If a tree falls with no ears to hear, does it make a sound?

It’s a hypothetical question many of us have heard before in our life but are often stumped by the answer. Routes of thought are often superficial questions around sound and how the tree falls, but I’d like to help you understand my perception of the question, through history.

History is a topic almost all of us will have studied during time at school, even from a young age. I remember learning about the Egyptians, the Vikings and the Romans, the Byzantine Empire, medicine through time, and even wars that have changed the courses of history.

All of these are topics that help us better understand the world around us, but rarely are they close to home. I would have been able to confidently tell you about the Battle of Hastings, but if you’d have asked me about my local history, 160 miles closer to home, I wouldn’t have been able to give you an answer.

World history helps us better understand the societies and cultures around us, which is invaluable to being better people, more in tune with the rest of the world, but local history does the same.

Local history relates us with the people who live closest to us, through connections past and present. It shows us the people who came before us, the change makers, the people who made the places we cherish what we know them to be today.

For me, what first pushed me to learn more about the place I’ve grown up in, was the people that I’ve grown up around.

I remember being in the car park of McDonald's with my dad when he looked across the car next to us and saw somebody who he used to compete with almost 15 years ago. I sat in the passenger seat as I listened to them converse and reminisce about how their lives had changed, and their families had grown since, yet both still lived in the same town.

As trivial as it was, it was more than insightful for me. It sparked a thought in me. How many monuments, buildings, places, and people have been permanent fixtures around me for decades, paramount to changing history in a way that directly affected me, and I had been none the wiser?

During my research, I found out so much about my local history, so many stories, people, and places even that The Old Reindeer Inn, a local pub is speculated to have been where Oliver Cromwell frequented and used as a courtroom during the trials of several Royalists during the Civil War. However, what stuck out to me the most, was a topic much closer to home, both literally and figuratively. The story of Herbert Payne.

Herbet Payne was a local councillor who advocated for social reform in Banbury during the early 20th century. Locally, Herbet was known as the "Cow Fair Roarer '' originating from the Cow Fair where Banbury Town Hall stands, a title he earned for his willingness to represent the working-class society. To the people, Payne was their hero, he was a changemaker, ready to push against the majority, he was a voice for those who weren't heard. An agenda he consistently pushed was the need to improve and increase the supply of housing from the resources of the council.

 It shocked me to know that through all the history I'd been taught, growing up in the same area for 14 years, the local history that made a direct impact on my life and the lives around me, was completely foreign to me.

I was even more shocked when I found out about an old local postcard selling on eBay. It had a poem, titled One Cross, One Crown.

 

Part of it reads “We believe he fights for us and fights his battles fair” and the poem ends “We’ll trust him in his judgement still, and may he never fall.”

These writings show not the physical aftermath of Payne’s advocacy for reform, but instead the more personal effects on Banbury’s people. To them, he was a hero, a fighter, and namely in the poem “A Champion of All”.

Payne's work and commitment to ensuring the working class were adequately cared for in housing largely led to the building of 40 houses on King's Road in 1913, a road that still stands today. Overtime, these houses underwent changes, and more houses were erected and sold at affordable prices. As well as King's Road, 770 council houses were built following Payne's work.

Today King's Road still stands, not necessarily in glory, but in pride. Proud of its rich history, of Herbert Payne who in many ways was a key founder of their existence. King's Road stands today as a microcosm for the reformed history of Banbury that Herbert Payne fought passionately for.

I’d like you all to think back to our hypothetical tree question, but instead with Herbert Payne in mind?  If you didn't hear Herbet Payne, the Cow Fair Roarer, did he make a sound? Maybe you weren’t there to experience the hubbub of the town centre or council meetings where he advocated for change, but can you appreciate how he influenced and will continue to influence society for the better? If so, then you can understand that Herbet Payne did make a sound, one that rings in the ears of us today. I implore you to join me in understanding and acknowledging the impact he has had. The future Payne strived for, is the present we are working closer and closer towards today, and I hope you'll agree that his story should inspire us as people to continue advocating for ourselves, and for the people who can't, just like he did.