Pilgrimage to Liddington Hill

 

On a recent ‘pilgrimage’ to Liddington Hill, Robin Stapleford captured this stunning view of the Sun perfectly positioned above the gap in the hill fort embankment. Jefferies’ sets the same scene so movingly and inspirationally in The Story of My Heart (Chapter 1, paras 3-4 edited). Jefferies wrote:

‘There was an intrenchment on the summit, and going down into the fosse I walked round it slowly to recover breath. On the south-western side there was a spot where the outer bank had partially slipped, leaving a gap. There the view was over a broad plain and enclosed by a perfect amphitheatre of hills. I was utterly alone with the Sun and the Earth. Lying down on the grass, I spoke in my soul to the Earth, the Sun, the air, and the distant sea far beyond sight. I thought of the Earth's firmness—I felt it bear me up: through the grassy couch there came an influence as if I could feel the great Earth speaking to me. Then I addressed the Sun, desiring the soul equivalent of his light and brilliance, his endurance and unwearied race. I turned to the blue heaven over, gazing into its depth, inhaling its exquisite colour and sweetness. The rich blue of the unattainable flower of the sky drew my soul towards it, and there it rested.’

The Alliance of Literary Societies Fair

 

Join us at the Birmingham & Midland Institute on Saturday 3rd October 2026 from 10am-4pm for the Alliance of Literary Societies Fair, a free day celebrating books, authors, readers and literary societies.

Jefferies' Swindon leaflet

 

A brief look at Jefferies' Farm, Coate

 

The Jefferies' family had left the old farm at Coate by 1886, but the map for that year still holds true. 

Helen Thomas’s letter to Samuel J. Looker dated 20 June 1948

 

This letter was found amongst Samuel J. Looker's papers that were acquired by the RJS and is now part of the Looker Archives held at the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre, Chippenham. Helen Thomas wishes to express her thanks to Looker for his address to the audience celebrating the Richard Jefferies Centenary event on Saturday 19 June 1948. The party had walked from the Corn Exchange in Old Town, Swindon, leaving  at 2pm, to Dayhouse Farm, Coate (the birthplace of Jessie (Baden) Jefferies. At around 3pm, Looker gave his talk to the assembled crowd. It is interesting to note in the letter that Edward Thomas’s biography of Richard Jefferies “received hardly any notice” when it was first published in 1909.  

 

 REFLECTIONS is the title Richard Jefferies gave to his undated thoughts (purchased by Samuel Looker on two sheets of paper) written in his own hand. It is likely that Jefferies wrote the following whilst living in the bleak cottage called 'The Downs' in Crowborough (Sussex). The family lived there from July 1885 to November 1886.

 Oil painting of 'The Downs' by Cyril Wright, July 1976 with owner Delcy Field-Buss at the gate.

Dedication plaque above front door.

Richard Jefferies' Notebooks

 

Hawthorn leaves from Notebook VII, circa March 1880

The British Library archives include Richard Jefferies' pocket notebooks that start in 1876 and finish 3 months before his death. 

Richard's drawing for his brother aged 8

 This pencil drawing by Richard Jefferies is dated 2 September 1860. He would have been 12 years old at the time. The drawing is dedicated to his younger brother Harry (Henry) aged 8. 

It reveals some of young Richard's interests at that time: trains, weapons and thumb-screws!

Coate Stone Circle

Coate Stone Circle, circa 2001

Richard Jefferies was the first person to document the Coate stone circle. In his ‘History of Swindon’ in an article published in the North Wiltshire Herald on 9 November 1867. He wrote:

 

Memorial Direction Indicator at Coate Water

 

 

‘Bursting of the Canal at Coate. Great Alarm in the District'

 

The changing face of the Old House at Coate

 A new illustrated guide, that looks at the changes to the front of the Jefferies' family dwelling house can be accessed here. The images are collected from original drawings/paintings, newspaper articles, and postcards and include the following -- the first dating from around 1845.

New Richard Jefferies Society website

Oil painting of Liddington Hill by David Brackston, 2010, courtesy of Jean Saunders

As of 9 September 2026 there is a new Richard Jefferies Society website at https://richardjefferiessociety.org/.

This blog will remain available as an archive of material related to Richard Jefferies but independent of the RJS (their decision). 

It was built and maintained, using Google's free blogger programme, by a former RJS Honorary Secretary (2005-2025). The pages about the RJS have been transferred to the new website.

The blog has proved to be a valuable source of information and has had half-a-million views from all around the world by September 2026. 

Thank you for your support.

Richard Jefferies died 139 years ago on 14 August 1887

 

The first memorial plaque to be added at the Old House at Coate read ‘BIRTHPLACE of RICHARD JEFFERIES BORN NOVEMBER 6TH 1848’ and was set into the garden wall next to the gothic gate. Thanks to the North Wilts Field and Camera Club the plaque, made of Aberdeen granite, was unveiled at a small ceremony on 6 June 1903. In his speech Nevil Story Maskelyne read the inscription on the tablet. He said that 

'it did not record the date of his death, for he was not really dead to us; his name would live immortal.'

Richard Jefferies and His Home in Wiltshire

This article by Bertha Newcombe (1857-1947. A suffragette and socialist) was published in Sylvia's Journal, March 1894. 

A Peculiarly English Genius Special Offer

 

Special pre-order price (before 6 November 2026) including post to UK only: £45 (Retail price: £60)

Pre-order price for RJS members (UK post): £35. 

Overseas postage extra (please contact). 

The fourth and final volume of this biography by Andrew Rossabi, the President of the Richard Jefferies Society, covers Jefferies’ last five years. This brings to a closure 18 years of painstaking research, expertise and total dedication by the author to whom our gratitude is immense. 

It will be published by Petton Books on 6 November 2026. Retails at £60.

Volume IV explores Jefferies' life and works from July 1882, when he moved with his family to Hove in East Sussex, until his death at Goring-by-Sea in August 1887--years that saw the reactivation of the tuberculosis that was to kill him, years of often intense physical suffering and mental anguish, during which Jefferies fought a heroic but losing battle against what he called the three giants of Disease, Despair, and Poverty. His woes were immeasurably compounded when in March 1885 he lost his infant son, Oliver Launcelot, to meningitis. His grief was such that he was unable to attend the funeral.

Illness caught Jefferies in a vicious spiral. It severely reduced his earning capacity by confining him indoors for long periods. As he told C.P. Scott, for whom he wrote a short history of his illness, he was entirely dependent on being in the open air, in direct contact with nature for inspiration. Doctors’ fees quickly eroded his savings, so that he began a slow but ineluctable slide into penury, a slide only temporarily halted by a grant of £100 from the Royal Literary Fund. Towards the end he became so weak that he was unable to use a pen and dictated to his devoted wife Jessie, who acted as his amanuensis.

Yet these were also the years in which, by a triumph of the human spirit over adversity, Jefferies produced his very finest work, including his masterpiece, the short volume of spiritual autobiography titled The Story of My Heart (1883), the cornerstone of his oeuvre. In it, Jefferies recounts the various stages of his spiritual progress from the time when, as a youth in his late teens, alone on a hill three miles from his home in his native Wiltshire, he received his illumination, a vision of eternity. In language of great freshness and purity, he describes his rapturous communion with sun, sky, stars, sea, and down, and his vision of a world free from want and needless toil.

In the final chapter Rossabi surveys Jefferies’ fluctuating reputation since his death and proposes reasons why he remains worth reading in the twenty-first century, why indeed his message remains more urgent than ever before.

****

PURCHASE DETAILS

Stitched hardback, Wibalin cloth, dust jacket. ISBN: 9781838391713, 800pp., 90 black and white illustrations. Retail price £60. Publication date 6 November 2026 -- Jefferies' 178th birthday anniversay.

Special pre-order price including post to UK: £45 (RJS members, £35). Overseas postage extra (please contact). 

Please note that there is no index in the final volume. All purchasers of the hardback book will be emailed an electronic version (pdf) of the text to use for word search. 

The book is also available as a pdf for £10. 

Please email Petton Books for more information or to order a copy. 

The Earth Prayer

'The Earth Prayer' was the title that Samuel J Looker gave to this poem in Jefferies' hand. Looker published it in the Chronicles of the Hedges in 1948 along with the comment that it 'is obviously part of the feeling that inspired the writing of The Story of My Heart' (i.e. the opening passage). 

N.B. Jefferies writes beautiful poetic prose. Forgive his clumsy attempts at poetry. 

                             Imaginative water colour of Liddington Hill by Jane Muir FCSD

 

12 July 2026 marks the centenary of Jessie Jefferies' death

 

Jessie Jefferies

The July Fly

 

The following extract comes from 'The July Grass' first published on 24 July 1886 in the Pall Mall Gazette and later collected in Field and Hedgerow. The "July fly", described by Jefferies, is the pretty burnet moth [a day-flying moth] and the birdsfoot "lotus" is birdsfoot trefoil that he would have seen in the meadows. 

Nature Notes in June

 

Samuel Looker transcribed the following page of un-dated notes by Jefferies and published them in Field and Farm with the title Bird Notes in June.