AT WHAT AGE DO BABIES CRAWL

Stretton on Fosse, Warwickshire
ST PETER. 1841 by Thomas Johnson (GR). Aisleless, with a west tower and octagonal top and spire. Hammerbeam roof. -STAINED GLASS. The EAST window probably of C1841-50 . Older tombs in churchyard one or two of quality. Stretton on Fosse derives its name from its proximity to the Fosse Way an imprtant Roman Road that bisects the county. By A.D. 47 the line of Roman advance appears to have been established on the Fosse Way with posting stations at Venonae (High Cross) and Tripon-tium (Churchover). Mancetter may have had an early fort, and the two camps at Metchley are to be associated with this early military phase. Romano-British civil life was established rapidly once the region was subdued. Settlements developed at Tiddington and Baginton and small walled towns at Alcester, Chesterton, and Mancetter. The pattern of rural settlement appears to have remained unchanged. No villas have so far been identified, and the normal unit must have remained the farmstead of Iron Age type, unaltered save that those who worked it now acquired Roman trinkets arid industrially produced pottery. A number of the enclosures discovered from the air have a surface scatter of Romano-British pottery, and many of them must be the sites of these native farms. The only hint of industries during the period are pottery kilns at Tiddington, Hartshill, and Fenny Compton, tile kilns at Rowington Green and Chase Wood near Kenilworth, and lead and iron smelting at Tiddington. This basically Iron Age rural economy must have survived the Roman withdrawal from Britain, and it was only with the arrival of the West Saxons in the region in the late c6 that a new economy was introduced. Of these pagan Saxons we know little, and they have left no visible monuments in the countryside, but their spread is marked by a series of flat cemeteries of extended inhumation and urned cremation burials (e.g. Chesterton, Churchover, Longbridge).

The Hoylake and West Kirby War Memorial was unveiled on the 16th December 1922 and is located at Grange Hill near Hoylake. Charles Sargean tJagger was recommended for this commission by George Frampton . The memorial involves a colossal granite four sided obelisk with an arched top. It stands on a substantial base and has bronze figures on its west and east faces. The figure on the west face is that of a woman dressed in long ecclesiastical-style robes with a hood covering her head. The figure holds a wreath that is made up of thick twigs intertwined with poppies. From her wrists hang heavy chains, which we see to be a broken manacle. The woman's head rests on a cruciform pillow made up of lilies with a large nimbus behind. On her chest there is an oval form that contains a baby that clings to the woman. The baby looks down at the viewer through the wreath. The figure on the east face is a soldier shown standing legs astride, fully dressed in World War I battle gear, complete with gas mask bag, water bottle, putties and his helmet pushed off the back of his head. His rifle is held horizontally in front of him at waist height. It is a typical Jagger soldier-figure. Solid and robust, Jagger’s soldiers are certainly the sort you would want standing next to you in the trench, to be by your side when you “went over the top”. At his feet there is another helmet. Inlaid on the granite a plaque attached to the west face of the base reads:


" At the call of King and country they left all
that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger
and finally passed out of the sight of men by the
path of duty and self sacrifice, giving up their
own lives that others might live in freedom
let those who come after see to it
that their names be not forgotten."

Here is a photograph of the Hoylake soldier.