Jerusalem

Dark satanic mills
Their infamous glory done,
Now house birds and trees.


On holiday at last!

My Mum came from Chadderton in Lancashire and had always asked that her ashes be scattered on her mothers grave, so on our way to Edinburgh we stopped a night in Lancashire to fulfil her wish.

It took a while to find the grave, but the cemetery itself was a rather grand affair in a rather Victorian Gothic style, many large and impressive memorials cheek by jowl with the rows of red brick terraces bordering the cemetery. Eventually, having found the grave and returned Mum to her home soil, we went to have a look at my Grandparents old house and various other houses referenced in birth and marriage certificates.

I haven'd been up to this area since I was a child and although much was as I remembered it, I hadn't before taken in how the old cotton mills dominate the landscape. Most are now being utilised for other purposes, their grand brick exteriors and thrusting chimneys preserved. Some, like the one pictured, have fallen to ruin and have been colonised by scrub bushes and local birds.

There is debate about what Blake meant by "Englands dark satanic mills", but I can imagine that this must have been a sort of hell in its heyday. With the mill chimneys belching out smoke and the workers forever in their shadow. It was the second world war which enabled my Mum and many others to escape, joining the WRAF as soon as she possibly could.

It wasn't an easy day, but I am glad we came, and I want to return to explore more ....

I will post some more pictures somewhere and add a link when I get a chance ...

The "smoke" in this picture is actually a passing cloud!