A lone tree falls

A lone tree falls

Chapter One

Marsh Avenue, Marsden

This is the last garden in Marsh Avenue with a privet hedge, the last with a piece of lawn at the front, and flowering borders. It used to be like that from top to bottom. You could see the seasons change through the cherries in early spring, the laburnums in late May, and the deep greens of high summer. Now it’s all concrete, cracked pavers and white vans.

There were neighbours, too: Mr Williams, next door, a retired gentleman who, in my memory at least, always wore a white jacket and a bow tie. Sometimes he’d have dungarees underneath the jacket, if he was repairing bicycles. He liked old maps and cameras. Weekends would see him in a trilby hat, a second-hand Voightlander over his shoulder, setting through Durleston Wood. He smelled of pipe tobacco, and mushrooms.

His wife, a portly dame of indeterminate shape would arrive unannounced to camp my mother, and help out with the housework. Nowadays, this would be seen as an unspeakable intrusion. Back then it was more a kind of solidarity.

Then there was Mr Simpson, on the other side. His back garden was a wild profusion of blackberries and rhubarb, but he kept his front manicured. He had three mature cherry trees to mark the apexes of a triangle of lawn. When they blossomed, they were the pride and the envy of the neighbourhood. The lawn has gone now, and the trees were felled to make way for a pick-up truck. Loud music thumps out from the house all day, and late into the night.

The occupant is now a scar-faced man, who wears camo. He keeps a pair of barking bull-lurchers which, the story goes, he trains to kill badgers, and foxes. I don’t know if this is true, but he has dead eyes, like black pebbles. I have studied his sort before, and I can easily imagine it is so. When we are ruled in a more unambiguously totalitarian manner, he will be appointed the local chief of police, pulling out the fingernails of leftist dissenters until they too scream out their love for Big Brother. I have never spoken to him, so cannot call him a neighbour. His music is – well – decidedly unmusical, consisting at my end purely of beats. It jams my brain, so I cannot write when I am there.

Thump. Thump. Thumpety.

I did not intend coming back to Marsden, but I don’t regret it now, nor the circumstance that forced me. It granted time to see my father out, with grace and honour. It also eased his mind, knowing there was someone around to keep on top of the garden, keep it respectable, this being in the manner of his generation, who took pains to ease the minds of passersby that here at least, they were safe from assault and robbery.

“Remember to sharpen the edging shears before you clip round.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“The India Stone’s in the shed. I showed you how. Remember?”

I do remember. I was eighteen when we had that conversation. How long ago is that? Forty years? Except I swear it was Mr Williams who showed me how to sharpen things with an India Stone. It was also his India Stone I was always borrowing, because ours had grown concave with use. I am on the cusp of old age myself now, or late middle, or whatever they call it, but in my father’s eyes I was always a lad. I didn’t mind that. He always meant well, even when he was wrong, which, looking back, was often. It’s an important step along the path to maturity, I think, realizing your father could be wrong, and forgiving him for it.

Thump. Thump. Wackety. Thump. Thump.

He’d gone a little deaf towards the end, so he wasn’t as disturbed by the noise from next door as I am. Or if he was, he never said. He never complained about anything, even when he had much to complain about, like how the doctor hadn’t a clue what was wrong with him, until it was too late. Then his only apology was: well, Mr Swift, you’ve had a good innings.

The night he died, there was heavy metal coming through the walls as I sat with him. I’d not the courage to go round and tell the scar-faced man there was this old gentleman, my father, with a magnificent story of life behind him, a man blessed by his obscurity and his inoffensiveness, dying on the other side of the wall, and could you not for once turn the music down, let him pass into the next world in peace, and not be chased there by Banshees?

Funny, the things you feel ashamed about.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

He was a craftsman, my father, worked magic on a lathe, making valves, and far away fortunes for the oil and gas industry, yet a pittance for himself. Mr Williams was a labourer at the rubber works, Mr Simpson a retired collier with emphysema who hid black stuff he coughed up, in a clean while handkerchief which he kept there for said purpose. All were gentlemen, their wives, decent, resilient women. Their solidarity was like glue to us throughout the leaner years of growing up.

Oh,… you get the picture. Things just aren’t the same now. And perhaps there has always been this sense of decline, certainly in the north of my country, and since the Thatcher years, but lately it has taken on a more unabashed appearance, smelling of a thing more brazenly corrupt. And it’s my fault because I looked away, and let it happen.

The obvious thing to do, now my father has gone, is to sell the house, but a part of me is saying that would be to close the door on what I still believe to be a thing worth rescuing from the past. If only I could define the shape of it. But I cannot stay either, because the insult of that music, and the loss of gentleness, and the richness of colour is full of hurt for me. All I do when I’m here is scroll my phone for crass novelty, and wait for a change in tempo.

Boom. Whackety. Boom. Boom. Boom.

___________________________________________

I think this works as an opener. It sets the mood, anyway. We’re ten thousand words in, and it’s still giving, still connecting. I’ve done the cover, too. We may be on to something. Coming to a bookshop no time soon and never to be seen on Amazon, except possibly as a pirated version.

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Zen and the art of ironing, with Alan Watts

I was going to write something grumbly today, something about the decline of real blogging, the decline of writerly bloggers who blog for the sake of it, and without giving themselves the airs of entrepreneurs. You know the type? They’re always offering six easy steps to financial success, and a set of perfect white teeth along the way, the sort of entrepreneurial bloggers who tag my blog daily now as if I’m even remotely interested in what they’re selling. If only they would wise up, admit that, in the great scheme of things, like all of us, they’re simply nobody, going nowhere, and then open their eyes to the world and tell me what they see and feel, in original prose or poetry that seeks no remuneration. Then I’d be interested, and I’d follow back. But I’m not going to write about that.

In truth, I’m a little grumpy because I have the beginnings of a toothache. A bit of filling has dropped out, and my dentist won’t see me for a month. The place was taken over by a corporate brand, a few years ago, the original staff all fired off and replaced with younger, cheaper versions, who now offer botox treatment, white smiles, and other questionable cosmetic enhancements. I sense they now rather look down on the humble, unwashed NHS patient, who simply wants competent dental care and an annual checkup. Anyway, there’s nothing like a bit of naggy pain for refusing admittance to the higher realms of imagination, for imprisoning one instead in this denser version of reality. So we’ll distract ourselves as best we can with the ironing and an exploration of Zen.

How to iron a man’s shirt? Well, first you take the cuff,… or so begins one of those Youtube instructables. It’s a job I’ve taken up more seriously, now I have the time, ironing shirts, trousers, handkerchiefs. I always used to rush it before, and with mixed results. As a kid I had to pick skills up fast, like how to handle a turret lathe, or a milling machine without losing a finger, and all that was before they’d let me near those dangerously sharp pencils in the engineering office.

Once you’ve got the basics, it’s just a matter of practice and focus, and with ironing there’s as much of it to practise on as you want. It also grants an hour or so out of the day, to plug in and listen to lectures on You-tube, which is the main reason I like it, but don’t tell anyone. In particular, I’ve recently discovered a rich seam of wisdom in Alan Watts (1915-1973), many of his recorded interviews, lectures and radio broadcasts being now online.

When plodding a personal metaphysical path, we come to realize there’s no one person who has a monopoly on wisdom. More, there’s always been a succession of teachers throughout time who were able to communicate, or not, in different ways. We might encounter the works of one person and find them too advanced, or too difficult or irrelevant, but we might circle back to them when we’re ready. I think that’s what happened with me and Alan Watts.

Watts had (and still has) an immensely popular following in spiritual and philosophical circles, though various biographies I’ve read suggest he was somewhat shunned by the more orthodox intelligentsia of his day. I find he has a fascinating voice, a compelling manner, an infectious humour, and a canny way of getting across complex ideas, shedding them of their mystique. His topic area is the whole of eastern spiritual thought and seeking a synthesis between it and western metaphysics, but at the moment, it’s his lectures on Zen I’m finding most interesting.

Zen, fares well in the pop culture of the west, with books on “Zen and the art of this, that and the other”. What Zen is though, actually, is a tricky thing to pin down, its subject matter being so ineffable. I’ve read western books on Zen, but none made sense, and the eastern works seemed always to be either laughing or throwing up the shutters at my ignorance. The nearest we can get to it, in western terms, says Watts, is the field of psychoanalysis. This makes sense, suggesting the nature of the mind is bound up with the nature of being, and reality. Watts has opened the door there a little.

The nature of the self – our true self – is generally unrecognized throughout our lives, being too easily mistaken instead for the story of our lives. But, says Watts, when two Zen masters meet, they need no introduction, because each of them knows not only who they are themselves but who the other guy is as well. Each understands there is, as such, no “other”. Both are “it”.

The awareness that grants one’s sense of being is the same awareness as everyone else’s. That’s not an easy thing to grasp. Indeed, it’s somewhat troubling, and near impossible for a materialist to even grant it an audience, since it posits the fundamentally “conscious” nature of reality.

Many pilgrims come unstuck at this point, either unable to accept the universe is thinking itself into being, or they think it’s them, their mind, that’s at the centre of everything, that they are somehow omnipotent. Then their world collapses into a solipsistic delusion with their megalomaniacal ego at the centre of it. The nearest I can get to what Zen, in part, is saying is the western idealist philosophy which suggests the universe is thinking “us” into being and not the other way around, meaning the thinker thinking you, is the same thinker who’s thinking me.

If we can at least work with the possibility reality is structured in this way, it grants us a fresh perspective on life. It allows us to explore reasons why such a thing might be the case, and what it means to be human in the world. It presents also the paradox of waking up to the transcendent nature of reality, while at the same time being trapped within the limitations of this particular version of it. We have our personal functional limitations – like how it’s taking me an age to iron this one damned shirt, when the dude in the video says I should be able to do it in three minutes – but also the fact that the whole of human endeavour is so prone to suffering, and no matter how carefully we build our societies up for the greater good, we cannot help but sow within them the seeds of our own destruction.

As for what Zen has got to with ironing this shirt, I don’t know, except,… just do it, maybe? Nor does it explain the purpose of my toothache, which perhaps only goes to show I know nothing of the true path of Zen, that if I did, I simply wouldn’t mind it.

I’ll tackle ironing a pair of trousers next. Damned tricky things, trousers.

Last word to Alan Watts (audio only):

Keep well all.

Graeme out.

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Holding on, or letting go?

Durleston wood is the setting for my novel “In Durleston Wood”. It’s where I grew up. I changed its name to protect it from visitor numbers, should the novel ever become a bestseller. Well, stranger things have happened. It didn’t, but Durleston, like many of our green spaces, is suffering anyway. I’ve written about this before.

In the book, there’s a beech tree, overlooking a bend in the river. It’s hundreds of years old. The protagonist sits under it, talks to imaginary people, and contemplates things. Like him, I’ve known that tree since childhood, and treasured the idea that it would be there forever. However, over the decade since I wrote the story I’ve had intimations of its mortality. A few years ago it lost a substantial proportion of its branches in winter storms. The more optimistic side of me hoped the rest of it would recover, other branches filling the void, plus I thought, it’s been there so long, it seemed unlikely it would fall down on my brief watch on earth. But fall, it has.

I’ve been away from Durleston throughout the pandemic. It’s an attractive bit of countryside, and social media did what my novel didn’t: it put Durleston on the map. Throughout the furlough periods, more and more people have been coming to what I once thought of as a secret domain, largely unknown outside the local area. The paths became clogged and churned to slime with processions of shuffling, noisome people, sometimes literally by the coach-load. So I’ve stayed away.

Now the pubs and shops are open, things have calmed down, midweek at least, and I returned today to find all that remained of the beech tree was a stump. Now, I can hardly blame this on the pandemic. It actually looked pretty rotten inside, like it’s been dying for a long time. It lies crashed to earth, scattered as habitat for bugs and fungi, all part of the natural cycle of the woodlands. Still, it was a shock, the loss of its sheltering canopy transforming the light in this corner of the woods into something eerie and unfamiliar. But more, I can’t help the feeling, that it should have fallen on my watch, is darkly auspicious of events in the wider world.

There have been other changes here in the year of my absence. The path along the river was bordered in places by lush, rolling grassland. It’s been used for livestock grazing – cattle and sheep – for as long as I can remember. But now the green is silver, the meadows covered in plastic, hundreds of acres of it. I’m not well up on farming practice and I don’t know what the crop is here, but the change is sudden, and it’s all the same – has the feel of a kind of all-eggs-in-one basket desperation to it, tearing up and rendering the picturesque landscape as something industrial and horrific, and then what do we do with all that plastic? Do we send it to Turkey, to be burned, along with all the rest? Dare I hope the stuff is in some way bio-degradable?

Then, other meadows that border Durleston are to be built upon. There is a long running battle with a national house-builder who is looking to put up two hundred houses on the greenbelt. This has been ongoing for a while, and though rejected by the planning department years ago, the council is losing the fight, ground down through one doggedly vexatious appeal after the other. The intent is clear, and so far as I’m concerned, the land is lost. I wonder why this bothers me, since I don’t actually live around here any more.

When a man we know grows old and dies, it’s a time for sadness, but we recognize it’s unnatural we should go on forever. We mourn, we pause in reflection, and in celebration of the man’s life, and we accept that he is gone. Why can we not treat our memories of places like Durelston in the same way?

I did not think I would be having to deal with this in my lifetime, the actual death of Durleston. It had seemed such an unchanging place when I was a boy. But now the beech tree has gone, the buffer zones of green meadow are covered in plastic sheeting, and the houses are coming down to the edge of the wood, which will transform it into little more than a dog’s toilet.

In town, if a coffee shop is changed into a charity shop, or vice versa, there is no personal sense of loss. Indeed, I couldn’t care less. Town is town; it is a literal representation of itself. But in a landscape the representations are fluid. A meadow at dusk is also a canvas on which to let play the imagination. The starry heads of the allium in the shady deep of the wood speak of something fey, until the mind trips over the vulgar beer-can, and then they do not speak at all.

I don’t live around here any more, but travel back when I can, because in many ways this place nurtured me. I like to pay homage to it, and have taken comfort down the decades from what, for so long, had been its unchanging nature. But I’m going to have to find a way of turning my back, and letting go, as I have similarly let go the lives of friends and family who have passed away. Of course, Durleston is still here. It still has a physical presence, a scrap of ancient woodland on a bend in the river, but in a deeper sense, it’s finished.

There is a story taking shape here, and it’s not the same as the one I wrote “In Durleston Wood”. And it’s not about nostalgia either, nor corporate greed, nor political corruption writ large. Such things are so obvious now they’re barely worth a mention. It’s about looking at the land and seeing more than what is physically there, and whether that’s important or not. And if we say it’s not then the world moves off in a particular direction, one that is uninteresting to me. But if we say it is, then that’s a thing worth exploring, indeed one of the few noble things left to us, but places like Durleston are vanishing fast in England. The towns are all merging into one another as houses are thrown up on greenbelt, and none but the rentier class can afford them. So it’s already looking like a lost cause.

I look at my broken tree-stump and I do indeed read it as auspicious, that it should have fallen on my watch. The future isn’t a road to the sunlit uplands, certainly not looking at it from the perspective of the north of England, and based on the direction of travel so far. But then we’ve known that since the eighties. Still, it’s looking like I may get another story out of it. Let’s call it: “Leaving Durleston”, or how about: “Letting go”? Or more simply: “A Lone Tree Falls”.

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Arnside and Silverdale, in a couple of ticks

Morecambe Bay from Arnside, Cumbria UK

The M6 was pretty much your normal mid-week M6, thick with tradesmens’ vans, ton-up delivery vans, and long lines of lumbering heavies. This was overlaid with the familiar manic tapestry of boss-class Beamers and Mercs, all shiny in their lease-black livery, tailgating and weaving about likes jerks. I counted just the one caravan making a speculative foray towards the lakes.

The giant electronic signs urged us to minimize our travel – meaningless from all but the earliest of days, and clearly ignored by most. Still, it pricked my conscience. Arnside was fifty miles away, so hardly local but, since “local” was however we chose to define it now, I had the letter, if not the spirit of the law on my side. Plus, I’d not been more than ten miles from home – at least not for pleasure – in nearly a year, which was surely the very definition of minimizing travel.

Arnside was warming up a bit by 10:00 am, beginning to bustle a little too, but there was still plenty of parking. I’m fond of this place, but I can’t say I know it – only as a tourist, and occasional walker, come to take in the scenery, and frequent the tea shops. Today I was meeting up with an old friend for a walk down the coastal way to Silverdale, then back over the Knott.

Arnside, Cumbria UK

There is an eerie beauty about this part of the world. The limestone cliffs overlooking Morecambe bay provide a habitat for all manner of unfamiliar colour of flora and fauna – unfamiliar to me anyway. And the light, reflecting off the wet sands of the bay, is exceptional. The cliff-top sections of path here have a sporting feel to them, with, in places, nothing to guard against a near certain fatal fall, not helped by the fact the limestone underfoot is becoming polished. There is mixed woodland, also dense thickets of blackthorn amongst which the near fluorescent yellow-green brimstone butterflies were in profusion.

From Silverdale, we turn inland, and a criss-cross of well-marked ways leads us eventually down by the evocative ruins of the Arnside Tower. The farm here was selling rather fine bird boxes at just eight quid apiece. The honesty box consisting of a child’s welly, was well stuffed. I’m into bird boxes, have built a few for my garden, and I would have partaken of the offer, but I’ve had no cash on me since I can’t remember when, and we’d still a way to walk.

Arnside Tower, Cumbria UK

The Knott is our last objective, a wooded hill, clearing towards the summit with fine views over the bay. They’re grazing cattle here now. Belted Galloways mooched amongst the scrub – cows, calves and bulls, all looking placid enough at our passing, but beware, if you’re up here with a yappy dog, you’ll perhaps not get the same indifferent reception. On the way down from the summit, there’s a particularly scenic tree. It has a wood-crafted heart suspended from it with the inscription: “Live, Laugh and Love”. Hard to argue with that one. It was a favourite for passing walkers to pose with their selfies.

On Arnside Knott, Cumbria UK

It was pleasant to be taking pictures of things other than the shaggy moorland and sycamore trees close to home, interesting to see how the much softer light played out, especially in the post-processing. It was also good to get the car out on a good run. But the day was not without its downside.

On arriving home, I noticed I’d picked up a couple of ticks. I’ve not seen these outside the Western Isles, and had not thought they were an issue at all in England. However, further researches inform me they are indeed very much a presence in the Arnside and Silverdale area, so do be careful when exploring around here. Walk with your trousers tucked into your socks, check yourself over on return, and be aware they are adept at finding the lesser viewed areas like backs of knees, elbows and other private places. If you’re out with dogs you’ll need to check them too.

A tick removal tool is best for getting them off safely. Otherwise, you’ll need a pair of fine tweezers and grasp the things as low down as possible, where the snout penetrates the skin. Don’t squeeze or burn them, and especially not if they’re engorged. Then, over the coming days, keep a lookout for inflammation and a red ring around the bite-spot, an early symptom of the onset of Lyme’s disease. If it appears, get to the docs urgently, screaming tick-bite, and demanding anti-biotics. Hopefully I’ll be okay.

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Rivington, Noon Hill and Coomb

Anglezarke Moor

Rivington, in the West Pennines, a popular spot at the best of times, it became a Mecca for urban escapees during the COVID-19 restrictions. But now the nation’s shops and pubs have re-opened, things have become a little quieter, at least mid-week. So it is, this morning, we park with casual impunity and unexpected ease along the Rivington Hall avenue. This would have been impossible a few months ago. Our plan this morning is to head up onto the moor via the terraced gardens, take in Noon Hill, then investigate a lonely old ruin called Coomb.

Rivington is famous for many things, not least among them being the first Viscount Leverhulme’s terraced gardens. They fared poorly after his death in 1925, falling quickly to ruin amid a profusion of rampant ornamental forest. Walking here was always like rediscovering the remains of a lost citadel. There have been several attempts to revive them. The most recent work, undertaken by the Rivington Heritage Trust began in 2016. This has been a most ambitious, well-funded undertaking, and the results are impressive. Previously dangerous structures are now repaired and returned to use. Lawned areas, long overtaken by nature, have been cleared of scrub, and re-seeded. Lakes have been drained, repaired and refilled. Still a work in progress, and a hive of enthusiastic volunteer activity – restrictions permitting – it has been a joy to see it returning to life. I just hope the trolls, or what the gamer community call NPC’s, don’t ruin it.

The kitchen gardener’s hut – Terraced Gardens, Rivington

The gardens occupy a vast area, and include many listed structures. There are also miles and miles of pathways to explore, with spectacular views out over the plain. No wonder it’s a popular venue. But today there’s a relaxed silence about the place, granting us the rare impression we have it all to ourselves.

The beech trees overhanging the terraces are in leaf now, and provide gorgeous cascades of fresh spring green. The oaks look to be about a week behind them, an orangey-redness to their leaves as they begin to swell.

I’m reading a book called “Entangled life” at the moment, basically about fungi. Fungi are one of the most mysterious and ancient forms of life on earth. Amongst many other things, they form vast networks that connect trees, through their root systems – a kind of Wood Wide Web, allowing trees to share information. The fungi trade nutrients with favoured species, in return for carbon. It’s an area of study that suggests we still know very little about the ecology of the earth, what holds it together, and how easily we can make disastrous interventions, destroying whole swathes of life upon which we ultimately depend ourselves. The book has made me look at trees differently.

The lower Summer House – Terraced Gardens, Rivington

Anyway, zig-zagging up the terraces we gradually rise some five hundred feet to the iconic Pigeon tower. From here pilgrims usually turn right, and head on up to the Pike. But today we’re heading left, along the Belmont Road, and onto the moor. This is the old stage-coach route from Bolton. A broad, rough track of uneven stone sets, it’s navigable only by rogue 4x4s, and the occasional fire-engine during the outdoor barbecue season. After a half mile or so there’s an access point to Catter Nab, which allows us to pick our way across the moor, towards Noon Hill.

This area was the scene of ferocious heath fires some years back, with a terrible loss of habitat. Some estimates suggest it will take centuries to recover. The moor is healing of a fashion now, the bare earth being re-colonised, but in ways that appear alien. The grasses are a shorter, greener variety. And there are bright orange mosses growing up and over the scattered grit-stones. The cotton-grass has come back, but with little competition it paints the moors now in prolific waves of bobbing white hares’ tails.

After being without company thus far, we discover to our chagrin the summit of Noon Hill is occupied, by unfriendly men in camo. They have a large, aggressive hound, a bull-lurcher, that takes umbrage at our approach. We’re better giving this dubious party a wide berth, so we head instead towards Winter Hill where we encounter the infamous bog coming off the saddle. I’m looking for a familiar track, down to the Belmont Road, but coming to it from the wrong direction I’m confused by what turns out to be an impromptu beeline cut by bikers under the influence of gravity. Water has found its way into the grooves and is fast eroding the peat, giving the impression of a well walked way.

At the bottom we are separated from the track by a barbed wire fence which has the appearance of being smashed open, then hastily re-jigged with a mad tangle of barbed wire. Its crossing looks tempting, though messy, to say nothing of hazardous in the trouser department, so we take the prudent option and follow the fence north a little, to where the more familiar path grants proper access.

Here we cross the track and venture into a little area of moorland between the Belmont Road and Sheephouse Lane. This is where we find the farm marked on the oldest maps as “Coomb”. Historian and local author, John Rawlinson* tells us the local pronunciation was “Comp”. By the later Victorian period, it was a vacated and unnamed ruin. Very little remains now, and its outlines are difficult to decipher.

Winter Hill, from the ruins of Coomb

The word Comp itself was likely a dialect corruption of “camp”, legend being there was a military camp here in Roman times. Mr Rawlinson also writes of an archaeological dig that yielded artefacts. These were retained by Viscount Levehulme, but the finds were not documented, and were lost on his passing. Time has long erased Coomb or Comp or Camp, certainly from living memory, and pretty much from the written record as well, but this morning at least, it provides us with a decent, if somewhat forlorn, foreground interest for a shot of Winter Hill. Unusually for the lost farms hereabouts, it is without trees, and looks all the more lonely on account of it.

We turn south of west now, along the line of the deep, narrow valley which gives birth to Dean Brook and opens out to Flag Delph, at the corner of Sheephouse Lane. Here we pick up the path to Lower House, above Rivington, and finally return to the car, refreshed in spirit and feeling philosophical, wondering what rich trove of stories was also lost with the demise of these upland farms, and what a shame no one thought it important, at the time, to write them down. Mixed weather and cold today – some hail, appropriately enough, on Winter Hill. Just four-and-a bit-miles, up to the twelve hundred foot contour, but apparently there is still plenty of puff left in the old geezer. What am I, nowadays, I wonder? let loose across the moors to muse on trees and fungi, and lost farms? Am I walker? Writer? Blogger? Photographer? Or just a plain old retiree? It matters not how we label it. All I know is, it beats working.

* Mr John Rawlinson was the president and Chairman of the Chorley and District Archaeological Society, also a good, and generous friend to my father, encouraging him in his own researches into the prehistoric remains of the Anglezarke area. His book, About Rivington (1969) is the definitive guide to this area, meticulously researched and containing a wealth of local lore, gleaned from conversation with its then living inhabitants. I remember him as a very kindly old gentleman, when my father and I would visit him at his home on Crown Lane in Horwich in the late 1960’s. He passed away in 1972. His book is sadly out of print now, though still oft-quoted in secondary sources, both on and offline. My father’s copy, padded out with correspondence from Mr Rawlinson is much treasured, and much thumbed.

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Passing Romantics, like me.

On Withnell Moor – West Pennines

There’s a remoteness about the Withnell moors that belies the fact even the loneliest bits of them are probably only half an hour’s walk from the well populated villages of Brinscall, or Abbey Village. In the nineteenth century they were home to many small-scale farms but, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, changing times were making it harder to justify such remote habitation, the mills and quarries being more of a draw for employment than farming, at least on this scale. Then an outbreak of typhoid, in Kent (1897), sent the public health bodies into a spin. The Withnell moors were (and still are) part of the water catchment area for the city of Liverpool, and the urgent word went out we should avoid anything, animal or human, defecating upon it. So the leases were withdrawn, and the farms fell to ruin.

I’ve come here today to photograph the sycamores at one particular ruin, Grouse Cottage. The weather’s fair for now, though looking a bit changeable, and I find I’m in the mood to explore further, if I can. I’m wondering if in fact, we can find a route up Great Hill from this end of the West Pennines. There isn’t one marked on the map, and scant trace of such in aerial photographs. But it would make sense, this group of farms being linked by a humble walked way, to the now similarly ruined farms over on the Heapey side of the moor. We’ll see.

The sycamores at Grouse Cottage

Grouse Cottage looks like it’s been gone centuries, but it was still lived in in the 1950s, one of the last of the farms to be vacated. I have seen photographs of it from its working days, and can only say its eradication has been most severe. Interesting to me, my mother, resident nearby in Abbey Village until 1960, would have known it as a working farm. A small piece of it is still standing, which adds some architectural interest to the photograph of the trees – this being what was the outside lavatory. The rest is left to imagination. It was dramatically positioned with fine views but, like all the farms out this way, and from the stories my mother told, a hell of a place to be in winter.

Twisted Beech – Botany Bay

From Grouse Cottage we head south now, to the corner of a tumbled drystone wall, then west, towards Rushy brook. We cross by the ruins of Popes, another lost farm, then onto the rise of the moor, and eventually to a curious, lone beech tree by the ruins of Botany Bay. This farm is renamed on OS maps from the 1930’s as the “Summer House”, it’s having by then been abandoned, and adapted for use as what I suppose was a luncheon hut, for the grouse shooting fraternity. Little remains of it now. The tree is remarkable though – twisted, stunted by ferocious weather, but stoically hanging on. Remarkable too is an upright stone, unworked and heavily weathered, one I reckon predates the farm by several thousand years and marks a previous era of habitation.

Botany Bay stone

From Botany Bay there is a sketchy path south and west, towards the trees that mark the ruins of Solomon’s and New Temple. It’s New Temple I’m after, to a little isthmus of benign pasture that marks the end of the ancient enclosures, and their abutment with the wilderness of uncultivated moor. If there’s a route up Great Hill, here’s where we’ll find it.

The temple isn’t an actual temple, no doubt much to the disappointment of the neo-pagans who have been known to frequent it, in search of “vibes”. It’s just another ruined farm, marked by a pair of magnificent sycamores, romantic in their isolation, and striking today with a background of moody sky. There are heavy showers sweeping the plain, drifting up the Ribble Valley, circling behind us over Darwen Moor. Meanwhile, we enjoy an island of calm and intermittent hazy sun. Anything incoming is at least thirty minutes away, but we seem to be in the eye of the system, so I reckon we’ll be okay.

It turns out there is indeed a little-walked path from here – no more than a sheep-trod, but inspiring sufficient confidence to explore further. It takes us up the nondescript hummock of Old Man’s Hill, then loosely follows the line of Rushy Brook, into the lap of Great Hill. I wouldn’t come this way in poor weather as it would be hard to trace, and it’s a rum wasteland of tussocky grass to go off course in, but otherwise the way makes sense, and follows a reasonably dry route.

The New Temple Sycamores

The plan now, if we can avoid a drenching, is to take in the top of Great Hill, then circle back via Pimms and the Calf Hey brook. I was there some weeks ago, but I want to shoot the trees at Pimms again, against this impressive sky, and to get a name for them. The buds are opening now and hopefully will reveal their signature leaves – sycamores probably.

Great Hill summit – West Pennines

There’s not a soul on Great Hill, again. Everyone must be in the pubs, or the shops as we find ourselves once more in one of those “hair down”, between wave periods. Meanwhile, the weather dances round us, a whirligig of drama, while our own steps remain blessed by dry, and that lingering crazy, hazy sun. This place feels as familiar as the back of my own hand, but no matter how well we think we know a place, there is always another perspective, always something fresh to be gained. If that insight is the one blessing of these Covid restrictions, then so be it.

As for the trees at Pimms, they are indeed sycamores, the same as at Solomon’s, and Grouse Cottage, common enough on the moors, as anywhere. The Woodland Trust tells me they’re not native to our islands, sycamores having been introduced in the 15th or 16th centuries from mainland Europe. They’re hard as nails though, as evidenced by their soaring height here, in defiance of the harshest weather Lancashire can muster. They’ve outlived the farms anyway, stand as monuments to them and, in the present day, provide beacons for navigation.

Roddlesworth falls

So, now we’re heading down through the plantations at Roddlesworth again – a second chance to grab a decent shot of the little falls on the Roddlesworth river. I make a better job of it this time – the Lumix I’m carrying today being a much faster camera than the Nikon I used some weeks before. Then the car’s waiting, my good lady’s car today. Unlike mine, it can navigate the humps and hollows of Roddlesworth lane, without getting beached.

As we ease off the boots, the rain catches up with us. It’s nothing dramatic – more gentle and cooling. It’s been kind enough to hold off for our walk, and a little wet is welcome after such a long period of dry. My garden will appreciate it, and it should replenish the water-butts, which are already at rock bottom.

It turned out to be a good circuit, not as far as it feels on the legs though – about five and a half miles, seven hundred feet of ascent or so. It was a little eerie. Being more used to dodging Covid crowds, I saw not a soul all afternoon, and had only the ghosts among the ruins for company. To be sure this is one of the loneliest of approaches to Great Hill I know.

There’s something sobering about the lost farms of the West Pennines. It’s the idea of, season after season, eking out a hard living from an unforgiving moor, and now those lives passed on, moved on as all things change and move on, and the reeds grow back, where once the deep-walled lane echoed to the sound of the passing cart and the driven beasts. And the multi-storied life, hard won, is reduced in no time at all to a pile of knee-high rubble, to be poked at, and pondered by passing Romantics, like me.

For more information on this part of the world, do check out:

“The lost farms of Brinscall Moor” by David Clayton

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May 6th! Hitting the letterboxes.

In spite of the ongoing pandemic, there are local elections taking place in various areas on May 6th. For anyone on the left, politics can seem like something of a lost cause these days. There is the hope we still have a shout in the locals though, and the Party cheerleaders, and their friends at the Guardian this week, are certainly keeping their peckers up in that respect. Locally though, we’re a little more realistic and expect a drubbing.

Once in a blue moon, I drop leaflets for the local constituency Labour Party. It’s a mystery how I’ve ended up doing this. My son was (briefly) a party member, so it’s his job really, but he resigned in dismay, post 2019, post Corbyn. And what with Bad Boy Boris still sailing high in the polls, on the strength of 130,000 dead, he’s lost faith in the topsy-turvy world of politics, and that anything can ever change for the better. That said, we managed to squeak our guy into the borough council chamber last time, which meant a Labour majority. But now the boundaries have been changed to include a larger swathe of blue, and he’s not so hopeful of being re-elected. When he accosted me over the garden hedge, sounding me out about the leaflets again, I got the impression we were just going through the motions, but he’s a nice guy, and I have the time, and why not?

So I’ve been out in the spring sunshine, wandering up garden paths with all the confidence of a man on official business. There are about a hundred properties, some of them remote. The boss-class Jags and Beamers on the driveways confirm this is not your natural Labour heartland, but I don’t want the Blues thinking they’ve a clear run. And one never knows.

Letter boxes are interesting things, at least they are if you’re in a philosophical frame of mind. Those up-tight double flapped draught excluder ones (like the one I have) are the worst. They scrunch up your neatly folded leaflets and trap them somewhere between the inside and the outside. Postmen must really hate them. And if you try to shove your hand through to lift the inner flap and get your stuff through cleanly, they’ll trap your fingers, if you’ve rings on them.

Then there are the old-fashioned easy lift-up type with the busted return springs – the type that rattle and squeak a bit in the wind. They’re the best, suggestive of a relaxed household, one that’s garden gnomey, with a cosy cat curled up somewhere. Your leaflets just sail through those. Then there are the posh mail-boxes that stand like sentries, keeping you at a distance from the door.

Long, scrunchy gravel driveways, electric gates, electric fences, keep out signs, beware of the dog signs, and the plethora of security cameras that protect wealthy egos, they’re all intimidating, but I’m on official business. I’m representing your local councillor, so I shall pass!

After the rout of the general election in 2019, we’ve entered a strangely post-political era, Orwellian in many ways, post truth, post fact, and with a media either powerfully in support of the incumbent, or shamelessly supine in not calling out even their most egregious transgressions. The left too, is in a pretty hopeless state, something self-neutering about it. On the plus side, I’m impressed by the various independent media – Novara, Double Down News, Byline Times, but they’re preaching to the converted and I don’t see them getting much traction in the main-stream. My own position these days, while still left leaning, has somewhat transcended the fray.

I’m working on the assumption the coming years will be turbulent as Brexit bites, and the Union disintegrates. There’s also the chance of a return to sectarian bloodshed in Ireland, and for which History will judge the British harshly, unless, as seems likely, History will be abolished, unless it can be proven to be Patriotic. Meanwhile, the right-authoritarians consolidate their grip even further on hearts and minds, by blaming it all on someone else. Politics is one of the most complicated stories there is, but all we want are simple answers, which is why many of us would sooner get our information from the crass soundbites of Youtube and Facebook pundits, making us all suckers for disinformation and spin.

A handful of leaflets for the locals isn’t going to change any of that. But it gets you round the houses, and it’s nice to see the various ways people make the approaches to their homes homely, or otherwise. Almost everyone I met was pleasant. The two ladies taking morning tea in their sunny front garden were charming, and received my leaflets like they were the most important missives they’d had in weeks. Just the one curmudgeon told me where to shove them. Then there’s the party member, and conference vet. If he sees you out and about, that’s it for an hour on the subject of where the left is going wrong, like I really care any more. He’s talked to this person and that person (drop name here) “at conference”, lets you know he knows infinitely more about politics than you ever will, as he may well do. But I do wonder why he isn’t he taking the leaflets round instead of me.

Anyway, May 6th. Whatever your political stripes, do read those leaflets. I know they’re cringe-worthy and my lot managed to wiggle in a few typos, which will have raised eyebrows among the keener eyed. But they’re the only info you’ll get unless you’re lucky enough to be door-stepped by your local candidates, and they tend only to go for the known floaters. I know, politics is mostly bullshit and name-calling, but votes count. So let’s have your votes.

And now after all that dirty politics talk, I need a bath in something slow, repetitive, and with lots of reverb:

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