Category Archives: Lancashire

Slagheaps

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Who would have thought slagheaps could be so interesting? From the train I’ve often noticed what I thought of (but without really thinking) as a broken wall – but it’s actually a line of slag heaps.

There was once an ironworks nearby, using limestone from local quarries to smelt iron ore from Furness, and the red-hot waste was taken along a single-track railway line and dumped in a long line beside the estuary. The works have been closed for a century and the slagheaps have become part of the landscape, protecting the low-lying land and providing a home to limestone-loving plants. I knew nothing about this, so it was all fascinating. I added even more to my mental maps by seeing the stock car track that I’d sometimes hear as I cycled that way. From the noise I’d imagined it was something on the lines of a speedway – but, no, it’s just an oversized Scalextric track.

Cherry Tree to Darwen

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I’d bought my ticket to Darwen and was on the railway platform before I realised that my Bakelite mobile hadn’t picked up the message about the group walk being called off because of train cancellations.

So I went for a walk anyway. I didn’t have a map but I did have my ipad, the OS app and perhaps enough charge to keep me on the right track. I decided the best route under the circumstances was to get off at Cherry Tree station and follow the Witton Weavers Way to Darwen station.

It looked fine on the app, but an enormous housing estate is under construction between Cherry Tree and the motorway, so I lost my path and followed another one that had been severely narrowed by the construction fence. Then a grim, muddy path sandwiched between the motorway and the kind of farm that is more like a dump.

And then all of a sudden I was enjoying myself. A stile into a little wood, a few streams and a little lane of old houses and all was right with the world. I walked up to Jubilee Tower on Darwen Hill, thinking about parallels between various jubilee towers and Bismarcktürme and wondering how much windier it could get. And then down into Darwen with thoughts of the heavy footprint of Victorian industry around this moorland – the chimneys, the factories, the reservoirs, the grand civic buildings, the ex-quarries turned into public parks, the terraces.

Reflecting on my day afterwards, I thought how appropriate it was that I’d followed the advice of that great Victorian sage, Mr Sleary, and made the “betht” of things.

The Fylde by Brompton

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The Brompton and I caught the train to Preston and headed northwards through the Fylde peninsula. A bit unlovely at first: I took a direct route from the station, through old terraces interspersed with garages and workshops, to the start/end of the Lancaster canal to take me out into the countryside. Not scenic countryside: it’s agricultural and flat (although if there is an incline, the Brompton always lets you know about it), but it felt good to be doing this.

I feared I had suffered a total map-reading breakdown until I realised that my OS map was too old to show the bypass that had come as a surprise. Then to Elswick, which was going for gold in the floral stakes, and Great Eccleston for a café.

Over the toll bridge (20p; I’m sure it was only 10p the last time I passed that way 20 years ago) and then beside the Wyre until I headed north to Knott End, where there was a bus leaving in 5 minutes. A little discourteous to blank Knott End like that, but there’s always another day.

Southport

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To Southport on a whim. Another one of those railway stations that was designed for more passengers and bigger trains than it receives today. (Skegness is my go-to station for that.) I’m not even sure what the front of railway station looks like, for there was an entrance to Marks and Spencer immediately beyond the ticket barrier and that was how I entered the town centre.

All towns look tatty these days; it’s particularly noticeable in places that were built for the prosperous in prosperous times. Their grand Victorian and Edwardian buildings require constant maintenance, and how can grand hotels survive in an age of Airbnb? I looked at the Venetian Bridge over the artificial lake . . . and read how popular it was in the years before the war with fancy dress and lights and gondolas. Such a disconnect with what I saw on this dull, damp day.

Fortunately The Atkinson – an all-purpose gallery, museum, library, theatre and café – has recently been refurbished and is great. I wandered round the gallery, noting the Laura Knight ballerinas that I’d seen at the Milton Keynes Gallery – and surely I’ve seen that Pygmalion somewhere? It was mostly traditional art – which was fine by me when the contemporary world was represented by a Tracey Emin neon scribble. There was so little to “unpack” there. Whereas “Lilith” . . . oh, my goodness!

There was also an exhibition of paintings by Southport-born Philip Connard – impressionist, WWI artist, decorator, teacher. His dates are 1875-1958, which brings me nicely to the book I am reading at the moment: “The Horse’s Mouth”. (Fourth or fifth attempt, although I sailed through “Herself Surprised” thirty-odd years ago.) The fictional Gulley Jimson is of a similar era – although it would be libellous to suggest that Connard resembled Jimson in any other way. Connard’s paintings were a bit “blah”, but he could capture light on flowers beautifully – and he was certainly versatile.

There was also a small exhibition of Connard’s contemporaries, including Sickert, Cadell and Fergusson. I added to my collection of Glyn Philipot paintings too, along with one by Frank Brangwyn which made me realise how sensitised I have become to current preoccupations. I am so used to being lectured by gallery labels on the out-of-date mindsets and values behind so many works of art that it was quite a shock to come across Brangwyn’s painting of a slave market without any commentary. And I realised that I did indeed find it shocking: I thought it needed some context for a younger viewer – which was perhaps a bit patronising of me. (I also rethought my reaction to an earlier Brangwyn painting of the same name, which was an exercise in self-reflection.) I wasn’t even sure if it was a real scene or something conjured up from an overwrought Victorian imagination – like “Lilith” again. (It did rather amuse me that most of Napier’s output on ArtUK are portraits of Victorian worthies – with the occasional nude offering a possible peek into what went on beneath those top hats and bushy beards.)

There was more information on the painting of the Village Belle, which at first glance looked like a pretty girl chatting with the village boys. Unsurprisingly it wasn’t that simple: there had been another painting showing the same girl, now clutching a child and leaving the village under a cloud. Another insight into the Victorian mindset – and/or a warning to pretty village girls everywhere.

Lighter-hearted images were also available, as there was a Bill Tidy exhibition in the gallery. This was my steal, along with “The Nosegay” and Hawksley.