It’s Parliamentary recess and the Easter holidays. Politics has momentarily quietened down. A good moment, then, to take the long view. I had a stimulating meeting in Devizes Town Hall with the Mayor, the Town Clerk, the boss of the Wiltshire museum and two of our county councillors. We sat at little one-man tables spaced around the beautiful assembly room on the first floor, with the Cross of St George snapping briskly in the wind outside the great bay windows, and talked about Devizes past, present and future.
This town was fortunate to lose the contest with Trowbridge to become the county town, the Wiltshire capital, in the mid 19th century. It has escaped the inevitable overzealous redevelopment and disfiguration. It is a gem of mostly Georgian English architecture on a medieval plan, with all the vibrancy of a modern market town - in particular, a spirit of independent enterprise (celebrated and promoted by the brilliant Indie Devizes). It is also something of a backwater, bypassed by the great East-West arteries, the M4 motorway and the GWR line between Reading and Westbury.
That may change with the hoped-for return of the railway to Devizes in the next few years. Either way, there are big changes afoot in the town and I am enormously optimistic about its future. The market place is line for a makeover, while great things are planned for the complex around the old Assize Court (planned as the future home of the Wiltshire Museum), Wadworth’s Brewery and the canal.
We are the natural but not official capital of Wiltshire, or at least the half of it north of Salisbury Plain, and the obvious place for tourists to base their exploration of the oldest monuments in England. And we can and should be home to a new generation of artisan businesses and high-tech firms, of professional home-workers and a revived manufacturing sector creating good jobs for local young people.
I also had a meeting this week with Toby Bartholomew, the boss of Wadworth’s, who echoed my sense that great days for Devizes lie ahead. Wadworth’s, like all hospitality businesses, has had to retrench significantly during the last year, including selling a number of pubs. They’ve also suffered because cask ale doesn’t keep as long as lager and during the lifting of lockdowns last year the pubs, fearful of the future, didn’t lay in stocks as much as usual. But the firm’s fundamentals are sound and - so long as we really do leave lockdown on 21 June and don’t go back in - Toby is feeling confident. He’s particularly pleased with Rishi Sunak’s super-deduction to encourage capital investment. There is, potentially, a great deal of pent-up spending, by both customers and companies, to come this year.
I had another walk up Roundway Down this week, this time with the local Ramblers, to discuss the rural paths network. It was a beautiful morning and heading up from the Leipzig Plantation, around the hill to the steep escarpment where the Royalists chased the Parliamentarians to their deaths in 1643, I was struck once again what a perfect location Devizes is in. Its funny name suggests the division between two manors, and is also where the greensand from northward meets the great chalk seam that runs down to the south coast. In the middle ages it was the gateway to the South West, with the finest castle in Christendom, apparently, till Cromwell wrecked it in revenge for the battle of Roundway. We must preserve its quiet beauty - and its small size - but also recover Devizes’ historic prosperity and its cultural eminence at this natural meeting point for the south of England.
I have my Prince Philip story, too. I met him briefly at a reception years ago. I worked at a think-tank at the time, and he was characteristically dismissive: ‘that’s not a proper job’, or words to that effect. I doubt he’d think what I do now is a proper job, either. But in many ways he was the model public servant, for all he never had to face a voter and was answerable only to his wife. He gave us an ideal of duty, of amused but respectful interest in all aspects of British life, and a fundamental belief that - for all his dignities and honours - he didn’t deserve any fuss. As many have pointed out, he was a rootless, nameless foreigner who ended up the greatest of Englishmen. We have much to thank him for and to emulate.