Captain Archibald Stocking and the search for 'The North.'

 

Captain Archibald ‘Trig Point’ Stocking was the finest leader of native guides I ever met. His memory of terrain was equal only to his attention to detail in producing cartographic impressions of the same. Stocking had been disappointed in not being appointed to a post at the Ordinance Survey and continued something of an undeclared war against them. It was his dream to catch them out and would, to this end, always carry a collapsible theodolite, quibbling over the placement of a contour line here and a spot height there then entering into detailed and prolonged correspondence over the matter.

 

I remember a particularly extensive exchange over the exact nature of St. Peter and St Paul’s,Ormskirk. The OS had inscribed it as a ‘Church with a Tower’ and he claimed that, as it had both and the steeple was built first, it should gain precedence in its symbolic existence. Might have been the other way round, thing was with St. Ps and the other two churches so blessed with excessive upward structures he tended to switch his line of attack, citing age, height and sometimes even nearness to Canterbury to batter away at the edifice of modern mapping, demanding a whole map series pulped and reprinted.

 

The matter of the Ordinance Survey was, however, but a mere skirmish compared to Stocking’s greatest war on geographical folly. His Damascene moment came when alighting from the Dieppe-Newhaven Ferry. Climbing aboard the omnibus to Guildford he noticed a sign saying ‘The North’. Now, it is certainly true that a majority of men from Sussex hold that Surrey is dangerously northern in climate, fauna and flora but Stocking had taken this as just one of the many curious facts about Brighton folk which were to be put down for being on the foreign side of The Downs. He questioned the men of his regiment on the matter and found a veritable Babel of opinions. Chaps from Chelmsford held France began somewhere near Gravesend; A Geordie sapper maintained Leeds was in the Midlands and one sergeant from Wolverhampton felt Nottingham was clearly in the North – as it took a long time to get there. The horror expressed by one Subaltern from Islington at having to travel anywhere in South London, even on municipally provided transport, convinced him once and for all that this slap-dash uncertainty would not do. Rejecting the compass ‘Cardinal Points’ as smacking far too much of Popery he set upon his self-appointed quest – to define ‘The North.’

 

Syocking had considered the matter as being one in which, with the proper application of rulers and the such, would be cleared up in an afternoon, probably with a decent break for tea and a range of breaded products. He retired to his study and set about unrolling a large map of England, which was where the problem lay. Scotland had divided itself up neatly with Lowlands and Highlands and the Welsh had never been happier than when tearing themselves asunder; north and south – a fact which can be testified to this day by the fact that all decently efficient transport routes do not pass directly from one to the other but go via England. But what of England?

 

A task foreseen as being ‘of a few hours’ soon stretched into the evening. Supper was sent for. A second supper, midnight feast and early morning coffee arrived in turn but England would not yield to the yardstick. The problem started with The Lizard Point – as it usually did. Stocking was of the opinion that the fact Land’s End was not also the most southerly point as well as the most western a sign that Geography couldn’t be trusted to fend for itself and needed taking in hand but that was for a future date. A line was run due north until it was equal to Berwick. Dividing the country into thirds, this placed Oxford in the South and Newcastle in the North. It did, however, make Bradford, Harrogate and Hull part of the Midlands – and a certain amount of opposition was expected from the usual quarters. It also ignored the fact of Cornwall, which is a place many maintained an unshakable belief was ‘just beyond Bristol’ contained a large amount of land which was to part of ‘The South’ in just the same way that Suffolk was held to be. It would not do.

 

After a good lunch and a nap Stocking looked at his calculations again. Finding Middle England was more than defining a point on a line – it was a matter of gravity. What was needed was to find the balance point – this would mean all geographical expressions of Englishness would be accounted for. He hired the local Territorials’ Drill Hall and began to construct a model, which he could balance on a point. Once again further considerations delayed the matter. Rejecting the option of two dimensions as lacking depth he would construct a relief map. After a night of anguished soul searching he decided that papier-mâché should be employed to create the magnificence of the Pennines, although he still had qualms over disadvantaging Southern Lincolnshire and similar lowly regions. The problems of off-shore bodies was dealt with by first declaring Canvey Island an overseas dependency and when that couldn’t be squared, scaled his map to include the earth down to a depth of 2000 yards – partly to account for mineral rights as per The 1925 Law of Property Act regarding coal but mostly to allow the inclusion of a certain amount of seabed connecting Brownsea Island and avoiding holes in and around The Fens.

 

After a week or so the great Model England was balanced and Middle England was declared to be somewhere near High Offley. While this had a certain aesthetic beauty it did not move the fundamental objection of putting Doncaster in the Middle counties – something both parties were vehemently against.

In despair Stocking fell back to what anyone would do at that moment, distracting himself by reorganising his gramophone collection using a new categorical method devised by himself. He had idly speculated once of the value of using Dewey decimal notation to place the recordings by title, Night on a Bare Mountain [Geography of and travel in Europe – probably - 914] coming after the 1812 Overture [World History 909]. This did the trick because half way through the process it came to him. The problem was one of definition. North and South would not do because it did not account for Cornwall. Was not Penzance as far from London as Newcastle-upon-Tyne? The answer was to change direction!

 

Back in his study Stocking unrolled his map again. Defining Dover, not unreasonably, as ‘the gateway of England’ he set it to be, by definition as ‘The South’. He then rotated the map around 43 degrees on its axis. This was the solution. The North could now be defined as an area beyond a line running roughly from Hull to Bristol. Sheffield was saved! The good people of Chester would no longer have to put up with being told they were in the North Midlands and Truro was finally recognised as being ‘a long way a way.’ An added bonus was that Frinton found itself redefined as being ‘a south coast watering hole’ and could finally descend into the Sodom and Gomorrah it had always secretly craved to be, the haunt of lovers of musical theatre and organic knitwear. As of yet this radical plan has not won influential backers despite a tireless campaign of lobbying ministers; picketing the International Cartographic Association and even having the occasional letter in the Radio Times. His friends await developments