Three of us set out across the fields in cool weather and with the nettles and cow parsley at waist height. I had covered up well and put on the crochet jumper and cowl that I made recently. It’s not the most glamorous creation but it’s all my own work!

As we walked we discussed the Lady Katharine Dyer monument inside St Denys Church, Colmworth. On the Sir William Dyer’s tomb is inscribed the epitaph to her husband that the young widow wrote in 1641. It is the first documented poem by and English woman. This is a typed version below.

Also on the monument there are reliefs of seven of the Dyer children, four grown up sons and three grown up daughters. Lady Dyer is shown holding her two babes in arms. The three girls are crying.

They are crying because the four brothers took opposing sides in the English civil war (as can be seen by their costumes).

The family were royalists but two of the brothers followed Cromwell who overthrew the monarchy. Oliver Cromwell as born a score of miles from Colmworth in Huntingdon in 1599. How terrible for mother and sisters to have boys on opposite sides of a civil war.