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A collection of facts on the life of Dr Thomas Wood |
Dr Thomas-Wood lived in Bures until
his death in 1950.
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The
Ghost of Parsonage Hall. This house is haunted You can hear a man and a woman talking together, quietly, and at night, in the angle of the roof between the main Tudor building and its Jacobean wing A room may have stood in this corner at one time, 'here is none now. The voices sound kindly, placid, sure f themselves and sure of each other, as those of man and wife should be. I think they must belong to man and wife. Friends would be less constant: lovers, more secretive. His voice is deep, pleasant in quality, and has some power of iflexion; she, I should think is thirty-five or so; even tempered, intelligent, shrewd. I picture her as a competent Elizabethan housewife who had a sure hand in brewing and baking and the spicing of beef; she is slim, fair-skinned, fair tired, grey-eyed; and her gown of Kersey wool, dyed red, is cut away in front to show a russet kirtle. This is surmise. I have never seen her. I have never seen him. Their voices are all I know of them. He speaks: she makes a comment, demurs, or affirms - you can almost guess the words; if you creep nearer to listen and be sure, their voices go away. Six months later, or a year,
perhaps, they come again. They move here and there as
though fresh points of interest were being examined and discussed; they
pass out of earshot, come back, stay, talking - and you have them. Now
you know where they are. They must be in the first floor room,due east
of the brewhouse. Half-way tip the
west wall is a Tudor window. Its oak mullions are as smooth and hard as
the beading-plane left them: cut into the head and into the sill are grooves
along which the leather-covered shutter used to slide sideways; but no
light has come through the glass - if there ever was any - for three hundred
years. The window was sealed when they built the brewhouse. You go upstairs
on tiptoe; wait. The voices fade. They pass to the other side of the wall,
behind the window - into the joists of the brewhouse roof. If you go downstairs
again they retreat into the room. They are always on the other side of
the wall. And here is the maddening thing - never can you catch a single
word. A guest came to stay, a Swiss
lady. In spite of her age she had kept her vivacity, her alertness, and
her pluck; and it was hard to believe that anyone could take part in general
talk so ably and so intelligently with only lip-reading to rely on. She
could not hear a word we said. She listened with her eyes. No mention,
naturally, was made of the nocturnal colloquia that occasionally went
on behind her bedroom wall. It was she who broached the subject at breakfast
next day with the eagerness of a small girl asking about the fairies.
Thank you, yes - everything most comfortable; but who, please, could be
talking so loudly at three o'clock this morning and on the roof - no,
near the roof, near her bed. She had got up to look. It was dark. She
was not frightened. Why should she be frightened? No one could be frightened
in a room like that. Yes, two people; one voice was that of a woman !
She smiled, archly. We explained; and as she was a wit, a character, and
very much a dear, her entry in the visitors' book is more than an unemotional
record of a weekend. It gives the date 07/09/1934 and her name, Elise
Fischer. ---------------------------------------------------------------- During the war her relations
Chris and Marrianne from Wasperton came to say for six weeks. While there
Marriane was upstairs and heard a swishing sound and footsteps on the
landing. She asumed it was Aunt Osyth, but when she went to the drawing
room both Osyth and Thomas were there. So she said '"I thought
you were upstairs I heard you on the Landing" to which they looked
at each other and replied "No that was the ghost" Strangely enough this Ghost
did not appear to subsequent residents of the Hall
Thomas Wood was the son of a master mariner and spent much of his childhood afloat, experience which, as we shall see, he reproduced in many of his subsequent compositions. He became a Mus B in 1913 after private study and then went to Exeter College, Oxford. Though medically unfit for military service (his eyesight was always poor) he did work at the Admiralty (1917-18) after which he studied composition and piano at the Royal College of Music. In 1920 he became a Doctor of Music at Oxford and took up the position of Director of Music at Tonbridge School where he composed two songs with a cricketing flavour. Four years later he returned to Exeter College as Lecturer in Music or Precentor but "went freelance" in 1928 devoting himself to writing, occasional examining and composition though his list of compositions never became extensive. He was Chairman of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1947 and Chairman of the Arts Council's Music Panel in 1949 and was a member of the BBC's Music Advisory Committee; he died just short of his 58th birthday in November 1950 at Bures in Essex where he had lived for many years. Further information at:-http://www.musicweb-international.com/garlands/woodT.htm "THOMAS WOOD" by
Neville Hume St. Osyth Eustace Smith married Thomas Wood on 2nd July 1924 at Wormingford. Thomas was born in Chorley, Lancashire in 1892 and was the son of a master mariner. He became a Mus. B in 1913 after private study and then went to Exeter College, Oxford. Though medically unfit for military service (his eyesight was always poor) he did work at the Admiralty (1917-18) after which he studied composition (under Stanford, like his namesake Haydn nearly twenty years before) and piano at the Royal College of Music. In 1920 he became a Doctor of Music at Oxford and took up the position of Director of Music at Tonbridge School where he composed two songs with a cricketing flavour. Four years later he returned to Exeter College as Lecturer in Music or Precentor but "went freelance" in 1928 devoting himself to writing, occasional examining and composition though his list of compositions never became extensive. He was Chairman of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1947 and Chairman of the Arts Council's Music Panel in 1949 and was a member of the BBC's Music Advisory Committee. He died just short of his 58th birthday in November 1950 at Bures in Essex where he had lived for many years. "THOMAS WOOD" - A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS by Jack Edmondson
My wife's mother carried out dressmaking work for Mrs. Wood on occasion and both she and my wife have visited in Parsonage Hall. My wife's diary carries an entry for 19 November 1950: 'Dr. Thomas Wood died suddenly this morning'. Evidently the news spread rapidly through the village in whose life he played a significant role - the highlight being the Christmas carol concert which he conducted each year in the village hall, the proceeds being donated to some charitable or national object. He was the president of the Bures British Legion and a member of the Parish Council for many years, always taking a great interest in the appearance of the village: a generous subscriber to any useful local scheme, he presented a new flag of St. George to the local church. During the war he was instrumental in forming the local Home Guard and was, at first, the leader while he and Mrs.Wood presented the village with an up-to-date fire engine and appliances. Dr Wood and Colonel Probert of Bevills Hall presented the village with a sports ground of about five acres bordering the river Stour. Just before his death he promised a subscription of £100 towards the proposed addition of two bells to complete the octave in the church tower and had undertaken to guarantee the full cost of the work - about £400 - in order that the project might begin immediately as it was hoped to have the eight bells ringing in time for the Festival of Britain celebrations in 1951. As might be expected Thomas Wood's death received a considerable amount of attention in the local Press: in the Essex Magazine R. S. Pickersgill wrote an article entitled 'True Thomas - The associations of Thomas Wood with Essex - The story of the man who arranged "Waltzing Matilda"'. The Essex County Telegraph ran a headline 'HE WROTE AUSSIES 'NATIONAL ANTHEM''. In similar vein the Essex County Standard declared 'DR. T. WOOD DIES SUDDENLY. He popularised "Waltzing Matilda"' - which, I guess, was the more accurate statement of the two even if less emphatically presented - and they followed this up in their 'Colchester & County Notes' with an article headed 'The Festival will miss 'True Thomas'' which went on to say : Indeed the secret of his success lay in the fact that he was a good mixer, not only a good mixer with his fellow men but a good mixer of all sides of life. He was as happy and as much at home with Bures British Legion or Parish Council as he was flying all over the Far East or hobnobbing with Royalty, and he enjoyed equally the exacting labours of creative composition and the social pleasures of musical recognition. As "The Times" puts it in the grandiloquent phrases of the obituary, "He devoted his great gifts of friendship to the service alike of his country and of the art of music". Further acknowledgements are to be found in 'Who Was Who, 1940-1950' and in the 'Dictionary of National Biography 1941-1950' which speaks of his rare talent for understanding the ways of men in countries far from his home, and interpreting them at home' and, referring to the problems with his eyesight: 'Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Wood's achievement was the way in which he overcame a lifelong handicap of eyesight so defective as to be near blindness. To read a music score was at all times a terrible burden, and it was impossible to understand how he could write one. He overcame this disability with courage, energy, and gaiety, and no doubt the discipline was a factor which added distinction to his character.' And, so, he and his wife Osyth sat in the brewhouse and planned - 'a long low room, lined with books, bright with prints, gay with rugs on a polished floor, warm with age and wood fires' - a room where beer was once brewed: honest stuff; and when the Roundhead gunners were tired of lobbing cannon-balls at Colchester they dropped in for a quart'. Or so they fancifully imagined - but, true or not, 'The Brewhouse at Bures' is commemorated in a woodwind quintet which he wrote in 1928 and the book - 'Cobbers' - which resulted from this trip is dedicated 'To Osyth, who waited'. And the 'good simple things' did continue at the time of his return from his travels, but under the increasing shadow of the gathering clouds of war. Still, as he recognised, change is inevitable and now things are not quite what they were - of the eight pubs which existed when he wrote these words, only three remain. The Swan, which was the closest to his home - and the Angel Inn, where he sat down with fifty-four village members of the British Legion to eat good beef and drink good beer and sing good songs, is now a private house; the smithy across the road from the Eight Bells Inn has gone and the mill, though still standing, is now silent though it was still working when I first came to the village in 1954 entirely unknowing of the fact that he had lived here. Thomas Wood was deeply affected by the first World War and by the outbreak of the second. Like many young men of his generation he had hastened to enlist at the declaration of hostilities - despite the foreseeable inevitable rejection which would result from his defective eyesight - and he writes almost with a sense of guilt of his time raising requisitions with the Admiralty in hut A.G.7a which stood on the south side of the Mall in St. James's Park alongside the lake which had been drained to eliminate any possible gleam which could have aided enemy aircraft on moonlight nights. There seems to be little detailed information readily available on his activities during the war years except that he was with the Ministry of Information but there can be no doubt that he was deeply involved in the war effort; perhaps this is an area which might profitably be the subject of further research. Since all good things are supposed to come in threes, one more little mystery. It is reported in 'Wormingford - an English Village' that in 1949 'The village hall was opened by Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Wood. Thomas like his famous namesake was a musician and composer and he was the man who advised the Australians that in Waltzing Matilda they had a jolly tune and lusty song suitable for a young and virile Nation as a National Anthem.' Right on! But who was the famous namesake? My guess is that someone was confusing Thomas with himself! I wish I had known him. I would have liked to have been present at his Christmas carol concerts and to have attended the choral evenings which he held in his garden at Bures but I came too late to this part of the country and so he has had to speak for himself through his writing. I feel that 'A Man for all Seasons' is not an inappropriate description. I hope that you will agree. Jack Edmondson For further information
on Dr Wood try this link to the
Morrison Foundation in the USA Prof Graham Steel
in Perth, Australia is currently researching the life and works of Dr
Wood.
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