Every street tells a story

Walking through the streets of Lancaster I feel history oozing from the walls around me.

The Pendle witches were tried at Lancaster castle and hanged on the outskirts of the city at Golgotha.

Many of the city's fine Georgian buildings were constructed with the proceeds of the slave trade.  The quayside once bustled with ships unloading sugar and mahogany, wealth from the Indies.  The ropemakers stood on Cable Street, now the site of Sainsburys.  The sailors drank away their wages in the local taverns and the prostitutes plied their trade in Swap Cunt Alley (now renamed Bashful Alley).

My morbid curiosity is aroused by the house on Dalton Square where Dr Buck Ruxton murdered his wife and her maid and then dismembered their bodies in the bath.

I imagine the houses rocked by the explosion at  White Lund ammunitions factory and brave Mary Wilkinson blown off her bike as she raced to her post at the local telephone exchange.

As the local industries declined, the city reinvented itself and now the streets are filled with students. The emos hang out on the museum steps.  Couples meet on Horseshoe Corner, but men can no longer sell their wives there.

So many stories to be told.

Too early for the emos....