Beginnings and enchantments

Monthly newsletter, April 2023

Dear friends,

Thank you all (and especially my paid subscribers) for your patience with my absence here for a little while longer than usual, while we’ve been moving house. Today is the first time that I’ve had a functioning workspace, and access to my desktop computer (you know, I can’t think on a laptop ...) for a full three weeks. The relief is immense. I actually have a place to create again, and some headspace to do it. It’s not quite finished/ arranged yet, but for the curious, here’s a glimpse of its unfolding, and its condition as I write, cleaning cloths and all.

Moving house is always disruptive, but this old house we’ve just moved into has been in particular need of redecorating and TLC in the short term, not to mention some major renovations coming up in the summer and autumn of this year. Still, paint always helps, and so I’ve been covered in it for the best part of two and a half weeks. I can’t remember a house that I’ve ever moved into which hasn’t seen me patiently repaint every wall and piece of woodwork. For me, there’s a sense of quite literally painting yourself into the place, coming to know all its foibles – and this old house has many, especially in the determinedly non-conformist bulging walls and decidedly unsquare rooms. Now that I’m rather more arthritic than I used to be in pre-lymphoma days, it’s a slower and less comfortable process. But it’s always joyful, nevertheless. I find myself talking to the house as I go. Singing the odd song, remembering and reciting the words to the odd poem.

Of all the rooms, my study is always the most important. I have the smallest room in the house, but with the most remarkable view, all the way across this narrow valley to the remarkable limestone escarpment of Mallerstang Edge. For those of you who don’t know this part of the world and might be curious, a helpful little booklet from the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (we’re actually in Cumbria, but the area – the Westmorland Dales – is now part of that national park) describes it beautifully:

Distinctive landscape character

The striking contrast between the narrow, verdant pastures that border the meandering upper course of the River Eden and the huge scale of the surrounding upland plateau and summits creates a distinctive and memorable sense of place.

The sweeping slopes of the enclosing uplands are occasionally broken by prominent screes and rocky cliffs, such as Mallerstang Edge along the eastern side of the dale. The distinctive flat-topped summit of Wild Boar Fell is of typical of the high Millstone Grit capped summits of the dales such as Pen-y-Ghent and Ingleborough. Tributary gills flowing down the valley slopes in areas with deep drift deposits have created a series of distinctive ridges along the lower valley slopes.

The River Eden begins as Hell Gill, which flows down a narrow, steep-sided limestone gorge before entering Mallerstang at Aisgill. From here it flows north, meandering across river floodplain pastures which are often bordered by ridges of glacial drift. These meadows, and the surrounding pastures, are enclosed by a network of drystone walls which extends up onto the lower valley slopes. Most fields are rough pasture, with patches of tussocky grass and scrub marking a gradual transition to open moorland on the upper slopes.

Mallerstang is a Viking name and the dale’s dispersed pattern of settlement reflects that established over a thousand years ago by Norse settlers. There are isolated small farmsteads, often sheltered by groups of trees, dotted at regular intervals along the lower valley slopes, each accessed by a track from the minor road which runs the length of the dale (B6259). There are also many stone field barns within the pastures just above the valley floor.

Extensive belts and loose blocks of broadleaf woodland on the lower valley slopes and floodplain margins create an enclosed, soft and intimate valley landscape; there is a diverse sequence of valley views from the B6259 and from the Settle-Carlisle Railway, which runs along the western slopes of the valley, above the floodplain. There are occasional glimpses of the embankments and brick structures associated with the railway line between the trees along the valley, but the railway is a distinctive landscape feature to the south of Mallerstang near White Birks Hill, where the railway runs alongside the road.

Sited on a knoll overlooking the River Eden near the northern gateway to Mallerstang, The ruined site of Pendragon Castle represents a type of fortified tower house that was particularly characteristic of the English borderlands. The original tower house was founded in 1180 but has been twice destroyed (by Scottish armies) and rebuilt. The existing ruins date from 1685 and the monument includes the defensive earthworks. Pendragon Castle was restored in 1660 by Lady Anne Clifford in 1660, a wealthy peer and landowner who is said to have counted it as one of her favourite dwellings. The ancient road to the east of the river is known as ‘Lady Anne’s Highway’.

The steeply enclosing landform creates a distinctive gateway character at the ‘entrances’ to Mallerstang. From the north, there is a dramatic gateway view as the road turns into the dale and the valley floor widens to give stunning picturesque views set against the distinctive backdrop of Wild Boar Fell. The ruins of Pendragon Castle are a prominent and romantic landmark on the edge of the River Eden floodplain. From the south there are more open, sweeping views which take in the wider profile of Mallerstang within the context of the huge upland plateau. Here the Settle-Carlisle railway line, with its red brick walls and bridges are foreground features, which accentuate the perception of a threshold at the entrance to the dale. These gateways enhance the distinctive landscape character of Mallerstang, which is coloured by a sense of isolation, enclosure and tranquillity.

Yes, it really is that magical. (And here is a view of Pendragon Castle from our house across the river, in evidence.)

But what is most interesting to me, in the short time we’ve been here, is an immediate and all-encompassing sense of being at home. More than the specific place (though not at all unrelated to, it – and more of that in the coming months), that feeling is for sure the consequence of returning to my northern homelands. An absolute sense of belonging. And how strange, that it was here all along, and that it took me the best part of fifty years, after we left, to understand it. But the first ten years of your life are incredibly formative, and the first ten years of my life were spent in the north, where I was born. Everything here makes sense to me, for the first time, I think, in all those decades. Much as I’ve loved many of the other places I’ve lived – especially the last couple of decades, in Scotland and Ireland – I’ve never really felt that instant sense of being known by the land, and by the people. That sense of being held by ancestors – as well as being closer again to my remaining maternal family.

Well, all of that is the subject of the book I’m writing now. In real time, as I find myself, finally, in this place, in this land, in this small but wonderfully friendly community.

On that note, as always, and with a promise of more to come, I wish you all a season full of richness and revelation, wherever in the world you might be. In the coming month, there’ll be an exciting new book announcement which I’ve been keeping secret for a while, and news of a brand new course I’ll be offering this winter.

Sharon

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Reading recommendations

A second month in which there hasn’t been much room for reading! But the book that is next up from my pile is the very wonderful Hags, by Victoria Smith. I’m reading it in good part because I’ll be appearing at the Chipping Norton Literary Festival alongside Victoria, at the end of this month. If you’re local and interested, the full details are here: https://www.chiplitfest.com/events/hags And here’s the event description:

Two trenchant women writers tackle the thorny subject of the second half of life, asking why women over 40 are so often overlooked, disdained or vilified. From witch hunts to today’s ‘Karens’: why is this group so prone to being ignored, pitied or abused, or seen as a threat? Victoria Smith’s Hags is a ferocious counter-argument to the demonisation of middle-aged women, while Sharon Blackie’s Hagitude reclaims these years as a liberating, alchemical moment. She finds a perverse pleasure, as well as a sense of rightness and beauty, in insisting on flowering just when the world expects you to become quiet and diminish. Join them to explore the history, and radical, fulfilling future for women in their mid and elder years.

Once that’s read, the next book I’m most looking forward to beginning is Wolfish, by Erica Berry. Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

Wolves abound through cultural folklore and through literature - vilified and venerated in equal measure. In Wolfish, Erica Berry examines these depictions, alongside her own research of the wolf for nearly a decade, to get to the heart of what our stories about the wolf reveal about our relationships with one another and ourselves: 'What does it mean to want to embody the same creature from which you are supposed to be running?' The wolf is so often depicted as the male predator, preying on the vulnerable girl/woman who strays from the path; the she-wolf meanwhile depicts women who sit outside the accepted boundaries of feminine behaviour. Berry openly recounts her own uncomfortable and sometimes frightening experiences as a woman to try to understand how we navigate our fears when threat can seem constant. Through it all, Berry finds new expressions for courage and survival: how to be a brave human and animal member of our fragile, often dangerous world.

Now there’s a book I wish I’d written. And perhaps the most amusing moment of my life as a writer came when I went into Waterstone’s bookshop in the delightful market town of Kendal, to see if they had a copy of this newly released book. They had; the lovely young woman at the till looked at the cover and the description, and then proceeded to recommend my own books back to me as the kind of reading I might also enjoy if I was interested in stories and fairy tales ....

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This month’s poem

With thanks as always to my dear personal poetry therapist Cath van der Linden, for sending this to me.

Let there be

From breath to breath
from dusk to dusk

let there be rainfall
when the soil is parched as rock

let there be sunshine
when the barley bends to be cut

let there be rainbows
when the days are short of light

let there be wind
when our boats are turned for home.

Jane Clarke, from The River, 2020