The Tyndale Memorial Trust

David Green

On Saturday 29 June the chairman and secretary of the trust, Mr. Peter Gadsden and Mrs Liz Hicks, invited some sixty friends and neighbours to a wine and cheese evening at Nibley House to celebrate the achievement of the appeal fund target of £60,000 for the Tyndale Tower restoration. It was a fine, calm midsummer evening and the memorial shone from the hill above the village.

Peter Gadsden welcomed us all and told how the total had been raised relatively quickly, partly over a sad period of time which had also seen the virtual closure of the surrounding countryside of Berkeley Vale and the tragic funeral pyres of local herds of cattle and sheep.

The plague season mercifully had passed, and the money was there, at least for the monument, the funds having been recently boosted by a generous, anonymous donation to ensure that a substantial part of the new capital could be devoted to future maintenance costs. The tower, with its cleaned and re-pointed masonry, had been fitted with a power line to supply internal lighting and floodlighting. The railings around the base were now being attended to and the pinnacle cross had not only been repaired and re-gilded by local craftsmen, but was also now firmly seated upon a new gablet stone, with the time-capsule replaced in its shaft and sealed until it might be found by future restorers,

As the sole representative of the Tyndale Society, I delivered our greetings and congratulations to the gathering which included the mayor of nearby Wotton-under-Edge, Mrs June Cordwell and her husband, Councillor John Cordwell of the Gloucestershire County Council. Mr Chris Galbraith, the deputy mayor, and Mr Michael Smith of the Bristol Bible College, were also present, as were many others with a keen interest in the success of the restoration fund. I was also able to give a brief description of the work of the Society and its Ploughboy group, and to repeat Professor Daniell’s offer to advise with the wording of the proposed information boards.

The monument is open to the public daily on payment of a £2 deposit for the key from the village shop or congregational chapel. We do urge everyone who may be travelling between Bristol and Gloucester, or walking the Cotswold Way, to make the detour to North Nibley, to climb both the hill and the steps to enjoy the view over the Severn Vale, the land of William Tyndale’s birth.