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Cromwell

THE KING’S WORKS IN WALES

Edward I’s decision, announced on 17 November 1276, to go against Llywelyn as a rebel and disturber of the peace, had, as not the least notable of its consequences, the inauguration in Wales of a programme of castle-building of the first magnitude.

THE HISTORY OF THE KING’S WORKS, HMSO, 1963

 

Maître Jacques, castle builder from St. George,

Savoy, walked the crag’s perimeter

two hundred feet above the breaking sea

that would ensure supplies during sieges,

and advised the king in what was due course then –

a relay of messengers riding to

wherever the court was – to build at Harlech,

Welsh heartland, dominate that long coast,

be grander even than Caernafon or Conwy.

 

Carpenters, charcoal burners, diggers, dykers,

plumbers, masons, sawyers, smiths, woodmen,

quarriers and labourers – all from England –

together with Master James have ensured

the elegant, sturdy walls and towers

have lasted beyond Glyndwr’s uprising,

the Wars of the Roses and Cromwell,

though some of the limestone from Penmon

and most of the steel and iron from Chester

have been snaffled over time by locals.

 

Victorian tourists, informed by guide books

in the grand tour style about ruins,

could catch the Paddington train to Oswestry

then the stopping train to Barmouth, alight here,

take the pony and trap up the hairpin road

to the Castle Hotel facing the keep.

 

The hotel has been refurbished: on two floors

luxury apartments; on the ground floor

the visitors’ centre with time lines, a/v,

museum shop, and café where there is

Fair Trade coffee, speciality teas,

paninis, scones – and all day full Welsh breakfasts

very popular with local builders.

 

 

 

LOST TRIBES

Catching the last train on any Sunday night,

when I was a student, before The Troubles,

they would be there. I would notice them

in noisy farewells clustered near the bar:

the men, red faced, shouting companionably

with the drink, the women calming kids –

the cardboard suitcases, the carrier bags.

 

Changing at Crewe, there would be more of them

to join us for the early Irish Mail –

refreshment bars and ill-lit platforms full

of bothered, now silent travellers.

One night – the Mail, as usual, delayed –

an old man, in a black overcoat,

gripping a scuffed doctor’s bag, its clasp

tarnished, turned to me, saying, in a soft

Dublin accent, ‘British Railways ought to be

bombed!’, and chuckled at what he must have thought

was our shared history and a past gone.

 

With them, waiting on the platforms or jostling

for seats, I felt close, whether real or imagined,

to centuries of unremitted wrongs

held so fresh in memories that it must seem

only yesterday the Black and Tans patrolled,

just a week since the potatoes failed,

a month since Cromwell’s hard-faced soldiery

massacred the innocents at Drogheda.

 

Leaving the train a few stops after Crewe,

I would think of their now unbroken way,

through a slate-black countryside, to embark

for somewhere they knew was home – and envy them

such modest certainty.

 

 

 

PARISH CHURCH, BURFORD

Hear them, silent on the leads,

watching their comrades,

the ensign, the corporal and the private

shot by firing squad

amongst the elms in the graveyard below.

Under the leaves in the summer,

Cromwell’s New Model Army

was practising democracy,

selecting all ranks for exemplary death –

the only leveller.