Alfred Williams Hammerman Poet – 1877 to 1930. It appears that I’ve never mentioned the South-Marston-born polymath on this blog before now. But a visit to South Marston yesterday to see the houses with which Alfred’s short and rather tragiclife intertwined, has prompted me to correct that.

I have though dedicated space to him on pages 29-32 of Secret Swindon. Many thanks to Graham Carter for the information that went on those pages. And thanks go too, to Graham, and Ian Hampson, for yesterday’s walk around South Marston.

The infant Alfred entered the world in the house you see below, Cambria Cottage.

When Alfred was around four or five years old his mother became a single parent. Whether Alfred’s father left of his own accord or was asked to go isn’t clear. Either way, the event forced young Alfred’s mother to move her brood to Rose Cottage, close to his South Marston, Cambria Cottage birthplace.

Education and self-education

The rudimentary education Alfred received was soon usurped by the need to get farm work to support the struggling family. Working on the land though provided a precarious living and Alfred faced a harsh choice. His heart belonged to the fields and the outdoors but he couldn’t justify ignoring the security and better pay of the Works, as soul-destroying for him as it was. Yet the young man forced to give the best years of his life to the stamping shop compensated by educating himself and following his creative urges in his downtime.

He set about learning the classics. He read Shakespeare, experimented with painting and learned Greek, Latin and French to further his education. Legend has it that, in his breaks at work, he’d chalk Greek and Latin letters on his furnace to learn them.

Cutting short a long story we come to1914. Now, dogged by ill health, Alfred left the railway works scrawling Vici (I conquered) in chalk above his furnace as he went. If nothing else, leaving the Works gave him the chance to complete Life in a Railway Factory. This the warts and all exposé of life inside that he’d begun in 1911. Williams’ biographer Leonard Clark described the book as the bravest and most comprehensive condemnation of factory life to appear in Europe in thirty years. Alfred himself was pleased with his work. He said it was ‘the only good book on factory life that we have in England written by a working man.’ Without doubt his book made an important commentary on the history of Swindon. And a landmark documentary of British industrial life. Yet it sold only a dozen copies in Swindon in the six years after its publication.

For even more detail on the life of Alfred Williams than I was able to include in Secret Swindon (I had a word count to stick to) do check out this blog: https://www.hungerfordarcade.com/2017/07/hungerford-arcade-alfred-williams-wiltshire-writer/

Alfred weds

From the aforementioned blog:

Alfred and Mary married at St Saviours Church in Eddington on the 21^st of October 1903.  They honeymooned in Torquay.  Alfred, at the time of his marriage, left Rose Cottage and moved into Dryden Cottage opposite Cambria Cottage, his birth place.  They lived in Dryden Cottage for the next fifteen years.

Alfred’s military service

After a brief spell in South Africa, he arrived in India in November 1917. And soon became fascinated with its history and culture.  He was by now working on a book called Indian Life and Scenery.  Like many, he became ill with fever.  As things worked out, he found himself in Ranikhet. That, as you’ll see, has a connection with a small Wiltshire village many thousands of miles away.  He was captivated with India and noted that if he were younger, he would have invited Mary to join him.  He also saw the Taj Mahal.

It was during his stay in India that Mary informed him they had have to move house. Dryden Cottage had been purchased by a local farmer who’d decided to live in it.

Again cutting a story short, Mary and Alfred decided to build their own house. This they did, pretty much with their own bare hands. And they called it Ranikhet.

Note this date plaque on the side of Ranikhet. It bears no relation to the house – it was built in the early 1920s. It’ll be, I imagine, some random bit of rubble that Alfred & Mary used when building the house.

Alfred’s legacy

Alfred already has two titles, but we can attribute a third one to him: social historian. He left behind his poetry and his prose yes, but he did something else too. He appointed himself a collector of Wiltshire folk song lyrics to prevent their disappearance. This undertaking was mammoth. He visited ninety-seven towns and villages on his bike. He covered something like 7,000 miles (take that The Proclaimers!) to collect over 1,000 songs. He’d have to have done this in the winter months, in the hours of darkness as during summer time and daylight hours, agricultural workers, from whom he collected the lyrics, would be hard at work.

More on that here: https://www.efdss.org/learning/resources/beginners-guides/35-english-folk-collectors/2449-efdss-alfred-williams#

His nickname

If you’re wondering … it’s taken because he worked as a steam hammer operator at the might GWR Work

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See also:

https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/9700101.Festival_honours_town_poet/?ref=twt