29th November 1941

Got up at 7 this morning to let Joanna Round into the office so that she could do three hours work before going hunting. Warm, but pitch dark. I could hear the footsteps of people going to work, and see a few cycle lamps coming up High St. An early bus came round from the garage in Queen Street, full of workmen.

28th November 1941

Had a most unpleasant dream about quarter to 6 this morning. I was with Hervey Benham and Maura, apparently in a field, and we were sitting on the grass, looking at pictures in a book. One showed a Thames barge fast on some rocks, a boat hanging from its davits on the starboard side, and the great red sail flapping. It was entitled “The Death”. The pictures were endowed with motion, like a film, and I could see the waves moving and the sail flapping. I had just drawn Benham’s attention to this fact, when a mighty bomb exploded nearby, with a blinding, yellow light and shattering roar. I crouched on the ground, my hands over my ears, and woke up in that position, sweat running off me and my heart pounding madly.

Wild stories in the papers today about “conscription for all”. Tonight heard one of the “Colonel Britton” broadcasts on the radio, the most puerile drivel I ever heard.

25th November 1941

Warmer, dull morning, and became so dark that by 10 o’clock we had to have lights on. Rain began, and the scene from the office window was one of grey winter twilight, steely rods of rain beating down, a low grey sky, the tree boles on the Castle Ramparts showing black against it. A woman with a shopping basket hurried across the lawn, her head well down into her umbrella, her light coloured mackintosh gleaming against the asphalt path. It is strange that here, in the very heart of Colchester, I can see green fields and woods right up to the distant horizon. What a tragic mistake that the By Pass road was ever put along the bottom of the valley.

This is the view that Eric Rudsdale could see from the windows
of Hollytrees Museum in Colchester Castle Park.
Part of Hollytrees Museum had been taken over by the Essex War Agricultural Committee as office accommodation during the war and this was
where Eric worked from 1941.

24th November 1941

Fine day. Warm. Did not feel well, with stomach pains on and off all day and a high temperature. Capt. Round came in today about the proposed aerodrome at Birch, which he is determined to oppose. He suggests Tiptree Heath as an alternative. How human these people really are. Of course, England must have hundreds of aerodromes, it’s essential, but by Gad, not at Birch! The amenities will be destroyed – the shooting will be interfered with – and, worst of all, Norfolk’s Grove, the best covert for miles, will be uprooted! To say nothing of ruining at least 500 acres of good farm land. Therefore, extinguish the common rights on Tiptree Heath, and bully the Air Ministry to establish a large aerodrome on the edge of a populous village. It is somehow curiously reassuring to find that our elders and betters are so like us.

E J Rudsdale Talk to the Dedham Vale Society 28 November 2011

Readers may be interested to know that I will be giving a talk on 'E.J. Rudsdale and his Journals from 1920-1951' to the Dedham Vale Society on Monday 28th November 2011 at the Assembly Rooms, Dedham, Essex at 8pm.

Rudsdale regularly visited Dedham and supported the campaign to preserve Dedham and the Dedham Vale in the 1930s, so this it will be a very fitting location to talk about his life and work.

Members of the public are welcome to attend. Please contact the Dedham Vale Society for further details. Many thanks, Catherine Pearson

21st November 1941

Warmer today, a cloudy autumn morning, the sun shining through grey and purple clouds. Everything very damp in the Castle, the walls sweating in rivulets. Had a bad night, high temperature and a sore throat. During the morning, Mrs. Blake, on the floor above, hurled a shower of bread crusts out of the top window onto the lawn beneath. Instantly a great flock of gulls, blackbirds, jackdaws, thrushes and sparrows, appeared from nowhere, and came wheeling and swooping in the most amazing evolutions, the jackdaws and sparrows dodging among the bigger birds. It is a strange thing that the Castle pigeons never seem to join in these daily feasts, nor do they ever come down to feed with sparrows. For years I have tried to tempt them with corn, so that they would come sailing down in great squadrons, like the London pigeons, but I have never succeeded.

17th November 1941

A little better than yesterday, but blustery, grey and purple clouds coming and going across the sky. Almost all the leaves are down now, and from my window at Holly Trees the great beech by the Castle Ditch shows only a few rustling russet leaves on the ends of his fingers. The little flowering cherry on the law below me has a few leaves still left, and a wide circle of brown and yellow all round him, like feathers, reminding me of a partly plucked chicken. “Old Bob”, who used to run with the Harriers, crosses the Park leaning on his stick, bent up with rheumatism. A plane flies slowly across the sky, towards the east.

It is just a year since the great air-raid on Coventry, when the centre of the city was destroyed and 300 people killed. I well remember it, for hundreds of German bombers flew over Colchester all night long, coming and going, sailing unhindered beneath the stars, as there was no opposition at all.