April – Roman Roads and Dragon Slayers
On April 26th we’re going slightly out of area and some might say slightly off topic, but bear with us.
Our speaker for April is the acclaimed journalist and author Christopher Hadley who will be taking us on a hunt for lost Roman roads, dragon slayers and ways to the past.
Christopher Hadley credit Dominick Tyler
His talk will be based around his last two books, “Hollow Places: an unusual history of land and legend” published in 2019, and “The Road: a story of Romans and ways to the past” published in 2023.
Hollow Places tells the story of Piers Shonks. Once upon a time in a Hertfordshire field, an ancient yew tree hid a dragon hunted by a giant named Piers Shonks. Today, the dragon and its slayer are the survivors of an 800-year battle between rural legend and national record, storytellers and sceptics.
In this brilliant and lyrical history, Christopher journeys from churches to tombs to manuscript margins, to explore history, memory and legend, and the magical spaces where all three meet. If you’re ever anywhere near Brent Pelham pop in to St Mary’s church and in the north wall you will find the tomb of Piers Shonks.
The Road is much more than the story of the author’s walk along a stretch of Roman road in Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, although it is brilliantly that. Christopher takes us on a lyrical journey into the past, retracing and searching for an elusive Roman road that sprang from one of the busiest road hubs in Roman Britain. His passage is not always easy. Time and nature have erased many clues; bridges rotted and whole woods grew across the route. Carters found an easier ford downstream, and people broke up its milestones to mend new paths. Year after year the heavy clay swallowed whole lengths of it; the once mighty road became a bridleway, an overgrown hollow-way, a parched mark in the soil.
Christopher leads us on a hunt to discover, in Hilaire Belloc’s phrase, ‘all that has arisen along the way’. Gathering traces of archaeology, history and landscape from poems, church walls, hag stones and cropmarks, oxlips, killing places, hauntings and immortals, and things buried too deep for archaeology, The Road is a mesmerising journey into two thousand years of history only now giving up its secrets.
Both of these stories, as well as being fascinating tales in their own right, are brilliant evocations of time, place and the very land itself. Christopher’s talk will flesh out these stories which are, in his own words “at the murky and wonderful intersection of history and folklore”.
Both of Christopher’s books will be available for sale on the day.
We’re meeting at 2.00pm on Saturday April 26th at Needham Village Hall, High Road, Needham, IP20 9LB. All welcome, and the usual refreshments will be available. Admission will be by ticket at £5.00 and tickets may be booked here.
