Little Jim’s cottage is no longer there (not altogether surprising, when looking at the photo from 1970) but the cottage, and Jim himself, is immortalised in poetry:
The cottage was a thatch’d one,
The outside old and mean,
Yet everything within that cot
Was wondrous neat and clean.
The night was dark and stormy,
The wind was howling wild;
A patient mother knelt beside
The death bed of her child.
You can tell by the verse where this is going. We have poetic staples such as the pathetic fallacy – the weather being dark and stormy going some way to accentuating the misery of Jim’s death. Naturally, the father opens the cottage door a moment too late, and misses his son’s passing.
With hearts bowed down with sadness
They humbly ask of Him,
In heaven, once more to meet again,
Their own poor Little Jim.
Now, modern day poetry might suggest a clash of the rather sprightly, jovial rhyming couplets and the subject matter, but it’s as well to remember that this is folk poetry, made to be remembered and recounted orally – the couplets help with remembering.
Speaking of remembering… does anybody remember Little Jim’s cottage? Can they add anything? Do please comment below.
Comments
One of my uncles and aunties owned this cottage. It was part of the original Polesworth village which was hidden in the woods. It was burnt down in 1971 and there is nothing left there now. My brother was a fireman who attended the burning. There was an article in the Evening Tribune on 10 February 1971.
I remember Cliff Michelmore reporting the fire on BBC television, I moved to the village the same year, after the fire had happened and before the building was demolished.
My Great Grandfather Burley owned the land to which Little Jim Cottage stood, until all the land was sold in 1966. My Mother remembers the fire clearly.
I remember the cottage in 1968/9. There was a car standing in the derelict garage as far as I recall.
I grew up in Dunns Lane, Dordon and the legend of Little Jim’s Cottage and the associated poem has always fascinated me. What is particularly interesting is that as a child in the 60’s I grew up believing that the cottage in question was really a derelict one on St Helena’s Rd between Dordon Hall Lane and Polesworth and not the thatched cottage in Polesworth which I remember quite well. The remains of this cottage (very little remained of the building other than a few bricks in the 60s) stood on what is now a vehicle passing spot on the right hand side of St Helena’s Rd as approached from Dordon Hall Lane. My family had lived in Dordon since 1910 and my friends whose families had lived in Dordon even longer also believed it to be on St Helena’s Rd (which we called Little Jim’s Lane). Therefore, the actual location of the cottage is somewhat disputed.
John Lea Tranter my ancestor lived there in 1937
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