2025: The Year in Review – part 2

Posted on January 12, 2026 by johnshortlandwriter

2026 has come in with a bit of a blast quite literally for we are experiencing a blast of cold air and snow that has swept down from the Arctic. Here, in our part of the Cotswolds, the snow and ice are more of a nuisance than anything else for there is very little snow cover and the roads have been quite treacherous. The country folk of yesteryear always said that if the snow hangs around there’s more on the way – time will tell. It’s been some years since we had deep snow blocking the lanes.

*It’s been a few years since we had snow like this*

In part 1 of the review (link here), I reflected on the first six months of the year. It had been quite a successful year for me researching my family history. I’m fortunate for I can trace them back very many centuries – at the moment I’m reading a book about them in the 1400s! I also took the opportunity to finally visit the chapel (link here) where one is buried and nothing had prepared me for the splendour of it or how strangely moving the experience was. I also met with Canadian cousins (this time, living ones!) for the first time and we all commented how strong family bonds can be. That, and a prompt from you, one of my readers, made me reflect on those other great influencers in our lives, mentors.

*The Beauchamp Chapel, named after one of my ancestors, Richard Beauchamp*

In June I had written about my first pair of mentors, Dick and Lorna French who lived on a remote farm in Exmoor National Park. Their story can be found here. The following month, I wrote about Cyril and Pamela Heber Percy who I first met in my early thirties. How different they were from Lorna and Dick but how equally valuable were the life lessons they taught me! The Heber Percy’s had both been brought up by wealthy, landed parents. Cyril, who was born in 1908, had come from a background that we now associate more with Royalty: it was a house with liveried footman and a strict regime. Pamela’s family were very different for she was brought up in Ireland where the discipline was far more relaxed. Both had a deep love for nature and a huge interest in people. They, like most mentors, had the ability to make you feel very special. It was with Cyril that I first learnt to fly fish, and it was he that gave me the ability to recognise where the fox had lain and the badger pushed through a hedgerow – more of them in this link here.

It was back to Exmoor for August (link here) to explore the three churches where according to local rhyme and legend no priest would ever go to. Was it due to them being so remote or was it due to witchcraft? Or bandits? Or lepers? Whatever the reason, they are well worth visiting today for they sit in some of the most stunning countryside that you’ll find in England, and in August the hills are cloaked in a purple haze of heather flowers. One of the three churches is world famous for it was at Oare that Lorna Doone was shot as she stood at the altar on her wedding day. As with all my blog posts, there are lots of photos to demonstrate what a beautiful area I have been lucky enough to have spent so much time in since my teens.

*Oare Church on Exmoor where Lorna Doone was shot on her wedding day*

September found me writing about the chance contact by a Cheltenham art gallery asking me for help with a series of watercolours of London street scenes they had acquired. It turned out that they had been painted by yet another ancestor of mine (they have since been sold and are now in the United States). My own artistic talent is restricted (as one kind person described it) to painting with plants – I can visualise garden design and create it but I could never offer clients an artist’s impression! In the blog I explored the various connections I have to people that are skilled artists ranging from present day to those in the past. It was a fascinating task and not one I’d ever thought much about until I received the prompt from Cheltenham. To see the London paintings as well as the others I found click on the link here.

*One of the four paintings of London that are now in the USA*

It was very much back to the Cotswolds for Halloween. We live very close to the Rollright Stones, parts of which date back six thousand years – so older than Stonehenge. It has long been a place of ritual and superstition and Rollright and its surrounding villages have an equally long association with witchcraft. In 1875, a ritual murder was committed. Poor, elderly Anne Tennent was harmless enough but accused of witchcraft with brutal consequences. In my research for the blog, I came across a hand-written eye-witness report and had email correspondence with her 4xgreat-grandaughter. What I hadn’t expected to find was that a similar murder was committed very many years later although the connection to witchcraft was not disclosed until the late 1960s, so well within my lifetime. And then there are the tales of the mysterious black, headless dog being seen… When I visited the stones in October offerings had been lain upon them. Intrigued? Click on the link here to find out more.

*The mysterious Rollright Stones, over 5000 years old and a centre for witchcraft*

It had been some time since I last wrote about gardening which is, of course, my hobby turned profession. One of the constant questions I’m asked – and often a tricky one to answer – is how to screen an unwanted view. November would be the perfect month for dealing with a problem like that so in Hide that Ugly Wall I looked at the various options. In the blogpost (link here) we looked at trellis, climbing plants, and ideas for planting in front of the wall, fence or whatever else needed screening. At the end of the post there is a list of plants of all types and sizes to help with selection.

*Screening an ugly wall – in gardening, there is a solution to every problem!*

So the year came to an end with reflection upon what had been and 2026 begins a new year of blogging. As Life in the English Cotswolds enters its seventeenth year all that is left is for me to thank you all for helping to make it such a success. When I began in 2009 it was to be a short-lived experiment in combining text with images. I never anticipated that it would be read let alone develop into this! Now, I hear from people all over the world and have even met a few of you. It has received awards and featured in national newspapers, and it led to my being involved in setting up a literary festival. It was through this that I was approached to write my book on gardening, Why Can’t My Garden Look Like That? Who would have thought it?!

*Book signing – the publishing contract came as a direct result of blogging*

With every good wish for a happy, healthy and peaceful 2026. I’m very much looking forward to seeing what adventures arise and sharing them here. If you have any thoughts on topics, ask questions or just fancy a natter I can be contacted through the Get in Touch tab at the top of the page.

An Arty Family?

Posted on September 26, 2025 by johnshortlandwriter

Eighteen months ago I was contacted by a gallery in Cheltenham about their researching an artist for they had acquired four watercolours of London street scenes painted during a ten-year period from 1885. They were by Edward Angell Roberts who had lived with Mary Ann Shortland, an ancestral cousin of mine. Although they described themselves as husband and wife in official documents, Edward was already married to the exotically named Josephine Bartolozzi Vestry Anderson.

*New* *Street, Spring Gardens*
Edward Angell Roberts, 1885

Edward was born in Kennington in the English county of Surrey in1836. His father was a tea merchant and aspiring gentleman which presumably he became for by the age of fifteen, Edward was being educated at Christ Church Hospital, a school for sons of clergy and gentlemen. It was a good springboard for Edward for in 1855 he was promoted to Deputy-assistant to the Commissary of the Inland Revenue before proceeding to becoming Clerk to the War Office. In his spare time, he painted.

*Old Wooden Houses, The Strand*
Edward Angell Roberts, 1887

The four watercolours show great artistic detail of places within a stone’s throw of the War Office, in London’s Pall Mall. They are New Street, Spring Gardens (1885), Old Wooden Houses, The Strand (1887), Garden House, Clements Inn (1895) and Pump Court, Temple (1895). They have since been sold at auction to a buyer in the United States.

*Garden House, Clements Inn*
Edward Angell Roberts, 1897

Edward had married Josephine in 1858 and the census, three years later shows them living apart. Whether that was a temporary separation is not known for shortly after they had two children, a girl in 1864 who died in infancy and a boy in 1866. However, by 1871 he was living with Mary Ann and Josephine and the son disappear from record. It is thought that they may have moved to Ireland for the son reappears in the English 1901 census return and claimed to have spent time there. As for Edward and Mary Ann, they never married (or had children) for in his will, Edward leaves his estate to Mary Ann Shortland, spinster.

*Pump Court, Temple*
Edward Angell Roberts, 1897

I began to wonder if we had other artists in the family for several of my cousins, my sister and my father were all artistic, I always felt that the skill had passed me by until some kind person exclaimed that through my career as a garden designer, I paint with flowers, a description I rather hold onto. It is true that there are some similarities for a new garden is a blank canvas waiting to be given a backwash of green and then daubed with the colour shapes and textures of flowers. Below is a rather poor quality photo of one of my early designs inspired by a Japanese Imari plate which was, I suppose, quite any arty approach to take!!

*Garden design inspired by Japanese Imari Plate*
John Shortland, 1999

Another ancestral cousin painted and illustrated books on the town of Rye. Marian Eleanor Granville Bradley was the granddaughter of the Dean of Westminster Abbey, George Granville Bradley. Mostly remembered for her line drawings, occasionally they or paintings of hers are available for sale at auction. An only child, born in the United States, she returned to England sometime during the 1880s. She never married and died in 1951. Her pencil sketches of Rye appear very simple at first sight and, like Edward Angell Roberts, belie the attention to detail that is executed. Interestingly, a couple of her close relatives are described as ‘oil and colour merchants’ so it seems that art provided a living for my family in more ways than one…

*Ship and Anchor, Rye*
Marion Eleanor Granville Bradley,1920

And finally, there is Uncle Les – not my uncle at all but (yet another) cousin of my father and, in the convention of the time, known to me as Uncle. I only met Les the once for he died quite suddenly when I was young. However, I did get to know his widow well, so it came as rather a surprise when I was sent this little pen and ink drawing of (I think) a house in Kingston-upon-Thames many years after her death.

*Edwardian House*
Arthur Leslie Shortland, 1935

A few lines on Josephine. With a name like hers, curiosity got the better of me and so enquiries were made and she turned out, as hoped, to be ‘interesting’. She was a close relative of Madame Vestris, a famous, if not infamous actress, contralto opera singer and theatre manager. Madame Vestris probably deserves a full article of her own!

Family history research is always uncovering something fascinating, puzzling or new – I wonder what it will turn up next?

With thanks to Andy Shield of Brave Fine Art , Cheltenham www.bravefineart.com }for sending me copies of the four paintings

Life Stories

Posted on October 8, 2022 by johnshortlandwriter

Nearly all of us have family stories passed down to us through the generations but gradually some element of the story, if not all of it, becomes lost. Over the past twenty years or so our family have written down not only these tales but also a detailed account of our own lives to pass onto future generations. Whether, of course, they will be that interested who can tell but it is quite likely that someone one day will be.

When the family first began to write their life history it felt self-indulgent and embarrassing, and these emotions must be overcome if it is to be successful. Then, of course, there are decisions to be made as to what to include and what to leave out, after all, we all have moments in our lives that we’d rather forget. So, a decision needs to be made whether to go for the ‘warts and all’ approach or to be a little more restrictive in what you have to say. I think it’s important to be cautious, for no-one wants to intentionally hurt others through careless writing or cause a family rift – unless, of course, you seek revenge! If it is selective memories you decide to write about it is equally important to include the lows as well as the highs, otherwise the writing will not sound genuine. None of us, sadly, just sail through life, after all.

*My first big low – the death of my girlfriend, Carolyn, aged 14*

Your life hasn’t just been one of relationships with people. It has included the places where you have lived, where you studied, where you worked, where you holidayed. I was 37 when I first wrote my story, now aged 70 it’s time for an update. In that thirty-three-year gap I have moved westwards from the Chiltern Hills, where I had lived all my life, to the Cotswolds. I changed careers from the indoor world of retail fashion to my present one of designing and managing gardens. It also includes a two-year stint studying as a full-time student at horticultural college, a couple of years of being involved with the Chelsea Flower Show and working on one of the first garden makeover programmes, Garden Doctors, for Channel 4 television. You and I have lived through a Covid epidemic, witnessed the recent death and funeral of Queen Elizabeth, and part of Europe is at war – all proof that we don’t need to be in our dotage to write down our history. There is no shortage of things to write about!

It was my sister who first persuaded my mother and then me to write our life stories. Strangely, she was surprisingly reticent when it came to writing her own and took some persuading to take part! However, what we have now is a potted history not only of our lives, but also social conditions and changes that span well over one hundred years. An aunt and an older cousin have both added some of their memories too and now that some years have passed since their deaths, as well as my mother’s, these documents become more interesting and more precious with each passing year.

*Extract from my mother’s memoir detailing the moment in 1945 when she regained consciousness*
*from a coma* *– for the full story of the pioneering treatment she received, click here*

One of the stories that had been passed down from my paternal grandmother was the tale of the family’s friendship with a famous poet. The bulk of the story was lost, and we had always assumed that the connection must be with Shelley as the poet’s mother had lived in Marlow, where my grandparents also lived. It was only relatively recently, when researching the family history, that the connection became clear. My grandmother’s cousins had been a close friend of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the Victorian Poet Laureate. I discovered through this research that our generations weren’t the only ones with lives documented for their friendship with Tennyson, as well as several letters between them, survived in the National Archives. Even better, a memoir had been written by the cousin, later published, which gave delightful insights into their lives: “…there was a constant coming and going between the children of each house, all being equally at home in the other…”

*The start of a friendship – to read more about our family connection with Tennyson click here*

Regular readers of my blog will know that I spent a lot of my time as a very young man (and now as an old one!) on Exmoor staying and working on a remote hill farm. Although so very different to my own home background and upbringing, I loved the traditional, farming life despite it being such hard work, sometimes in very bleak weather. Now, much of that lifestyle has gone which makes a written record of it all the more valuable – and it is all included as part of my life story. I hadn’t anticipated discovering yet another ancestral cousin had written about his teenage life on Exmoor a hundred years earlier. I also discovered that his sister married and emigrated to New Mexico and published a memoir of her life there in 1898. It seems that writing life histories is a long-established tradition in our family after all! I hadn’t known of the New Mexico connection when I visited there in 1994 – visiting a cousin from another branch of the family who had also emigrated there – even more to go into my updated memoir.

So now that you’re going to write your own historical record what is the best way to preserve it for posterity? A blog, such as this one is a possibility, and it is an easy way to record events along with appropriate photographs. It may not survive long-term as it depends upon the blog hosting company continuing indefinitely to exist. The same applies to any form of digital storage: in my lifetime we’ve gone from reel-to-reel tape recording to cassette tape recording. Then we became computerised, and storage moved from floppy disk to cd-rom to memory stick. Now only the latter is in common use (how many younger people even know what a floppy disk is?) and that is almost certainly to change. I shall continue to type my memoir with photos attached although hand-written would be even better for it gives a deeper insight into someone’s character as well as looking nicer on the page. Part of the pleasure of reading my mother’s story is that it is in her own handwriting, and it is easier on the eye. We have digitally copied it which means that it can be shared easily amongst the family. Publishing it in book form, as my ancestral cousins did (for it was their only option) is a good way to preserve it. These days it is much harder to find a publisher that is interested although self-publishing could be an option. Lastly, a copy lodged with your local museum or County archive should ensure its survival and many are very interested in receiving a record of everyday life and lives. Go ahead and do it!

*Include photos, newspaper cuttings, invitations – anything that helps to tell the story*

Conceived on Exmoor?

Posted on March 30, 2019 by johnshortlandwriter

There used to be a standing joke between my mother and I that I must have been conceived on Exmoor as it has such a magnetic hold on me. My parents had honeymooned there, staying at Ye Olde Cottage Inne at Barbrook in the mid-1940s – the fact that I was born in the early 50s and had an older sibling we conveniently overlooked.

Wedding Day

When I first came across Exmoor, in the summer of ‘68, I thought I had stumbled into a paradise, if not unknown to others, certainly unknown to members of my family. “Stumbled” is an accurate description. My intention had been to cycle further west into Cornwall before returning south to Exeter for the train journey home. Poor map reading skills took me instead to the North Devon Coast at Westward Ho!. During my final term at school we had studied the novel Lorna Doone and now seeing Doone Valley, Exmoor marked on the map it seemed logical to visit despite it being way off to the east.

Badgworthy Water, Doone Valley

Brought up in the Chiltern Hills, I was used to a hidden landscape of narrow lanes, high beech hedges and dense and extensive beech woodlands. Rarely, was there an unbroken view of far-distant places and, almost as rarely, large expanses of sky and cloud. Cycling across Exmoor with its open, rolling landscape ablaze with heather and gorse and views across the sea to the Welsh coast was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Sometimes the lanes would pass between high banked hedgerows or descend into well-wooded coombes reminding me of home. I came across a farm where I pitched my tent intending to stay two days before leaving for Exeter.

A Chiltern lane winds its way through dense woodland

The open views of Exmoor

Helping on the farm, two days turned into weeks and then into months by which time I had moved into the farmhouse and embraced Exmoor life. I occasionally telephoned my parents, or sent a postcard, always being evasive about where I was staying and only telling them I was working on a farm and being well cared for. With the benefit of maturity, I sometimes wonder how they coped with their sixteen-year old son, on his first lone holiday, disappearing for so long in an era of no mobile phones or credit cards for them to track my progress. They only succeeded in finding me after I foolishly reversed the telephone call charge and soon after arrived on the doorstep to drag me away, kicking and screaming. It was time to get “a proper job” but Exmoor and the farm had completely changed my outlook on life as well as the direction it would ultimately take. After twenty years of “a proper job” I finally escaped to agricultural college and a life of outdoor work.

Brendon Barton 1968

At agricultural college 1994

I had been surprised and a little disappointed when I first discovered my parents also knew Exmoor. Despite not having been conceived there, my attachment to Exmoor has never waivered and more than fifty years later I regularly return. Upon entering the moor the same emotion of discovery, as if seeing it for the first time, remains. Many of the old friends that I made in those early years and their unique way of life that I was privileged to be part of, albeit in a small way, have gone but the landscape remains remarkably unchanged. The heather and gorse are still a carpet of purple and gold, the sea (at least, on a fine, sunny day) still blue.

Countisbury Common, where the moor falls into the sea

Very recently, through researching my family history, I have found that an earlier cousin, at a similar age to myself, had also discovered Exmoor. He too had never settled in school and life on Exmoor changed him. He also chose to write about his time on the moor, something else we have in common. Although I was surprised to learn of his life and his book, this time I am delighted!

002

Postscript. Just a few years before she died at the age of 93, I spent a few days on Exmoor with my mother and took her to revisit the honeymoon hotel. Long widowed, the day must have been a mix of emotions.

At Ye Olde Cottage Inne, renamed The Bridge Inn

Seek and Ye Shall Find

Posted on September 22, 2018 by johnshortlandwriter

Several years ago I wrote of my fruitless search for my great-aunt. I hadn’t physically lost her for she had died many years earlier – she was just one, albeit an important one, of the conundrums that constantly arise when researching your family history.

Aunt Baba had left a lasting impression on me when I met her for the first and only time; me just entering my teens, she as an elderly lady of ninety. Although she certainly was elderly (ancient to my young eyes) she still had the quiet energy and sparkle that had endeared her to my father and his siblings as youngsters. Perhaps because of the happy visits to her that he would tell me of, I too, adored her instantly.

Gt Aunt Baba (Frances White) 90th bithday about 1965 watermark

Aunt Baba, aged 90, c.1965

As youngsters, my father, uncles and aunts, around the time of the Great War, would travel to Rudgwick, Sussex in what is now the South Downs National Park to stay for short holidays. There they were allowed to run wild, roam the fields and woodlands and generally be spoilt in a way that would never be allowed by their authoritarian parents. Brought up as Plymouth Brethren, a strict Christian sect, their usual life was one of bible study, education, chores and prayer meetings. At aunt Baba’s, although she too was Plymouth Brethren, life was very much more relaxed. In later years, when I was a child, the Brethren became more rigid and dictatorial about who they could associate with. My father had rebelled as a young man and as a consequence, contact with us became forbidden. Family meetings were very few and aunt Baba’s visit was shrouded in secrecy for fear of her being ‘caught’. Many years later, long after both she and my father had died, I realised I had no idea whether she was a relative or not and my research was drawing a blank. In desperation, I wrote of her in the hope that someone ‘out there’ might respond.

Relaxing in the 1940s?

The blog post (link here) created quite a lot of interest but no hard leads. It did generate correspondence from the Rudgwick Preservation Society which although useful didn’t produce the breakthrough I hoped for. Fast forward to a couple of months ago when I discovered a letter from my father’s eldest sister. In it she told of how, when staying with aunt Baba, she had met her future husband whose parents also lived in the village and were Brethren. This was the first ‘hard’ fact I had to go on and from there aunt Baba’s story unfolded.

Frances White - auntie baba - and Clara Joyce Shortland watermark

My aunt as a young woman with aunt Baba, about 1924

Born close to midsummer’s day 1875, aunt Baba, who remained unmarried, by 1916 had become housekeeper to an elderly farmer and his son who lived in the wonderful, ancient house of my father’s memory, Greenhurst. By the time of the Register that was conducted of all households immediately prior to WW2, it can be seen that by 1939 she had moved to a house in the heart of the village. Within its grounds stood a Plymouth Brethren Meeting House. Further correspondence with the Rudgwick Preservation Society has revealed that when the son died, (his father predeceasing him by several years), the house had been left to their loyal and long-serving housekeeper; a wonderful gesture. By 1943, old telephone directories show that she had moved once more, this time to a smaller house in the same street. She was still living there in 1953. She may have continued to reside there after that date but the trail disappears until the record of her death in 1965 – which means she must have died within months of my meeting her.

postcard of Greenhurst, nr Rudgwick watermark

The house where my father ran wild c.1918

The research has revealed that her name was, as I had thought, Frances White, and that she was a close family friend and not a relative. I am rather sad that she isn’t blood related for, in theory, she doesn’t belong on my family tree. I have placed her there for posterity anyway as an honorary member, in the process, no doubt, causing some confusion to future genealogists.

Is there more to find out? Indeed there is, for how on earth did she end up being called aunt Baba? That is the part of her history that, I suspect, she has taken to her grave.