There is no obvious connection between John Freeman, the poet, and Thursley, but he is buried in our churchyard. He must have visited the village, liked it and somehow obtained permission to be buried here. His friends, probably the circle of Georgian poets, including Walter de la Mare and Alice Meynell, bought the field next to the churchyard and gave it to the National Trust in his memory.
From Allpoetry.com:
John Freeman was a poet whose work reflects the asethetic principles of the Georgian era in British literature. This period, which roughly spanned the first two decades of the 20th century, was marked by a renewed interest in traditional forms and a focus on rural life and themes of nature.
From A Dictionary of Methodism:
Poet and critic, born into a WM family at Dalston, Middx on 29 January 1880. His health was permanently impaired by scarlet fever in early childhood. At 13 he joined the Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society as a junior clerk and spent the rest of his life in its employ, rising to become Secretary and Director in 1927 and a leading figure in the insurance world. He was a local preacher. But he was more widely known in the literary world, where he contributed to Edward Marsh's Georgian Poets anthologies and enjoyed the friendship of such figures as Alice Meynell, Walter de la Mare and J.C. Squire. His friend Edward Thomas called him 'a sort of angel' and Eleanor Farjeon described him as a 'quiet poet ... gentle, with a fine sensitive mind, and qualities which made his plain features lovable.' After Thomas's death, she collaborated with Freeman in seeing Thomas's first volume of poems through the press.
His own first book of poems, published in 1909, was followed by several others, marked by his 'grave and quiet rhythms' and including Stone Trees (1916) which gained him recognition. Poems New and Old (1920) won him the Hawthornden Prize for imaginative literature. His Collected Poems appeared in 1928. He wrote on literary matters for the New Statesman, The Bookman, the Quarterly Review,and the London Mercury and his prose works included a Portrait of George Moore (1922), English Portraits (1924), Herman Melville (1926) and a play Prince Absalom (1925). He died on 23 Sept. 1929 and his funeral service at Anerley WM Church was conducted by his fellow poet, Andrew Young, then a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He was interred at Thursley, Surrey, where a field adjoining the churchyard was given to the National Trust in his memory.
'Meanwhile de la Mare came to know a poet friend of Roger Ingpen's … John Freeman, who like himself was in business - a great deal more successfully than de la Mare. He had begun life as an office boy at thirteen, and became in time the Secretary of his insurance company, the Liverpool Victoria. Like de la Mare, he would come home at the end of an eight- or nine-hour working day in the City, to write verses late into the night. He was also a copious correspondent and very well read. Tall, gangling, ugly, solemn, punctilious, there was in him an endearing quality about these very attributes; Edward Thomas referred to him as "a kind of Angel", and de la Mare, after his death, described even his physical appearance in phrases that suggest beauty - "beautiful brows", and ruminative eyes "of a peculiarly ardent blue".'
Theresa Whistler, Imagination of the Heart: the life of Walter de la Mare (1993), pp.127-8
From Wikipedia:
John Frederick Freeman (29 January 1880 – 23 September 1929) was an English poet and essayist, who gave up a successful career in insurance to write full-time.
He was born in London, and started as an office boy aged 13. He was a close friend of Walter de la Mare from 1907, who lobbied hard with Edward Marsh to get Freeman into the Georgian Poetry series; with eventual success. De la Mare's biographer Theresa Whistler describes him as "tall, gangling, ugly, solemn, punctilious".
He won the Hawthornden Prize in 1920 with Poems 1909-1920. His Last Hours was set to music by Ivor Gurney.
John Freeman's headstone in Thursley Churchyard:
This stone, set into the wall of the churchyard and juxtaposed to Hohn Freeman's headstone, has this inscription:
THE ADJOINING FIELD WAS PRESENTED TO
THE NATIONAL TRUST IN 1931 FOR PRESERVATION
AS A MEMORIAL TO JOHN FREEMAN
BORN 29 JAN 1880 DIED 23 SEPT 1929
The view across the National Trust field with John Freeman's grave,
and the inscribed stone in the wall, in the foreground
John Freeman's poetry:
Here are two examples of his verse: from MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD AND OTHER POEMS; published 1919 by Selwyn and Blount of London.
Snows
Now the long-bearded chilly-fingered winter
Over the green fields sweeps his cloak and leaves
Its whiteness there. It caught on the wild trees,
Shook whiteness on the hedges and left bare
South-sloping corners and south-fronting smooth
Barks of tall beeches swaying 'neath their whiteness
So gently that the whiteness does not fall.
The ash copse shows all white between gray poles,
The oaks spread arms to catch the wandering snow.
But the yews--I wondered to see their dark all white,
To see the soft flakes fallen on those grave deeps,
Lying there, not burnt up by the yews' slow fire.
Could Time so whiten all the trembling senses,
The youth, the fairness, the all-challenging strength,
And load even Love's grave deeps with his barren snows?
Even so. And what remains?
The hills of thought
That shape Time's snows and melt them and lift up
Green and unchanging to the wandering stars.
The Wren
Within the greenhouse dim and damp
The heat floats like a cloud.
Pale rose-leaves droop from the rust roof
With rust-edged roses bowed.
As I go in
Out flies the startled wren.
By the tall dark fir tree he sings
Morn after morn still,
Shy and bold he flits and sings
Tinily sweet and shrill.
As I go out
His song follows me about ...
About the orchard under trees
Beaded with cherries bright,
Past the rat-haunted Honeybourne
And up those hills of light:
As up I go
His notes more sweetly flow.
Or down those dark hills when night's there
Full of dark thoughts and deep,
A thin clear soundless music comes
Like stars in broken sleep.
When I come down
All those dark thoughts are flown.
And now that sweetness is more sweet,
Here where the aeroplanes
Labouring and groaning in the height
Lift their lifeless vans:--
Sweet, sweet to hear
The far off wren singing clear.