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

 

This dramatic headline appeared in the North Wiltshire Herald on 5 May 1866 and it might have been written by Jefferies who, at the age of seventeen, was a new reporter for the newspaper. Flooding had spread over the Jefferies' farm fields as well as the Marlborough Road as a result of a breach in the culvert at Coate Reservoir pictured above. See here for news coverage.  

Jefferies also described the incident in his 'History of Swindon' as 'of a very serious character, when the meadows below were flooded by the escaped water of the reservoir, and had not a hatch been beaten down by sledge hammers, it has been thought that the reservoir bank must have been washed away, and the thousands of tons of water it contained would have been precipitated into the vale, the effect of which would have been an enormous damage to property and probable loss of life.'

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.

Pencil drawing by John Luckett Jefferies, circa 1853

Reuben George in foreground, circa 1903

Oil painting by Kate Tryon, 1911

Museum opened in 1960. Photo circa 1968

New Richard Jefferies Society website expected soon

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

Please note that the Richard Jefferies Society is in the process of building a new website that will link to the domain name richardjefferiessociety.org that currently redirects to this blog.

There might be temporary disruptions with links until the new website goes live. 

This blog will continue as a personal one by a former RJS Honorary Secretary (2005-2025) who created it in 2006. It  has proved to be a valuable source of information and an archive about both the life and works of Richard Jefferies and the Society. It has had half-a-million views from all around the world at August 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. 

Bertha Newcombe was a water colourist known for her four images of Jefferies' Land, North Wiltshire that were published in the large paper limited edition of H.S. Salt’s Richard Jefferies: A Study in the same year. The delightful critical essay she wrote includes a further eight superb illustrations by her. 

In her article Bertha condemns Jefferies for some of his Conservative writings as a young man but applauds the fact that 'he saw so clearly the wrong construction of society; the injustice that, in a world of plenty, heaps that plenty into the hands of a few, and holds the majority at their mercy'.    

Thanks to Colin Benford, the full article can be read here. 

A Peculiarly English Genius Vol. IV to be published this year

 

The fourth and final volume covers Jefferies’ last five years 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 we survey Jefferies’ fluctuating reputation since his death and propose reasons why he remains worth reading in the twenty-first century, why indeed his message remains more urgent than ever before.

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR MORE INFORMATION. LIKELY PUBLICATION DATE 6 NOVEMBER 2026 -- Jefferies 178th birthday anniversay.

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

 

The sunshine in the cloudless sky,

When up the hill I pressed on high,

Upon the earth I laid my breast,

The thyme beneath my form was prest,

My face within the grass was laid,

My hair was mixed with the green blade;

I smelt the odour of the grass,

And the sweet smell the sweet earth has;

The little insects trembling fled,

And turned aside from couched head,

The wind now uttered siss, siss, siss,

Sharp as the sound of a bee I wis,

The wind that blew so free and blithe,

Like the clean swinging of a scythe,

The wind that lifted every stalk,

As if the grass would rise and walk;

Nor could these grasses be so small

But that I knew them one and all;

That earth might keep my lust so bold,

I with my finger touched the mould,

The atoms clung to the moisty skin,

And as a prism my nail glowed then,

But as earth's beauty I adored,

I heard my heart against the sward,

Within my soul from a distant sea,

A deeper pulse that answered me.

Walk from White Horse Hill to Wayland Smithy

 Sharing a recent youtube film by Neil of his recent ramble, in the heat, from White Horse Hill along the Ridgeway to Wayland Smithy. This is a walk that Richard Jefferies would have enjoyed and which he wrote about. Wayland Smithy partly features as the dolmen in Greene Ferne Farm (1880) when Margaret Estcourt is lost in the mists on the downs with Geoffrey. 

 

12 July 2026 marks the centenary of Jessie Jefferies' death

 

Jessie Jefferies

On 12 July 1926 Jessie Jefferies died at her final home in Penlu. Perranporth, North Cornwall. Little is known about the beloved wife of Richard Jefferies but she must not be fogotten. She played such a vital role in his life and works. 

Jessie's grave at St. Piran's church, Penhallow has been restored to mark the occasion of the centenary. 

You can read more about Jessie here.

photos courtesy of Jennifer Carpenter

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. 

A July fly went sideways over the long grass. His wings made a burr about him like a net, beating so fast they wrapped him round with a cloud. Every now and then, as he flew over the trees of grass, a taller one than common stopped him, and there he clung, and the eye had time to see the scarlet spots - the loveliest colour - on his wings. The wind swung the bennet and loosened his hold, and away he went again over the grasses. I wonder whether it is a joy to have bright scarlet spots, and to be clad in the purple and gold of life; is the colour felt by the creature that wears it? The scarlet-dotted fly knows nothing of the names of the grasses that grow here, and thinking of him I have decided not to learn any more of their names either. I have picked a handful this morning of which I know nothing. I will sit here on the turf and the scarlet-dotted flies shall pass over me, as if I too were but a grass. Here by me is a praying-rug, just wide enough to kneel on, of the richest gold interwoven with crimson. It is indeed too beautiful to kneel on, for the life in these golden flowers must not be broken down even for that purpose. It is so common, the bird's-foot lotus, it grows everywhere; yet if I had purposely searched for days I should not have found a plot like this, so rich, so golden, so glowing with sunshine. You might pass it by in one stride, yet it is worthy to be thought of for a week and remembered for a year. Slender grasses, branched round about with slenderer boughs, each tipped with pollen and rising in tiers cone-shaped - too delicate to grow tall -cluster at the base of the mound. They dare not grow tall or the wind would snap them. A great grass, stout and thick, rises three feet by the hedge, with a head another foot nearly, very green and strong and bold, lifting itself right up to you; you must say, 'What a fine grass!' Grasses whose awns succeed each other alternately; grasses whose tops seem flattened; others drooping over the shorter blades beneath; some that you can only find by parting the heavier growth around them; thousands and thousands. I wish I could do something more than gaze at all this scarlet and gold and crimson and green, something more than see it, not exactly to drink it or inhale it, but in some way to make it part of me that I might live it.

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.

Wayland Smith's cave

 

                                 photo courtesy of Tom Saunders

Richard Jefferies wrote about the Wayland Smithy (just off the Ridgeway) in an article for the North Wilts Herald published on 2 November 1867. He wrote under the name 'Geoffrey' and there were eight articles in all as part of his 'History of Swindon and Antiquities of its Environs' that was later published as Jefferies Land and edited by Grace Toplis in 1896.

It also featured as the dolmen in Greene Ferne Farm.

 

                                                                                  photo courtesy of Hedley Thorne

Richard Jefferies memorial elm in Tolworth

Andrew Rossabi (President of the Richard Jefferies Society) gave a talk at Surbiton Library on Richard Jefferies’ Tolworth years on 26 September 2018. It was a beautiful sunny day and this memorable occasion was followed by a walk to the Richard Jefferies Bird Sanctuary where a young English elm sapling, that was Dutch elm disease-resistant, was planted as a Jefferies’ memorial in The Wood next to the Sanctuary fence and behind Surbiton Station.

'The Pageant of Summer' as an Epic Found-poem

Richard Jefferies' footstone on his grave in Broadwater Cemetery, Worthing describes him as the 'Prose Poet of England's fields and woodlands'.  Never could there be a better example of how well his prose reads beautifully as lyrical poetry as in his glorious essay 'The Pageant of Summer' that was collected in The Life of the Fields (1884).

R.D. Stapleford has introduced and edited the essay (in May 2026) and expressed it as an epic found-poem (click on the link to read in full) that begins:

Green rushes, long and thick,

Standing up above the edge of the ditch,

Told the hour of the year

As distinctly as the shadow

 

THE LOST ELMS wins top literary prize for Nature writing

Mandy Haggith was announced today (7 May 2026) as the winner of the Richard Jefferies Award for the best nature writing issued in 2025 for her book The Lost Elms published by Wildfire, an imprint of Headline Publishing Group Limited.
   

Walk around Tolworth 6 June 2026

 This guided walk, in the footsteps of Richard Jefferies' Tolworth years, will be led by local ecologist and Richard Jefferies Society member, Alison Fure. 

Please note that you need to book a place if you wish to attend. Numbers are limited for insurance reasons. Email bentonbat@gmail.com.

An Ecological Vision of Earth

 

New meeting room for the Richard Jefferies Museum

 Please help towards funding a new meeting room at the Richard Jefferies Museum. 

Artist's impression of the proposed building.

Richard Jefferies Society AGM and Spring Lecture

Richard Jefferies Award Shortlist for 2025 Nominations

 The Richard Jefferies Award is given annually to the author of the publication considered by the judging panel to be the most outstanding nature writing published in a given calendar year. The winning work must reflect the heritage and spirit of Richard Jefferies’ countryside books.

Congratulations to the following 2025 nature-writing books and their authors that have been shortlisted for the latest Richard Jefferies Award: