Don Chapman was a prolific journalist at the Oxford Times under the pen-name Anthony Wood. Sue Chapman (formerly Susan MacFarlane) kindly shared this story.
IF EVER by some lucky chance The Ballad of Swinford Bridge reaches the top of the Hit Parade Mervyn Butler won’t be the only one who’ll make a packet. “So many people will flock to Eynsham,” he says with a wicked grin, “just for the privilege of saying they’ve passed through the famous toll bridge that the attendants won’t be able to issue the tickets fast enough.”
And that’s just as well because, as he admits himself, the present owners are likely to cough a bit over their whisky when they hear the last verse of his latest epic which had its first airing at the recent Eynsham Festival.
So what will become of the toll bridge?
One thing in my mind is clear
That the town-coated man at the barrier
Will be with us for many more years.
We’ll continue to be honest payers.
We’ll stop when he raises his hand
So descendants of gracious Lord Abingdon
Can live off the fat of the land.
New pastime
Song writing is a comparatively new pastime for Mervyn. But like many a young lad who grew up in the Fifties he's served a solid apprenticeship to pop music.
When he came out of the Army in 1959 he joined a popular Oxford group called The Electrons as their bass guitarist, from them flitted from group to group for a while, had a spell with Paul Cooling, the young man from Wolvercote destined to make his name in Italy as Mal Ryder, and The Spirits, and finally wound up with another popular group called Frog E. Moore’s Cuckaburra Jazz Band.
Then in 1962, he got married, a year later moved from Botley to Eynsham and gave up pop music for more peaceful pursuits like winemaking and photography. Oddly enough, that’s really how involved in the pop scene again.
A few months ago Blake Pullen, who runs Eynsham’s do-it-yourself shop and is a keen amateur cine fan suggested they might make a film together about the toll bridge. “I'd never done anything like that before,” Mervyn says, “but I thought it would be fun and I suppose you could say more or less ended up directing it.
“Anyway, we thought we ought to have a commentary and I said I would write the script for it. But it wouldn't seem to work out the way I wanted it to. So Blake said why not write a song instead. And that's what I did.”
Rush job
Mervyn, who composed the tune in his head as he went along, dug out a mate of his from the old days called Gerry Denton to knock it into musical shape and provide the guitar accompaniment to his singing, and together they recorded it on Blake’s equipment in Blake’s kitchen.
He says: “It was a bit of a rush job because we wanted to get the film finished in time for the Eynsham Festival. But everybody was very impressed and we were encouraged by our success to enter the tape in the Radio Oxford tape-recording competition, where it took fourth place and will now go forward to the national competition.
IN fact,
“In fact, as a result I might come out of retirement. I've always been very fond of country music, songs that tell a story and artists like Woody Guthrie and Lonnie Donegan, and when I've written one of two more folk sings in that style I might try my luck as a singer.
“I’ve got a few already. There's one about a factory. I work at Morris Radiators. Another about a poor lass with two humps who lives in the Cotswolds called Kitty’s Calypso. And another one about a chap's pair of false teeth.
Few words
“I only need a few words to set me going. This chap came into the washroom at work, took out his false teeth to clean them and proudly, brandishing them at me: ‘They’re sharper than a knife, my lad.’ That set me off.”
They’re not songs with a message, just to make you smile which he sings with a pleasant country burr in an engaging offhand manner reminiscent of Allan Smethurst, the singing postman, who is another of his idols.
I can’t quote all of The Ballad of Swinford Bridge (which incidentally is my title — “I was going to call it Highway Robbery,” he jokes) but I’ll give you the opening verse just so you can catch the style and flavour:
On the road from Oxford to Witney,
Driving along in me car
At a bridge near the village of Eynsham
I noticed my journey was barred.
Then up came a man in a brown coat,
Said: “Two new pence you'll have to pay,
Then I’ll open the gate for you, mister,
So you can be off on your way.”
“Don't get me wrong,” Mervyn says, “I wouldn't like to see the toll bridge go. It’s such a beautiful old bridge. But,” he adds with a cheeky smile, “I do think the people of Eynsham should be exempt.”