BETWEEN RIVERS

BETWEEN RIVERS

BETWEEN RIVERS AUGUST 2026 – THE GARDENS AT ERDDIG: THREE POEMS BY DAVID SELZER – ALAN HORNE

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments9 min read588 views

For this quarter’s edition we use three poems by David Selzer as lenses through which to view the gardens at Erddig, the country estate a little south of Wrexham.

Erddig. Photo: National Trust.

 

If you follow David’s poems you become aware of the way in which he returns to certain locations which are examined in depth over time. While Erddig does not appear as frequently in the poems as Hoole or Beaumaris, it surfaces from time to time, and each time we get a new vantage point.

Erddig does not have the grandeur and history of its neighbour, Chirk Castle, or of some of the large Cheshire estates. There are no re-enactments of past battles, of sieges during the English Civil War that culminate with the re-staged summary execution of recalcitrant defenders. This is a gentleman’s house originating in the 1680s, with more building in the 1720s. It was owned by the Yorke family from 1733 until 1973 when it was given to the National Trust.

The National Trust may merit a brief explanation for non-UK readers: it is a public charity, set up in 1895 to preserve countryside and buildings for public access, which owns large tracts of open countryside. During the post-war period it received donations of many country houses and estates which were no longer economically viable, and Erddig is one of these. Entry to National Trust countryside is usually free, but to the houses it is often quite expensive; however, membership of the Trust makes it much cheaper, and so millions of people with a little spare cash join the Trust and regularly take their children to play in the gardens, dress up in period clothes in the houses, go sledging in winter or eat ice cream in summer. These are the ‘diverse families’ who appear at the end of the first poem below.

The Yorkes financed the house through trade, especially the exploitation of coal reserves which lay on the estate, with an ironic conclusion when the house began to subside into the workings underneath. As a building Erddig is substantial rather than spectacular, though with an unusual collection of 17th Century furniture. But it is marked out by two features which might elicit the return of any first-time visitor.

Firstly, not only did the Yorkes have an untypically close relationship with their servants, compose poems about them and have them painted; but care has been taken to preserve the servants’ quarters, an extensive range of estate buildings, and many objects used by workers in the house and on the estate. As a result, the visitor gets a detailed view of sorts into the lives of servants and estate workers in the 18th and 19th Centuries, lives often dismissed elsewhere with a few cliches at best.

Secondly, this house has remarkable gardens. Both productive and ornamental, they sit within a park laid out, at the height of the 18th Century enthusiasm for landscaping, to include a section of the Anglo-Saxon boundary called Wat’s Dyke and a Norman motte-and-bailey fort. The whole is set at the junction between the Cheshire plain to the east and the hills of North Wales to the West. All of David’s poems about Erddig make use in some way of these tremendous outside spaces. The three poems we look at here explore the potential of the gardens as a focus for writing about the history of Erddig and its people.

The first poem we shall look at is Erddig: Reflections on Patrimony, which was first published in this site in March 2013. Starting off in a little corner, the poem looks across the gardens to see the whole history of house and estate, grand and businesslike by turns, to end in a moment of calm before night falls.

 

Erddig: Reflections on Patrimony

From the corner summerhouse set in the wall,

the towering lime trees between the canals –

at the eastern end of the formal garden –

are still leafless, like jet lace work, like nets

disentangling, against the light blue skies

and the white, driven, cumulus clouds of March.

 

This was a medium-sized business. They made

their money the usual gentry way from rents

plus coal, were typically self-sufficient,

using and selling their managed timber,

were unusually innovative in

hydraulic projects, exploiting Afon Ddu,

the stream that flows through the estate, named black

for the coal dust gathering in its bed.

The pit they owned was a couple of miles

away, its slagheap, now greening, still

clearly visible from the west front.

Factories took the small tenant farmers, wars

the gardeners and nationalisation

literally undermined the house. The last squire –

Oxbridge, of course, then priest manqué, thespian,

war service, holiday tour courier

before inheriting –  bequeathed house, gardens,

park, his redundant patrimony,

to the National Trust’s service industry

of conservation, crafts and carrot cake.

 

In October when the apples and the pears,

in all their traditional varieties,

have been harvested and the grounds are full

of diverse families and music plays,

there is a sense of something shared – not a

common culture but a moment of ease

and tranquillity, an event of order

and fruition before the sweet dusk enfolds.

Erddig: lime avenue in winter. Photo: National Trust.

 

This first poem uses the trees in the garden as a frame within which to view the house and its history. The second poem, The Old Lime Trees at Erddig, shifts the attention onto an aspect of the frame, the avenues of lime trees, which turn out to have a significance of their own. Both poems close with the close of day: in the previous poem this gives us a moment of human commonalty but, in the present one, something mythical emerges.

 

The Old Lime Trees at Erddig

for Glyn Smith

When the meticulously landscaped gardens

were left to hazard, during the estate’s

long, reclusive neglect, some of the trees

in the two avenues either side

of the wide ornamental canal – whose

perspective frames the classical proportions

of the house – began to grow together

like errant, statuesque teeth. A couple

have been extracted to save the rest.

 

… Limes are almost indestructible – felled trunks

will sprout. Honey bees favour them. For aeons

they have been planted in rows for blessings,

and for battles – their bark used for basketry,

and rope. Their flowers mend the heart, and the soul…

 

Perched roisterously on topmost branches,

here, in autumn, are parliaments of rooks.

Against the sky, in winter, the trees

are wild filigree, black fretwork – in spring

flickering shade in the afternoon’s sun.

On summer evenings, after the park has closed,

dryads waltz amongst them.

 

The poem was first published on David’s site in July 2018, and came with a long explanatory note, reproduced below in full. It includes an eloquent response to the poem from the then head gardener to whom the poem is dedicated. He speaks not only of the generations of people who have worked with the limes but also of the work which, in a sense, the limes have done themselves.

The poem was inspired by the trees, their setting [https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/erddig] – and by an e-conversation with Glyn Smith,  the current Head Gardener at Erddig. I sent Glyn the final draft of the poem for comment and asked if I might dedicate it to him.

He wrote:

I really appreciate your poem and thoughts to dedicate it to me. The only comment I might make is this one about time. I’m not the first head gardener, or gardener for all that, to work here and I’ll not be the last. Someone had the vision and had to plant the lime avenues, amongst other trees and flowers. Over the years there have been many others who contributed their sweat to the garden. On those lines I would like to modestly just be one of those dedicated artisan gardeners who made, developed and curate this garden. The limes stand as a testament to those generations of gardeners who over the years were watched over by them, by the limes themselves. In a way we were the children and the limes the parents and teachers in this school. What learning they must have witnessed and how proud they must be of our achievements.

I have been steadily looking at lime avenues on and off over the last few years and it would appear that our lime avenues are, historically, much more important than ever previously thought. Before c.1700 the only limes in this country were small leaved limes, Tilia cordata. A native species and less suited to the lime avenues we see. On the continent there were hybrid limes between T.cordata and T. platyphyllos and it was this hybrid lime that became so popular for avenues. Now called Tilia x europea it became particularly popular in northern Europe and there are now several slightly different forms of it that are broader, taller, or less or more covered in basal sucker shoots. Just walk in any estate where there are limes and you will quickly spot how densely some are shooted amongst their lower canopy branches.

As gardening spread, particularly the influence of French and Dutch gardening on British horticulture, so we saw introductions of this hybrid lime. It probably achieved its greatest influence around the end of the 17th Century and the great Dutch influence of the Glorious Revolution and William III. One of the more recent forms of lime to be introduced and possibly the most common, is Tilia x Europa ‘Pallida’ and our limes are of this. Perhaps it was best adapted to the wetter Dutch lands, and as such prospered best.

We usually see lime avenues planted across estates. It seems exceptionally rare that shorter avenues of trees were planted within walled gardens. That really makes our lime avenues virtually unique and they should be kept for as long as possible.

Erddig: lime avenue in spring. Photo: National Trust.

I have watched the gardeners tending the limes from tall ladders which curve outwards at the base to give a stable footing. They give an almost balletic air to the work.

The final poem begins at the limes, and evokes the atmosphere of the garden at the end of summer – with the bees, the blossoms, a mole – before one of those switches which are a feature of David’s poems, which takes us through time and space to the ancient Caucasus before returning at length with its harvest, the apples. Apples at Erddig: a Glimpse of Avalon. was first published on this site in 2019. This poem too ends with a glimpse of something transcendent, but things have changed, and this time the hint of possibility comes in the morning.

 

Apples at Erddig: a Glimpse of Avalon

Beneath the rows of limes edging to yellow,

the air, tangible with precipitation,

appears almost emerald, a sea green.

 

In the border beside the high wall, which marks

the tended gardens from the unkempt woods,

there are blooms still. A bee gathers nectar –

and the black, turned earth ripples slowly

as a mole forages in the underworld.

 

***

 

Beyond ruined Troy, and north of Paradise

abandoned, from where our words began,

far over the plains and ranges of Europe,

on steep mountain slopes in haphazard orchards

are wild fruit the colour of blood and grass,

which travellers on the Silk Road – merchants,

conquerors, slaves – might once have eaten.

 

***

 

In the wooden barn where the tools are cleaned,

sharpened, hung, this year’s apples are displayed

in small pyramids: Lord Lambourne Dessert,

Gloria Mundi, Keswick Codlin,

Grenadier, Crimson Queening, Wise…

 

When the heavy doors are rolled back each morning

the air is overwhelmed with that keen, sweet scent –

as if Ynys Afallach, Isle of Apples,

Avalon were just below the horizon,

and landfall imminent.

 

I had not previously grasped the link between Avalon and afal, the Welsh word for apple. The poem leaves us here, perhaps not quite sure whether we are being shown the hope of a new morning or something about our mortality. What sort of landfall will it be?

Fiesta apples. Photo: Heather Kirby

 

BETWEEN RIVERS is a quarterly series edited by Alan Horne. It is focused on the area bounded by the rivers Alun, Dee and Gowy, on the border between England and Wales in Flintshire, Denbighshire and Cheshire. You can read about the background to Between Rivers in the Introduction

 

 

 

 

 

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BETWEEN RIVERS

BETWEEN RIVERS MAY 2026: THOMAS PENNANT’S ‘TOURS IN WALES’ – ALAN HORNE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments14 min read746 views

BETWEEN RIVERS is a quarterly series edited by Alan Horne. It is focused on the area bounded by the rivers Alun, Dee and Gowy, on the border between England and Wales in Flintshire, Denbighshire and Cheshire. You can read about the background to Between Rivers in the Introduction.

**************************************************************************************

 

If you were to go north-west from Holywell in Flintshire, you would come to the small village of Whitford: a pub, a church, a school and a few houses. Pretty walks lead eastwards towards the Dee estuary, and here are the remains of an ancient estate. First of all is Downing Ucha’, once the estate dower house, later a children’s home and now a derelict but still substantial building with an online presence among those who like to explore such places. Next come the former estate cottages, now attractive rural homes. Finally, there are a few ruins – most of what survives is underground – of Downing Hall, built in 1627, badly damaged by fire in 1922, eventually but not very thoroughly demolished in 1953: the home of Thomas Pennant (1726-1798), naturalist and travel writer.

Pennant is not a household name today, but if we had to choose the most influential cultural figure from the Between Rivers area his claim would be serious. He was a well-known Enlightenment scholar who was prominent in two separate fields. He took the usual route for young gentlemen of the day, via Oxford University and the Grand Tour, making copious notes of animals, plants, landforms, minerals and other natural phenomena he encountered, keeping detailed travel diaries, and contacting other natural historians including Linnaeus, the inventor of the system of botanical classification still in use. But it was not until he was in his mid-30s that he made the defining move to begin work on a publication, eventually issuing British Zoology in 1766. This was ultimately a tremendously successful work: its concern for accuracy, its systematic approach and the inclusion of many detailed illustrations set a new standard for books on natural history in English, and Pennant followed it up with others, Indian Zoology, Synopsis of Quadrupeds, Genera of Birds and Arctic Zoology, which made him a prominent figure in Enlightenment science.

At the same time, Pennant began working up his travel diaries into publications. He made two trips to Scotland and published first A Tour In Scotland, 1769, and then A Tour In Scotland And Voyage To The Hebrides 1772, works which would justify an edition of Between Rivers to themselves. They were very successful, and he followed them up with several accounts of travel in various regions of England and, perhaps the best received of all, with his Tours In Wales.

Tours In Wales was published between 1778 and 1783, in three volumes ostensibly detailing three different tours, although in reality Pennant incorporated material from his many travels in Wales over the years into his accounts of journeys made specifically for this publication. The first tour stayed close to Pennant’s home, describing a trip through Flintshire and Denbighshire with a notable diversion into Chester. The second and most famous tour took him into Eryri to the literal high point of his enterprise, the ascent of Y Wyddfa, before continuing to Anglesey and home along the north coast. That journey is sometimes published separately as The Journey To Snowdon and is our focus today. The third tour runs through parts of Montgomeryshire close to the English border before moving into England, to Shrewsbury, and ends with an excursion to the iron age fort at Caer Caradoc in the Shropshire hills. The three volumes end with a hundred pages of Appendices on every conceivable topic, from Owain Glyn Dwr to potato exports, via notes on the Beaumaris Shark.

As regards the title of the book, Tours In Wales, the operative word is In. Pennant does not pretend to offer a comprehensive tour of Wales, and does not penetrate into South Wales at all. Instead, he sticks to areas with which he is well acquainted, or where he has good local contacts. This seems to have given the book an enormous advantage with the public because of its detail and accuracy. He took with him John Lloyd, vicar of Caerwys, an expert on Welsh antiquities and a fluent Welsh speaker: although Pennant was very proud of his Welsh ancestry, his grasp of the Welsh language was poor. With him also went Moses Griffith, a gifted artist and draughtsman whom Pennant employed to make illustrations for the forthcoming book. The contribution of these men greatly increased the value of Pennant’s work in a market full of superficial and ill-informed travel literature on Wales mainly written by English gentlemen with no knowledge of Welsh. The fruit of Griffith’s work in particular can be seen in the ‘extra-illustrated’ edition prepared for Pennant’s own library, and now held by the National Library of Wales: this contains all sorts of visual art, with landscape watercolours, paintings on mythical subjects, scientific drawings of plants and animals, detailed drawings of antiquities, ‘portraits’ of the houses of great gentlemen, coats of arms and much else, really a rather breathtaking achievement. Illustrations to the present feature are taken from that edition.

 

Pennant – Tours in Wales. National Library of Wales/Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru.

 

Pennant took a most indirect route to Snowdon, traveling from his home along the Vale of Clwyd to join the River Dee at Corwen, going south to Dolgellau and then northwards up the coast via Barmouth and Harlech before taking a route which seems unlikely now, but less so then, across the moors via Ysbyty Ifan and Pentrefoelas, to finally approach Snowdon from the east, passing through Capel Curig into Dyffryn Mymbyr. Today this valley might seem a blasted wilderness. Pennant records much farming activity.

The bottom is meadowy; at this time enlivened with the busy work of hay harvest, and filled with drags, horses, and even men and women, loaden with hay.

He describes the lifestyle of the farmers.

This mountainous tract scarcely yields any corn. Its produce is cattle and sheep, which, during summer, keep very high in the mountains, followed by their owners, with their families, who reside in that season in Hafodtai, or summer dairy-houses, as the farmers of the Swiss alps do in their Sennes. These houses consist of a long low room, with a hole at one end, to let out the smoke from the fire, which is made beneath. Their furniture is very simple: stones are the substitutes of stools; and the beds are of hay, ranged along the sides. They manufacture their own cloaths… During summer, the men pass their time either in harvest work, or in tending their herds: the women in milking, or making butter and cheese. For their own use, they milk both ewes and goats, and make cheese of the milk, for their own consumption. The diet of these mountaineers is very plain, consisting of butter, cheese and oat-bread, or Bara Ceirch: they drink whey: not but that they have a reserve of a few bottles of a very strong beer, by way of cordial, in illness. They are people of good understanding, wary and circumspect; usually tall, thin, and of strong constitutions, from their way of living. Towards winter, they descent to their Hen Dref, or old dwelling, where they lead, during that season, a vacant life.

In this tour, Pennant’s intentions are not primarily scientific, but he is still keen to make observations of plants and animals, and Griffith provides many illustrations.

As we are on the subject of grasses, it may be pleasing to observe, how wonderfully some of them change their appearance as they ascend the higher hills; the turfy hair grass, Aira caespitosa, sheep’s fescue grass, Festuca orina, Alpine meadow grass, Poa Alpina, and some others, which in the low countries, where they enjoy the due influence of the sun, and length of summer, to ripen their seeds, are propagated in the usual manner of grasses; but as they reach a more exalted situation, where they want a continuance of summer, and the necessary power of the sun, to perfect their seeds, they become viviparous; that is, the rudiment of the germen vegetates, and shoots into blade in the cup, from whence falling, it readily takes root, and grows; a kind and providential dispensation, for the advantage of those colder climates, which are less favourable to vegetation!

 

Pennant – Tours in Wales. National Library of Wales/Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru.

 

The party sent their servants on with the horses to Llanberis, and climbed the Glyders on foot. Like many a traveller after him, Pennant was absorbed by the rock formations on the summits of these hills. Here he is on Glyder Fawr: and while Pennant’s writing generally chooses clarity over poetry, now he gives us both.

The prospect from this mountain is very noble. Snowdon is seen to great advantage; the deep vale of Llanberis and its lakes, Nant Ffrancon, and a variety of other singular views. The plain which forms the top is strangely covered with loose stones like the beach of the sea; in many places crossing one another in all directions, and entirely naked. Numerous groups of stones are placed almost erect, sharp-pointed, and in sheafs: all are weather-beaten, time-eaten, and honey-combed, and of a venerable grey-color. The elements seem to have warred against this mountain: rains have washed, lightnings torn, the very earth deserted it, and the winds made it the constant object of their fury. The shepherds make it the residence of storms, and style a part of it Carnedd y Gwynt, or The Eminence of Tempests.

 

Pennant – Tours in Wales. National Library of Wales/Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru.

 

The party moved on to Llanberis. While staying there, Pennant rode around the two lakes, Llyn Peris and Llyn Padarn. One feature of Pennant’s travel writing is a love of recording the local gentry and their houses. Sometimes this may be a kind of recompense for hospitality offered; sometimes perhaps a strategy to motivate those so recorded to buy his books. He plainly likes to celebrate members of his class of wealthy Enlightenment gentlemen. But he also enthuses about those he sees as the ancient Welsh gentry, whose lives were perhaps not much changed from those of their forbears two or three centuries previously. His visit to Llyn Padarn occasions one such portrait.

Near this end of the lake lives a celebrated personage, whom I was disappointed in not finding at home. This is Margaret uch Evan, of Penllyn, the last specimen of the strength and spirit of the antient British fair. She is at this time of about ninety years of age. This extraordinary female was the greatest hunter, shooter, and fisher, of her time. She kept a dozen at least of dogs, terriers, greyhounds, and spaniels, all excellent in their kinds. She killed more foxes in one year, than all the confederate hunts do in ten: rowed stoutly, and was queen of the lake: fiddled excellently, and knew all our old music: did not neglect the mechanic arts, for she was a very good joiner: and, at the age of seventy, was the best wrestler in the country, and few young men dared to try a fall with her. Some years ago, she had a maid of congenial qualities; but death, that mighty hunter, at last earthed that faithful companion of hers. Margaret was also a blacksmith, shoemaker, boatbuilder and maker of harps. She shoed her own horses, made her own shoes, and built her own boats, while she was under contract to convey the copper ore down the lakes. I must not forget, that all the neighbouring bards paid their addresses to Margaret, and celebrated her exploits in pure British verse. At length she gave her hand to the most effeminate of her admirers, as if predetermined to maintain the superiority which nature had bestowed on her.

At last Pennant came to Snowdon and the ascent of Y Wyddfa. Led by a local guide the party followed a route which might today seem very roundabout, riding due south from Llanberis until they met what is now the Snowdon Ranger path, which they ascended on foot, leaving their horses behind.

Days of fine weather on Snowdon are at a premium, and Pennant pauses his narrative to recall one such from an earlier journey to the summit.

The view from this exalted situation is unbounded. In a former tour, I saw from it the county of Chester, the high hills of Yorkshire, part of the north of England, Scotland , and Ireland: a plain view of the Isle of Man; and that of Anglesey lay extended like a map beneath me, with every rill visible. I took much pains to see this prospect to advantage: sat up at a farm on the west till about twelve, and walked up the whole way. The night was remarkably fine and starry: towards morn, the stars faded away, and left a short interval of darkness, which was soon dispersed by the dawn of day. The body of the sun appeared most distinct, with the rotundity of the moon, before it rose high enough to render its beam too brilliant for our sight. The sea which bounded the western part was gilt by its rays, first in slender streaks, at length glowing with redness. The prospect was disclosed like the gradual drawing up of a curtain in a theatre. We saw more and more, till the heat became so powerful, as to attract the mists from the various lakes, which in a slight degree obscured the prospect. The shadow of the mountain was flung many miles, and shewed its bicapitated form; the Wyddfa making one, Crib y Distill the other head. I counted this time between twenty and thirty lakes, either in this county or Meirioneddshire. The day proved so excessively hot, that my journey cost me the skin of the lower part of my face, before I reached the resting-place, after the fatigue of the morning.

On the present journey the weather proved more typical.

On this day, the sky was obscured very soon after I got up. A vast mist enveloped the whole circuit of the mountain. The prospect down was horrible. It gave an idea of numbers of abysses, concealed by a thick smoke, furiously circulating around us. Very often a gust of wind formed an opening in the clouds, which gave a fine and distinct vista of lake and valley. Sometimes they opened only in one place; at others, in many at once, exhibiting a most strange and perplexing sight of water, fields, rocks, or chasms, in fifty different places. They then closed at once, and left us involved in darkness; in a small time they would separate again, and fly in wild eddies round the middle of the mountains, and expose, in parts, both tops and bases clear to our view. We descended from this various scene with great reluctance; but before we reached our horses, a thunder-storm overtook us. Its rolling among the mountains was inexpressibly awful: the rain uncommonly heavy. We remounted our horses, and gained the bottom with great hazard. The little rills, which on our ascent trickled along the gullies on the sides of the mountain, were now swelled into torrents; and we and our steeds passed with the utmost risque of being swept away by these sudden waters. At length we arrived safe, yet sufficiently wet and weary, to our former quarters.

After resting, the party returned up Nant Peris, and passed through Nant Gwynant to Beddgelert, spending a few nights there while Pennant explored the locality. They then passed southwards to Pont Aberglaslyn. Pennant gives us the painting below, which seems to show a druidic figure praying at a cromlech in the locality.

 

Pennant – Tours in Wales. National Library of Wales/Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru.

 

At this point, heading for Criccieth and its castle, they had to pass around the edge of the Traeth Mawr, the treacherous tidal marsh, drained in the nineteenth century, which in Pennant’s time extended to the coast. Pennant records a correspondence of elaborate politeness about a proposed drainage scheme. Sir John Wynn, a local gentleman, writes to his cousin, Sir Hugh Myddleton, who has experience of reclaiming land from the sea in the Isle of Wight. Sir John declares that his skill is little, and his experience none at all in such matters, yet ever he has had a desire to further the profit of his country, and is ‘content to adventure a brace of hundred pounds to joyne with you in the worke’. Sir Hugh replies that it would need not hundreds but thousands, £200 being his usual weekly charge. ‘Noble sir, my desire is great to see you, which should draw me a farr longer waie; yet such are my occasions at this tyme here, for the settlinge of this great worke, that I can hardlie be spared one howre in a daie’. Pennant includes an etching of Traeth Mawr in its flooded state with boats sailing on what is dry land today.

 

Pennant – Tours in Wales. National Library of Wales/Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru.

 

The party visited the Llyn peninsula, spent some time in Caernarfon, and then crossed to Anglesey. Pennant has much to tell of the druids, some of it rather lurid including sacrifices in a ‘Wicker Colossus’ as in the 70s horror movie. There is a map of sacred groves at Tre’r Dryw, shown below. Even Pennant admits that some of this history is conjectural.

 

Pennant – Tours in Wales. National Library of Wales/Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru.

 

As he travelled around Anglesey he came to the mineral mining area around Parys Mountain, and this yields a very different species of writing. After enumerating various phases of exploration, amounts of copper ore extracted, ways of burning the ore or otherwise getting the copper from it, and the worth of the companies involved, Pennant speaks of the mode of work.

The ore is not got in the common manner of mining, but is cut out of the bed in the same manner as stone is out of a quarry. A hollow is now formed in the solid ore open to the day, and extends about an hundred yards in length, about forty yards in breadth, and twenty-four yards in depth. The ends are at present undermined, but supported by vast pillars and magnificent arches, all metallic; and these caverns meander far under ground. These will soon disappear, and thousands of tons of ore be gotten from the columns and roofs. The sides of this vast hollow are mostly perpendicular, and access to the bottom is only to be had by small steps cut in the ore; and the curious visitor must trust to them and a rope, till he reaches some ladders, which will conduct him the rest of the descent. On the edges of the chasms are wooden platforms, which project far; on them are windlasses, by which the workmen are lowered to transact their business on the face of the precipice. There suspended, they work in mid-air, pick a small space for a footing, cut out the ore in vast masses, and tumble it to the bottom with great noise. In such situations they form caverns, and there appear safely lodged, till the rope is lowered to convey them up again.

Another aspect of Pennant’s visit to Anglesey is that he turns his attention to sea creatures, with spectacular illustrations of crabs and some beautiful coloured illustrations of fish.

 

Pennant – Tours in Wales. National Library of Wales/Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru.

 

At last Pennant turned for home, travelling east along the coast of North Wales, taking in the formerly perilous road around Penmaenmawr and exploring Conwy and Llandudno on the way.

If you would like to read more, Pennant’s Tours in Wales are readily available in facsimile reprints. I found those available from Forgotten Books to be well reproduced, and they are based on an edition first produced in 1883 which uses the modern ‘s’ rather than the original long ‘f’ of  Pennant’s day, which makes for ease of reading. The complete extra-illustrated edition is available here from the National Library of Wales and is well worth a look. A recent, accessible study of Pennant’s life and work is Thomas Pennant (1726-1798): Natural Historian and Curious Traveller by Chris Park (2020); I have found Park’s book to be of great help in getting to grips with Pennant’s multifarious interests and writings.

 

Pennant – Tours in Wales. National Library of Wales/Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru.

 

 

 

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BETWEEN RIVERS

BETWEEN RIVERS FEBRUARY 2026: THE WORK OF LINDEN SWEENEY – ALAN HORNE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments6 min read975 views

Welcome to this edition of Between Rivers, in which we feature the poems and photographs of Linden Sweeney.

Between Rivers has looked in previous editions at work emanating from writing groups on the Welsh side of our area, and so I decided to even things up and see what could be found on the English side. I started searching for writing groups on the Wirral. They seemed strangely fugitive, despite an obviously active writing scene with the Wirral Festival of Firsts and Wirral Poetry Festival. Then I located an anthology called Weaving Words, produced by Neston Writers in 2025 and which included, along with other interesting work, poems by Linden Sweeney.

Linden Sweeney was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, and has written poetry throughout her life. She came to Liverpool to study English as an undergraduate, moved to the Wirral, was a school teacher for some years, and then became an academic librarian, working at Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Chester. She lives in Little Neston.

She is a keen photographer of birds, and I have interspersed some of her photography among the poems below. Watching birds is an emblematic activity around the Dee estuary where she lives, though some of the birds, like the poems, range further afield.

 

MEADOW PIPIT, RHÔS-ON-SEA photo: Linden Sweeney

 

The first two poems struck me because they are especially pure observational poems. They press no argument: one is about birds and the other about noises. They defy being paraphrased. They are what they are. Let us start with the birds. In Still sits the snipe, Sweeney brings what she has observed in the estuary into a panoptic lyric with the bird of the title as the all-seeing eye.

 

Still sits the snipe

Late afternoon on the marsh,

the snipe sits watchful, bulrush hidden,

as a dozen bar-tailed godwits drill the grass;

their grey heads rocking like derricks.

A pair of swans, as white clouds, settle on the scrape

where a wigeon dabbles, in his war-paint,

and the tufted duck dives and bobs

with golden eyes that stare.

Two egrets sail up, white kites against the hill,

with their long legs trailing like strings.

 

A thousand silver quills of grass flutter in the breeze,

their feathered heads all pointing north.

A wired line of fence posts cuts across the land

and a harsh wind corrugates the water.

The Wrexham train clatters across the horizon:

above, a factory belches steam into the clouds,

below, are the watching and the watched.

 

A marsh harrier circles, and a flight of lapwings

rises; swirling W’s against the sky.

A silent heron is a statue in the marsh,

waiting and watching. His arrow head poised.

His orange dagger of a beak, drawn to kill.

Stone still, as his feathers ruffle in the wind

and still sits the snipe; silent and watchful.

 

SNIPE photo: Linden Sweeney

 

The railway line which is such a feature of the English side of the Dee also runs through House sounds, one of the poems from Weaving Words. Sweeney remarks that writing poetry was rather displaced by academic writing at some points in her career, but that on retirement she took a course in writing poetry with the University of Oxford and then set up Neston Writers about six years ago: Weaving Words is one result. Here again, Sweeney gathers up many details into a meditative account, but this time organised through the slow movement of the day, with the poet herself putting in an appearance at some points but not others, declining to adopt the all-seeing eye of the previous poem.

 

House sounds

At night, the wind soughs in the pines

as the hard rain falls on the window

and the long Wrexham train rattles by.

 

At first light, a blackbird sings

though the rain still falls apace

and the gulls have flown in from the sea.

 

By day, the motors whirr

of washers and dryers and mowers

and, still, there is wind in the trees.

 

Above me, the magpies dance,

heavy-footed, on the roof

and skeins of geese honk past.

 

Inside, there is the click of a kettle

and the tink of my ring on a cup

and the sounding of words in my head.

 

At evening tide, when quiet falls,

there is the soft settling of a log

and silence, sometimes.

 

CORMORANT, LEIGHTON MOSS RSPB photo: Linden Sweeney

 

Next, also from Sweeney’s poems in Weaving Words, is The decorated city. This moves away from the estuary to give us a completely urban poem. The street names identify the city as Liverpool. We can say that this is a poem about homelessness, but that does not do justice to the power of its grotesque imagery.

 

The decorated city

Blood red lanterns

swing like bodies

from the gibbets

of skeletal trees;

the hanging remains

of Chinese New Year

abandoned,

redundant,

unwanted.

 

The gypsy trumpeter plays

‘On the street where you live’

while the boy on the windy corner,

bearded, dirty and drugged

sleeps on a cardboard pillow,

at the level of passing dogs.

 

Bare legged girls with dirty knees

smoke cigarette butts

on Colquitt Street and Wood Street,

on Slater Street

and Seel.

 

The city is awash;

its doorways brimful,

the basement areas inundated,

overflowing into the gutters.

This is not a sudden high tide,

nor an unforeseen deluge.

It is a seepage of the unsettled,

a discharge of the disinherited,

an excretion of the exiled,

the drip, drip, drip of the houseless,

the abandoned,

the redundant,

the unwanted

decoration of the city.

 

HERON, BURTON MERE RSPB photo: Linden Sweeney

 

Our final poem, also from Weaving Words, is Remainder of the day. Sweeney tells us that this is based on Shakespeares’s Sonnet 73 (‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold/When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang…’) with a nod to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, his novel in which the aging butler is unable to realise a long-denied love and instead, with a kind of strangled heroism, re-dedicates himself to his role as a gentleman’s gentleman. I noticed that Ishiguro was 35 when he wrote this classic novel about aging, and that put me in mind of an elderly Lancastrian who was an important mentor for me early in my own career in the National Health Service, one of those people – there are still quite a few of them in the NHS – who had retired but not gone away. He mentioned that as a young man he had written a poem about his own old age: “But it’s nothing like that…” he said. Sweeney gives us her own view.

 

Remainder of the day

That time of year you may just see in me

when work is done, the harvest gathered in.

When wrinkled leaves are hanging from the trees

and winter’s preparations now begin.

You think you see in me the evening shadows

of night’s dark clouds that will obscure the sun,

the summer warmth now with cold opposed

and only night’s dark promise yet to come.

But you are wrong to see me in this light.

The remainder of my day is still to come

with still time to accomplish all I might.

My time’s my own, a new life’s just begun.

You may see me now as old and grey.

You are wrong: this is the best part of the day.

 

SNOW BUNTING, HOYLAKE BEACH photo: Linden Sweeney

 

I hope you have enjoyed this edition of Between Rivers. You can find more of Linden Sweeney’s poems in Weaving Words: An anthology of short stories and poetry by Neston Writers, edited by Maureen Allsop et al and published by Pumpkin Press. And you can see more of her photography on her Instagram feed.

***

BETWEEN RIVERS is a quarterly series edited by Alan Horne. It is focused on the area bounded by the rivers Alun, Dee and Gowy, on the border between England and Wales in Flintshire, Denbighshire and Cheshire. You can read about the background to Between Rivers in the Introduction

 

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BETWEEN RIVERS

BETWEEN RIVERS: NOVEMBER 2025 THE WORK OF JOHN AND MARILYN DAVIES – ALAN HORNE

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments14 min read1.4K views

Welcome to another edition of Between Rivers. In this edition we look at the work of John and Marilyn Davies: poetry and a variety of visual art, especially carvings of wild birds.

‘Little Stint’ by John and Marilyn Davies

 

When I arrived in Prestatyn to meet John and Marilyn Davies it was September, just as in John’s poem Things To Do When The Town’s Closed. Rain and the start of the school term had chased most visitors away, and it was easy to get into the mood of the poem. Like the others quoted here it was first published in his collection Flight Patterns (Seren 1991).

Things To Do When The Town’s Closed

Our choir dressed as guerrilla butlers
has driven the holidaymakers back.
It is September. Seagulls
are critics prying over spilt ink.
The town’s scraped off its silver lining
to get at the cloud instead.

In search of a bit of life,
Ron has started taxidermy, juggling
bags of skin like a homicidal vet.
They grin from furry cells,
near-squirrels.
You can’t keep a good man up.

And Mr. S has emptied his firm’s safe.
Self-bloodied, he faked
assault then described the villain
so well for the police photofit,
like a shout his own face rang out.

On the library wall: ANACKY.
Draughts from the Mersey Tunnel quicken
across the Dee. Wait,
slow down
at the station.
You can find yourself elsewhere.

Balloons were released in August
from Frith Beach for Holiday Fun
with addressed labels. W’s returned
all the way from Builth. His prize?
First cash, soon a court appearance:
winds blew north that day so how come W’s balloon
went south? Well, live in town
and wind is just a ghost. The label went
via his aunt in Builth, both ways by post.

Yesterday, high on a ladder with acres
to paint, Mr. S was whistling ‘Born Free’.
And although the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Society
now meets all week, although the slipper women
at the launderette seem lively
and waves roll up in fits watching dunes
fail to outwit caravans,
it’s a bad time.

We are alone together.
Even our jeweller’s stopped twinkling.
You can’t help but feel
someone out there might be planning chainsaw
psychiatry or florist pressing.

 

Arriving at the Davies’ home I felt some slight trepidation, having contacted them out of the blue and invited myself round, but they were most welcoming. Marilyn, a small, bright woman, came out to conduct me in, and then here was John, slower, but very thoughtful, and remarkably open in our discussions. I straight away encountered some of Marilyn’s stained glass in the windows. As we ate lunch and discussed some of John’s poems, I started to realise that the house is full of art objects which the couple have created.

Stained glass by Marilyn Davies

 

I first encountered John’s poems when I was looking for material for Between Rivers, and David Selzer pointed me to A Clwyd Anthology, edited by Dewi Roberts and published by Seren Books. Not all the items in the book were on topic, but one that I knew we had to use was Downing, a Davies poem set in Whitford, near Holywell in Flintshire, on the former estate of Thomas Pennant, the eighteenth-century  traveller and natural historian.

Downing

Seventy, rasping, he lives in the saddlery

of the estate now run out of paths.

He keeps the tv. busy. The past? The brisk squire

who toured the eighteenth century and met Voltaire?

Not interested. But around pleasure garden, summer house,

Bob Weston cleared gullies for parched ironworks,

lopped trees in the dingles, was tolerant it seems

of poachers. The house, burned down as an insurance job,

is a DIY kit. Its drive can’t find the gateway.

Tunnels though and waterways built by miners

are intact, theirs or land’s revenge on stateliness

where ponds sag under weed.

 

Below on Mostyn sands, cockles have been found

by diggers in balaclavas linked to the underground economy.

Jobs, they’re rare as oysters. Unmarked trucks

sidled, and from dunes, they say, the DHSS took photos.

Bob Weston’s watched – Dunkirk again, another

scramble, grab what you can then home, the brass

will know the score. Except the brass aren’t on your side.

 

Now that it’s wanted for caravans, what no one could visit

is lamented. People will flood in, there’ll be petitions.

But he’ll not be collecting who likes that brandnew

pub at the junction and leaves his dog at home.

 

I found a copy of his Flight Patterns and was much taken with the vivid characterizations, humour and the sharply cut phrasing. This led me to other volumes of his poetry: The Visitor’s Book (Poetry Wales Press, 1985), Dirt Roads (Seren 1997), and North by South: New and Selected Poems (Seren 2002) which also includes poems from his earlier books, At the Edge of Town (Gomer, 1981) and The Silence in the Park (Poetry Wales Press, 1982). There was also a book of short stories by Welsh authors which he had edited, The Green Bridge (Seren 1988), which introduced me to several unfamiliar voices, notably Caradoc Evans, who unfortunately can in no way be construed as a Between Rivers author. Some of the poems were about belonging or not belonging in small towns on the coast of North Wales or around the Dee estuary. Before our meeting John had already sent me typed notes he had made in 1986 preparatory to the poem Downing. What really struck me was a handwritten marginal note, about the cargoes shipped in via Mostyn Dock on the Dee: bulk phosphate, woodpulp, sulphur, potash. These were not drafts of poetic lines so much as a gathering of ideas and information: to get the poem going, as John said to me. Now over lunch he produced yellowed sheets of typed and annotated historical material about the Flintshire town of Holywell, it’s mythical origins and industrial heyday, out of which he had made the sonnet sequence Burying the Waste. At the time, he said, he thought his poems had to rhyme, and the rhymes helped him to get to the images. Here is the sequence.

 

Burying The Waste

(Holywell)

Trapped by Caradoc, favourite of a king,

even Winifred could not deny his sword.

Where hair leaked blood, a well of healing

sprang, then the stream hurrying its hoard

of news woke up the valley. Winifred

drew pilgrims limping, eager to be whole.

He signed up slaves of cotton, copper, lead.

Her stream, severed by water wheels, rolled

machines. When Winifred spread her arms wide

to make from shadows trees, he cut them down

but she thinned the Dee channel. Its quayside

became silent, the valley a ghost town.

Now buildings sprawl headless. All around,

sprung green, half-buried: still misshapen ground.

*

Not just the Church preferred its blessings high.

This cotton mill snatched six storeys of sky

with stone from the nearby abbey’s shell

then, power untapped, St. Winifred’s Well.

An act of God, a world in seventy days.

High too squire Pennant’s recorded praise:

all the workers flourished, dined on meat,

fish, “in commodious houses”. Work was sweet.

 

Poet Jones of Llanasa, muffled voice

of the backwater – why couldn’t he rejoice?

“Rods doom’d to bruise in barb’rous dens of noise

the tender forms of orphan girls and boys.”

Poets. They build nothing. Just hover, stare,

write maudlin history. Except he’d worked there.

*

Ingenuity flowers in such fumes.

New copper bolts were roots helping great ships

spread wide. Brass beakers moistening the lips

of Africa, exchanged for slaves, seemed blooms.

 

Up there, notice, a fly-wheel gouged the wall.

In this bank, too, an opening faced with brick

like an oven gone drowsily rustic;

no grass, webs or wormcasts though. Earth, that’s all

 

almost. Hereabouts being where the knack

of refining human brushes took hold –

twigs bound in rags who carefuly swept back

arsenic from this flue and lived to rot –

last year they found a skull, some ten-year-old

ingenuity planted then forgot.

*

The wall keeps on haemorraging dark green

through the bricked-up centuries, through soil

Meadow Mill injected with copper spoil.

And its damp spillway is coloured gangrene

in memory of times, as Pennant said,

when workers obeyed the “antient law”

of sluicing thoroughly before meals or

watched “eruptions of a green colour” spread.

(They knew dogs, if they licked the sheeting, slept

for good.) So justice as well, urbane,

copper-bottomed, is remembered here. Yet

though the wall’s washed scrupulously by rain,

strange that metal still heaves through. Dogs drop.

It has tasted men and starves and cannot stop.

*

For three years, Frederick Rolfe alias

Baron Corvo, the Crow, pecked at the shell

of Holywell. He saw in it himself,

more idea than place, a proud man mostly

beak who squabbled, wrote and painted, furious

with “Sewer’s End”, obscurity’s rebel

till fury grew him wings. Two crows he left

in painted banners still caw “Look at me!”

 

Flashing, art’s narrowed gaze will open

on polluted water and turn even stones

to mirrors. The Well running wheels ran men.

Its stream’s “uproll and downcarol” Manley

Hopkins sang rang walls from where Poet Jones,

apprenticed to heartache, jumped to sea.

*

Ice tore a trench to the estuary.

Grass healed its sides. Water devised a well.

An idea, grown around it like a tree

surviving as an arched stone spell,

towered so pilgrims are still beckoned here,

a welling of belief that named a town.

When another idea for water

bricked up the flow, its weight wore people down.

 

The centuries keep waking to change dreams.

Dug from the undergrowth: brickwork’s feud

with stone for possession of the stream.

 

And voices insisting water is alive –

those pursuing always and, pursued,

those in need of miracles to survive.

 

‘Curlew Sandpiper’ by John and Marilyn Davies

 

We took a break from lunch and I was shown around the house and garden. There were birds carved by John and painted by Marilyn, and artworks in various media created by Marilyn, especially ceramics.

 

‘Ceramic Head’ by Marilyn Davies

 

Outside, under a tree was a little sculpture garden.

Ceramics and found objects by Marilyn Davies

 

Unlike John, who comes from Cymmer Afan in South Wales and does not speak Welsh, Marilyn comes from Pwllheli in the north-western heartland of the Welsh language, and spent her career teaching in Welsh-medium schools. She did not seem to push her own creations forward, though we were surrounded by them, but indicated that she had been a lifelong maker of art objects. John was more specific. When he was eleven there had been a school eisteddfod, he was encouraged to contribute some poetry and was hooked, haunting the school magazine with his poems, and continuing through a long teaching career, notably as head of English at Prestatyn High School. Important too were some sabbaticals he spent teaching creative writing at universities in the United States, in Michigan, Washington and Utah: alongside the poems about Deeside, the North Wales coast and the wider Welsh scene, his books have many poems derived from his experiences in America, contrasting but clearly linked with his depiction of Wales: there are miners, displaced first nations, powerful religion and a host of sharply-drawn characters, some of them carvers of birds in wood.

While John could pinpoint the origin of his involvement in poetry, the origin of his interest in woodcarving, and especially in carving birds, seemed less clear, but grew somehow out of a childhood love of making things like Airfix model aircraft. He recalled his mother questioning whether it was worth doing, a discouragement which nonetheless spurred him on. The skill did not come easily, perhaps in contrast to his facility for writing, but the carving of birds in wood ran alongside and perhaps behind his writing of poetry throughout his adult life, and was given a big push by his contact with others who carved birds in wood in the United States. He talks about the process at length in his most recent book, Bird River (Carreg Gwalch, 2023), from which most of the illustrations of bird carvings in the present feature are taken. The book is an absorbing mix of encounters related to the carving of birds, descriptions of the creative process, discussion of influences, poems, and photographs.  The title points to the amount of time John spends walking the banks of the nearby river, the Clwyd, collecting driftwood for the mounts which have become such a feature of the carvings. As we spoke, he suddenly interjected that he loves collecting the driftwood and putting it together with the birds. Really, he told me, the driftwood has become the main event, a sort of gift that appears twice, first when he finds it, and again when he opens up the store in which it has been left to dry. He felt so thankful for it.

As in the poetry collections, Bird River contains a good deal of humour:

Then there was the small tribe of young men living by the Clwyd for about four months last summer, on a muddy creek at Rhyl. Some lived in a sod hut they’d built, flying a Welsh flag. Some lived in tents. Nearby was a handsome structure made of driftwood and a large bakery tray. By the time I encountered them, they were shooting rabbits and fishing but had decided not to kill pheasants because it was the breeding season. They were jobless. A lot of the money saved on accommodation went on drinking in the scenery. And they left behind, filling two burned-out cars already there when they’d arrived, hundreds of beer cans shining silver against the rust-brown like an Arts Council installation. I admired their enterprise, living, as one of them put it, ‘the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle’. So when later one of them checked out my armful of wood and driftwood-collecting costume and asked, ‘Sleeping rough, are you?’, I felt oddly flattered.

John carves the birds and they are then coloured by Marilyn:

Once John has finished the carving, it’s usually over to me. The first stage is to use a pyrography tool to produce the texture of the feathers… A low temperature will produce a light mark and hundreds of these barbs are required to give the bird a feathery look. At a high temperature, the tool can also be used to produce dark brown markings. Sometimes, with a bird such as a curlew, which is basically white and brown, white paint or dye and the use of pyrography is all that is required. Compared with a paintbrush, even a very fine one, it’s more accurate. But most birds will be painted. Many British birds are what birders call ‘little brown jobs’, so achieving shades of brown and grey is vital. The colours I use most are earth tones: Raw Umber, Burnt Umber, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, and White.

(Marilyn Davies, quoted in Bird River)

My tour of the Davies’ house and garden concluded in John’s workshop.

Workbench in John Davies’ workshop.

 

Surrounded by tools, partly fashioned carvings and driftwood pieces waiting for use, it was the tactile nature of it all that struck me. I asked John if carving the birds had replaced writing poetry. He was emphatic: yes, that was right. How did that happen? Again he was quite direct: he had found that he was writing rubbish, and it was embarrassing when editors who had once eagerly accepted his work now sent it back with a more or less polite rejection. He thought that poets commonly ran out of steam as they got older: the reactiveness that fires the images becomes less, one is not so much moved by events. I asked him if the tactile nature of carving and the fact that driftwood is a found object – a gift, as he put it – helped him to get the artwork going. He seemed to think that this was right. He was so grateful, he said, that the carving was there when his poetry gave out. It was the second time in our conversation that he spoke of his gratitude for what this form had given him.

In Bird River, John adapts a poem from Flight Patterns which ties together his preoccupations with woodcarving, birds and the environment of the estuary. This is Decoys. It takes the form of a dialogue between the poet and the Parkgate wildfowler Harold Gill. Gill was and remains a somewhat legendary figure in his locality, one of the last people to earn his living by wildfowling in the Dee estuary, and certainly the only one to record much about the life, in a remarkable memoir Dee Wildfowler: the last professional (1982), edited and published by Leslie Brockbank. Here is the complete original version of the poem.

Decoys

(in memory of Harold Gill)

My timber for carving’s from the shore,
driftlumps water sluices out
so it dries fast and won’t crack. Elm most of all.
Bones in the woodshed’s drought,
they clench. Opened months later, a store
of ripeness surprised is the windfall.

We’d leave for Mostyn, cross
the Shrouds. You had to know the water.
What use is a duck-punt once a week?
You’re not informed. Birds on the ebb won’t stir,
just sit there packed. The flood brings chaos.
High tide meant hide-and-seek.

I carve birds, ducks often: pintail
and mallard, a teal, shapes wood lays for the hand.
Bandsaw for roughing out — check the grain
runs with the bill. Chisels, rasp. Elm is hard sand.
With oil or polish, what’s been fingered stale,
another late surprise, is sunburnt terrain.

Each day — start early. We liked a NE
in the face when we picked our spot:
no wobblings, steady as she… Sixty yards
for a clean kill. 20 ounces. AA shot.
But for food, I wouldn’t have killed — at least
not birds. Smooth the feathers, keep no scorecard.

Best I like the curve where crown, cheek,
sweep down through the swell of chest,
the sweptback, cleared-for-action prow
of a poised gathering unrest
that, from the moment’s peak,
though wood, might just take off, go anyhow.

It wasn’t the birds mainly,
that’s something I can’t nail.
One chap I took, a February morning,
sang for hours — threats to shoot him failed.
Never sung before. The estuary
was fine, I lived on dusk and dawn.

Beyond wood: an airy something
from nothing wood’s a pretext for.
Alone at last with the whole mind’s scope,
you drift. Almost a familiar shore.
Stirrings, gleams are stalked, and springing
this time they are yours, you hope.

Not that bird carving is entirely without drawbacks. John told me that it was hard to find others working in the same field locally, or even further afield. In the United States he appears to have found a vigorous community of fellow carvers of birds, leading to various escapades which find their way into the poems; but not in the UK. He thought that this might be because of the time the work takes: he recalled a woodworker at a craft fair who had “Bloody Ages” printed on the back of his jacket, in answer to the question which is always asked. But John said that the slowness of the work did not bother him: it was the whole process, not so much the end product, which was engaging.

As I made my goodbyes, the Davies’ thanked me for taking an interest in their work, as if few people noticed it. I confessed myself baffled: there is so much there to take an interest in. I hope you have enjoyed reading about their art in this edition of Between Rivers. If you would like to find out more about their carvings of birds you can visit their website, Birds In The Wood, or visit their Facebook page.

‘Treecreepers in Sycamore’ by John and Marilyn Davies

 

BETWEEN RIVERS is a quarterly series edited by Alan Horne. It is focused on the area bounded by the rivers Alun, Dee and Gowy, on the border between England and Wales in Flintshire, Denbighshire and Cheshire. You can read about the background to Between Rivers in the Introduction

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BETWEEN RIVERS

BETWEEN RIVERS: AUGUST 2025 KING RICHARD II AT FLINT CASTLE – ALAN HORNE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments11 min read3.6K views

To introduce this edition of Between Rivers we have a poem by David Selzer. And With A Little Pin was first published on this website in 2009.

And With A Little Pin

On liberty’s last morning, he said mass

in the Great Tower – the chapel was cold

as winter. August’s sun warmed the rebels

riding along the estuary shore,

their drums silent. He watched from the walls.

At his back, the seas breaking on Ireland. King

and Usurper, first cousins, exchanged

purple words in the base court, a surfeit of

epithets: bombast, self-pity. Serfs

were indifferent but Richard’s dog fawned

on new majesty. The epicure

who bespoke a coat of cloth of gold

rode captive from Flint to London in the same

suit of clothes. Through Chester he was jeered, stoned.

Twenty miles inland, a sandstone hill

– sheer to the west – rises from the plain.

Parliament’s army sacked the castle.

Westwards there is the estuary’s mouth,

the livid sea. Above twitching fern,

a hawk stoops. Stones, flung into the well’s blackness,

fall through the hill seawards and never sound.

The poem connects Flint castle, on the Dee estuary, with Beeston castle on the Cheshire sandstone ridge. Flint castle is now an eroded stump surrounded by recent development, and you can read about this in David’s poem The Optimism of Engineers. But in medieval times it was an important stronghold, guarding the principal ford across the Dee to Neston, and controlling major routes not only into Wales but onward to Ireland.

Selzer takes the title And With A Little Pin from a line in Shakespeare’s Richard II. The doomed Richard surrendered at Flint to his friend turned rival, Bolingbroke – the future Henry IV – and Shakespeare turns the surrender in the castle into the pivotal scene of the play. But first, on the way to Flint, Richard is given what must be one of the most remarkable speeches in all of Shakespeare’s writings, from which David takes his title. Richard’s attachment to his royal pomp has always seemed brittle, and now, following news of the desertion or death of supporters, he falls into a despairing monologue about the vanity of kingship. It veers between being an expression of maudlin self-pity – what Richard later calls ‘that sweet way I was in to despair’ – and a cynical review of the real position of the leader. Here it is, from Act 3 scene 2. It repays being read aloud. Excerpts from the play are from the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Of comfort no man speak.
Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
Let’s choose executors and talk of wills.
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposèd bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke’s,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings—
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed,
All murdered. For within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and humored thus,
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell, king!
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence. Throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while.
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends. Subjected thus,
How can you say to me I am a king?

Samuel West playing Richard in 2000. Photo by Manuel Harlan, RSC archive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Richard is briefly rallied by his retainers, but news of a further betrayal seems to prove the case for despair, and he proceeds hopelessly to Flint.

The historical Richard was born in 1367, during the reign of his grandfather, Edward III, who is usually portrayed as a competent monarch. Richard’s father was the charismatic Edward, otherwise known as the Black Prince, but he died in 1376, leaving Richard to inherit the throne at the age of 10 on his grandfather’s death. In the early years of his kingship he was much guided by his father’s brother, John of Gaunt. There was serious conflict about the influence of courtiers and also the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 – bloodily put down in the end – but Richard was able to keep the upper hand with the support of his uncle and other advisers. But as he grew older and began to rule in his own right, certain weaknesses emerged. He took an elevated view of his kingly status, chose the sun as his emblem, and held a grand court with much patronage of the arts. This may have encouraged a wider flowering of middle English culture. Chaucer, who was close to the court, was at work during his reign, but so were William Langland the author of Piers Plowman in Worcestershire; the unknown author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in Cheshire; the anchoress Julian of Norwich; and the mystic Margery Kempe in Kings Lynn. Richard himself is the subject of a contemporary portrait in Westminster Abbey, probably painted in the 1390s, which is unique in northern Europe as a surviving full-length portrait from the period:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yet Richard’s grandeur led him into conflict with the nobility at large. He was accused of depriving his nobles of their traditional rights and giving preference to court favourites. He does not appear to have had the ruthlessness or determination necessary to prevail, and Shakespeare’s play dramatizes this fatal weakness. Richard exiled John of Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolingbroke, in 1398 – the period of exile is exaggerated in the play – and took over John of Gaunt’s lands when the latter died in 1399, effectively disinheriting Henry, who returned from exile, rallied disaffected nobles against Richard, took him prisoner at Flint and usurped his throne.

The play turns on Act 3 scene 3. We see Bolingbroke arrive outside Flint castle, with Richard already within. He and his followers are torn between their respect for the king and their wish to defeat him.

Enter with Drum and Colours Bolingbroke, York, Northumberland, with Soldiers and Attendants.

BOLINGBROKE 

So that by this intelligence we learn
The Welshmen are dispersed, and Salisbury
Is gone to meet the King, who lately landed
With some few private friends upon this coast.

NORTHUMBERLAND

The news is very fair and good, my lord:
Richard not far from hence hath hid his head.

YORK 

It would beseem the Lord Northumberland
To say “King Richard.” Alack the heavy day
When such a sacred king should hide his head!

NORTHUMBERLAND

Your Grace mistakes; only to be brief
Left I his title out.

YORK

The time hath been, would you have been so brief with him,
He would have been so brief to shorten you,
For taking so the head, your whole head’s length.

BOLINGBROKE

Mistake not, uncle, further than you should.

YORK

Take not, good cousin, further than you should,
Lest you mistake. The heavens are over our heads.

BOLINGBROKE 

I know it, uncle, and oppose not myself
Against their will.

Royce Pierreson as Bolingbroke, Bridge Theatre, 2025. Photo Manuel Harlan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bolingbroke sends messages to Richard, ostensibly submissive but backed up with threats, and invites him to parlay. Then Richard himself appears high above them on the castle wall.

Bolingbroke’s Soldiers march, the trumpets sound.
Richard appeareth on the walls with Aumerle.

BOLINGBROKE

See, see, King Richard doth himself appear
As doth the blushing discontented sun
From out the fiery portal of the east
When he perceives the envious clouds are bent
To dim his glory and to stain the track
Of his bright passage to the occident.

YORK

Yet looks he like a king. Behold, his eye,
As bright as is the eagle’s, lightens forth
Controlling majesty. Alack, alack for woe
That any harm should stain so fair a show!

KING RICHARD, to Northumberland, below

We are amazed, and thus long have we stood
To watch the fearful bending of thy knee,
Because we thought ourself thy lawful king.
An if we be, how dare thy joints forget
To pay their awful duty to our presence?
If we be not, show us the hand of God
That hath dismissed us from our stewardship,
For well we know no hand of blood and bone
Can gripe the sacred handle of our scepter,
Unless he do profane, steal, or usurp.
And though you think that all, as you have done,
Have torn their souls by turning them from us,
And we are barren and bereft of friends,
Yet know, my master, God omnipotent,
Is mustering in his clouds on our behalf
Armies of pestilence, and they shall strike
Your children yet unborn and unbegot,
That lift your vassal hands against my head
And threat the glory of my precious crown.
Tell Bolingbroke—for yon methinks he stands—
That every stride he makes upon my land
Is dangerous treason.

Richard regains his regal self-assurance, but not for long. The loyal Aumerle urges him to play for time. He cannot, and we learn this from another passage of memorable poetry.

KING RICHARD  To Aumerle. 

We do debase ourselves, cousin, do we not,
To look so poorly and to speak so fair?
Shall we call back Northumberland and send
Defiance to the traitor and so die?

AUMERLE

No, good my lord, let’s fight with gentle words,
Till time lend friends, and friends their helpful swords.

KING RICHARD

O God, O God, that e’er this tongue of mine
That laid the sentence of dread banishment
On yon proud man should take it off again
With words of sooth! O, that I were as great
As is my grief, or lesser than my name!
Or that I could forget what I have been,
Or not remember what I must be now.
Swell’st thou, proud heart? I’ll give thee scope to beat,
Since foes have scope to beat both thee and me.

AUMERLE

Northumberland comes back from Bolingbroke.

KING RICHARD

What must the King do now? Must he submit?
The King shall do it. Must he be deposed?
The King shall be contented. Must he lose
The name of king? I’ God’s name, let it go.
I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads,
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,
My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown,
My figured goblets for a dish of wood,
My sceptre for a palmer’s walking-staff,
My subjects for a pair of carvèd saints,
And my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little, little grave, an obscure grave;
Or I’ll be buried in the King’s highway,
Some way of common trade, where subjects’ feet
May hourly trample on their sovereign’s head;
For on my heart they tread now whilst I live
And, buried once, why not upon my head?

At this point the play makes use of the castle setting and the opportunities afforded by the Elizabethan playhouse to depict Richard’s descent from his elevated station to ground level. Modern stagings have expended much ingenuity as to how this is done. The photograph below shows Richard Pascoe as Richard II, descending ‘like glist’ring Phaëton’ in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of 1973.

Photo by Donald Cooper, from RSC archive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KING RICHARD

Well, well, I see
I talk but idly, and you laugh at me.
Northumberland approaches the battlements.
Most mighty prince, my Lord Northumberland,
What says King Bolingbroke? Will his Majesty
Give Richard leave to live till Richard die?
You make a leg, and Bolingbroke says ay.

NORTHUMBERLAND

My lord, in the base court he doth attend
To speak with you, may it please you to come down.

KING RICHARD

Down, down I come, like glist’ring Phaëton,
Wanting the manage of unruly jades.
In the base court—base court, where kings grow base,
To come at traitors’ calls and do them grace.
In the base court come down—down court, down king,
For nightowls shriek where mounting larks should sing.
Richard exits above and Northumberland returns to Bolingbroke.

BOLINGBROKE

What says his Majesty?

NORTHUMBERLAND

Sorrow and grief of heart
Makes him speak fondly like a frantic man,
Yet he is come.

Richard enters below.

BOLINGBROKE

Stand all apart,
And show fair duty to his Majesty. 

He kneels down.

To the end, Bolingbroke conducts himself as a faithful subject who only seeks redress of wrongs, while keeping the threat of force close to hand. In the wider play there is the sense that, although much steelier and more determined than Richard, he is keenly aware of the blasphemous rupture in the order of things entailed in displacing an anointed king. Richard’s refusal of Bolingbroke’s protestations of loyalty seem to take the place of any effective assertion of his own kingship.

KING RICHARD

Fair cousin, you debase your princely knee
To make the base earth proud with kissing it.
Me rather had my heart might feel your love
Than my unpleased eye see your courtesy.
Up, cousin, up. Your heart is up, I know,
Thus high at least indicating his crown, although your knee be low.

BOLINGBROKE, standing

My gracious lord, I come but for mine own.

KING RICHARD

Your own is yours, and I am yours, and all.

BOLINGBROKE

So far be mine, my most redoubted lord,
As my true service shall deserve your love.

KING RICHARD

Well you deserve. They well deserve to have
That know the strong’st and surest way to get.—
Uncle, give me your hands. Nay, dry your eyes.
Tears show their love but want their remedies.—
Cousin, I am too young to be your father,
Though you are old enough to be my heir.
What you will have I’ll give, and willing too,
For do we must what force will have us do.
Set on towards London, cousin, is it so?

BOLINGBROKE

Yea, my good lord.

KING RICHARD  Then I must not say no.

They exit.

So Richard gives himself up to Bolingbroke’s custody, evidently before he needs to. As in David’s poem, they travel from Flint via Chester to London, where Richard is imprisoned. At the end of the play, Bolingbroke has Richard killed; and then kills the man he hired to do it, seemingly out of hatred for his own regicidal action. Richard’s actual fate is unclear, but he appears to have died in Bolingbroke’s custody.

There are a series of excerpts from the 2013 RSC production of the play with David Tennant as Richard which are well worth viewing. Tennant’s comic gift seems to have given the production a real twist.

 

I hope that you have enjoyed David’s poem and the selections from Shakespeare’s play. Shakespeare was not the only major artist to base work around Flint Castle. The painter JMW Turner visited it repeatedly over his lifetime and made many artworks depicting the area, which we will look at in a future edition.

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BETWEEN RIVERS is a quarterly series edited by Alan Horne. It is focused on the area bounded by the rivers Alun, Dee and Gowy, on the border between England and Wales in Flintshire, Denbighshire and Cheshire. You can read about the background to Between Rivers in the Introduction.

 

 

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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BETWEEN RIVERS

BETWEEN RIVERS: MAY 2025 ‘IRON AND STEEL’ – ALAN HORNE

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments9 min read2.5K views

BETWEEN RIVERS is a quarterly series edited by Alan Horne. It is focused on the area bounded by the rivers Alun, Dee and Gowy, on the border between England and Wales in Flintshire, Denbighshire and Cheshire. You can read about the background to Between Rivers in the Introduction.

In this edition we feature four pieces of writing related to the iron and steel industries of the Between Rivers area. Much of the heavy industry which was characteristic of the area within living memory involved extractive industries: coalmining, mines for iron, lead and other minerals, and quarrying for limestone. But the co-occurrence of these resources, together with easily available water power and charcoal from local woodlands led to the development of iron smelting on the eastern slopes of the Denbighshire hills around Bersham and Rhiwabon by the time of the Civil War in the middle of the seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century, the industry consolidated at the ironworks which later, with the development of blast furnace technology, became the steelworks at Brymbo, near Wrexham. Then, at the end of the nineteenth century the Summers family took advantage of the chance to build on land reclaimed from the Dee estuary to create what became a very large steelworks at Shotton, where raw materials and finished steel could be shipped in or out by sea. Brymbo steelworks closed in 1990. Steelmaking ceased at Shotton in 1980, when the blast furnaces were closed and a large part of the site shut down with many redundancies, but the works still exists on a smaller scale, coating and providing other treatments for steel brought in from elsewhere.

Bersham ironworks was in the valley of the Afon Clywedog near Wrexham. You can still see it today, and a few original buildings form a small museum. It had an important role in the industrial revolution under the Wilkinson family. John Wilkinson developed a method for the accurate boring of cannon. When James Watt patented the steam engine in 1769, he struggled to get cylinders bored to the standard he needed, but Wilkinson adapted his cannon technology for the purpose, and cylinders from Bersham were an essential component of the Watt steam engines ubiquitous at this stage of industrial development.

Part of Bersham Ironworks today. Photo: Alan Horne

 

Here we have David Selzer’s Lament for Bersham Ironworks. It was first published on David’s site in 2011, and captures just how novel this enterprise would have been at the time.

Lament for Bersham Iron Works

Not for the hard, life-denying graft of it

or the danger, not for the polluting smoke

or the banishing of bird song,

not for the exploitation and social

upheaval, least of all for its cannons

at Naseby, Bunker Hill, Waterloo,

but for its madness, the sheer reach of it,

the invention of it, the ambition,

the defiance, the rhythmical creak

of the horse-drawn gin pumping water

from the river, the sulphurous roars

of the furnace, the forge hammers pounding

through the ancient woods, along Offa’s Dyke,

their echoes dying…

 

By the time the linguist and writer George Borrow (1803-1881) was active, the Romantic movement was in full swing, and he is best known for travel writing and novels which feature picturesque scenery and picaresque action among the Welsh, Spanish and Romany subjects whom he saw as having more real character than his unimaginative English fellows. For some mysterious reason Wild Wales, his account of a walking tour through the country in 1854, was something of a set book in my family when I was growing up, and I continue to find Borrow engaging, as he walks long distances, drinks remarkable amounts of ale, tries out his Welsh on passers-by, and barges into isolated farmsteads to question the inhabitants about their life and locality.

Borrow’s account is of a largely agricultural, or indeed wild, Wales, but when he encounters industrial settlements his descriptions are just as vivid. During a stay at Llangollen he walked out in the Wrexham direction to explore the various settlements around Rhiwabon. Industry had taken off around here with the arrival at the start of the nineteenth century of the canal, which crossed the Dee valley by the spectacular Pontcysyllte aqueduct, subject of David’s poem The Aqueduct  published on this site in 2015. (The anglophone may easily romanticise about this gorgeous Welsh name, Pontcysyllte, polysyllabic and so hard to pronounce. It means Connecting Bridge.) Borrow got to the village of Cefn after dark.

I struck across the fields and should probably have tumbled half-a-dozen times over pales and the like, but for the light of the Cefn furnaces before me which cast their red glow upon my path. I debauched upon the Llangollen road near to the tramway leading to the collieries. Two enormous sheets of flame shot up high into the air from ovens, illumining two spectral chimneys as high as steeples, also smoky buildings, and grimy figures moving about. There was a clanging of engines, a noise of shovels and a falling of coals truly horrible. The glare was so great that I could distinctly see the minutest lines upon my hand. Advancing along the tramway I obtained a nearer view of the hellish buildings, the chimneys, and the demoniac figures. It was just such a scene as one of those described by Ellis Wynn in his Vision of Hell. Feeling my eyes scorching I turned away, and proceeded towards Llangollen, sometimes on the muddy road, sometimes on the dangerous causeway.

George Borrow, Wild Wales (1862), chapter 62.

 

We now leap forward by more than a century, into the era of large-scale steel production under the auspices of a nationalised industry, British Steel. I have spent some time looking for contemporary poems or other writing about the local iron and steel industry, but have not found much. They are probably there, and I may have been looking in the wrong places: I would be very happy to be directed to writings or other artistic productions about the industry. As it is I will, for the first time in Between Rivers, make use of two of my own poems.

 

Shotton Steelworks. Photo: BBC.

 

I do have some slight claim on the subject. As an undergraduate in 1973 and 1974 I spent the summer working at Shotton steelworks, first as a cleaner and then – a real step up – as an electrician’s mate, mostly in the cold strip mill, which is where coils of steel sheet were taken to be trimmed, heat-treated and otherwise finished off. After that, by a curious reversal, my father followed in my footsteps and spent the last few years of his working life as a cleaner in the hot strip mill. This was the previous stage of the steelmaking process, in which slabs of red-hot steel were squeezed through a press, shooting out at the other end as a long thin sheet, which flew down a runway of rollers and coiled itself around a spindle. Safety rails surrounding the area were buckled and bent at all angles, as things did not always go to plan.

The experience of the steelworks stuck in my mind, and about ten years ago I wrote three poems about it. One, The Electrical Cellars, became part of an early edition of Other People’s Flowers on David’s site. Here are the other two, Clearing Scrap and Overhead Crane. As with almost anything that is – at least in the United Kingdom – disappearing, it is easy to feel a nostalgia for heavy industry, so I should record that my main memory of the actual work was of considerable boredom, in an environment which retained some risks even if these were much less than in earlier days. At the same time, the scale of the works and the undeniable drama of some of the industrial processes made a strong impression which for me is always linked with the ubiquitous smell of hot steel and oil. It was the last hurrah of nationalised industry, providing quite well-paid jobs to large numbers of employees who were not continually policed to maximise productivity; when steelmaking ended in 1980, 6,500 people were made redundant, my father being one. On YouTube you can find a series of atmospheric amateur videos of the cold strip mill, shot just before final closure of the mill in 2003. You can see one of them here.

 

The vast majority of the workforce were men, and this was plainly a traditional masculinity which had plenty wrong with it. I recall the commotion when women from the offices appeared in the mill one day; and some parts of the works had a hard-drinking culture that must have caused terrible problems for family members. Conditions which were often squalid evoked a sordid response in some. And like many another young and naïve person, I was sent to the stores to ask for items that did not exist. (In fairness, I can add that this also happened to me when I first started working in the female-dominated environment of a hospital.) But I think that the old hands often showed a care and concern for apprentices and people like myself, and a wish to guide. Some of these features emerge in the poems.

As one of the main tasks in the mill where I worked was the trimming of coils of steel sheet to a set width, large quantities of jagged offcuts were produced, which have a role in both poems. The first, Clearing Scrap, recalls an incident, trivial in itself, that happened to me one day while gathering this scrap together. The poem first appeared in the Poynton Poetry Trail in 2017.

 

Clearing Scrap

Lined with carved old concrete, slick oil-grey,

sunk in the factory floor like a diving pool

abandoned and long dry, was a five yard hole

down which we threw the steel scrap that day.

Snaking pieces shook like rough-toothed eels

and snapped at face and hand as we whipped them away

into the smoky space.  The lengths lay

on the air, then piked from view, jangling in the well.

But up then flew in Scouse and Welsh a voice,

which begged with kindly swearing that we cease

(should we not mind) while yet its owner lived;

plus other efficacious words. We peered with silly faces

down the rim. We’d cornered one of the hard cases

who grinned leniently, sought an underground door, and left.

 

The second poem, Overhead Crane, is an amalgam of the kinds of experience which would have been common to a young man, as I was, in that environment. The cranes were a characteristic, seemingly animate part of the mill, and their drivers were the aristocracy of the workforce, given the precision of their work and the chance that they could drop tons of hot metal on unsuspecting heads below. Rumour suggested that they were the most highly paid of the workers; whether this was true I do not know.

 

Overhead Crane

Child.

Look up.

And up you look.

Lewis at your elbow

looks up also,

here’s no solitary world.

Smeared faces, turning to the lights.

 

On tracks high up there in the eaves

a crane is rolling with a popping roar

towards you, hoisting an electromagnet

to which cling, as iron filings might,

a bale of shards trimmed from the coiled steel,

severally hurled in a pit and now

en masse extracted for the scrap-mill,

each one yards long,

hooked, torn along the edge.

 

Had your boyish idiocy stirred

a mobile footbridge into affronted life

it would be so: cornering you

in the bay with hot, non-human breath

of plastics and electric cables,

flicking its metal tongues,

drumming on the wall, hooting now.

You look about for the cab

as for a sentient eye, seeing at last

he who is at the controls.

 

Marring the stillness of his lordly role

the crane driver makes movement at the wrist

to shoo you from the way, or to impute

your favourite pastime, you can’t tell.

You duck, Lewis pulls you to the side,

the crane accelerates off down the bay,

its load of points a modern flail

away to the great burning.

 

Lewis mimes a deadly blow.

You giggle and get back to work.

But it’s a sign that’s unmistakeable,

though minor. You are yet babies.

You have not your wits about you:

losers of tools,

forgetters of basic instruction.

Later you will be more competent.

For now, balding, brawny little men

called Albert or Llewellyn

tap their pates and look up

to the Lord if you appear.

And every foolishness will draw you,

as with magnets,

to their superheated heart.

 

I hope you have enjoyed this collection of writings and other material about iron and steel production. It causes me to think that there are more poems to be written on the subject. And it is just one aspect of the industry which is such a feature of our area. We will come back to that in future editions of Between Rivers.

 

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