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On the eve of Expectation Sunday, 9 May 1875, the clergyman Francis Kilvert went out to lock a gate at his parsonage at Langley Burrell, near Chippenham.
"The wind had dropped, and all was still, save for the occasional slow dripping of the trees after the last heavy shower. Against the clean bright sky every leaf and twig stood out with marvellous distinctness, and as I approached the gate the moonlight streamed in up the avenue, dark with foliage, from the wide empty open Common, like moonlight streaming into a dark house through an open door.
"The ground was still wet and shining with the rain, and the gigantic shadow of the gate projected by the moonlight was cast far up the avenue in huge bars upon the shining ground," he reports in Kilvert's Diary 1870-79, selected and edited by William Plomer (Jonathan Cape).
Weeks later, he walks across the golden meadows and along the flower-scented hedges and is overwhelmed by a great wave of happiness. "I was in a delirium of joy, it was one of the supreme few moments of existence, a deep delicious draught from the strong sweet cup of life. It came unsought, unbidden, at the meadow stile, it was one of the flowers of happiness scattered for us and found unexpectedly by the wayside of life.
"It came silently, suddenly, and it went as it came, but it left a long lingering glow and glory behind like a gorgeous sunset, and I shall ever remember the place and the time in which such great happiness fell upon me."
