chain coral Chorus
Over the Bumble Hole
‘A landscape is like a wormhole linking different times and different places of living organisms and inanimate objects.’ Graham Hardman bumble: late Middle English (in the sense ‘hum, drone’): from boom + -le hole: 1. a hollow place in a solid body or surface. 2. a place or position that needs to be filled because someone or something is no longer there Black Country born and bred. It has a certain ring to it. Or perhaps more of a boom, with those drop-forge consonants. It’s a phrase I hear quite often, and one that I’ve rattled out myself more than once. An off-the-cuff troth of belonging, with a stray spark of pride and the slight rust of nostalgia. Not bad for a region so derided over the years. But what is it that we’re attaching ourselves to exactly? The more I traverse the Black Country, the more I think of it in terms of layers and levels, rather than boundary lines and questionable borders. Depth above breadth. A place where rich seams of history and culture are intertwined with the off-kilter landscapes. And there are few spaces where this palimpsest is more porous – or the various elements more charged – than over the Bumble Hole. If industrial alliteration can evoke a sense of Black Country heritage, then the name Bumble Hole goes a step further – albeit by default. For while there’s no definitive account of how the site gained its title , it conveys both the heyday of the Industrial Revolution, and the voids that were left in its wake. Straddling the border between Dudley and Sandwell, the Bumble Hole pays little heed to what author and presenter Phil Drabble called the ‘arbitrary meanderings of cartographers’ – shaped instead around the ancient formations below. Coal, limestone, iron-ore, fireclay. It seems fitting then that my first introduction to the site came by way of the Netherton Tunnel , or the Nevvy as we knew it. From beneath the ground, rather than above it. Growing up, the long, ungainly walk through this subterranean cut-through – from the Tipton end – became a rite of passage; the incursion into enemy territory carrying with it the risk of being thrown in the cut, or worse. Intermittent air shafts, or pepper pots , provided the only source of light, as well as transmitting the ghostly echoes of the world above – situated as they are between houses, on a park, and even moonlighting as the centrepiece of a suburban mini-roundabout. Add to this the eerie tintinnabulation of dripping water, lime-slimed walls, and the possibility of a broken or missing handrail, and it’s no wonder that these youthful forays filtered into the sub-conscious. These days I approach the Bumble Hole from the opposite direction – along the Dudley No 2 canal – and usually on two-wheels. As the housing estate to the right slopes away, the landscape ahead opens into green space. From here, the view is almost pastoral. Almost. In every direction, the industrial past breaks the surface; nature, growing around the bones of centuries-old infrastructure. Take Bumble Hole Lake – a former clay pit – that shimmers in a wreath of bulrush, bluebell and forget-me-not. Or the canal’s iconic cast iron bridges with their familiar Toll End Works signature; towpaths looped over and under each, like some colossal rope and pulley system. In the distance, Cobb’s Engine House peers out from the tree line, the adjacent stack rising above the branches like a periscope. My ride invariably takes me out towards Gorsty Hill, but not before I’ve circled this totemic structure. Whether by force of habit, or some other strange compulsion, I’m drawn to it every time. The Grade II listed building was once home to a Newcomen steam engine, pumping water from the deep coal mines until 1928. Shortly afterwards, the engine itself was transported to the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan. There’s an almost vampiric symbolism attached to this peculiar turn of events: sucking the land dry, then laid to rest only when head and heart were separated. Stand beside it today, and the old pumphouse is attended by a clotted, uncanny silence, punctuated by birdsong. Elsewhere, the remnants of this bygone era can be found under the fingernails and behind the lugholes: abutments to disappeared railway bridges; grooves in thick iron guardrails from the back and forth of rope that coupled horse to barge - the rub of centuries; Blow Cold Bank – or Black Bonk – a grown-over spoil heap with its tell-tale, begrimed brow. There’s something irresistible about the sweet-spot meld of industry and nature in spaces like the Bumble Hole. These shape-shifting interzones where neither past nor present can claim hegemony, while deep time – in its vast arc – humbles them both. If I ever tell you that I’m Black Country born and bred, this is probably the place I’m thinking of. Reference list: Davis, B (2012) On landscape ontology: an interview with Graham Harman. Available at: On Landscape Ontology: An Interview with Graham Harman – landscape archipelago (wordpress.com) (Accessed: 22 May 2021) Drabble, P. (1952) Black Country. London: Robert Hale Ltd. The Bumble Hole Smoke still pours from the stack, if you’ve the eyes for it. There’s a hiss of steam and a seething underfoot. The taste on the air changes with the breeze. Grease. Sweat. Soot. This is everythin’ and nothin’; the onny song we’ve ever known. Dig the scene that separates dolerite hills from Darby End; Rowley Rag and the spit-polish rows of post-war utopia. Where the scraped-back landscape re-invents itself - forging new links and strange acquaintances. Tuned-in to the heavy-metal reverb of buried lives and sunken trades; Chain-maker and nailer. Colliery and boatyard. Where spoil heaps rub shoulders with silver-shafted birch, and hawthorn sparks shower blue-collared walls. This is the space where time clocks-off, unwinds, goes wild. Finds itself. Thin-placed and hard-pressed. Courting the in-between. Pick at the seam of picture-postcard vistas, sitting pretty in their off-kilter kingdoms. A cast of bridges still reflecting on the old ways; criss-crossing epochs. Straddling aeons. Ambered in the glass-bottle brown of the cut. The walkers and riders that float like ghosts on pitted fields and fire-crack pathways: cow, desire, barely-theres. This is where time gets deep; ponders its past in death-knelled bell-pits. Tunnels its secrets in calcite scrolls - age seeping into age. Where the bones of the long-departed are sketched in bedrock pages. A smokeless stack abides, if you’ve the eyes for it. The whisper of trees and seedlings underfoot. The ring of industry still carries on the breeze. Magpie. Blackbird. Coot. This is nothin’ and everythin’; the onny song we’ve ever known. R. M. Francis, The Black Country Geological Society and the University of Wolverhampton Early Research Award Scheme is excited to present this guest blog by poet, novelist, performer and Wolverhampton Poet Laureate , Emma Purshouse. In this specially commissioned poem and blog post, Purshouse guides us through the Black Country Geosite, Wightwick Wedge and Smestow Valley. Wightwick Wedge and Smestow Valley Slink with me down this tarmacked path between two schools to trip trap over a gruff bridge, climb the grassy bank past a managed pond where once the heron and I mourned lost mangrove murkiness. I’ll point out steel barring the route I used to walk, tell how that way skirts a crater where men once quarried narrow twists of gravel. We’ll head instead down thicket corridors, find light and open ground on the cut’s offside where dogs wade in from little beaches to bark at ducks. Baring right, we’ll cross the field, pass behind allotments, turn left at Tiger Wok, a second left to slip between Aston Bentley Interiors and the Oddfellows, and swing through iron gate to towpath. On the way to Dimmingsdale there will be kingfishers, grey wagtails, and you can spin for perch if you’ve a mind. At Wightwick I’ll show you the valley at its most obvious, how the only way is up on both sides of the Bridgnorth Road. I’ll tell of how one winter night I left the Mermaid at last orders to hear snow melt and glaciers in the Smestow’s rush. At Mopps Farm we’ll detour, climb tree root steps, take bridle path around Pool Hall, watch courting grebes flirt with bivvy boys. Down Dimmo we’ll eye the waterworks where my granddad used to work, and I’ll regale you with my scant knowledge of bore holes and artesian wells. A boat might pass, heading towards Wombourn(e), where Orton Ridge rises. I will tell of Rocky lock where you might graze your face on folds of orange sandstone as you work to wind paddles. At evening’s approach we’ll leave, follow loop of lane towards Lower Penn, find the disused railway line that will transport us back to the city. And even though you are with me I’ll keep my phone in my hand, keys between my fingers as we walk this path where panthers lurk, and little girls should never go alone. We're also delighted to share this beautiful film of the geosite, by photographer and filmmaker, Nicole Lovell. This offers a gorgeous sensory view of the place. Crows over Smestow Valley
Each winter dusk and dawn they come mob-handed, streaming in over the canal and the fluttering tennis courts, to gather above this ragged street, caw at empty playgrounds. Black paths fracture the sky above our erratic homes. Murder settling on roof tops, stirring aerials and furious slates. And in their cracked scrub song, their gravel eyes is the rise and fall of land, cold seas, long nights, the glacier’s slow slow bite. Emma Purshouse Poet Laureate for the City of Wolverhampton |
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January 2022
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