Lacock has a Maud Heath — a poem on a 15th century gift

“It is the year of Our Lord 1474, King Edward IV has been on the throne now for 14 years. Life for us all is spent in keeping the lands and tenements in good order, that I and the villagers may live comfortably…”

In 1474, the widow Maud Heath, of Tytherton, 3 miles outside of the small market town of Chippenham in Wiltshire, arranged a charter to gift her land and tenements to the building of a ‘causey’ (olde English for causeway, from the French chausée — road with a laid surface) from her small village to the town.

Roads in the 1400’s were not so much roads as unkempt, muddy tracks so Maud’s regular trips to market to sell the goods from her farm were fraught affairs, particularly with England’s regular inclement weathers. In her own words:

“There are times it would be foolhardy to attempt the journey as the land around is marsh-like and treacherous.”

She desired a raised and surfaced route to allow her villagers to be able to:

“…reach the Chippenham markets with all their goods to sell, and dry feet”

So Maud Heath’s Causeway came into being, and an unusual stipulation in the deed ensured the creation of a charity to maintain the causeway in perpetuity. Over half a millenium later, the causeway still stands, including the beautiful raised walkway above the floodplain of the river Avon, at Kellaways.

I may remember incorrectly, but for most of my life I’ve heard this route referred to, and I’ve referred to it myself, as “Maud’s Heath” — as though the word ‘Heath’ is an olde English word for path. (incidentally, a heath can be described as a patch of uncultivated land with inferior drainage — very apt).

The overlapping meanings of the name and the odd and very local history of the mysterious Maud prompted me to try and write something about this beautiful place. The Heath family bequeathed a curious artifact on the landscape, and despite its pressing importance in 1474, you would not know it was there today — this important route is now, as Wikipedia so delicately puts it, merely an “undistinguished country road between Bremhill and Langley Burrell”. So in tribute to selfless Maud and her gift, and the centuries of care that allow the ‘causey’ to still stand, here’s a poem.

Thanks Maud.

Lacock has a Maud Heath

A causeway is out by the high bridge,
if you route through Lacock stream
where dogs wade and waddle and
see left and right those cottage shops
that are selling absent, honestly, the
garden finds at one pound a pot. Drop it
through the letterbox, will you

and on your way to that bridge,
that fords a willowy beach on both
banks, you can if you so wish, send a twig
through, run through and see who wins it.
The wall top is small smooth from all
the bum breaches, tourist seatings,
rub rub rub. Sometimes the water

goes so fast, and hoes so deep
that all the river leeks and plantation
weeds that live half in river sleep
the dearest year long, all lean downwind,
nick the twig a bridge-width in no time.
And that causeway! Sometimes horses nearby whine
in memory of marvelous Maud Heath.

There are old menfolk and women seams
who are alive so long a-while that when
they think of kids, being them in their
eyes, full of rheum, they see visits
past old Maud’s posts, the markers for
Bremhill or the Dumbpost, now that’s an inn
that will warm your market toes.

You must be weary, but still, kids,
we need some under-ration
eggs to provide a sneaky pudding,
maybe spotted dick or something suet
do you like that kids? Aye we do,
you all go, and play on bridges
in the miles it takes to,

the miles it takes to bring.
The milestones are diamond-shape heads,
stout and still there, after god knows
how many trucks and carts and ships
over a hundred-weight years or so.
So many weathers to fill the ditch
back when backroads were the main thing.

Isn’t it lucky I made it rich? Maud quips
on this stretch, which with a kink in history
could be the M66. But now is only
thrown twigs by countrying kids
not needed to carry things.
From Wick Hill, where on pillar
like a greek sits modestly high

a stone mix of her and the sculptor’s eye,
to Chippenham Clift, where we presume
the market was at which she loaded out
her legacy things, eggs mainly,
so the stone pillar says in English,
not in greek. And up the Heath went,
raise up and treat the traipsers feet

to a ritzy view, above the whining
horse’s ears, and impervious to even
the severest attempt of the Avon to
flood above its own plain and willowy
knees. Childless she, so sixty-four arches
in Maud’s will, and in a certain light
her causeway is a sunken Manchester mill.