Dudley Castle, Wikimedia, Trevman99 |
And far about Him gazed,
And said, 'I never more shall feel
At Hell's fierce flames amazed."
If I look across the valley from my house, I can see Dudley Castle on the opposite hill.
A
former owner, John Dudley, was executed for trying to put Lady Jane
Grey on the throne and as a child I used to be told that it was 'one of
the ruins that Cromwell knocked about a bit.' Parliament's guns were set
up where the present day Castlegate roundabout is, just by the 24-hour
Tesco's. (It's a long way from the castle and gives you an idea of just
how big a castle's outer baileys were.)
But
the rhyme above refers to the period when industry came to the Black
Country, the period from, roughly, 1760 to 1860: the Industrial
Revolution.
My
Scottish partner has just told me, flatly, that 'nobody knows where the
"Black Country" is.' So I'll tell you. It isn't Birmingham. That
overgrown village with too high an opinion of itself is to the
south-east.
The
Black Country was an area of small towns and villages until Industry
arrived -- and Industry arrived because of the district's geology.
Dudley Castle is built of limestone and the 'Seven Sisters' caverns
beneath it are quarried from limestone. Where the Black Country isn't
limestone, it's basalt, streaked with rust from the iron in it.
Alongside enormous quarries there were enormous 'marl-holes': holes from
which marl, or clay had been dug. And through the Black Country ran the
massive thirty-foot coal seam. It was said to be the only place in the
world where ladders were needed to cut coal.
Clay
to make bricks to build factories; iron-ore for smelting iron;
limestone to act as a flux for the iron; and coal to fire the furnaces.
All of it within a small region which meant little time and energy would
be spent hauling raw materials over roads little better than dirt
tracks. Once canals were dug -- and the Black Country has many 'cuts' or
canals -- the iron and coal could be floated right up to the factory's
own quay.
Within
a short time, the Black Country became a place of brick-works,
coal-mines and iron-works. Coal had been mined and iron worked in the
district for centuries. Small, family run mines were common where the
thirty-foot seam came close to the surface and 'Smethwick' means 'the
town of the smiths.' There had always been back-yard nail and chain
shops in Dudley, Oldbury and Cradley Heath. But these had been
small-scale cottage-industries, worked as and when demand was there or
when the work-shop owners felt like it. At other times, they tended
their pigs, chickens or vegetable patch.
But
the 'Revolution' meant more mines and deeper; more nail and chain
shops, more foundries, more steel mills. There was a sudden steep
increase in exploitation too. It was the kind of capitalist free-for-all
that the Tories are itching to return us to, if they can only get rid
of all that nannying red-tape from the EU: all that wimpy stuff about
workers' rights and air and water purity.
There was none of that fuss-potting in the old Black Country. The Agricultural Revolution had forced people off the land:
'They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals a goose from off the Common--
But leave the greater villain loose
Who steals the Common from the goose.'
People
poured into the Black Country from surrounding English counties, from
Wales and from Ireland. They came to a place where there were no laws
against child labour: children worked in factories and were lowered into
mines on the end of a rope, to spend all day down there, in the dark, o
be hauled up again after dark had fallen. Many fell to their deaths or
were brained by objects falling from above. There were no safety rules,
no guards on machinery, no minimum wage, no welfare -- not even
something as inadequate as Universal Credit.
Great
mechanical hammers pounded day and night, 'wildfire' burst out above
ground from ill-kept mines, and a dense dark cloud of smoke and soot
obscured daylight. It's said that, at night, the red glow from the
foundries and forges reflected off the underside of this cloud of
smoke.
"The Devil stood on Dudley's keep
And far about Him gazed,
And said, 'I never more shall feel
At Hell's fierce flames amazed."
The old Black Country was Hell on earth for most.
It's the setting of my book, The Ghost Wife.
The
book was partly inspired by the Dudley Devil. His name was Theophilius
Dunn and he was born in Netherton, a village near the town of Dudley, in
1790. He made a living as a witch, telling fortunes and 'finding things
lost.' He was called 'Devil' because, like 'cunning man,' it was a name for a witch. He was known locally as 'Owd Offie.'
He
was supposed to have been such an accomplished witch that 'great
personages' came in carriages from as far away as Scotland to consult
him. Despite such claims, he seems to have been the usual con-artist,
doing business at all the local 'Wakes' or fairs, from a tent decorated
with occult symbols. He sold charms and potions.
Theophilius
Dunn hanged himself in 1851, at the age of 61. One story has it that he
foretold the day of his own death. When that day came, finding himself
in good health, he was so annoyed at the thought that one of his
predictions wouldn't come true, he made sure it did.
My
devil comes to a sticky end too, though not by hanging and I'd like to
make it clear that my devil, though inspired by Dunn, is not intended to
be a portrait of him. My devil, Amadeus Warley, is far more wicked.
And, of course, has genuine supernatural powers.
Another of the characters, Rattle, goes to visit the Devil and has to walk through the town of Dudley (called 'Dudham' in the book) through its streets of slum dwellings, where blood and guts were washed downhill from the market-place beneath the castle walls. The narrow streets were often blocked with refuse, including human waste. A din of hammers rings out on all sides. Dudley was a nailing town.
Rattle is a 'pit bonk wench' -- a girl who usually works on the pit banks, loading coal onto carts, or carting away waste earth and rock to the 'pit bonks.' In my childhood, if a girl or woman was untidy or grubby, they were accused of 'looking like a pit-bonk wench.' The chains of figures cut out of newspaper to amuse children were always called 'pit-bonk wenches.' That, or 'brickle wenches' who were very similar wenches who worked in brick yards.
The pit bonk wenches you did not mess with. They were muscular and they came mob-handed. Old photographs usually show them dressed in skirts, bonnets and big boots and grimy as anyone would be who worked loading coal all day. I think they'd dressed in their best for these photos, though, as the tales I was told as a child always described them as wearing an old flat cap that had once belonged to a male relative and often one of his old jackets too. Sometimes a shawl or sack was draped around the head and shoulders with the flat cap on top. And a pipe in the corner of the mouth.
I've never seen photos of them wearing trousers but they did. They often rode astride on the horses that pulled the carts and were climbing on and off carts all day. It was easier to wear trousers.
Another of the characters, Rattle, goes to visit the Devil and has to walk through the town of Dudley (called 'Dudham' in the book) through its streets of slum dwellings, where blood and guts were washed downhill from the market-place beneath the castle walls. The narrow streets were often blocked with refuse, including human waste. A din of hammers rings out on all sides. Dudley was a nailing town.
Rattle is a 'pit bonk wench' -- a girl who usually works on the pit banks, loading coal onto carts, or carting away waste earth and rock to the 'pit bonks.' In my childhood, if a girl or woman was untidy or grubby, they were accused of 'looking like a pit-bonk wench.' The chains of figures cut out of newspaper to amuse children were always called 'pit-bonk wenches.' That, or 'brickle wenches' who were very similar wenches who worked in brick yards.
Pit bonk wenches |
The pit bonk wenches you did not mess with. They were muscular and they came mob-handed. Old photographs usually show them dressed in skirts, bonnets and big boots and grimy as anyone would be who worked loading coal all day. I think they'd dressed in their best for these photos, though, as the tales I was told as a child always described them as wearing an old flat cap that had once belonged to a male relative and often one of his old jackets too. Sometimes a shawl or sack was draped around the head and shoulders with the flat cap on top. And a pipe in the corner of the mouth.
I've never seen photos of them wearing trousers but they did. They often rode astride on the horses that pulled the carts and were climbing on and off carts all day. It was easier to wear trousers.
The Ghost Wife herself
is not inspired by the Black Country at all. She stems from my reading
of sinister Icelandic folk-tales about 'followers' -- a kind of ghost
which attaches itself to a particular family and follows them
relentlessly through generations. This is usually said to have happened
because of a curse inflicted by a witch. The witch -- who was as often
male as female -- created the ghost by murdering some luckless beggar
and then sends the ghost against his or her enemy, to torment them or
spy on them.
In the book a 'Methody' farming family had a rather less religious ancestor who drowned a beggar girl in order to create for himself a witch's familiar. The witch died -- but his familiar continues to haunt the farm-house and attaches herself to some unfortunate young man in every generation. As the Dudham Devil remarks, the classical writers would have called her a succubus.
In the book a 'Methody' farming family had a rather less religious ancestor who drowned a beggar girl in order to create for himself a witch's familiar. The witch died -- but his familiar continues to haunt the farm-house and attaches herself to some unfortunate young man in every generation. As the Dudham Devil remarks, the classical writers would have called her a succubus.
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