When a Miss is as Good as a Mile (or Two!)

Carrying on with the theme of last week's post, after visiting two preserved railways on Friday and Sunday, Monday evening found me planning how I would spend my last full day in the Notts./Derbyshire border country.  Looking at the current map in conjunction with the excellent Rail Map online, I could see a number of places where it ought to be possible to identify some evidence of a past railway line that is no longer there.  I made a note of a number of villages to visit in the area between Bolsover and Shirebrook and, satisfied with that, went to bed.

Next morning, with little further thought, I set out.  One village is quickly followed by another, however, and if you haven't noted a particular street name to look for, the opportunity is soon lost ... especially if you are concentrating on the potential oncoming vehicle around the next bend, worrying about holding up a van behind you, or anxious about maintaining power going up a very steep hill.  Rylah Hill, Palterton is not pleasant.  A notice at the top says 'vehicles over 7.5 tonnes: access only' and one at the foot advises, 'unsuitable for HGVs' ... and that's not just because it's narrow in places!

Ringa Lane, Elmton

To cut a long story short, the only railway relic I saw was at the end of a cul-de-sac called Station Road (usually a bit of a giveaway), in the form of an embankment that might have carried a railway track many years ago.  I had long since given up my search and was enjoying the sunny day finding an alternative way home when I stumbled on a place that boasts itself 'a small village steeped in history' where archaeologists have discovered 'evidence of every period of human history since prehistoric times'.  Elmton, though small, is certainly a pretty place and I took a number of photos.

After I'd got home I had to do a bit of research to find the name of the lane in one picture and was intrigued by a regular geometric shape on the map.  Research was sidetracked to find out more.  Only a mile-and-a-half from where I'd parked my car was a feature called 'Model Village', in the village of Creswell.  In the heyday of the railways, Creswell had had two stations.  One, on the Midland Railway, was named Elmton & Creswell, and still exists (under the single name 'Creswell') on the line between Mansfield and Worksop.  The other was less than half-a-mile away to the south-west on the Great Central Railway and was called Creswell & Welbeck.  This has now totally vanished, but the 'Model Village' associated with it, is very much still in evidence.

To one living in the 'First Garden City' as I do, it is of particular significance.  Wikipedia tells me that it was built as a pit village in 1895, in the arts and crafts style, by the Bolsover Colliery Co.  Its shape is described in a publication by the local council as 'a double octagon with an inner and an outer circle', i.e. an almost rectangular peripheral road, surrounding a large green area.  The 280 houses are built on either side of this road, half on the inside, facing the green, and half on the outside, facing the open countryside.  Thus the backs of the houses face the peripheral road, where (in the original design) a tramway facilitated the delivery of coal to the cellars of the houses, and the removal of night soil from enclosed ashpit lavatories in the back yards.

Between the houses and the colliery the company also built a village institute, which not only had a bar, billiard room, reading room and library, but also a lecture hall seating 400, where the colliery band practised (there was a bandstand on the central green!).  There was a branch of the Bolsover Co-operative Society's store and allotments and a cricket ground were also provided nearby.  There was also a church, lit by electricity generated by the company and, in 1903-4 they built a drill hall to provide recreational facilities for the Boys Brigade; this was used as a military hospital during World War I and has now been modernised as a social centre.

We often read of the exploitative and oppressive nature of the independent mine-owners and no doubt this was true in many cases, but here was at least one colliery company willing to provide an element of employee welfare.  This far after the event, of course, it's hard to be objective.

Full Steam Ahead!

I make no apologies for using as my title what I believe is a nautical expression, for it fits exactly my situation this weekend.  With a trip booked tomorrow on the Churnet Valley Railway, and yesterday spent steaming to and fro on the Severn Valley line, I am blogging this morning betwixt the delight of one dip into history and the anticipation of another.

We had just set out from Kidderminster yesterday morning.  I was intrigued to see the variety of industries large and small in the track-side industrial estates, and remembered a similar variety which I had visited either delivering or collecting in my working life.  Scarcely had these passed from view than I spotted a small first-floor office and I wondered what might go on there, as my mind whizzed back to my own office experiences: paperwork, routines, the need for accuracy and consistency, faces old and new.

Gardens gave way to neat modern houses as we sped through the countryside.  Suddenly, the light above the seat opposite lit up, signifying the approach of Bewdley Tunnel.  My mind clicked back a few more decades to an occasion when I had asked my mother why such a light had gone on in the train we were travelling on.  I became very anxious when she told me it was ready for the train to go through the tunnel.  We were making a journey to Ipswich and had almost arrived.  Clearly, it wasn't my first visit, for I knew that, just beyond the end of the platform there, could be seen the broad black mouth of Stoke Tunnel.  

To a boy of about three or four, it was bad enough having to walk past the big black engines, still steaming away, as we made for the station exit at Norwich, which was our more frequent destination.  The idea of being taken into that big void - even in a well-lit train - was nothing short of frightening!  To be reminded that we were about to stop and would be alighting in the station, before the train went through the tunnel, was very reassuring.

Nowadays, of course, the thought of seeing these great reminders of our engineering past is a delight to be planned and looked forward to.  I'm always impressed by the great army of enthusiasts who keep these preserved steam railways running, whether through practical involvement as drivers or signallers, maintaining the engines or the rolling stock, or ensuring the safely of the lines themselves, or by way of commercial 'front-of-house' activities such as helping in the shops, booking offices or catering.  Many are employed of course, but many more are volunteers, just bringing their own particular skills for a few hours a week to help preserve a charming and attractive way of life from yesteryear.

The Girl in the Red Car

It's almost a direct quote from a Welsh lesson: "Pwy ydy hi, y ferch yn y car?"  (Who is she, the girl in the car?)  Only this time, having seen it, I can say it was 'car coch' - a red car - and I'm not interested in who she was, just the memories of which she reminded me.  I find that some things are only brought to mind at certain times: this was definitely a Saturday lunchtime recollection.  

I had been working in Norwich one Saturday morning and was going home on the train. (Those were the days when it was cheaper to take the train than to pay for the petrol and drive.)  Like many a railway, the line passes the backs of suburban houses as it leaves the city and I could see people who, like me, had been at work during the morning and were just arriving home.  For some, I pictured lunch waiting for them, children agog to know what was happening in the afternoon (just as I would have been, ten years earlier), and wives anxious to have some DIY job sorted as soon as possible.  The younger ones would perhaps be calling mates about an upcoming football match or the evening dance.  The weekend was about to take off.

So what of the girl?  It must have been about 1.20 a few Saturdays ago as I was taking 'a walk around the block', when a young lady of late teen-age or early twenties walked out of her home to a red car by the kerbside; she opened the door, parked her carrier bag on the seat beside her and drove confidently off.  For all I know, she may have been going shopping, or off to work for an afternoon shift.  My fertile imagination said she was off to visit her boyfriend for the weekend.  Apart from the carrier bag, which could have contained absolutely anything or nothing at all, there was no evidence to support my conjecture.

Music came to mind as I dredged back in my memory to determine whether I had ever embarked on such a weekend as I now vested upon her.  It is, I believe, a very old Welsh love song, Ar Lan y Môr.  There are several verses, with which I won't bore you, but the English version begins, "At the seaside are red roses, At the seaside are white lilies, At the seaside is my love, Sleeping through the night and rising in the morning."  

Yes, I decided, there was one relationship - with my first proper girlfriend - in which this scenario was acted out quite regularly.  She did indeed live at the seaside, so to get together at the weekends, one of us had to travel to the other.  Sometimes there would be 'an event' to attend, more often than not we would just share whatever the other happened to be doing.  I remember one afternoon spent cleaning our cars together outside her home, and another when we spent some while sitting in her brother's home a few streets away, while his wife was upstairs giving birth to a brand-new nephew or niece.

On one Saturday, after working the morning at the factory where she was a supervisor, she drove to mine.  I don't know what we did for the afternoon, but we spent the evening in Norwich, after which I stayed at hers that night and then on Sunday afternoon she drove me out of town to the main road and I hitch-hiked home: something that just wouldn't be possible today.

I sometimes have that same 'Saturday lunchtime' experience when I'm going to a football match ... the supreme example of my 'second teenage'.  It's a perennial situation: the routine of the working week is finished (even if I'm no longer in paid employment), and the liberty of the weekend is about to begin.  It is a wonderful feeling of freedom.  Long may it last!

And a personal footnote - on Monday, I booked my seat at Biggleswade's first FA Cup tie of the new season, so tomorrow afternoon I shall be hoping that it will be the first of many this season!

Lock-down - the Epilogue

As I come to the end of my second (two-day) week back at (voluntary) work, it seems right to look back over the last five months.  Many, no doubt, will have found the isolation and restrictions tiresome and uncomfortable in one way or another.  For my part, once I'd sorted out a 'food-stream', it was quite nice to be able to spend seemingly limitless days working on family history.  That's not to say I didn't look over the horizon, but with concern, and with no feelings of desperation.  I quickly realised that the holiday I'd booked for June wouldn't be happening and, rather than take up the offer of a 12-month delay, I cancelled it completely and am free to do whatever takes my fancy next year.

On the genealogy front, one 'project' followed another.  In March, I was already working on a 'distant twig' in my father's tree and most of April was spent exploring the possibility of a link between my great-grandfather's family and that of my cousin's husband ... the same comparatively unusual surname in a small area providing an intriguing, but in the end negative, possibility.  Then, in May, I remembered that, some years ago, I had started writing a history of my mother's direct ancestors with a view to completing a biography.

This absorbed my attention for many weeks, as I formed my earlier work into chapters, set out pages and styles and re-wrote paragraph after paragraph, incorporating many stories and links I had discovered since my original efforts had been put together.  It was also at about this time that I enjoyed the diversion of preparing some graphs for a political group.  Did you realise that, over the last twenty years, 70.1% of votes cast have had no effect on the outcome of the elections? ... But that's a script for another stage.

By the time I'd got to the point of my grandparents' marriage and the establishment of what became my mother's early home, the general lock-down had come to an end.  It was a convenient point at which to park that project - but perhaps not for so many years this time - and to turn my attention to the resumption of 'normal' life.

Normal life for me, however, proved still to be some weeks away and, as a 'filler', I decided to dig into one of the spreadsheets in which I store the original findings of my research.  I knew that many entries in my record of Civil Registration Births and Deaths were lacking reference numbers, so I determined to begin correcting these omissions.  There were many reasons for these gaps; for one thing, the record itself pre-dated the decision to include the references.  At times I was working with such enthusiasm that I hadn't given myself time to complete all sequences before following up new discoveries ... and there are, too, many entries that were collected 'on the off-chance' that they might be connected one day.

This is a job that can be dropped at any point, so it was ideal to begin it with the view to probe gently any entry that seemed to ask a question as to its relevance.  So it was that, yesterday, I came across two possible entries for the death of the father-in-law of one of my dad's sisters.  Did he die in 1914 or 1941?  In establishing that the former was the case, I examined the first census entry following his birth in 1855 and hence have now begun the sequence of adding the man's parents and eight siblings to my database and, subsequently, to the family tree itself.

These days of triumphant success and achievement are not without a grain of sadness, however.  I was reminded this week that the coming weekend will mark the second anniversary of the death of my former manager's wife in a road traffic accident outside their home.  This tragic event occurred just as I was making arrangements to begin this present job so, unsurprisingly, that is where some of my thoughts will be at the moment.