The swifts were screaming high in sunny air as we turned our backs on Gloucester for Monmouth and Kymin Hill. We passed through a land of orchards and rush-green corn to Ross, there changed trains, and soon found ourselves on the banks of the Wye en route for Symon’s Yat. Wooded hills began to grow up on either side of us. The cresséd isles of snow-white water-crowfoot gave us the impression of winter snow in summer flood. (p. 38)
Arrived at the station of May Hill, we crossed the bridge to take a photograph of the Kymin, with the bridge in the foreground, then recrossed it. Haymakers were busy on one side of the road, and on the other side, beneath the shade of poplars, the sheep shearers were at work, not with the picturesque shears as we see them at clippings at the northern fellside farms, but with an unpicturesque and whizzing machine. We turned to the left up the main road for Coalford and Gloucester, and in a couple of hundred yards began to ascend by a delightful hazel-bowered path which led to an open meadow, and thence turned steeply toward the Kymin Hill; a fine view was obtained from this meadow of the pink and white town, with its blue-grey roofs and single town spire beyond the gleaming Wye. Thence to the right we made our way up a good cart road, passing one or two cottages covered with roses, whose gardens were gay with valerian and pansies, missed the near path up the hill by reason of an entire lack of guide-posts, and eventually leaving the main cart track went through another woodland path till we regained the cart road which turned sharply to the left beneath the shadow of fine beech trees. We passed another house and eventually arrived at a gate through which we entered a wood, and again, more by luck than direction, found a path which led steeply up to the white tower on the top of the Kymin, which stands in nine acres of ground purchased by the National Trust in 1902 for the sum of £300. (pp. 38-39)
It was about three-quarters of an hour’s slow climb from the town, with endless variety of view, and the surprise of the open grass plateau which we gained, with its wind-blown Scotch firs and its comely sycamores, well rewarded us for the ascent. From near the tower where dwells the custodian, though we were somewhat troubled by the fact that seedling sycamores and badly grown oak trees shut out the main view, we were able to obtain at a small opening a fine panorama (pp. 39-40)….
Tranquil as the panorama was, a note of war was sounded by the rose-pink newly-ploughed lands high upon the ridge of the Buck Holt hill. But we forgot the sound of war in the singing of the garden warbler and willow wren. Then we turned from the view and made our way to what looked like a summer-house, or walled enclosure, to the east, and there again the sound of “unhappy far-off things and battles long ago” asserted itself. For this summer-house was in memory, as the inscription tells us, of the glorious deeds of the British navy more than one hundred years ago. The inscription runs as follows
“THIS NAVAL TEMPLE
WAS ERECTED AUG. I, 1800,
TO PERPETUATE THE NAMES OF THOSE
NOBLE ADMIRALS
WHO DISTINGUISHED THEMSELVES BY THEIR
GLORIOUS VICTORIES FOR ENGLAND
IN THE LAST AND PRESENT WARS
AND IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO
HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF BEAUFORT
DAUGHTER OF
ADMIRAL BOSCAWEN.”
The abominable habit of the scribblers who visit Kymin Hill have rendered the inscription almost illegible. One would have thought that we, who owe so much to our navy, should at any rate have been shamed into abstention from such desecration, and the sooner the scribblers’ work is painted out the better. The summer-house roof which runs right round is in sad disrepair, and the seats have by horse-play been partially destroyed—not to the disadvantage of certain cattle that were thereby enabled to shelter from the sun. They, at least, were setting an example to humankind, for they were enjoying the cool and rest, and not doing indignities to their surroundings. (pp. 40-41)
(A Nation’s Heritage, pp. 38-45)
