11th December 2024 - The Ruralists.

Stoney Littleton long barrow

Whilst thumbing through my old December blogs for a Xmas card to send to people, I came across David Inshaw's Silbury Hill.  Which led me back into memories of walking down to Stoney Littleton long barrow with Moss in tow.  A long walk down a green lane, which served some cottages and a farm.  Then you would come to a stile, through a couple of fields and then the long barrow in all its glory of wild flowers and stone.  Still telling us that it was the tribal territory of the Ammonite tribe.  Well I may exaggerate there but on the entrance was an ammonite stone and the surrounding district had ammonites dug up from the soil, with some cottages still decorated with them. But I am going off tangent.  At the stile was the most beautiful brook called the Wellow I think,  You could have set Millais's 'Ophelia' into it with its water flowers and damsel flies that shimmered in their turquoise hue above the surface.

But we must go back to the beginning of the walk, you passed the old Wellow railway station, more a stopping off place before the great cull of the railways by Doctor Beeching.  It was an old fashioned verandah place.  It was here that I learnt that an artistic group called 'The Brotherhood of Ruralists' had lived for a time  I had come across their paintings at an exhibition in Bath.

To cut the story short, and in the rabbit holes we all end up in now  I found the following extraordinary video of the group.  The film is fuzzy and old but it captures some of the magic of the 70s and also Somerset.

Also it captures very strongly the personalities of the groups.  Here I must make a point of some of the physicality of the paintings and also draw attention to the much later scandal of Graham Ovendon.  They are artists and paint what they want, time catches up with them and judges. But their work as a group is fascinating.

"Summer with the Ruralists"