BETWEEN RIVERS SUMMER 2022: ‘THE COOK’ & ‘THE LADY OF LLONG’ – ALAN HORNE

BETWEEN RIVERS is a quarterly series focused on the area bounded by the rivers Alyn, Dee and Gowy, on the border between England and Wales in Flintshire and Cheshire.

In this edition we feature a poem, Sarah Dolan’s ‘The Cook’ from 2015, and an archaeological piece from the Curious Clwyd website about the discovery of The Lady of Llong and her necklace.

‘THE COOK’

Sarah Dolan is an English poet and artist who lives now in Scotland,  but previously in Wales. She is a long-distance member of Crossborder Poets, who are based at Gladstone’s Library in Flintshire. ‘The Cook’ was written as part of a Crossborder Poets project at Erddig, a National Trust estate near Wrexham. The subject is one of a group of estate staff pictured in an old photograph, and the vivid images of the poem reach back to this long-dead person. You can see more of Sarah Dolan’s work at lemoninkproductions.home.blog and at www.facebook.com/SarahLouiseDolan

‘THE COOK’

from a knuckle of bone

time fashions a fist

one for the right and one for the left

a knot of carrot roots vein the surface

pumped with sap as sweet as honey

wrapped in a tissue paper skin

worn taut as the pastry lid on a pie

through fire and ice

her hands scar over

fine filaments of asbestos crow footing the skin

puffed pink with scrubbing

peeling and pounding

prepared with carbolic soap

the blood stained fingers

dust the table with freckles of flour

©Sarah Dolan 2015

‘THE LADY OF LLONG’

The Curious Clwyd website lives up to its name, with a wide selection of history, myth and other material about north-east Wales. It includes this article on the ‘Lady of Llong’ the remains of a woman found in a Bronze Age tumulus in Llong near Mold, together with a remarkable necklace which has now been re-strung. You can read the introduction below, with a link to the full article and photographs. Prehistoric remains are widespread in the Between Rivers areas, often in homely or industrialised settings. The spectacular grave goods are of course an important aspect of this account, but there is also a fine sense of the archaeological process, the area, and the life of its ancient inhabitants.

They were hoping for something astonishing and the omens were good. The accidental discovery of the Mold Gold Cape at Bryn yr Ellyllon in 1833, and the Caergwrle Bowl in 1823 suggested that the curious, somewhat unusual river valley tumuli along the Alyn were special, that within were treasures that would bring the peoples of the Early Bronze Age further into the light, that would confirm the power, prestige and wealth of this area of north-east Wales. Ellis Davies, writing some twenty years before the excavations noted the name of the field as, Dol yr Orsedd – Meadow of the Throne. Perhaps more interestingly, the tithe map of the area, notes the field as Dol roredd – possibly rendering into English as, Meadow of Abundance. Hopes were then high with the excavation of the burial mound at Llong, two miles to the south-west of Mold – and while no gold cape was found beneath the turves there, something rather impressive was unearthed, nevertheless.

The article includes a photograph of the grassy mound which is all that remains of the tumulus – and   a link to a Google map which takes you straight to the field where the remains are. You can see where the River Alyn runs through the field, which is bordered in part by a section of Alyn Lane. You can read the full, illustrated article here.

[Note: I became aware of ‘The Lady of Llong’ through Sam Hutchinson, who posted a response to the Spring 2022 edition of BETWEEN RIVERS].

©Alan Horne 2022