.... to write about Frome in my sixtieth year, ie. 2028
Frome 2028
I'm sitting in the amphitheatre in the curve of the river in the centre of Frome, it's 2028 and I'm glad of the shade of the tent here and the trickle of water flowing down the steps into the river. A solar water taxi just pulled up & the kids are tumbling out, clutching their lunch boxes....
What a difference it made when the river level was raised in 2017, making the river navigable from Blatchbridge to Freshford & on to Bath. Since the fish-farm was built out beyond the now-derelict Asda site and flood prevention resolved the need for the 'canal' we used to have through the centre of town, the river is a magnet for activities and a lovely place to sit here on a Sunday afternoon. I've just finished my session at the Cheese & Grain & I'm waiting for the methane bus from the Cork Street terminal. I dug out the old file the other day - can't believe it was 2002 the amphitheatre was first proposed! Let me tell you what I see around me....
Market Yard here has truly returned to being a market yard, not the Cattle Market of 1992! Our consumption of meat has drastically reduced since those days and Standerwick is now a thriving Farmers Centre and Energy Company HQ.
We have markets here now on Mondays, Wednesday, Fridays & Saturdays. I used to come by train from Great Elm, stopping behind the Cheese & Grain and bringing eggs in return for Frome Pounds or Vallis Veg, now I'm living in Leigh I catch the methane bus every Monday & Friday. On Sundays my son-out-of-law brings me here in his electrocar, charging up for free while we go to the skills swap. The river is flanked by community market gardens which are a delight to wander thorugh & you can pick up lots of ideas & tips, and sometimes free veg.
I just gave a mini-talk on the Frome Energy Company Union (FECU) that we set up in 2020, using methane digestion in Innox, and subsequently at Standerwick and Lullington to convert farm, food and industrial waste into gas and electricity. Tim, who founded the company with me, is still pottering around organising the troops in sprightly fashion, despite having just celebrated his 80th! He now lives a stones-throw to the north of the former sewage works by the weir on the river and is one of our many small-hydro owners. Last week the Sunday Skills swap was about cheese making - something I've been thinking of doing since 2008 but never got round to it! My slightly reticent changes to a more vegetarian diet have increased my cheese-love considerably. I couldn't cope without my fortnightly bacon-fest ... but wild duck & pigeon are abundant in this patch now - Rode Bird Garden having been replaced by DODO (Doulting Organic Ducks Org.).
Talking of age, my daughter Dolly (28) and grandaughter Martha (4) are organising my 70th - they fancy a skating party at Rodden Ice Festival but I've said I would prefer the usual bonfire party. I'm taking M up to the Showground next week to the mega-play centre. The adjacent hospital is one of the few places (understandably), not involved in the PPP peoples powerdown project. Every day at 6pm we (voluntarily) switch off the juice [I actually think of it more like community juice than ever before!] at 6 til 7. In the summer we tend to have community barbeques and in the winter pot-luck suppers by candlelight. Anyhow the hospital is one of the first to achieve their zero-carbon centificate with the largest PV array in Frome, conveniently shading the mega-play centre and animal centre on the Showground. While I'm keeping an eye on Martha and getting us both a free skin-check at the hospital, Dolly is planning a hike around the Stonebridge Trim Trail! She's going to stop off at one of her breastfeeding awareness mates and plan their Time Bank treat. I think they are cycling to Batcombe for an awayday in the sweat lodge & a bit of massage, and to catch up on the twin-twin project (where each child born in the UK is twinned with one in a developing country for shared understanding & funding support).
Anyhow, back to here, I've got 20 minutes before the bus arrives, I've been discussing with a fellow skill-swapper the new Library extension - we both hate it! Despite the fact that they put the third storey on to match the local stone, and I know it contributed to their zero-carbon gold star status, but why oh why did that have to inflict Frome with that hideous bling solar intensifier in the shape of a huge silver book hovering over the building? AWFUL! I think I've run out of time to do a slow milk-float trip up Catherine Hill to see how the Badcox Community Bakery is getting on, oh well maybe next time.
Cork Street garden, formerly Cork Street car park, is now flanked by permanent market stalls, available for first-come-first-trade, on a half-day basis. The linear market thorugh the town from the C&G to Saxonvale Square is no longer blighted by the traffic through Market Place - after huge turmoil it was finally pedestrianised in 2019 when the bus terminal was completed in Cork Street. Unlike the hideous silver book on the Library, the methane globes around which the buses turn in Cork Street are sublimely beautiful .. a triumph of art & science working together!
Oh well, despite the growing pains, we are getting there... We won't forget the horrendous few months which helped us to change the minds of many, despite the town being calmer and now beginning to thrive. In 2020 we had a really bad winter with months of power cuts and water stoppages. Bedrock was inundated with 'refugee's’ from the main village, all keen to join us as they knew they could rely on our off-grid supply and CHP system. It did provoke them to install the three new turbines and was the moment when Suzie’s home-schooling pilot project really took off in the main stream, but I really felt for some of the families who hadn't been aware of the oncoming problems.
It wasn't until 2012 when the planners realised the errors in their models til we finally were able to expand the Bedrock concept to other villages of Stoke & Cranmore. Until then they really thought that cars were the enemy of the countryside and couldn't see the possibilities in front of their noses - it wasn't pollution from petrol, a depleted resourse, that was the issue but the erosion of the village community and services which were. By allowing villages to grow more organically & take possession of the surrounding land for food and power generation, the villages were finally freed from the shackles of years of stultification……
more later!
Saturday, 10 July 2010
Saturday, 29 May 2010
William Pearce
It was 5am and William Pearce was already awake stoking the oven of the bakery preparing the daily bread for his customers. There would be a queue at the door at 8am and the loaves would be laid out on the shelves still warm and the familiar smell of newly baked bread would fill the air.
When the cold storage business closed down in 2015 he and many others had had to retrain and he had chosen to be a baker. Since the opening of a number of wood fired ovens around the town in the past couple of years, with wood sourced from sustainable coppiced willow forests of the wetlands, he had become an apprentice and, for the first time in his life, had learned a trade.
Frome had changed immeasurably since he was born in 1985, the energy crisis, massive unemployment, the changing climate which had led to food shortages and riots across the country and the slow readjustment to a more sustainable way of life. It hadn’t been easy but he was a Frome man, and Frome people had a reputation for being adaptable, and resilient. Although in Frome’s history there had been setbacks, as in the decline of the cloth industry in the early 19th century, new industries had sprung up leading to diversification of the towns industrial economy and other ways of earning a living had been created. And so it was now. Indeed many of the successful industries drew on the achievements and skills of the past. There were iron founders, metal workers, printers, blacksmiths, engineers....Frome’s people were skilled in the past and this was happening all over again.
Water once again became a source of energy as it had been in the early days of Frome’s history when watermills were used for grinding flour and as part of the cloth making process. Now more sophisticated computer co-ordinated systems were in place but the river was once again a valued resource in the town. And now there was respect and love for the river – the annual water carnival was a sight to see; an extraordinary display of inventive vessels of all kinds. Neighbourhoods would come together to share tools, ideas and skills to design their unique vessel to enter the event. Building on the tradition of the illuminated carnival floats of the past, these water borne floats used fire instead of lightbulbs and the flames that lit up the river as the crowds looked on were equally if not more thrilling to behold.
As in years gone by when Frome was a market town, it became a centre for the purchase of locally produced goods and foods. The revival of St Catherine’s Fair in November and the Orange fair in February were highlights of the year for local people and others would come from far beyond the district for what some said were the liveliest and most colourful fairs you could find in the west country. The centre of town would close to traffic for the day, children would have a day off school, the street bands would play and as well as stalls selling local wares of all kinds, there would be entertainment and feasting. The fairs were, above all, a social occasion and a holiday atmosphere was always present.
Frome was also famed for its arts and crafts, pottery, stonework, woodcarving as well as paintings – some of Frome’s graffiti art was the talk of the region!
William Pearce pondered on all this as he slid the loaves out of the oven and onto racks and saw the first customers arriving, some of them bearing their own cake dough and other dishes that he would slip in the oven to make the most of the remaining hot embers...to be collected later in the day.
Some townspeople liked to arrive early to catch up with their neighbours about the previous day or make arrangements for sharing childminding or looking after an elderly neighbour, planning a communal meal or simply for the satisfaction of a neighbourly chat.
William was ready; he made his way to the door with a smile to welcome his customers.
This tale came from Annabelle Macfadyen.
When the cold storage business closed down in 2015 he and many others had had to retrain and he had chosen to be a baker. Since the opening of a number of wood fired ovens around the town in the past couple of years, with wood sourced from sustainable coppiced willow forests of the wetlands, he had become an apprentice and, for the first time in his life, had learned a trade.
Frome had changed immeasurably since he was born in 1985, the energy crisis, massive unemployment, the changing climate which had led to food shortages and riots across the country and the slow readjustment to a more sustainable way of life. It hadn’t been easy but he was a Frome man, and Frome people had a reputation for being adaptable, and resilient. Although in Frome’s history there had been setbacks, as in the decline of the cloth industry in the early 19th century, new industries had sprung up leading to diversification of the towns industrial economy and other ways of earning a living had been created. And so it was now. Indeed many of the successful industries drew on the achievements and skills of the past. There were iron founders, metal workers, printers, blacksmiths, engineers....Frome’s people were skilled in the past and this was happening all over again.
Water once again became a source of energy as it had been in the early days of Frome’s history when watermills were used for grinding flour and as part of the cloth making process. Now more sophisticated computer co-ordinated systems were in place but the river was once again a valued resource in the town. And now there was respect and love for the river – the annual water carnival was a sight to see; an extraordinary display of inventive vessels of all kinds. Neighbourhoods would come together to share tools, ideas and skills to design their unique vessel to enter the event. Building on the tradition of the illuminated carnival floats of the past, these water borne floats used fire instead of lightbulbs and the flames that lit up the river as the crowds looked on were equally if not more thrilling to behold.
As in years gone by when Frome was a market town, it became a centre for the purchase of locally produced goods and foods. The revival of St Catherine’s Fair in November and the Orange fair in February were highlights of the year for local people and others would come from far beyond the district for what some said were the liveliest and most colourful fairs you could find in the west country. The centre of town would close to traffic for the day, children would have a day off school, the street bands would play and as well as stalls selling local wares of all kinds, there would be entertainment and feasting. The fairs were, above all, a social occasion and a holiday atmosphere was always present.
Frome was also famed for its arts and crafts, pottery, stonework, woodcarving as well as paintings – some of Frome’s graffiti art was the talk of the region!
William Pearce pondered on all this as he slid the loaves out of the oven and onto racks and saw the first customers arriving, some of them bearing their own cake dough and other dishes that he would slip in the oven to make the most of the remaining hot embers...to be collected later in the day.
Some townspeople liked to arrive early to catch up with their neighbours about the previous day or make arrangements for sharing childminding or looking after an elderly neighbour, planning a communal meal or simply for the satisfaction of a neighbourly chat.
William was ready; he made his way to the door with a smile to welcome his customers.
This tale came from Annabelle Macfadyen.
Friday, 10 July 2009
The beginning.....
What will Frome be like in 2030 when we are much less reliant on oil, central government & supermarkets? How will it flourish? Here is a place you can be inventive, dream, paint, write news stories, poems, videos, songs, anything you like to explore a positive future view, picking any date between now & 2030.
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