Historical Blue Plaques

Born into a farming family in 1802 in Kempsford, South Gloucestershire, he emigrated to the New World in his late twenties and took with him a group of local people who sought a refuge from the tough conditions endured in agriculture at that time.

They arrived in Canada and set up farming.  He established a strong community and founded a village, still named Arkell to this day.  However, three years later, John returned for love. His fiancée preferred to live in England so he came home to marry.  In 1843 he bought his farm in Stratton St Margaret, where he grew his malting barley.

In 1861 he built a new brewery on the present brewery site.  John was forced to convert the old Kingsdown Inn into offices and build a new pub across the road. Yet the expansion was still gathering pace and John was to buy up another 20 pubs in the next ten years. Acquisitions reached a peak with the addition of three pubs in one year (1877) and a further seven by 1881.

Sadly, John Arkell died on 21st October 1881, much mourned by a local community who always knew him as ‘Honest John’.

The Swindon Advertiser noted that shops were closed and blinds drawn as the funeral cortege passed to Stratton Church and added: “He was open and above board and Radical in all he said and did. The poor had lost a good friend, a plain and simple friend.”

On Sunday 7th December 1941 at about 10:10, while children were waiting to go into Sunday school, a Canadian spitfire pilot, Sergeant Norman W. Barbeau, R/88806 of Canadian Air Force, aged 20, crashed his Mark 1a Spitfire X4354 in Ermin Street cutting the Lime tree at Church Street junction in half.

Husband of Florence Marguerite Louise Barbeau, of Montreal, Quebec, he was buried at Holy Trinity, Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire.

Barbeau’s plane had struck a petrol tanker on take-off. Then, when in flight, the port wing became detached causing the aircraft to go down.

The plane was seen to break up before it crashed, and one wing landed in a nearby street just missing resident who had been hanging out her washing. The local bobby P.C. Phillamore did his best to keep local children from getting too close, two boys, Reuben Scarrott and his mate saw the crash.

Bill Taylor helped to cover the body with a hessian sack.