Frank Musgrove, who was professor of sociology at the University of Manchester when I was there as a postgraduate student in 1976-77, had a memorable line that has resonated with me from that time to this. ‘The health of a society’, he said, ‘lies at its margins’.
Becoming and being a Quaker identifies the person
who has taken that path as being different from the mainstream. Quakers live at
the margins of society, seeking to change themselves and the world for the
better. That’s why we can be a force for good. At our best, we are the health
of a society.
All of which brings us to Alan Newton, clerk at the Marazion
Meeting House, who has recently accepted clerking duties within Cornwall Area
Meeting. When I first met Alan my judgement was that he was a good, kind man
with a quick wit and accomplished in his role as a clerk. He seemed a modest
man, confident in some ways but self-effacing. Now I know his story I can
appreciate his character more deeply. Alan has lived a life at the margins in a
fashion which I find inspirational. More people should know about his
alternative take on how to live well, how to live the good life.
Living the good life in the home that Alan built - June 2024 - Alan Newton and Beryl Brookman, with a Friend, Louise Donovan, in silhouette between them, sharing a simple lunch |
Alan was born in 1958 in Hornsey in north London before it became gentrified and posh. When he was five years old, the family moved to Wimbledon into a house that had been inherited from an aunt. Their new home was in a middle-class street with bankers and city commuters as neighbours. Alan’s dad was
an auto-electrician, a car repairer. Alan was the youngest child with two siblings, a brother who was eleven years older (and the ‘success’ of the family, following a career in computer technology) and a sister who was seven years his senior. Alan was an only child, in effect. Even aged five, the stage was being set for a life at the margins.From early childhood, he felt protective towards animals. Bubble
and squeak – you may be too young to remember this post-war staple – was
shunned because the squeak suggested animal suffering. Beetroot was avoided
because it spoke of blood. The giant in Jack and the Beanstalk was terrifying
in his desire to eat you up. Alan grew with the sensitivity and imagination of
a lonely child who required the security of a home but realised he needed
something other than the routine and order that sustained his parents.
Life was all the more complicated because mum was disabled
and Alan became more and more her carer as her condition worsened. Aged 12, he
was pushing his mum to the shops in her wheelchair. At school he was quite
isolated, saved from too much bullying by the support of his teachers who liked
this hard-working boy. His dad did not want him to bring other boys home. The
home was the family castle and the drawbridge was kept firmly raised. My image,
not Alan’s, but Alan’s world was so similar to mine in childhood.
Alan’s concern to explore the big questions in life was
nurtured on the all-important paper-rounds he undertook before school. By the
age of 12, he had a firm vision of himself as the owner of a bit of land and
growing trees. His parents supported a version of the dream, paying the rent on
his first allotment. There can’t be too many who enter that fruit and vegetable
world so young.
A glimpse into the future - the doorway into the house that Alan built which became the home Alan and Beryl have made together - June 2024 |
Life at home was lived in an emotional vacuum. Alan’s dad had
a measure of what we now call autism. It was taboo to show emotion within the
domestic castle. Alan turned to children’s TV programmes such as the House
on the Prairie and the Waltons for vicarious fun and joy and as a means of
understanding emotions. As he approached the age of sixteen, he resolved to
give up his childish ideas of self-sufficiency. He was in the top class at his
Wimbledon single-sex, comprehensive school yet his mum and dad told him he was
not clever. By now his much older brother was enjoying success in the world of
computers. What was he to do? His mum insisted he didn’t need to learn to cook.
His dad, who had left school at 14, would not teach him practical Do It
Yourself skills. Alan was painfully aware that his contemporaries at school
where he had no real friends were more informed emotionally than he was. The
world was proving difficult to shape.
Then came something of a breakthrough. Alan still hankered
after finding out more about foods and cooking. His journeys to the public
library on one occasion unearthed a book called ‘Wild Harvest’. That name
appealed. ‘Wild’ suggested that the ingredients would be cost-free. If that
were so, he would not be offending his mum by bringing them into the tightly
controlled kitchen at home. But Alan had utterly misidentified the book. It was
not a collection of recipes. It was the autobiographical story of Hope Bourne who
lived a life of self-sufficiency in a caravan on Exmoor. The Light had appeared
and illuminated a way forward. This was exactly what he wanted to do. Wow! – it
was possible after all.
Hope Bourne's advocacy for self-sufficiency, first published in 1978 |
Yet the nagging doubts surfaced. Alan saw the other path
only too clearly. I have got to be sensible’, he thought, ‘and get a good job’.
Being a young man with a moral compass, he added the rider: ‘…so I can do
good in the world’. Aged 19, with a couple of A-levels behind him, he joined
the Metropolitan Police and was posted to the station at Wandsworth. That did
not go well. In part, it was down to Alan’s lack of life experience but more
importantly he refused to accept the institutional racism that the Macpherson Report
finally and officially identified in 1999 a couple of decades later. When he first
started he was given his 3-a-day quota – stop and question at least three
people every day. If they are mostly black people that’s fine. They are the
ones committing the crimes anyway.
Alan was aware of the institutional corruption too. At one
point on the beat at night, he stopped outside a travel agent in the High Street
with a hunch something was wrong. He checked, unaware that he was being
observed by an undercover unit within the Met who suspected he was part of a
corrupt group of officers who were running some kind of protection racket that
had targeted a number of places including this travel agency. He was later
called in for questioning – and found innocent. Within the year, Alan and the
Met parted company.
By now, Alan was desperate to get out of London. He resolved
to learn the skills of the retail trade. He would run a shop in the
countryside. The first step was employment with the WHSmith chain of newsagents
in Wimbledon. That led to a friendship and love with a woman who was already
married so that relationship was doomed. Then came the election of Margaret
Thatcher in 1979 and the world began to change. Alan feared he would be stuck
indefinitely where he was and resisted. He gained fresh employment with John
Menzies in central London, commuting on his motorbike. Menzies doubled his pay
– but they also doubled his working hours. He was getting up at 3.30 in the
morning to ride into work for a very early start and clocking off at 6pm in the
early evening. By now, his dad had retired. One evening Alan asked his parents what
seemed to him now the obvious: ‘Why don’t we leave London and buy the place in
the country you have always wanted?’.
Wonderfully, they agreed. His mum wanted to move to the New
Forest to be still near London – but the estate agents laughed when they
explained how much they would have as capital after selling their Wimbledon
house. His dad fancied Devon and Alan did a reconnoitre of possible houses, staying
in the Exeter youth hostel. Alan’s own preference was for Cornwall and the Light
shone and within the year the family were living in a bungalow near Port Isaac,
not far off the beaten track where Alan could grow and sell his foods. He and
his parents would be self-sufficient and anything extra would be sold to
provide additional income. Meanwhile, Felicity Kendall and Richard Briers were
living their inspirational Good Life of self-sufficiency weekly on the TV.
Alan Newton with one of the horses and his dog - at Tregole, near Port Isaac - 1985 |
Unfortunately, Alan had not taken into account the horrendous winds that blew from the sea one mile away and shaved the branches of the trees into a permanent sloping angle. Life was tough. Between 1981 and 1990, Alan and his parents just about coped. Alan would earn money leading pony treks in the summer for a local stable but it was mum and dad’s pensions that were keeping the wolf from the door. Local farmers ridiculed Alan’s ideas about organic production of foods without the use of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, or other artificial chemicals. As the last decade of the century approached, Alan was becoming aware that his lack of social contact had led him to become almost a hermit. Self-sufficiency was perhaps not as fulfilling as he had imagined. Maybe self-reliance within a circle of friends was the better path to follow.
The stage was set for the next phase in the odyssey. By 1990, Alan’s dad was in his late 70s and mum needed access to a town. The family agreed they needed to start looking for somewhere else to live. A home in Gulval was found but late into the purchase the deal fell through. A family suicide on the seller’s side had intervened. By such twists are our lives shaped. The family that had been selling were sympathetic and offered a cottage on their land where the Newton family could stay until they had found another property. Meanwhile a Green Centre was opening nearby for the Penzance region and Alan arrived on the first day and put a notice on the board saying that he wanted a piece of land. Serendipity appeared again, wearing the finest green clothing ever. The local chair of Friends of the Earth knew a landowner who wanted to sell his 13 acre site in what became Gonew Woods – and the rest is Alan Newton’s history for the next three decades. His mum and dad bought a bungalow in St Erth and lived there in contented retirement, mum passing in 1995 and dad in 2006. Alan had £2,000 capital left over and bought a very cheap caravan where he lived in constant fear of the men from the council arriving to say this is not legal. The green life had started. He let part of the land as grazing for horses from nearby stables and started planting the trees that have become the woodland of today.
The Gonew Woods sign fixed to the gate that led into the field planted with saplings - circa 1996 - nearly thirty years later the view is now woodland |
He had some initial help in the tree planting and the emphasis was on fruit trees. Alan disliked machines and what they represented so he avoided projects that involved too much heavy digging to prepare the soil for crops. Instead, he concentrated on the fruit that the trees yielded which he could sell at a number of markets, including the weekly market at St John’s Hall in Penzance.
Alan Newton in the east end of a fruit field - 1997 |
The house that Alan has built began to take shape. What an achievement! Let the images tell their own story. Over thirty years, there have been extensions and alterations but all the work is Alan’s. The edifice, with its surrounds, that had been part of the vision of Alan aged 12 has become a reality.
Another view of Alan and Beryl's front door, showing on the right some of the extensions to the house that have been shaped over these last thirty years. |
Yet, one important dimension was still missing. Alan sensed that his spiritual journey was incomplete. He knew that his explorations of different faiths had left him unsatisfied. There was so much binary division. We are right. We have the truth. You are living wrong. Join us and all will be well. By 1999, Alan had begun attending at the Marazion Quaker Meeting House. The Quaker belief that everyone was equal and all spiritual beliefs are valid spoke the essential truth. In 2007, he and Beryl Brookman, also a Quaker at Marazion, made their commitment to each other.
The Marazion Quaker Meeting House - 2022 |
As well as offering a spiritual path, the Quakers also provided the practical support and social acceptance and friendship that Alan has always craved. Meanwhile, Beryl who had followed a very different life journey to arrive at the same point made the house that he had built a home, full of her love and the joy of a loving and supportive family.
Beryl and Alan - June 2024 - at home |
The health of a society lies at its margins – just ask Alan
and Beryl.
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