Andy Marshall's Genius Loci Digest: 9 October 26

Compact Edition!

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Photo-hoard

A loveliness of ladybirds at St. Mary of the Angels at Brownshill

Words

“... the place has as many aspects as there are gradations in the light.”

Nan Shepherd. The Living Mountain

Observations

The Lighted Way

I’m lodging over in Staffordshire at King’s Orchard Marina and, on a late September afternoon, I take the opportunity to break the bounds of my land-locked haven and walk the mile or so along the Coventry canal to the Plough at Huddlesford.

It’s more about the canal than the pub for me. I’ve always been fascinated by canals. I remember buying my son, Sam a toy canal lock system when he was little, only to find myself playing with it more that he did. Like Offa’s Dyke - the canal system in Britain is a palimpsest of marks upon the landscape - one that covers over 5000 miles of navigable waterways. It has it all – slow living, light, nature and reflection – and, of course, those little pocket homes – each one a small sphere of personal culture – moving along designated lines and carrying the lives of their occupants with them.

I think of how the boaters lives are governed by lines and circles - the linear path that they take and the cycle of daily activity on the boat. A whole world gathered into a narrow space – a private life made portable, with its familiar comforts and daily rituals drawn close around it. By evening they cluster like ladybirds in the autumn sun. Meals are cooked, chores are finished and, for a night at least, temporary bonds are made with their fellow boaters or the landlubbing walkers that pass in parallel.

The canals are an extra layer laid over our landscape, holding the zeitgeist of another age – one of steam and coal and brick and iron. Today, they offer funnelled views through trees and overgrown hedges – brick bridges with yawning Georgian arches, their voussoirs, patchwork repairs and rope-worn edges forming a vast Serengeti of moss and lichen.

In their time, they brought a radical shock to the ancient pattern of boundaries across the land - cutting through them like a knife through butter. Now mellowed, they have become part of the landscape they once disrupted, their hard lines softened by growth, weather and time. Within these tempered boundaries sit the narrowboats - little containers of life, boundaries nested within boundaries.

On my way to the Plough, the sun is low and everything is working upon its inner glow.

There’s a chill in the air and the boat hearths are burning.

Gossamer strands are shimmering, leaves are translucent and the darters are settling.

I catch a glimpse through a narrowboat portal and see a pair of hands held out towards the fire. I feel like a voyeur, but my overwhelming desire is to sit there inside, beside the fire - a thought that corresponds with some lines by J. R. R. Tolkien:

I sit beside the fire and think
     of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
     in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
     in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
     and wind upon my hair.

I have supper and a pint in the pub and, by the time I leave, darkness has descended. As I walk back to Woody, I feel as though I’ve slipped into a different world - another threshold crossed. The path is the same, but everything around it has altered.

The bridges are darkened apertures, the water a sheet of blackened glass, and the narrowboats have shrunk into their sidings. Their worlds are still visible through their windows - little glowing geometries, suspended in the darkness and doubled in the water.

My reverie draws up more poetry - words by Ezra Pound about twilight in New York:

“I have looked down across the city from high windows. It is then that the great buildings lose reality and take on their magical powers. They are immaterial; that is to say, one sees but the lighted windows. Squares after squares of flame, set and cut into the Aether.
Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.”

We are on different scales here, but the transformation is the same. Here, too, the solid world falls away and all I see are lighted windows - each one a glimpse into a little pocket home, each one holding a life beyond my view. The stars have been pulled down and tethered along the canal, lighting my way.

As I walk on, each of those windows begins to feel like a threshold - an opening between the shadowy world outside and the latent lives within.

By the time I get back to the comfort of Woody, it feels as though one threshold has opened onto another.

I think of what I have seen and then dare to think of the place I visited yesterday, along a canal not far from here.

Alrewas.

It was a place that lit me up inside - a place of thresholds and transformation - a place where even the pronunciation of its name is an embodiment of deep history - a place that led me to a door that has survived for over 800 years.

Huddled within my own cosy world, I think of that door as a threshold between times - and of the people who have crossed it and those who will come after us. The lighted windows along the towpath offered glimpses into lives beyond my view; this ancient doorway opened onto lives beyond my time. Through it came the final lines of Tolkien’s poem - lines that seemed to sum up my perfect day:

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

To be continued…

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AND FINALLY

Last year I set off on an epic journey to photograph some of the photographs from several cathedrals for Janet Gough's Divine Light book.

I'm so happy to say that Janet Gough has now created a Divine Light Calendar - which has my photograph of the east window at Carlisle Cathedral on the front - and a few of my photographs on the inside.

To celebrate the remarkable heritage of our stained glass, I've created a page as part of my Sense of Place Series - a way into the wonderful world of coloured glass including Janet's book and calendar. Enjoy! 👇