On local history

Now I am a great believer in keeping busy, but you can have too much of a good thing.

It was the Castle Park Stories project that blew my schedule, but what an adventure it has been! I'm no historian, but as an experience of bringing history to life it was remarkable. Understanding the involvement of one individual in the transatlantic slave trade and their legacy has made history immediate and compelling in a way that I didn't think possible. I've been inspired by the enthusiasm of other researchers too and I can't wait to see what they've come up with when the exhibition opens next week.

There seems to be a huge amount of interest in local history. I've joined a fantastic Facebook group called Lancaster Past and Present where people share their photos, memories and stories of the local area. It's a great way to preserve the history of ordinary people and a great source of story ideas. The challenges of my Castle Park research have made me realise the importance of recording our history. What might seem mundane now could well be fascinating fifty or a hundred years hence.

That's enough on history for now, I have a Shakespeare assignment to do. But more on that next time.

Castle Park Stories

The streets of Lancaster are full of stories. From the first Roman settlement, the founding of the castle in the eleventh century, the city's brief boom as a trading port to the vibrant community today, if walls could speak they'd have so much to tell.

Castle Park, the small area surrounding the castle and Priory, is one of my favourite parts of town. With its steep cobbled streets, fine houses and a quayside lined with converted warehouses, all in the shadow of the castle itself, it doesn't take a giant leap to imagine the folk living there two hundred or even five hundred years ago. So when Litfest put out a call for local residents interested in history, photography or writing to participate in a lottery funded writing project, I didn't take much persuading.

You can find out more about the project here, but essentially we have six weeks to put together an exhibition about the area.

There's so much scope in such a small area that it's hard to know where to start. Around fifty people want to be involved with interests as diverse as slavery, the Quakers, maritime and family history. Already we've heard some marvellous stories such as the banter between the prisoners held in the castle and the factory girls passing by. So the story goes, the young women would take great delight in giving the male prisoners a glimpse of the delights they were missing. Brazen hussies! We heard too of the grammar school boys who were allowed to go on the roof of the church before prayers to get a better view of the castle hangings. Let that be a lesson to you all boys!

I have my first Open University tutor to thank for the particular piece of history I'm hoping to explore. She's an expert in Lancaster's connections with the slave trade, back in Georgian times when Lancaster was one of England's major ports. She took us on a walking tour of the city and in passing pointed out a rather fine house just next to the castle. Built in 1720, it was once home to a successful merchant involved in the slave trade. He had a black female servant, brought to England from the West Indies. I've always wondered how this woman came to be in Lancaster and how it must have felt to live under grey Lancashire skies so far from home.

I've only just started my research, but already I've uncovered the most macabre tale. Truly, truth is stranger than fiction.

I wonder what other stories this fine house has to tell?

20 Castle Park, Lancaster

On Derwentwater

After a tough month work-wise, a few days in the Lake District was a welcome break. We usually stay in a little village, chosen for its walks and homely pub. This time though, we plumped for the 'metropolis' that is Keswick.  We've visited the Lake District often enough not to be put off by gloomy weather forecasts. Armed with sturdy boots, waterproofs and a bottle of suntan cream (well you never know), we were well prepared, whatever the weather.

We left the hilltops to those with a better head for heights, and set off on a walk around Derwentwater. Lake circuits are my favourite, I think, and have the advantage of making it very difficult to get lost. This is an important consideration.

With fabulous views towards Cat Bells and Borrowdale, Derwentwater didn't disappoint. The Lake District is glorious in rain or shine. A friend from Sardinia tried to convince me of this many years ago, and finally I can see her point.  

Apart from the fabulous views, Derwentwater is also noteworthy as the last remaining native habitat of the vendace fish. At one point we did come rather closer than I'd anticipated to the lake's aquatic life, wading through its chilly waters where the path was flooded.

The lake's islands are interesting too. Derwent Island was bought in 1778 by Joseph Pocklington. He built a house there, and a fort, a gothic boathouse and a mock stone circle. Every year he challenged the people of Keswick to attack the island whilst he shot at them with cannons. I can only hope that there weren't too many casualties. St Herbert's Island is said to be the inspiration for Owl Island in Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. In the book Squirrel Nutkin, his brother Twinkleberry and their cousins cross the lake on rafts, using their tails as sails.

As much as I love walking, the highlight was returning to the pub for a pint of beer and a steak pie. Now that's what I call a day well spent.

The Daylight Gate - Jeanette Winterson

'The North is the dark place.

It is not safe to be buried on the north side of the church and the North Door is the way of the Dead.

The north of England is untamed. It can be subdued but it cannot be tamed. Lancashire is the wild part of the untamed.

The Forest of Pendle used to be a hunting ground, but some say that the hill is the hunter - alive in its black-and-green coat cropped like an animal pelt.

The hill itself is low and massy, flat-topped, brooding, disappeared in mists, treacherous with bogs, run through with fast-flowing streams plunging into waterfalls crashing down into unknown pools. Underfoot is the black rock that is the spine of this place.

Sheep graze. Hares stand like question marks.

There are no landmarks for the traveller. Too early or too late the mist closes in. Only a fool or one who has dark business should cross Pendle at night.

Stand on the flat top of Pendle Hill and you can see everything of the county of Lancashire, and some say you can see other things too. This is a haunted place. The living and dead come together on the hill.'

Lancaster Castle,
site of the Pendle Witch trials

Don't you think that's a wonderful opening?  I seldom pre-order books, but when I saw that Jeanette Winterson had written a novella about the Pendle Witches, I couldn't resist.

I must admit to having a particular interest in the Pendle Witches. In August 1612 the Witches were tried at Lancaster Castle and hanged just a stone's throw from my house. On a dark and stormy night I can almost imagine their cries on the wind-swept hill... You can visit the Castle and see the dungeon where the Witches were imprisoned. You can have a drink at The Golden Lion, supposed to be the final stopping point for the Witches on the way to the gallows.

The story begins on Good Friday 1612, with a mysterious gathering of thirteen people at Malkin Tower on Pendle Hill. The gathering is discovered by Roger Nowell, the local magistrate, and from here the story of the unfortunate women unfolds. Winterson does not spare the reader any of the horrors of the women's life either before or after their capture. For the most part they were superstitious, ill-treated women, victims of their own ignorance and poverty. One woman, however, does not fit this mould. She was Alice Nutter, rich widow and landowner. It is Alice's story that is at the heart of the book.

For the first few chapters I didn't know what to make of it all, but once I abandoned my own ideas and prior knowledge of the Witches I found I could properly engage with the story. Winterson combines fact with fiction, reality with witchcraft and religion. Seventeenth century England was obsessed with witchcraft and treason. The Protestant King, James I, wrote Daemonologie, supporting the practise of witch hunting. At the time, witchcraft was considered to be inextricably linked with Catholicism, or 'witchery popery popery witchery' as the lawyer Thomas Potts liked to put it. I certainly hadn't appreciated that the conspirators of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot had fled to Lancashire, making the county a prime target for accusations of witchcraft and treason.

Winterson was commissioned to write The Daylight Gate for Hammer Books. She herself says that the book was written 'as a kind of dare', to see if she could write a Hammer Horror.  There is undoubtedly horror in the book, from the Witches' macabre practices to their terrible treatment before and after their capture. Nor does Winterson spare us the horror of seventeenth-century tortures, as suffered by the Papist Christopher Southworth, Alice Nutter's lover. Strangely though, despite the horror, I will remember the book mostly as a love story. I don't want to give too much away, but if you do read the book you'll see what I mean.

I'm not sure what fans of Winterson's other writing will make of this, but as an imaginative retelling of a fascinating story, I'd certainly recommend it.

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....