at people morally/emotion-
ally. e.g. p. 14 when William studies Thomas and says that Anne
looks at him ‘as one claps up a dog that growling out on the steal.
The question is, was I the deer or the keeper?’
This one causes him to laugh. Is Thomas more afraid of him, or he
of Thomas? Well, he’s not afraid of Thomas. He can laugh. And
think. Does Anne believe she is a witch. She says she is sum-
moned to William in the church. William thinks that the village
needs a witch in order to blame someone. This story is elaborated
in many future chapters.
2. Friends (1689). They are the Rev. Crispin Brazier, pas-
sionate adherent of the Church of England, his curate, Simon
Kistle, and William Scablehorne, churchwarden. Scablethorpe
collapses and dies - of age, heart?, alcohol? - and Simon Kistle re-
veals his Quakerly convictions, eventually tearing off his clothes
and collapsing, frozen into the snow.
At least this is Brazier’s account, and explanation of why
he is alive with all these clothes on him, and the others are dead.
Probably mostly true, partly because it reveals his own obsession
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with dissenters, with corruption and canker, with evil falsehood
and the great adversary.
He is against the William and Mary ‘Toleration Act’ of
May 1689, which gave some dissenters (Protestants who went fur-
ther than the Church of England in their Protestantism) exemption
from some penalties of the law. (Not Catholics or Unitarians).
Quakers were therefore to be ‘tolerated’. But Brazier knows better.
He was also absolutely terrified himself, and began to
panic, we can assume. He decided that Kistle was dangerous be-
cause ‘I reckoned that one among us was not feeling his suffering
as he ought.’ A brilliant way of finding a scapegoat.
A wonderful, Biblical tour de force, with sceptical English
villagers sniggering at him. But Brazier has a point. This will lead
to general wide-spread religious scepticism, ‘its precious lifeblood
sucked, a cheating zeal that sups up as the east wind among the
rabble and leaves our churches hollow’.
At the same time the situation is hilarious, because in or-
der to justify himself Brazier has to go through a great deal of -
for him - unseemly explanation. The congregation obviously enjoy
it.
3 Improvements (1743)
A chapter about the early Enlightenment period. An edu-
cated man trying to work out for himself what works and why.
New scientific thinking in the early eighteenth century. It feels
much more modern than the two previous chapters, and yet there
is considerable horror and madness in it. But Farmer Plumm is as-
serting Reason even if it is sometimes a struggle. Consider his at-
tribution of disaster to some kind of ‘magnetic’ force in the wind.
The details about rags. Would it work? Probably not, but
done in the name of Reason and Progress. This, however, comes
immediately after the legend of the old shepherd and the witch,
which he accepts.
Improvements mean beggar problems(!) See p. 67
Plumm is a religious dissenter. He goes to Chapel, [for
more explanations of this and its implications, see Understanding
5
English Literature by Karen Hewitt, Perspective Publications]. He
regards Brazier as an old fool. (B has been there now for at least
24 years, probably much more.) Plumm is pious and charitable,
but sees no incompatibility between that and reason. In his future
sermon or talk, he plans to say:’ the seed being the soul, and the
husk being the body, or flesh. We are cast into this life with the
trappings of our flesh, that gives us weight; whereas if we deny the
flesh we are too light and buoyant, like a cloud of bedwine seed,
and know not where we go’. And he is on the edge of fears and
mysteries which he keeps pushing back.
At the end of the chapter he counts out the profit he has
made. This is foreign to all the others, very few of whom have any
money anyway. But you feel he really has deserved his profits.
The joys of the individual farmer.
NB He rebuilds the barn where his wife died.

4 Leeward (1743)
By this time we should know, I think, that the novel is not
just a series of chapters. It is not simply that characters’ ancestors
or descendants reappear, or their stories become legends - though
this is fascinating. But we know more about them as a result. Usu-
ally we know more about characters or about their situations than
they do, either through the narrator, or through some kind of dra-
matic irony. In this case we know more about them longitudinally,
as it were.
[When Sam, the narrator of the carpenter’s story tells us
about Ladybitch Chalmers, it is not ‘the truth’ but it is another
view of her which is a fascinating insight and adds to our pictur of
her.] Why Leeward ? This is the name of the black servant boy
who carries her letters. As a result he is going to be sent back into
slavery. To the Leeward Islands. So in some ways it points to so-
cial differences and their terrible life/death consequences. But also
Lady A is on the leeward side of the great obstacles, away from
the wind, pampered and cosseted. But actually a prisoner. A stink-
ing stool, covered with a white cloth.
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 How far are we to deduce the story? William Sykes, the
young tutor of young Norcoat, son of Norcoat, the Squire at
Manor House has an affair with Ann, and the result is baby
Charles, assumed by her husband to be his own. Or perhaps he
suspects something, for she is certainly kept caged up.
5 Dissection (1775)
One of the more difficult sections to read. John Pounds,
Tailor, writes the letters for Sara Shail to her son Francis, in
prison in London for stealing a hat that had blown off. He is to be
hanged, and she and her family want to come and collect his body
to save it from the surgeons who take executed criminals bodies
for dissection. Francis is finding out the costs of this, and keeps
asking for extra shillings. (For bribing the gallowsmen, or to get
away?) She has some kind of breast cancer, and John Pounds
reckons that Francis knows how to heal it.
Charles Chalmers is now Lord at Ulverton House. Sara
has contempt for lords, parsons, surgeons, and almost anyone who
is in power. Expressed thus in the letter of 29th October:
“Thy letter tends the fire of my ?distress. I burn. And
those damn gentlemen and parsons will swing head over heels,
says Mr P, they all have their tongue in the king’s arse. Lord
Charles is mighty chuffed at the noose, says Judith, that’ll be your
poaching days. Last week he was blubbering at all his swans -
their throats were cut. Judith says the lake was red from them.
Cruel! ....”
The last letter by Pound (17th March) has a story which
will mean nothing to us ‘Abraham Webb will make thy coffin; thy
wife has scraped together shillings for him.. Old Sam Day went up
a tree and played God, and frightened Abraham half to death.’
This is of course the anecdote told in Rise.
6 Rise (1803)
As well as the reference in the previous chapter, a lot of the
jokes in future chapters draw upon this one. Samuel, who keeps
indicating that he needs more beer in order to tell his simple anec-
dote is both slow and garrulous. He tells us much on the way.
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Abraham Webb is the Master Carpenter, a skilled man but very
stern with his apprentices. Good but over demanding. Sam has
made a beautiful big gate, best oak, with metal twirly bits made by
Bowsher, the village blacksmith. Ketchaside is just hammering in
a post to hang a gate when he stops and declares he has seen an
angel. Sam later says that it opens and closes very smoothly, but
clearly this is not so one hundred and ten years later. (See the be-
ginning of Jo Perry’s monologue in ‘Stitches’.)
7 Deposition 1830
There really was a labourer’s rising in Berkshire in 1830
(see Thorpe’s final note). People were desperately poor and – un-
like those living in the north of England – they had no obvious al-
ternative employment. So all machines which reduced the need for
labour were real threats to their livelihoods. After the rebellion/ri-
ots there is a tribunal and many witnesses.
The letter writer is a solicitor hearing the witnesses and
preparing the briefs. He is in love with Emily. He wants to marry
her but does not yet have an inheritance (£700 would do - 147) but
her father does not approve of the match, and has himself lost
money in some trading deal. (150) They are clearly planning to
marry, discussing how to do this and not alienate her father. At the
same time the young man is small, weak, unattractive and suffer-
ing from TB - a terrible cough and spitting blood. He watches the
Squire (Norcoat) make a White Horse upon the downs. [Because
the soil is so thin, it is easy to clear away, revealing the white
chalk. Pictures of men and animals can be cut out on the slope of
the hill so that they can be seen from many miles away. The earli-
est White Horse on the Berkshire Downs is prehistoric.]
All this is intercut with extracts from the depositions.
Many names are coming back again or anticipate future ones. The
main deposition is by Hannah Heddin, and her full account sup-
plies virtually all the story. The other fragments add odd details or
reflect on them from a different point of view. In the first lines
there is someone who lights the straw under the plough. In a

8
brown smock. In other depositions it emerges that he is Edward
Bunce, aged about 14, small and scrofulous, in an old smock.
Some of the famers are sympathetic (Barr) and even the
Squire is not too vindictive, unlike Chalmers. The lawyer thinks
that several will hang, many others be transported, and that it is
necessary. The Rector, Mr Willington, does not behave well.
(147) Bowsher the blacksmith is both afraid and sympathetic.
The lawyer is constantly harping on the dirt and smell of
the labourers, and on the chalk mud. He slips in it himself. Then
he talks about their apple-cheekedness, but this is suddenly thrown
into relief by the revelation of his own small, useless physical
frame. And the fact that he is dying. The incident of spitting blood
into the envelope of Emily’s letter. (162)
8 Shutter (1850)
Notes for a lecture. A woman photographer who is sympa-
thetic to the village, enjoys being in it, enjoys the picturesque and
Victorian romantic tastes but is still clear about the sufferings of
the labourers. But she quite misunderstands about Hannah Heddin.
A kind of uneasiness about the social situation which goes (as al-
ways) alongside comfortableness in what you know. The rector,
Walter Willington, was behaving like a pompous ass in ‘Deposi-
tion’ but now he is a charming old man with whom the photogra-
pher enjoys afternoon tea. (181)
9 Stitches (1887)
This is a brilliant chapter, but very difficult. You could skip it – al-
though I assure you that if you have been reading carefully, it all
makes sense.
Why stitches? It seems to be the word for the turning
around at the end of ploughing the furrow.
The red admiral (197) has got a little ‘teared’ and would
need fine stitches to be mended; the parish and its memories are
stitched together; Jo talks about ‘another year stitched up’ at har-
vest (207), when everyone is merry;
Jo Perry’s monologue, in which he is purportedly taking young
Daniel Holland around the parish, showing him things and telling
9
him stories. Jo is 67 in 1887 (was 10 at the time of the Riot.) Actu-
ally Daniel, aged 12 or 13 is dead, of a cold-pneumonia-bronchi-
tis- something of the sort, during his first days at Eton.
Jo is called ‘Hoppetty’ because he has a damaged leg - his
leg ‘goed aneath harrow tines’. Before that he was for a time Head
horseman for Farmer Barr (the decent man in ‘Deposition’ proba-
bly, or perhaps his son). Jo keeps saying ‘Hup’ and ‘Up’, presum-
ably as he hops up and down banks and ditches.
His ruminations are partly about changes and their effect
on the countryside. The gate (Sam Day's gate) is badly hanging,
but they could re-hang it, not put up some new metal one. The rail-
way has come with dirty smelly monsters. Barbed wire is taking
the place of hedges. A nice story about a tree sick with ‘rust’ be-
cause a poacher’s knife got stuck in it. (197) And he has the pho-
tograph plates of the lady photographer which he is using as gar-
den cloches (198-9); he tells about his cousin caught in a man trap
and dying (200) and how they blackened the white horse (201)
starving and poaching (201-2, and 205 where they shoot his dog
Ketch); the riot (202-3); and how Agnes Plumm who hanged her-
self in the cowshed came to comfort the prisoners at the time of
the riot (205-6) and seeing the young lawyer spitting blood (206).
Intercut with his memories of the boy who always wanted to go
round with him. Sometimes he almost hears/sees the boy still there
beside him. We learn that he taught Daniel about the birds - but
his mother burnt his feather collection (195) The difficulty is that
Jo was once in a daze of love for his mother before she was mar-
ried. It made him scatter the seed unevenly. And perhaps he hangs
around the Holland’s house not just because of Daniel but because
of those memories.
The language is full of sayings. E.g. 196 ‘Can’t disgouge
what thee has aready cut’. (Good carpenter’s saying!)
This is the most savage of all the stories. The bitterness of the poor
against the rich - and again Thorpe has to provide some other
point of view, so provides the boy, Daniel. But Jo is utterly con-
vincing.’ ..well hawkin boy hawkin out all the hate in us afore it
10
burn I up...a thousand acre o’ maiden downs won’t bolt my hate
boy though it burn I up in hell’s fire as they tries to frit thee
with...’
10 Treasure (1914)
The narrator is writing in 1928 about events that happened
in 1914. So this is already a reflective, looking-back story. But this
also means that he knows that the enthusiastic squire - the last of
the Norcoat line - was actually much more melancholy within. Or
at least he shot himself in his orchard in 1923, perhaps because of
his guilt over Cullerne. This is hinted at (215) But this is not ex-
plained until the next section (Wing).
Cullerne is known as Bide-at-home, and then as Bidem.
He survives however, has eleven children (see ‘Here’ where one
of them is reflecting in the pub) and is briefly accosted by Violet
Nightingale in ‘Wing’ (292)
The recruiting scene is tense and dramatic – but not just an
exciting narrative. The narrator is examining his own reactions
and then analysing them at each stage in what is apparently a sim-
ple matter of patriotic appeal. And yet the histrionics are not just
mocked at. The squire is honest and earnest, even though he does
try to keep his ‘archeologists’ out of it.
Consider the effect of this. The apparent climax of the
story is aborted, so that it becomes a story about disturbing the
dead, and about self-delusion and uncomfortable parallels. Some-
how the squire remains at the centre; partly because a possible
suppressed homosexual theme is hinted at. The Squire is not mar-
ried nor interested in women. He is impressed by old heroics and,
in some way, with Percy Cullerne who vaunts his own indiffer-
ence. The squire is looking backwards, Percy with his 11 children
is looking forwards.
11 Wing (1953)
(Why ‘Wing’? The Wing of the Big House, meditations on
seeds, angels, ribbons, owls. Probably the longest in actual words.
Violet Nightingale, live-in secretary to Herbert Bradman, neither
of whom is local, conveys a repressed, sadly-comic failed life
11
through her diary and autobiographical writings. Thorpe captures
the quality of her thoughts and perceptions. Her failures and re-
sentments and little life are potentially comic, but her delight in
birds and flowers is rendered with with sympathetic skill. She has
been with him since the 1930’s but in his memoirs he never ac-
knowledges her. This is really a study of what is remembered, par-
ticularly when malice enters into it.
269 – a conversation with Desmond Dimmick at Plums
Farm who is still preoccupied with how to fertilise his land more
that 2 centuries later.
Exploring Ulverton House, which has been taken over by
the M.O.D. and ruined by soldiers. But she comes across Ann
Chalmer’s red silk hangings and the dull brown underneath them.
(286) The Squire story is taken up on 281-282 See also Webbs
and Mummy seeds which seem to be some kind of sweet pea.
Compare with Herbert’s ‘great steel seed’ (299)
She also talks to Bidem who is convulsed with feeling about the
Squire (292)
12 Here (1988)
The script of a television documentary about housing de-
velopments in a small village.
Clive Walters is a local boy turned property developer. He
is putting up some low-cost housing and a series of period-style
houses, the ‘Balmoral’, the ‘Windsor’, the ‘Westminster’. While
digging piles for one of the Westies they dig up the body of a
Cromwellian soldier. ‘Adam Thorpe’ writes a story about it for the
Wessex Nave. That story is ‘Return’ and the villain is deliberately
given the name of Walters. This turns the whole thing into a Post-
Modernist fantasy about what we still think of as a real village. I
don’t think this works. I think it is a clever trick which spoils a
novel which we have read with complete seriousness.
Families in the village who have appeared earlier: Walters;
Ketchaside; Cullerne; Bunce; Oadam; Bradman; Rose; Scable-
horne who are intermittently called Scalehornes. (The stone mason
inadvertently leaves out the ‘b’ on the War Memorial); Pyke; Grif-
12
fin; Webb (who is running a timber yard where his great-great-
great-etc grandfather was a master carpenter); names that do NOT
appear: Chalmers (the last one went down in the Titanic) , Nor-
coat, Stiff, Bowsher; Barr.
The building over of the countryside is a real dilemma.
After all, the proposal is to have ‘ghastly houses’ which many
people – most of us? – would be happy to live in. So different
from the squalor of earlier years. The fact that Clive is an unpleas-
ant cowboy builder doesn’t really remove the dilemma. Work for
the unemployed? The energetic protesters are all, themselves, in-
comers. Enid Bradman; Sally Caird (346 – is this satire or is even
this sympathetic?) Discuss Bradman in Church 352 – she is not
saying anything very different from William in the first story,
though a great deal less elegantly.
They get things wrong. E.g. story about the gate. Duckett,
the local historian tells about this. This is Sam’s gate where Tom
Ketchaside pretended to see an angel. They were carpenters. But
much has been revised, adapted, just plain invented.
The topic of building houses in the countryside provokes
bitter arguments throughout England. We need more houses. They
cannot/should not all be built in towns and cities which needs
parks and green spaces. But if they are built on arable land, they
destroy the countryside which we all need.

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