Regular readers of my blog will already know that the relationship between past and present is a theme that comes up time and time again in my short stories and novels. So it should come as no surprise at all that old buildings and ruins also fascinate me. I also know that this fascination is far from unique! But what it is that fascinates is not so easy to nail down.
Take a look at the photo below left. It shows Errwood Hall in the Goyt Valley, between Buxton and Whaley Bridge. Built in 1840 by members of the Grimshawe family, it was demolished in 1934 not long after the death of Mary Ambrose Louisa Gosselin-Grimshaw. The photo below right shows servants and staff around 1895. I find the blond girl in the white dress (front row - middle) rather haunting. Everything about her, from her hair, to her posture and the whiteness of the dress makes her look very modern. She could be about to push herself up and walk towards us. She certainly seems to have been dropped in from another age - or is my imagination working too much?
Have a look at the two photos below. The first pic shows a part of the house today. The second pic shows a view of the Grimshawe family graves.
I have chosen the Errwood Hall pics for this blog because I passed the ruins many times on a favourite (1990s) walk between Disley and Buxton. I was doing an MEd at the time and used the walk to muse on topics like knowledge. What is it? How do we get it? But I always stopped at the ruin. It seemed to fill me with both melancholy and a moment of stillness. Here, after all, was a place where time had not moved and where history could be felt and the passer-by could lose himself in dreams. The passer-by might also take the opportunity to reflect on the nature of change and that the ruin is a warning from the past. "It will all come to an end."
Look again at the picture of the ruin. The gaps, the holes and broken parts do invite you to fill them in with your imagination and make stories, don't they? They also invite me to move across time, to take the blond girl by the hand and take a walk with her to the rhododendron gardens just down the road. But then, the ruin reminds me not to be so stupid. My imagination is definitely working overtime. The blond girl belongs to the graveyard above. She went away a long time ago, didn't she? Or am I seeing the past, the present and the future at the same time?
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