THE OLD SEAWATER BATHS, PARKGATE…

…is now a bosky car park – owned and maintained

by the borough council, and enhanced

by two charities: one for birds, the other

for history and the built environment.

Over the remains of the wall along

what was once the seaward side of the baths

is a belvedere across bird-teeming hectares

of reeds and runnels, and, beyond, the long

low mauve and lilac of Halkyn Mountain.

Though no Ur or Babylon, this small space

and its short history is a metaphor

for humankind’s enterprising and

egregious journey to date through the cosmos.

At the head of the Dee estuary were

salt marshes with a navigable channel

through to the international port of Chester.

The marshes were drained, filled and the land

‘reclaimed’ – as if the sea had stolen it –

to build ships, and make chains and anchors.

Silt began to block the channel so the river

was canalised – which has caused the east coast

of the estuary to silt and become

marshland. As the hectares of reeds became

multitudes making the sea a distant,

occasional thing the baths had to close.

They were most popular in the ‘Thirties,

despite the Depression and the long grey lines

of unemployed men in flat caps. Bathers

came via the railway – now gone –

or by car. There was parking for a thousand

Rileys, and Rovers, and Singers, the sun

reflecting from their bonnets in fields

next to the baths, and now pastoral again.

And, like any ancient civilisation,

on a ruined wall is a graffito:

in stencilled, aquamarine spray paint

and a ‘Thirties’ font – ‘The Old Seabaths’.